Is the Blood Plague the Least Realized Mechanic in State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition?
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- Опубликовано: 27 апр 2020
- When Update 16 came out for State of Decay 2: Juggernaut Edition, it did something that brought up an interesting question: removing the ongoing medicine cost for stabilizing a blood plague infecting community member means... what is the point of the blood plague?
The blood plague is supposed to replace the disease mechanic in State of Decay 1, but how effective is it? Does it convey any of the feelings and emotions of a life threatening microbial threat?
What can be done to fix the lood plague?
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What do YOU Think? How "gud" is the Blood Plague?
I agree Fox. After I got gud at hitting plague hearts and the overall mechanics it became somewhat irrelevant. Honestly, the best use of blood plague was in HEARTLAND where every zombie infected you.
Check out my videos I made blood plague a real threat Fox if you want to check it out let me know but yes with the base game it’s pretty lame and can be almost ignored completely
I agree that it should be way more deadly and scary for the players
I think the Blood Plague is seriously underwhelming since they did NOT add that content into the 'main' game.
I think Undead Labs made the game even easier in the hopes that more "casuals" will buy the cheaper Steam edition.
I think they reached the dev teams 'technical' plateau early on ... and that is why we did not get better end game content.
I think giving up community mods for 'online always' was a bad move.
I think taking this long to come up with a better fix for co-op players troubles is just sad.
And i think the Bounty Broker is a huge fumble , that fat man should be a FUN part of the game , instead he is a lazy, fat, invulnerable 'merchant' with a truck we can not drive.
Thank you for asking what I think. :) hehe
I think that regarding the blood plague there should be some sort of mechanic like there is in Heartland DLC.
For example, to be able to craft a blood plague cure, you would need some things first.
- a book that you can randomly find in houses, left by previous survivors that has all the instructions needed to make the cure.
- some samples from bloaters (same mechanic we see in heartland dlc), some samples from blood plague zombies, maybe some chemicals or ethanol too
- a unique facility mod that allows you to craft the cure while installed in an infirmary
I also think there should be more done with the scraps of circuitry.
Maybe there should be a mechanic that lets the player build barricades outside the walls, maybe some wired fences, or some spike traps.
The thing that I would absolutely love in this game is HUNTING and self sustainability. Hunting deers and boars for food, fishing and being able to build chicken pens. It would be so nice if there were DOGS in the game, like when you deal with enclaves, the dog can be scary for them and they wont attack you, or the dog can be aggresive and bite one of them giving you the time to kill the rest of them.
I think the biggest thing this beautiful game misses is LIFE. More life, like animals, pets, changes in the environment like you mentioned.
I don't know, what do you think of these ideas?
Is it just me, or does anyone else miss the "boarding up of windows of houses we're looting" mechanic from the first game. Also, how about the REAL heroes from the first should've been added (That's my opinion) Marcus, Maya with the Lois Lane from Smallville Season Four, Ep. 1 clothes, Jacob, Ed, Sam, etc., etc. I mean, C'mon, who else is with me here?
What they could actually implement without changing the mechanics as much would be tweaking the blood plague. Make nightmare zone a nightmare. No cure for blood plague. You get blood plague on nightmare, you have 10 min to decide to either euthanize, exile or go out swinging by taking out one last plague heart or infestation. You can accumulate plague infection but the only way to remove (no more passive heal) would be to use the current cure in game. Leave standard and dreadzone alone. That way, this gives players the option of how deadly they want it.
The game is too buggy to go that hardcore. You could get blood plague because you got stuck in a searching animation, or a zed teleported to you on top of a survey point, or a bunch of zeds randomly spawned in on top of you.
I definitely like the idea of human raids, however I think the aim bot like A.I on nightmare mode would end up making it legitimately unplayable
Joshua Meek honestly, their aim is genuinely ridiculous
Just spam dodge and aim snap
I think if you let a infection spot get bad enough or 3-4 infection spots close to together it would turn one of them into another plague heart for you to destroy. That could be cool mechanic for sod3 or new add-on for sod2.
I wish you customize and upgrade your walls or buildings at your home depending on the base being 4, 6, or 8 person.
At Level 1 building: Adding "Water Catcher" gain small water replenish over time or "Grass Roof" helps improve your base ecosystem over time to combat blood plahue at the nature level of virus as you mentioned.
Level 2 building have "Solar Power" for free electric power to that building alone or Satellite Disk installed to increase Radio Ranged and better chance of getting Red Talon or Network traders inside your map.
4person base-Level 1 Walls: Wooden or Aluminum fencing.
6person base-Level 2 Walls: Brick-Cement combined or metal covered fencing.
8person base-Level 3: Inner and Outer walls to base. Electrified Barbed Wired fence with Wooden fence outer wall Or Brick/Cement Wall with metal prods with sandbags and small spike trench around your base.
Wish they Let you grow your allied communities to be bigger or combine together to combine abilities or make new and improved ability one over the 2 lost abilities. Like Level ability has less effective-ness vs a Lv2 or Lv3 ability.
Example: Two Level 1 allied communitirles with "Encouraged Advice" ability and "Medical Advice" abilty move together into 6 person unoccupied base, Gaining Level 2 ability "Doctor Expertise" when combined.
Another level 2 allied community that has that community combine "Ammo Offsite" & "Fuel offsite" abilities into "Hoarder" Community.
When merged with "Doctor's Expertise" Community could move into a 8 person base with Level 3 ability called "Medical Storage".
The level 3 Community's would have 12 people in those 8 person bases, but the Negative would be that those allied communities would be more subjected to Zombie Attacks due to their community size, which requires your help more often from them.
Smallest 3 person allied Community would have rare or no attacks from zombies, once every hour in-game with Bloaters or Screamers zombies attacking.
6 person allied Community would have 3 - 4 attacks periodically every 30 minutes with Screamers or Feral zombies attacking.
While 12 person allied community would 5 - 7 attacks every 10 mins in-game time with ferals or juggernauts zombies attacking.
Have your Allied communities be able to move one of your un-occupied bases to grow bigger as your reputation with them increases.
(What you think Git Gud Fox?)
It's harder to build a toolbox than cure the plague lol
I'd say its a toss-up between blood plague and the use of outposts. both are very under utilized.
Depends on how you use them
If I have someone with utilities and someone with agriculture, I have very little need of outposts beside beds and maybe ammunition.
