Dead Island

[kamikazekyle]

Can't view the link at work, but is that for zombies? 'Cause headshots against humans were always 1-hit kills with a pistol for me unless they had a helmet or I had a *really* underleveled pistol. Zombies, though, only took normal damage from firearms which was annoying as all hell if you were totally firearm specced on Purna. Never really did try the shotgun but once-ish simply because I rarely found any and those I did find were on a throw-specced Logan. I got to the point where I'd stop carrying a gun and just get whatever the first human dropped. That was then high enough to 1-hit all other humans for that encounter.

I also didn't really have much issue with weapon reach. Shorter weapons like knives and fists you pretty much had to be in their face. Midranged weapons like swords, bats, and machetes felt appropriate. Big weapons like katanas and sledges you could be further away. All made sense and felt right to me, and added a tiny extra layer of tactics in choosing which weapons to keep or toss.

 

[Zargon]

Can't view the link at work, but is that for zombies? 'Cause headshots against humans were always 1-hit kills with a pistol for me unless they had a helmet or I had a *really* underleveled pistol. Zombies, though, only took normal damage from firearms which was annoying as all hell if you were totally firearm specced on Purna. Never really did try the shotgun but once-ish simply because I rarely found any and those I did find were on a throw-specced Logan. I got to the point where I'd stop carrying a gun and just get whatever the first human dropped. That was then high enough to 1-hit all other humans for that encounter.

I also didn't really have much issue with weapon reach. Shorter weapons like knives and fists you pretty much had to be in their face. Midranged weapons like swords, bats, and machetes felt appropriate. Big weapons like katanas and sledges you could be further away. All made sense and felt right to me, and added a tiny extra layer of tactics in choosing which weapons to keep or toss.

yeah this mod is all about SP/COOP(more coop than SP)

and its about balancing the zombies

I play tested it for like 6 hours saturday night and an update should hit soon if not already

 

[KaOTiK]

I've been playing the game the last few days, I'm around 58% complete on the main storyline and have done all side quests I come across, logged in about 18 hours almost.

I'm enjoying the game overall, but man there are a few things that just downright piss me off, and most of it is with the inventory and a few other minor things..

My only real gripe with the UI is the lack of being able to press 1-8 or whatever to select a weapon and have to use MMB instead. I also hate when I throw an explosive canister and I automatically switch to my shotgun instead of handgun.

Inventory, I want to kick someone in the head. Have a medium health kit in my inventory, go to buy more, it tells me I have no room in my inventory, I have to sell something to make space so when I buy the med kit it stacks on the one I already have, wtf? Same stacking crap when trying to pick up molotovs I just made at a bench, this happens only sometimes with them though and I have to equip a weapon to switch instead of selling something, so if I don't have a junk weapon in my inventory I can't pick up the molotovs, again only sometimes.

Picking up weapons, I'll have no weapon in an open slot when I MMB and yet when I go to pick up a new weapon it will only allow me to switch with whatever one I have equipped, if I hold F to switch sure enough I toss my weapon on the group and pick up the new one, bullshit. When I come across a weapon that is higher level then me it wont allow me to even pick it up or swap out for it, I can't do anything but see the stats.

Some general crap I do dislike.
No way for me to save, I don't mind checkpoint saves or autosaving, but in an open world game, BAD move. I'll go hand in a bunch of quests pick up the new ones, take care of some other odds and ends shit and turn it off. Log back on and I have to do everything after turning in the quests again.

This is more of a game design issue probably but I wish things were a bit more persistent. I'd ok with the whole everything is respawned when you start playing again. I do find it annoying though when I go half way through the city for some quests and finish them and then head back to turn them in, going the same way I came from and the zombies are back, but not in every spot at that, some spots they will be back others not and it seems totally random, gets damn annoying as I make sure to bulldoze a clean line to my objective lol.


