Ah, yes, that’s a good way to think of it, Chaplin. It is a bit weird that they ask you to get invested in a particular gun, but then it’s totally luck of the draw whether you’re going to use it. But World War Z clearly wants you to vary which guns you’re using, even within a mission. For instance, any weapon xp you earn after a gun hits its level threshold is wasted, which incentivizes using multiple weapons instead of just focusing on your favorite during any given mission.
Also, for some dumb reason, there are a ton of unique weapons available to me in the Steam release, even without buying any of the DLC. Which undermines the whole weapon leveling scheme! Why would I painstakingly level up the shotgun when I already have some gaudily painted super-advanced shotgun with a silencer?
Apparently, there’s more to the weapons system when you start earning prestige ranks (?) for the classes, so maybe it makes more sense later. But for now, what a great way to undermine your own design, dumbasses. It’s so frustrating to see developers flailing around trying to market their games as Call of Duty alternatives at the expense of their own design concepts.
Buying the base game on Steam gives you the first-person view option. But maybe the base game on Steam includes whatever expansion you’re talking about.
Maybe you should have brought along the aptly named Exterminator and her molotov cocktails? :)
Buying the base Aftermath game that is. The old WWZ “base” game and WWZ GOTY are delisted. If you have the latter from before Aftermath, you don’t get the faux ADS / ironsights mode.
Again, I’m talking about the Steam release. Before this week, World War Z was not available on Steam. If you buy it on Steam, you have the first-person mode.
(Which I can’t imagine using. The loss of situational awareness is too painful.)
Hey, look! Rats were soundly beaten with the nerfstick in today’s patch (I would cut and paste the text, but the developers decided to post the patch notes as an image file).
This is good news! I am still on the don’t hurt me or whatever difficulty, and even then the rats were the biggest pain in the rear. I’m looking forward to leveling up some classes and hunting some rats later.
Just fired up the latest version. Still really good as far as the core gameplay, but WTF at that terrible half-assed “first-person” mode? Hey Saber! Looking down the side of my rifle is not at all how that works!
Strangely enough, my boys just love it. “Dad, its so much better than the old way”. And now they know about perspective and the difference between first and third person.
I will say that after playing the Back 4 Blood beta, it’s so refreshing to just play a straight-up zombie horde game without all the garbage card collecting nonsense. The progression here is straightforward and simple.
I quite liked the card mechanic in B4B. I find WWZ progression, while straightforward kind of boring. I like the idea of each run varying a bit and me having some control over that which the cards provide. Shame the controls suck in B4B though so I still won’t be playing it.
Aliens: Fireteam Elite is excellent for this, also letting you use cards to change up the experience. Unfortunately, the card system is pretty limited. You need to have the card you want; only one card will apply and in a multiplayer game with randoms, you have no control over whether it’s going to be the card you chose; and the card is used up when you’re done. It’s a weird system and I’ll be curious to see how Back 4 Blood compares.
But, yeah, it would be cool to have something like this in World War Z. As it is, the challenges offer some interesting tweaks, but it’s nothing like the card system you’re talking about. World War Z doesn’t seem interested in letting players mess with the basic gameplay formula.
@Harkonis, when you say you find the progression boring, do you mean compared to Back 4 Blood or just overall?
just overall really. didn’t play enough of B4B to compare due to control issues. The type of progression we have in WWZ is perfectly serviceable but feels like with the number of years we’ve had these types of systems that things would have evolved by now. Progression mechanics feel stagnant in many games to me.
I’m not sure where I am at on my feelings about WWZ progression. I like how it is so open ended with lots to work towards, but I sort of feel like they stepped on their own systems. It seems like the best use of Supplies (the progression currency) is to not use them at all. I should just use the already unlocked DLC guns, upgrade nothing, bank Supplies, then prestige an unupgraded class as soon as I have the requirements met. It feels like a punishment to use any currency for skills or guns. This makes the progression feel very hollow. It feels like they needed to have the DLC guns locked behind blue coins, gun levels, Supplies, or something.
I self imposed a limit of not using a DLC gun until I unlock gun level 5 for that gun. It makes the progression feel a bit better, but then I know I am sapping my prestige options as is unlocking any class skills.
It’s not thermal nuclear war, but I feel like the best way to win the WWZ progression game is to not play at all (until hundreds of hours of currency are banked).
I’m doing the same thing with the weapons: not using the uber-guns that are already unlocked for whatever dumb reason. I really like how different weapons have personality in World War Z, and the progression system just feeds into this even more. Again, such a stupid decision to throw in all those uber-guns and undermine the fine work they’ve done with weapon personality and progression. I even like the sniper rifle, which I previously scoffed at. Who brings a sniper rifle to a World War Z shootfest? I do.
I don’t know the first thing about prestige stuff, since I presume you have to max out a class’s level to unlock whatever prestige is. And instead of focusing on one class, I’ve been sampling them all. I really like the variety they introduce, and how they play differently. Although at this point, I’m leaning into the Gunslinger, which just makes the weapons that much more cool. Which brings me back to my first paragraph.
@Chaplin, have you gotten hip to the virus samples yet? I noticed I was getting a bonus for virus samples in a public game, but I had no idea what that was until I looked it up online. Seems to be totally undocumented ingame.
The only thing I’ve seen is one of the tutorial popups in the right-hand side of the screen right after I found a virus sample. Easy to miss during a fight.