Kishqui remember in state of decay you could set outposts to have mines around them. Base included. There is SO much more they can do with the blood plague and base customization. I hope with the extra money and help from Microsoft they can take state of decay 2 (a very good game) and make it a masterpiece. Before they were a small team but now there isn’t an excuse. They do well at listening to their audience but with state of decay 3 I honestly think it has to be a homerun or it’ll fail because if they copy paste and update the name of the game it’ll fail. I believe they’ll lose a large portion of their fan base if that happens.
I strongly recommend trying to get this discussion going on the Reddit forum, as clearly they have at least some eyes on what's going on there. I really appreciate all the thinking you put into making Blood Plague more dangerous and agree. Maybe it'll resonate with someone on the team if they happen to be in a position to add more big elements to the game, as I'm sure a load of players are craving.
Someone else pointed out about outposts. What about clearing an area for say a week, then having a neutral group move in. Build them up, and slowly clear and hold area by area, them move groups in before moving to the next section. And you have to hold an area for a week before possible friendlies move in, but you have to keep an outpost/community member in the area to act as liaison to the groups in that area. Old school hearts and minds ops.
with this video and some of your older stuff on features you would like in the game (particular the upgrading vehicle stuff sounded really awesome to me), i think Undead Labs should reach out to you for more ideas on SoD3! I never played this game until about a month or so ago now and it is my new obsession. i am loving it and all your content!
can we play together?
Unfortunately many of the players from the gamepass really seem to struggle with the game overall. Which is what the Jugg update they tried to fix. I don' see them trying to increase zombie threat at all.
Watching Fox shoot, the controls on XBox seems very clunky. I'm playing on PC and the shooting is pretty much like any FPS game - I can shoot around 2 zombies per second with good precision, and that's neither boasting nor bashing on Fox. The aiming is just that much quicker and more precise. On the flip side, I'm reluctant to fight Jugs and Ferals in melee - which he seems to do leisurely...
No wonder that console players feel that the game is difficult enough as it is - if you basically have to have Gunslinger in order to actually shoot with any kind of speed and precision.
That's part of the reason I don't like playing shooters on PC. I think that the game pad adds a certain level of realism to the shooting in a game. You shouldn't be able to have the sort of reaction time a mouse gives. It just doesn't feel right.
I could be drastically more effective playing on PC, but I would just use a game pad as I just have an ethical problem with shooting games and mice.
It's why I play games, like Warframe, on the Xbox, but am willing to play Mechwarrior 5 on PC. Mechwarrior builds clunkiness into the game to compensate for the mouse while Warframe would put me at strictly a disadvantage playing with people who can use a mouse, so I prefer to play it on the Xbox where everyone has a level playing field.
@@GitGudFox I dunno man guns aren't THAT hard to use irl. They aren't clunky, sure, you aren't quite as precise all the time but that has a lot more to do with bio-metrics and stress, surprise, etc. I play on KBM and scare pretty easily in monster games =D I'm not godly or anything. If I owned a console I would find a way to use KBM, it's just a better and more financially sustainable way to play... considering the cost of controllers/accessories. All console players should use the best most affordable option to play, imo.
And neither is the usage of a controller as clunky as non-console players make it out to be.
I don't have the best aim because I don't care to improve it. I'm not currently playing any full shooter games, so I don't have any regular practice aiming. When I was playing Halo 5 competitively, I had dramatically better aim.
Great video as always Fox 👍😀
I don't like how quick 'Threaten this enclave' is. I try to learn about a survivor and I threaten them. Too many goshdarn times
Seriously Undead Labs should offer you employment today!
You made some very great points another great video
15:25....now tell me again how you are a Trader and not a Warlord?
War is trade my good sir.
What if they just made all zombies plague zombies? Then flip them to regular zombies if you clear all the hearts out?
I think it would just cause people to concentrate more. Like, if I sit up and really focus, I will hardly take any damage from zombies if I just dodge at every moment and only attack when it's safe.
@@GitGudFox some people joke that I-frames are OP in SoD2 ... but I think they are an important, elegant, and simple mechanic. There are some options and methods that can allow for pretty fast heart clears, I'm not the best but I could get it done with few losses. All BPZ would just have me focus hearts that much more, and I think that would be a ham-handed buff to the BP system overall.
They should make it so when a character is infected with blood plague, normal zombies ignore them. The trade off is that amount of time before zombification is randomized so you are gambling with your character.
1. There should be a survivor trait to cure the blood plague which is more difficult to acquire than just reading some skill books.
2. Bloood plague samples should only be given by destroying a heart and in very little quantity.
3. The blood plague should also require a slot in your base for a specific lab to create the cure with the survivor trait.
Talk To me it doesn’t have to be I just figured to make it more difficult.
1 and 2 - cool idea.
3 - we are already strapped for slots. With a base redesign, sure, although that is practically impossible as the slots are represented physically when we walk around. I never have enough room to build what I need, even on normal zone. ... now - if we could mesh bases - and have more than one - HAPPILY!
It's already too late to increase the difficulty of the blood plague in this game. The zed hunter items necessitates that they be relatively easy to acquire.
1. The cure shouldn't be trait locked. Perhaps just a higher resource cost. 2 meds to make a single cure while keeping someone in a bed used that cost 3 makes little sense.
2. Absolutely plague samples should come only from plague hearts and possibly plague Juggernauts. But that might make them too easy to acquire.
3. Perhaps a facility mod but not a base slot.
Jules Windu that’s what I mean a facility mod not a base slot🤦🏻♂️ thank you I legit couldn’t think of what I was trying to say.
hey git gud fox, please make base review for providence ridge and best base for ALL map combined.
I wanna go for 300 day achievement but dunno where to settle
Instead of having it being binary like this (you either have or don't have blood plague) make it so even contract partial blood plague debuff your character performance. The more severe you have, the worse it becomes. How come contracting one doesn't degrade your physical ability? Even catching a minor cold in real-life make you feel weaker and head dizzy a bit. Make it so it reduces your max HP, SP, and overall stats ie all of your skills get -1 star for a minor infection. And partial infection will become full infection if you leave it like that so it constant ticking down, make it a threat that you can't let it go. Check-In shouldn't completely pause the countdown but make it so the patient is living on buying time. One cycle might get lucky that it doesn't develop any further, another cycle they end up becoming worse thus speed up the turn rate. Full infection should make everyone in your community going a bit batshit insane because they don't know when this guy is gonna turn so everyone just sleeps with one of their eye open, more conflict would occur and maybe someone would even attempt to murder a guy with full infection due to paranoia.
I like your idea that Plague Cure won't cure the Blood Plague completely. It only a stop-gap measure and if you still being reckless about it, you won't have a second chance. I would go further on this and make it has a chance to permanently scar/debuff your survivor or a slim chance that your survivor will develop immunity or resistance to it thus making them stronger and turn them into a unique combatant to use mainly against Blood Plague threat.
By making Blood Plague much more potent and threatening, it will make a goal to wipe the town of Blood Plague much more valuable and prominent.
I wish they add a Minor Plague Heart on Dread, and Nightmare zone. Minor Plague Heart will happen if you leave an infestation for too long so it develops into one. It won't become a Full Plague Heart since that would conflict with the goal of the game, and infestation usually spawns together in a cluster, it still hellish to clear them out if you let a lot of them develop into Minor Plague Heart.
Some thoughts
1. If someone is infected it should progress over time like Blood Plague does now.
2. Beds in the infirmary should be used to treat infections.
3. To cure infection cost time in bed and plague samples. The amount of rest and samples used should be based on how much the infection progressed.
4. If you don't have the resources the infection will continue to progress.
5. If Survivor reaches full infection they Git the Blood Plague.
6. Blood Plague progresses over time and is incurable.
7. Blood Plague survivor gains some new traits could be Gud could be bad or both. The higher the progression the greater the effects of the new traits.
8. Remove Blood Cure and add Blood Treatment. This will lower the Blood Plague progression.
9. If survivor reaches full Blood Plague they become a new breed of survivor super plague zombie that can use items and weapons, maybe even spit up blood vomit that can infect people or it can attract more plague zombies.
I love the block by block and restoration idea!
These descriptions would make its replayability so high.
Good reviews point out the bad things pointing out only good things makes it hard to improve
I know this isn't a question about the subject but what do you use to record on xbox.
I like the idea but the way I would see it, is that you start the game an there is just no cure, just treatments to the Blood Plague but when you beat game you unlock a legacy that gives you the cure. I would also suggest phases to the blood plague, where they become more infectious and aggressive. The contamination idea, I love it, but I see more as territory control where you have large sections of the map that are infection zones with the goal of clearing them, if you destroy one plague heart and not the others another one spawn back. Once you destroy all the plague hearts in that zone, lets just say a grand plague heart would appear but have have the characteristics of Plague Walls but with more health, this would provide a battle worthy of co-op play. I really hope that Undead Labs addresses this because Blood Plague is just a joke at moment. Thanks for the video Git Gud Fox I enjoyed it.
What if the only way to cure the blood plague was with a doctor, but if the doctor got the blood plague then they can’t cure themselves.
The need for doctors.. a very rare class of character.. could tie into the blood plague being more dangerous..
Interesting LORE bit, CLEO calls the juggernauts "highly augmented foes". "Augmentation" as a word is sometimes used to describe a medical operation to surgically enhance parts of the body.
Great thoughts on blood plague Fox.
I have been playing SoD2 for well over a year and have never used one of those beds.
I think at the very least if you get blood plague, it should be a must the infected would have to check into the bed for some type of minimum amount of in game days. You would also lose his/her bonusses and skills for the community. For example, if that person skill was utilities and was needed for hydroponics, those farms would break for as long as they where checked into the bed.
That will be definitely be more realistic tbh
Oh and you should need a survivor worth the pathology specialization to even be able to make a cure.
So heavily agree. The Blood Plague should feel like a war, and it doesn't. The blood plague should spread like a PLAGUE, and not just be this static 'hearts are here, here and here' kind of thing. If you're having a tough time or are just hoarding resources and not actively hunting down the hearts, the game should generate new plague hearts until you are either forced to retreat to a new map or just community wiped. Choosing to turtle and hoard should have consequences beyond a couple of enclaves being mad at you. It should be a meaningful choice where spending an entire day scavenging and ignoring infestations carries the risk of those infestations all turning into plague hearts, which could be disastrous. I would certainly welcome the drama of suddenly getting a distress call from an allied or friendly enclave whose settlement is about to get taken over and having a very short window to go help. If the devs think that would be too harsh, make it an option. "Blood Plague spreads" on or off.
They just need 2 modes for the game. The normal State of Decay mode designed to be as atmospheric of a real survival horror zombie experience and then a sort of "minecraft creative" mode where you can just play the game casually with the existential threats removed.
I play with all the plague freaks in my main game so dealing with plague feral packs or plague bloaters makes blood plague a lot more deadly you get a lot of plague plus my plague hearts have 10x more health so your in the situation of fighting off waves of plague zombies and ferals for a longtime it’s a real challenge
Yeah and kills other people character with one bloater explosion 😋
Congrexes Prime 😂😂😂😂 I’m still sorry bro
@@BrianMenard add to the fact that he can't drive worth a damn but claims he s drift King. Fun times lol 🤣
Congrexes Prime lmao the UL Hitman I get the one that they can’t
@@BrianMenard don't trust him fox he drive right over the boater and kill your character lol 🤣
What if, on the idea of the flamethrower, whenever you destroy a plague heart and leaves the husk behind that you can loot the husk doesn't disappear it's actually going to become a plague heart again unless you actually burn it with the flames thrower and destroy it completely but as you burn it it lets out that scream feedback again where it sends even more zombies then the initial plague heart as a last stitch effort to survive. This way it makes taking out a plague heart way bigger and even more dangerous and it's something you're going to have to do all the way through and really risk your character's life to completely eradicate instead of just defeating it one time. It immediately repairs it's self overtime when you beat it
Something I do in my game to make it more of a challenge is not allowing myself to make cure until I have a doctor + a level 3 infirmary
Well say sir.
Then if they Add the hallucination mechanic like in fear or some zombies then when you attack its kinda ghost then dissappear. Then random standing dodge animation like just looking around so frightened. Some animation that make them look like theyr afraid.
Undead Labs could create Blood Plague Infestations that could terraform the surrounding environment if not destroyed soon after appearing.
Imagine if there was blood plague in real life
Ebola
I think the main problem UL has in general is that they're afraid of committing to their own ideas. A few examples:
Builder legacy lets you ignore the water and electricity mechanics of the game entirely.
Trade depot lets you ignore the attrition and scarcity elements of SoD2.
Sniper tower gives you a get out of jail card every 10 minutes for minuscule amounts of influence.
Cars let you drive away to safety no matter where you are.
And now the Blood Plague as well.
It seems to me they don't want the player to be able to make decisions that ultimately lead into a dead end. I'm all for the changes you suggest but that would lead to the possibility that an entire playthrough might become unsalvagable - devs nowadays really have a problem with that. You can see that in many games that have faux choices, nothing really sticks at the end of the day. There are almost no real either or choices in games to be had anymore. I think the problem is the philosophy behind game development and UL is no exception here. That's probably also why UL transfers all the difficulty into the constant drainage of ressources. Which they also don't really commit to because the Trade depot exists.
They've also mentioned some awkward ethical hangups (awkward in terms of a team making a zombie apocalypse survival game) like being unwilling to include animals in the game, so there is no hope of ever being able to hunt for food for example. It's a case of realworld niceness preventing the inclusion of perfectly reasonable gameplay systems. You can be a perfectly good person, an upstanding citizen, and still play video games where you hunt deer or defend yourself from zombie dogs. UL seems to feel that isn't the case.
@@yescommander2458 That sounds like PR-speak to me. It's much more likely that they don't want to spend the ressources to model and animate animals. It's the same with rain in the game - their official stance is that they don't want to bother with it because they can't rival RDR2's rain so they're not even going to try. They say that with a straight face to the audience while zombies still visibly phase in and out of existence right before the player's eyes. It took ages for them to somewhat fix the issue of zombies spawning on top of you. UL seems to be a team of amatuers, and I don't say that to be mean or disrespectful, it's just that they seem to have severe issues handling the engine they're using.
@@HankTheVillain Yeah, whatever the case may be, they just aren't pushing the game into areas they should be. I'd love to see how Red Hook (Darkest Dungeon devs) would handle SOD3. My second choice would be to see Hinterlands (The Long Dark devs) take over a sequel.
They should add the heartland special zombies to the base game
Great video and discussion. I was kind of confused about that change to the cost of the stabilization. I think we will see some kind of nerf to our ability to cure in the future.
I would like to see a more in-depth infection system. Something like an official gameplay "modifier" that you can toggle on game start, where normal Zombies have an infection like we have with BP at the moment - that is diminished over time... where BP would build up over time, even if it was just one exposure. Some checks, maybe skills would play a role, or a new Armor system that helps protect survivors from exposure as well as damage. I dunno about you guys but Armor would be a big focus for me if I were in this situation. I don't want to get bit! .... Stamina comes into the question there as well but we can also look to the real world, where if any of us were strapped up with BDUs, boots, armor, firearms - akin to modern soldiers, we would be very strained by the weight. But over time - we would level our skills (see where I'm going) so that we could wear armor for longer with minimal drain on our stam. The fact that armor isn't in this game is a mystery to me. I'd love to see some mods to the plague and armor idea separately. Contamination is a cool idea too, works well with the armor, where hazmat gear that has lower armor value but against normal zeds we could switch to ballistic armor. .... Cool video Fox!
I wanted state of decay 2 to be like their live action trailers of the hardship of surviving and how tough desicions will have to be made and how your survivors can truly die at any time from zombies or actual hostile humans (since you can't shoot other humans till the game permits you with the red diamond icon).
I am day 7 nightmare and plague samples are super rare for me [killed about 100 plague zombies and only got 5 samples which went to the quest giver], I agree on easier modes plague is nothing to worry about but on nightmare it is a concern for me because I have no cure for it currently.
What they need is boss type events you can choose to do, on all modes. If they added something like a moving plague heart that get's giant or something.. or two blood jugs... I don't know. Something that creates more of that end game raid boss feel.
No thanks. as someone who also played SOD1, this game is meant to be sandboxy. its a sandboxy zombie survival experience. Not a game where you team up to do raids. theyd have to be legitimate enemies for that, which zombies are not. raiding implies there is a conscious enemy to fight and to gain something at the end, as a prize. they are zombies. just no.
I think a "raid" could be a good idea, but not as the typical MMORPG "raid" experience.
You should be rewarded for overcoming a major obstacle, but in a survival game, rewards often come in 2 forms not just 1. The first form can be some kind of collectible object that grants you power, but the other form can be relief from pain. In other words, there could be a raid that is designed to reward you with more real estate, more room in the map to explore. It also could relieve you from the pain of a giant infested zombie city making the threat to your base unbearable.
I don't think that building a threat designed for multiple characters to overcome is a bad thing, but I also don't think that the game needs a generic MMORPG "raid boss" thing that you just kill for some kind of ultimate weapon because we already have something akin to that: the Bounty Broker, and more of that isn't what SoD2 needs.
@@GitGudFox Yeah, I didn't mean like a MMORPG Raid boss, but more like just a harder to beat boss that's kind of a bullet sponge. Optional, of course. You know, for when by day 8 you've already looted everything, lol.
Some changes I would like to see are economic ones. Right now there is no good way to profit with crafting (especially in nightmare zone) outside of strong painkillers/beer.
I have a question, are the grenade launchers any good to give your community members at base, im playing nightmare zone at the minute and need some 50 cals or some other good weapons to keep the juggernauts away, because im constantly getting attacked by like 3 at a time
.50 sniper rifles take 4 shots to knoked down a jugg...
@@Elglobulo I'm using 50 cals but even still they're constantly infecting my community with blood plague
@@Jmsborland97 then you can try using grenade launchers, box mines are great to, and red talon mines are the best in game but youll have to play daybreak to get that :/
@@Elglobulo Nah i just used the community editor to unlock all daybreak items, saves 100 hours of grinding
@@Jmsborland97 Lol, where is the fun in that?
Hi
gid gud fox
Did you ever try playing "Phoenix Point"
Your video is recalling me to this game
It is a turn based game like xcom
They should really emphasize the need to check people into the infirmary for a meds + time cost over easily creating a cure for both infection and the plague. That would definitely fix this.
I think purifying the base would just be too much lol. If you added base selling and building sterilization would make a different kind of game. More like a Sid Meyer style Zed City kind of thing lol.
See a bunch of people glow red
Constructive criticism is what is always a benefit never a debit of thought.
The game starts with a good idea when playing the tutorial, you have a concern with blood plague, I agree that the plague samples could be more difficult to find, I agree with the idea that the environment could become infectious, as seen in Heartland, you can't get too close to the plague wall or you start to be infected, just as when juggernauts hit the ground they form "puddles" of infection that could become permanent, adding this "ability" to all freak zombies, the implementation of heartland mechanics within the main game would be something to do , adding plague walls, adding plague infestations.
Perhaps even some race against time as the freak zombies and the plague hearts if left out can create the infested areas that would generate more plague hearts and even generate new plague walls.
But, whit all this said
Sod2 has not become a game where history or how you survive will matter. So the whole tutorial as well as the blood plague were already destined to become obsolete
If the base game had heartland mechanics with all zombies being blood plague it would defiantly be more dangerous. And maybe permanent defects from being infected even if your cured. Maybe a random positive boon and a negative boon like some kind of mutation. Like after curing yourself you have enhanced max stamina but less max health
Just an idea I had while watching this video.
But a few ways that the devs could make BP a bit more of a risk vs. Reward:
*Any plague consumables used on a survivor automatically raise the gauge somewhere between 80 - 90%
*An internal timer kicks in (between 5 - 10 minutes)
where the survivor cannot lower the gauge through any means.
(because they just took in a large quantity by their own choice.)
*survivors become extremely susceptible to all sources the plague
ie: if a jug punched you during this time period it'd become full blown BP.
I'm sure there'd have to be some testing / balancing for the idea if it were ever realized.
After watching this video. I just realized I have not checked someone into the infirmary for Blood Plauge in a very long time. I actually forgot you even could. I just make a cure, cure myself and move on with my day.
Also the contamination idea reminds me of Black Fever from State Of Decay 1.
I was thinking of Terraria's "crimson" and "corruption" when I wrote the loose script for this episode. I feel like the Blood Plague originally was the Black Fever, and they just renamed it in SoD2. The "Black Fever" hasn't even been mentioned since SoD1.
I like the idea of the contamination. It can help boost the weariness of players on how the kill the plague zombies. In addition to this i would propose a base building where you need a burn pit as stated but also a quarantine lab where only the cure can be made in this facility. For the burn pit it could be cool to have a "clean the base" feature that boosts morale and reduces survivors contamination. But also have a "sweep the streets" where you will actually see survivors drag the zombie bodies to the burn pit also reducing the rate of contamination.
I think the most under used mechanic in State of Decay 2 is the find other survivors option it'd be a lot better if there was some short stories in there and that would really flush out the game
There is one big problem with blood plague. It incentivises evading the zombies instead of dealing with them.
Even you said that the standard strategy is just running away. If they made the blood plague even deadly, people would be forced even more into the evading/sneaking strategy and never try to deal with zombies in a "fair" fight.
You can't make the blood plague deadlier without making evasion the best answer and thus making the game boring/worse. As a stealth/evade game, SoD2 is pretty mediocre.
As you said, the best solution is something that forcer us to stand our ground and fight against this disease instead of cowering in fear and running away. The land corruption you mentioned is a pretty good idea. UL tried something similar in the Heartland campaign.
Another thing that can mitigate the blood plague is the fact that with good vehicle position you can destroy most plague hearts from outside the building from on top of the car. Honestly, it's more likely a follower will get blood plague rather than the active character. The problem is having a follower tends to be actively discouraged by the follower AI and often, it's easier to go solo between the fact that the AI does dumb stuff that gets them killed or they don't defend themselves well because of it.
As for how to make blood plague have more weight, even something as simple as making the cure take longer to craft so that it either requires using the infirmary or having it prepared beforehand may do the same thing. Of course that may require changing the 'The Only Cure' quest.
I think they should change the currency of the game to parts and or supply ruck sacks. I feel like that would be a much more realistic and better option to purchase things. In a real zombie apocalypse people would trade supplies instead of using "influence" points.
Are you enjoying Scarlett Spear Fox?
I don't have my ship yet. I just started playing again after like almost a year.
Hey, Fox, anyone ever told you that you sound a lot like Dennis Miller?
I don‘t know man i just want you to play Dead Matter when it comes out
Agreed,I keep telling fox he has to tube a playthrough when it comes out
Jim Struckman Jr Indeed, i‘ll just keep annoying him with it till he one day does
Is there alike a beta or a demo for it or something? Send it to me on Facebook, Jim, if there is one. Or early access or something.
Git Gud Fox As of now there‘ll be a closed alpha for backers and if i‘m not mistaken they said they‘ll sometime after that put out a public beta
All they need to do is add more hard enemies some type of boss enemies that are hard to kill etc
I don't think that really does anything to improve the blood plague though. I think that physical threats, such as zombies, are a totally different thing that what disease threats should represent.
Even in Heartlands it’s not very scary since they give you a better cure and it’s just way too easy. They should definitely at least add in that blood plague will be more effective on you every time you get infected. And also every character just passively slowly gets blood plague just in general, and you can only ever slow down the process of passively getting blood plague.
I hadn't played for a few years and come back to just see newer weapons that are slightly better. where are the new cars, new maps, new zombies?
There is a new map, Providence Ridge, but there are no new zombies, and I don't think there are any new vehicles.
Omg great ideas
It seems to me like a big part of the problem with blood plague, and difficulty in general in SOD2, is that casual players would quit if it gets too hard. A lot of people already dont really get what the game is about. I personally love the sandboxy nature of the game, i can do whatever i want and that makes it great.
I would like to see us be able to customize our game settings. Have the current Standard, Dread Zone and Nightmare Zone as difficulty presets, but let us be able to adjust invididual aspects of difficulty. For example, how severe blood plague is. Im thinking The Long Dark type difficulty customization.
I play on Dread Zone. Im comfortable there. It doesnt bore me, but it definitely feels too easy. Im currently 13 days into my new save and ive only been infected once from a plague juggernaut. I had no ammo left for my ranged weapon so i was forced into melee combat. Thats what it took for me to even get close to getting infected. Still killed the jug, still cured my survivor. Its too easy. But on the other hand, Nightmare Zone is too difficult. Well, Its not actually that its too difficult in itself, its just rage inducing. I despise freaks in this game, i would prefer an experience more similar to The Walking Dead, so keep the normal zeds and bloaters and call it a day. The Juggernauts, Ferals and Screamers are comical. Individually they arent that hard to kill once you get over the initial fear so its not even like they add much to my experience. ive been playing since SOD1, so they arent exactly new to me. Theyre just a nuisance.
I want the difficulty of Nightmare Zone, without packs of freaks. I want to have to consider noise levels, be forced to not use my car all the time, less resources, plague infection to be more of a threat, more zeds on the map, higher damage from zeds. All of that would add to my experience.
But i refuse to play with the damn freak packs. They are ridiculous and only result in me rage quitting when i inevitably die repeatedly to feral and jug packs. the fact they gather in cliques is just. it makes no sense. Like the XL hordes for example, they make sense. Its a bunch of different types of zombies together because they are gathered by noise. I see them get triggered by the ferals roars and stuff all the time, so while theyre moving, theyre still triggering themselves at the same time because of the noise. Its not about the type of zombie, they are simply attracted to noise. I have no problem with that. But youre telling me the ferals gathered one day and were like "hey man. ykno, we should really just keep to ourselves. all these loser normie zombies are really slowing us down dude. we would be so much more lethal just the 3 of us" - "yeah, man! fuck these loser zeds" *initiates brofist* ?? i mean come on. I dont wanna cry about immersion in a zombie game, but im gonna do it anyway, every time i see them, i cant help think theyre fucking stupid lol even just the concept of freaks in general, are stupid. Im cool with bloaters. they make sense. otherwise. meh. So to what you were mentioning about UL not introducing new zombies and stuff.. no, thank you xD
(edit; i can see how freaks could be fun. Ive played Left For Dead, in that game type i think freaks add a lot to the experience by themselves. But SOD is more of a real world survival type game, at least thats how i see it, and they just feel wrong to me bc of that)
Got off on a tangent there, my bad. But yes, i think blood plague cure should be WAYY more difficult to make. I should be a real possibility that i lose a community member if they get infected. Make me fear the infection instead of, like you said, willingly infecting myself with it for perks. That Zedrenaline man, its so powerful. I used it today for the first time against humans, and it was the difference between life and death. I will never underestimate those again xD
I think that is a very significant problem.
There are people who don't even see SoD2 as a survival game, and it's not their fault, let me be the first to tell you. The game just isn't hard enough to give people the impression that it is a survival game. Their perception of the game is based on their experience.
Undead Labs have designed themselves into this situation. They cannot build the game for both a casual audience and a SoD1 veteran audience at the same time. The needs of both audiences are quite a bit different.
Casual players mainly just want more toys in the sandbox to play with.
Hardcore players want more depth of gameplay.
Even the Nightmare Zone, while overall a good idea, is very brutish and inartistic in its way of presenting difficulty. It's clearly a "bolted on" idea rather than something that the game was build around.
Good post. Myself, my ideal version of the game would be SOD2 as the foundation, plus the option to just remove freaks altogether (I think they're cheesy, and if other game systems were more challenging you wouldn't need enemies with gimmicks), with survival mechanics and weather hazards along the lines of The Long Dark, and the settlement building freedom from Fallout 4. Or even just some hybrid of Rimworld and SOD2, since Rimworld has its own weather hazards and base building. I could get a lot of mileage out of that.
@@yescommander2458 oh my god dude that is such a good concept. ugh. i want to play that now. I dont neccesarily want to base build in it, i think if i have a constant threat of zombies then what we currently have in the game is good enough. I would like to see us be able to clear out some spaces that could clearly fit a slot but just.. dont. for no reason. if it was a real life situation i would put a slot there. it would be cool for that to be unlockable somehow. Maybe with a construction skill or something. but absolutely yes for weather hazards and no freaks, but more in depth game mechanics.
@@GitGudFox Yeah this is definitely a good point. I miss Breakdown. I was able to stay at the level of difficulty i wanted. If i felt it was too easy i just went up a level for a slight increase. but not a straight jump from challenging-but-chill to literal-nightmare. + SOD1 was more accepting of mods than SOD2. at least from what ive seen. If they opened the game to modders, that would solve most of the problems. The community would do it for them. Just look at Ark. Ark is trash by itself, but with mods, its a beautiful game i have over 1000 hours sunk into
@@thitpoulsen352 Yeah, I wouldn't focus on base building either. I'd honestly have way more fun just making Long Dark style campfires instead of a dedicated base but I do think we should have more agency, more options. Plugging holes in a fence is, y'know, kind of a thing that all people would do if 99% of the rest of the world was trying to eat them alive. >.> Not being able to reinforce defenses is just one of the things that bugs me the most.
This is a good point
So, what do you mean is you want a plague zone
No, I don't want another difficulty. I don't like adding difficulties in.
Also if a human dies any other way than a headshot they will revive as a zombie. So is this apocalypse walking dead style where everyone is already infected? Shoot a survivor in the chest until they die, and they will fall to the ground start freaking out and come back as a zombie
Your idea is good but it should be a new difficulty like the actual nightmare
I disagree. I really hate the difficulty levels theyve created. Its a good thing theyve made them, but for me, Standard is boring, Dread Zone is decent but too easy and Nightmare is way too fucking hard. What i would like to see with difficulties is the ability to customize what we want for difficulty. Similar to how The Long Dark does it. So you can pick how severe noise sensitivity is, resource scarcety, amount of and level of challenge with human enemies, how severe plague infection is, how many zombies should populate the world, if you want no freaks, regular freaks or pack freaks, how many cars should spawn -if any, if they spawn destroyed or not. individual things that change the game every time. They could have presets like they do now, so like for me, i feel comfortable on dread zone, but i want more of a challenge, i could ramp up almost everything to make it much harder, but not have to deal with pack freaks. I dont personally like the freaks and if i could i would turn them off. They are unrealistic af. I dont mind the bloaters tbh, those seem like they could be a real thing, but otherwise, juggernauts? really? ferals? really? screamers? are you kidding me? no. i want a realistic the walking dead type experience, and i could easily get that with state of decay if they gave us these options.
I'm not a fan of difficulties either. I think the new difficulties are very brutish and inartistic. They were clearly just added on as a just muscle in some challenge into the game.
The game is balanced around the Standard Difficulty. That is what SoD2 is. That's the problem. The very game itself is built around a casual difficulty in a survival game.
My inclination at first was that you were making blood plague extremely difficult. But you won me over with the second half. I have an idea for the human raids.
What if, if your leader is killed, your people surrender to the raiders. Then, 1. You can leave, 2. You can stay but they take your guns and send you on bitch work missions until they trust you, at which point you can play as them, or 3. Stay and try to get them killed or kill them discreetly. Once they're all gone, you're back in charge.
The problem with that idea is that in this game most players treat the characters as expendable. Any character that got the blood plague would just be killed. Very few would consider even not euthanizing a character.
That itself isn't a bad thing. The issue would then be a comparison to how recruitable people are versus how expendable they are.
Why can t they just let us assign guards freely to our bases and add patrol routes and schedules. Because that’s necessary if the bloodplague becomes so dangerous.
That would be really nice. You could pick weapons a lot more strategically.
I think that the only way to fix the Blood Plague is to do a big redesign of the game. Also, a lot of what you purposed would make the game much harder. Looking at the reviews, people seem to struggle with the difficulty as is. I do go off topic a bit, the reason for this is to try and balance the game around the suggested Blood Plague changes.
The blood plague is a very bizarre issue. I like some of your ideas however, increasing the likely hood of getting the plague every time you become infected isn't a good idea. It would get to the point where by you would get hit once and become infected; as a result you would have to travel back to base to cure yourself. This would be annoying if you drove to the other end of the map only to get hit once by a zombie forcing you to drive across the map back to base. Maybe make it so that you can inject yourself with cure on the fly?
Your other ideas are alright i.e making the plague water born and making it so that survivors try and siege you to get to your plague free base. This would require a massive improvement to the friendly AI as it is currently missing a frontal lobe.
Another problem is that your ideas would make it more likely that characters would die or at least have to be exiled. The problem with this is that a lot of the game relies on randomness. If your one farmer dies it could be a long while until you find a suitable replacement due to random traits, timing of quests, random character generation, random frequency of quests etc... This would be crippling if the Blood Plague could spread to other survivors.
Here are some of my thoughts:
Increase the scale of the game: Increase the amount of survivors so that you can "stockpile" people. Also, increase the amount of zombies to compensate for this.
Reduce but do not eliminate randomness: Randomness in games increases reply-ability but reduces the ability to predict and manipulate which is pretty important in a game like State of Decay. Make it so that if you find a survivor in a farm that they would have an increased change of being a farmer. Or if you find someone in a gun store that they are more likely to be good at shooting. Also, make it so that the characters can acquire traits by doing certain actions. This would give more emotional wait to characters as the player would have nurtured them and helped them develop skills so that they would become an integral part of the community.
Give traits that ability to have both positive and negative effects: Lets say that you chose all of the confrontational options in dialog for a certain character. Give that character a trait that provides a moral penalty to the group (because the character is an ass). But also, the character might be better at negotiation due to his disagreeableness.
Scale the game difficulty as it progresses: I really like your ideas of contamination i.e having the plague change the land and environment, making other survivors desperate and besiege your base. The developers could even make it so that the plague gets worse and spreads, as a result more zombies populate the world due to the plague. IT NEEDS TO BE SCALED THOUGH. You must let the player build up their base and gather resources, build their community before adding these mechanics otherwise the start game would be too difficult.
Referring to the scaling difficulty. You could even make finale a huge base defence where a huge amount of blood Plague zombies siege your base and you have to arm your community to the teeth as a final last stand.
Please add more incentives to the infestations. At the minute they are grind. Please make it so that you have the chance to get a weapon or find a survivor locked in a bathroom or something who is willing to join you after you clear out the infestation. Please don't add things that need to be done for the sole purpose of avoiding depression.
I don't think it's a problem if people struggle with the game. People struggle with Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro Shadows Die Twice, but those games are well rated, well received, and raked in a lot of cash.
There's a market for challenging games, and certainly the survival genre, of all the genres, is one of them.
Blood plague is definitely way to easy to deal with in sod2
I think you're mostly dreaming of State of Decay 3. However, I think they could do something about zombie spawns to make it so they don't just spawn all around you all the time, but instead really badly infest certain areas of the map, which would give you a good reason to mount an assault (and maybe even use muzzle brakes) on a particular area instead of just busting out the B50fg when a plague jugg shows up near your base.
I also think this would make Blood Plague more of a threat because it would be hard to complete an assault without getting infected, as TONS of zombies would be on your ass as soon as you start. Honestly I think most of your ideas about the Blood Plague are good, but mostly not feasible in this game. Mine are barely even feasible without heavy modding.
I don't even think this is SoD3. If you compare SoD2 to SoD1, there were not the kind of revolutionary changes to the game like I'm suggesting.
I had the help the survivor find their child well found the child and guess what he had blood plague normally a 10 minute or so window no a 1 minute window so I just had to choose the option allow to die. One thing about blood plague that makes no sense random survivor they talk like they have I brought several blood plague zombies to a cold enclave a guy was scratched and bit twice yet blood plague does not come into effect unless they die then they are a blood plague zombie.
State of Decay's logic is hilarious. The blood plague is horrible, but regular zombies is A-okay.
I like the game as is. I have been playing it on and off for a year and just finished up one legacy. If you start adding stuff and making it more difficult even on standard difficulty, which I only play on, I will not play it or it’s sequels. I games that are not stuff with so much to do that I lose interest after awhile.
The reverse is true with other players. If you don't make the game harder, you'll lose them. You already are losing people who are saying the game is for babies now.
Lethal Zone enters the chat...
It honestly still has the same problems. It's a really boring mechanic that doesn't deliver the feel of the fear of zombification due to being bitten.
You can just carry a plague cure around with you for example, and bam, you're going to be fine.
Hello
Your ideas don’t sound like “low friction” but fun. BP is a joke today... even nightmare is more enjoyable with lack of loot. Your idea reminds me of Tiberium from command and conquer
You're damn right they're not. Low friction ideas will not push SoD forwards.
Can we talk about the error code 3 instead
Wouldn't know anything about it.
@@GitGudFox it's a joke but it's the description it gives you when the game disconnects you, honestly can't even connect to my friends on SoD 2 and that's because I have good internet connection and so do they, undead said they fixed it but it's still going on.
The blood plague just need to be more dangerous. Have normal zombies transmit very little. Have the gas from plague hearts be very contagious and getting bitten should raise the bar by 75%. The cure should be made by a new resource that is found at military outposts. The survivors killed by the plague should transmit it immediately to others in a 30 second time frame before becoming a normal plague zombie.have this plague be a real threat
I think that just makes it a generic zombie disease. The events of SoD2 Heartland show that the blood plague is a lot more than just a normal disease. Just cranking up the existing numbers of what the blood plague does doesn't go far enough to develop it into an actually interesting mechanic.
There should be a video called “Why State of Decay 1 is better than State of Decay 2”, I don’t know it’s just my own personal opinion on what these 2 games are compared to what is right and what is wrong.
God Bless America Fox! It's "Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeejj"!
Lack of meaningful endgame?
The whole thing is designed AROUND the endgame. What's missing from it?
What's missing is the entire endgame phase. SoD2 has a mid game, and then it ends. There is no end game. Activities you can do after the mid game include extremely trivial activities such as collecting weapons, completing bounties, and grinding survivors for rare traits.
The game is effectively over after you complete your favorite base which is the mid game.
It can be easily compared to the progression of your typical RPG.
Early Game - leveling up.
Mid Game - building up gear and equipment
End Game - The most powerful and deadly battles that could not be completed without a high level of equipment.
It doesn't have to be an RPG either. It can be a 4X title or really anything with some kind of progression in mind.
Early game - exploration
Mid game - expansion
End game - extermination of super powers that could not be beaten without extensive expansion and gathering of power
SoD2 doesn't have this.
Early game - gathering supplies and equipment to survive
Mid game - using your gathered supplies to build the perfect base
End game - now that you've built the perfect base... ??? nothing. There is no end game.
So a better question is, what ISN'T missing from the end game? The entire end game is missing.
@@GitGudFox I feel like this deserves adressment in a video of my own. Right after I figure out the small detail of "Editing at all" I'll have it up.
I feel that blood plague is way too casual of a mechanic. Dealing with it just ends up being a resource sink and a general inconvenience rather than a strong game mechanic with any depth. The game would definitely benefit from at least an option to increase the threat without resorting to something like filling the map with blood juggs just because of the plague AoE.
Some other mechanics that could use some TLC:
- Base customization could definitely still use some work. Ideally, I'd much rather be able to build bases anywhere, though I realize that the game engine may not be able to handle that. I don't condone anyone playing Bethesda games these days, but they seriously did much better than SOD2 with the settlement building.
- Outposts in SOD2 have always felt pretty pathetic. I'd like to be able to set specific survivors to various tasks at outposts like loot the surroundings, thin out hordes, set traps, reinforce defensive perimeter, etc.
- Character customization - I'd like to be able to rename people and switch voicepacks. This would be great for streamers too. XCOM and Darkest Dungeon streamers get a significant amount of audience interaction by renaming characters after viewers.
That's why I say that we don't need even more "nightmare zone" of a game mode. I feel like there are plenty of enemies in nightmare zone and that they do sufficient damage. The answer isn't more zombies or more damaging zombies... it's new threats and new mechanics altogether.
They said why you cant rename yours caracters or comunity in the last streaming.
I like most of your ideas.
I'm not a fan of the idea that all survivors will eventually die of blood plague as the cure becomes less and less effective. Unless there's a mechanic where a survivor can be totally immune. And by immune I mean things like scent block, zedrenaline and zedeye no longer work on that character.
I'm all for the cure being rare and a lot harder to get or make EXCEPT for the tutorial where 1 survivor is plagued by default or if you start with 1 cure.
Then there's the quest for the biochem mod. Do you help them or cure 1 of your own?
What if infection didn't just go down over time? What if you needed a survivor with the hygiene skill and or the sanitization mod. What if they had to take up a bed space to get the infection lowered? Now you have less survivor labour and less bodies to defend the base.
You said the infected could bring in more blood plague sieges. What if they just brought in more blood plague zombies in general? Any BP zombie within a certain radius gets drawn in. As zombies spawn they come to the base.
How about if another way to cure the infected was by killing a plague with them? It kills all plague zombies in range. What if it killed the infection in live people?
I know I had more comments as I was watching but you can't watch and type at the same time so I need to rewatch.
Only if you keep getting infected. There has to be a ultimatum for constantly getting infected. The finality of death is just that.
@@GitGudFox Agreed that only if you keep getting infected. But if the formerly infected are attracting more plague zombies then the chances of getting reinfected are that much greater. If using the zed hunter items are going to get more infected. It just makes getting reinforced all the more likely.
Those aren't bad things. It's why I made the comparison to "injecting yourself with a little ebola." It should be a pretty dire circumstance that would make you willingly put blood plague into your body to gain some kind of advantage.
Warframe playthough when?
I have no idea. Warframe isn't really a "playthrough" kind of game. It's more of an ongoing game you play for years and years.
Git Gud Fox you could just playthough the main star chart quest
I could. That's like seriously the most boring, tedious, and not fun content in Warframe though.
Git Gud Fox sorry, I meant the main quest line up to the war within or past that Possibly
The problem with blood plague, IMO, is that it's either super OP or completely worthless. If it's OP, which is more realistic and interesting, then that means you're losing people. The problem is that players don't like losing people. They're gonna bitch and moan about how it's "unfair" which is why blood plague will never be a real threat.
They should bitch and moan then. This is supposed to be a survival game. It's not burger king where you can just have it your way.
@@GitGudFox Well, so they will lose more players for making the gae "unfair" that making it easy. the average player find the game as a challenge un fun, when you know the mechanic and have a decent hours played it get less and less dificult, like every game where you play agains IA. Sorry for my english :S
Not necessarily. Games like Dark Souls do very well despite being very difficult. You don't need the average player buying your game to be profitable and successful.
@@GitGudFox Darksouls doesn't have permadeath, there are many difficult game, but do you know some with permadeath? That particularity make so difficult make a game for casual gamers and for hardcore ones...
I can think of a few: Darkest Dungeon, Oxygen Not included, XCOM, and Don't Starve.
wow 8 views
They should add hell on earth difficulty mode a nightmare+++ gamemode
Undead Labs should take these ideas into thought. All of this would improve the game to me.
The idea of making blood plague something to much more afraid of is something that would make the game great, along with the improving of the games AI. I am curious if there will be a state of decay 3.