Overall, I do like the game and am enjoying it, but those things above have stood out and bothered me a fair amount. I'd be fine with all of the above if the inventory crap was fixed. I'd have a village full of dead orphans if I killed one each time I had an inventory problem during a play session.

 

[Skott]

The more I hear people talk about this game the more I don't want to buy it. The fact its mostly melee really turns me off. No save game in an open world sounds aggravating as well. Inventory problems sounds like they didn't do enough Q&A as well. I'll wait and see if they fix these things. No way will I touch it as it is right now. Full price or sale price.

 

[kamikazekyle]

The whole MMB/quickwheel thinger is annoying as hell. Also the instances where you pick up something like a medkit or alcohol and your inventory is full, so then it stacks in and switches that to your active weapon. Big ol' WTF there. I mean, from the game engine's perspective it makes sense as both the medkit and alcohol are wieldable items. Other wieldable items follow the "hold F" rule, so it follows from the game engine that alcohol and medkits should follow this as well. But from a game design perspective you wanna punch someone in the face for not adding an exclusion. I've lost count of the number of times I'm grabbing loot and pick up alcohol, but don't notice until I chug a bottle when I'm trying to hit that infected running up to my face.

The save system is 1/2 fine yet 1/2 WTF. Your character's inventory and skills are saved all the time so simply quitting a game is no issue. But, your quests are only saved when you reach a checkpoint or complete a quest. That means if you do some work on a quest, it can reset back to the last step unless you've checkpointed the quest since then. THAT bit sucks. If they saved the quest status on exit like the character stuff, it'd be fine.

Oh, and I still hate loosing thrown weapons in the geometry. It really only happens in the City when an NPC falls weapon-down in those texture trash piles, but still frikin annoying.

That being said, I still put in nearly 60 hours into the game and plan on going through with all the characters. I got it on sale with a preorder and coupon so I only paid just over $30 for it, and I'm perfectly happy with it at that price. The annoyances are tolerable for me, but that's just my personal opinion.

Oh, and Skott, if you don't like melee, yea, stay away from the game The firearms work great against humans and there's plenty of ammo in those cases, but using firearms against zombies (unmodded) is kinda useless and you'll be doing a lot of crafting of ammo. Ammo in random loot seemed very rare unless it was from a human, so even assuming you can one-shot zombies you'd run out of ammo quick due to respawn.

 

[Skott]

Oh, and Skott, if you don't like melee, yea, stay away from the game The firearms work great against humans and there's plenty of ammo in those cases, but using firearms against zombies (unmodded) is kinda useless and you'll be doing a lot of crafting of ammo. Ammo in random loot seemed very rare unless it was from a human, so even assuming you can one-shot zombies you'd run out of ammo quick due to respawn.

Yeah, doesn't sound like something I can get into. Its fine for those that like the difference of just doing melee and probably realistic in the sense its on a small island where guns would probably be somewhat scarce. Just not my cup of tea is all.

 

[Jeeebus]

Just finished the game last night. Ended up modding a few things to make it overall more enjoyable, like upping durability of all weapons, increasing ammo carry capacity, and increasing money drops. Played through Acts 3 and 4 largely with a rifle rather than melee weapons.

Overall, satisfied with the game... though the ending... err....

Spoiler

Whoever wrote that ending was likely bit by a zombie a few hours earlier and the fever had already onset. Why exactly does the army guy need to betray us? We were gonna give him the needle anyway. And how is it that I'm armed to the teeth the entire game, but he magically gets the drop on four of us with just a single handgun - especially given the next cutscene we're all carrying auto rifles again? And we're supposed to believe this guy has the ability to call in a nuclear strike?

Ending was just kinda dumb and not all that satisfactory.

BRRRAAAINNNNSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

 

[AdamK47]

For anyone experiencing "micro-stuttering" when moving using the keyboard, turn on filter keys to prevent key repeats. Makes moving much smoother.

 

[Dankk]

Inventory, I want to kick someone in the head. Have a medium health kit in my inventory, go to buy more, it tells me I have no room in my inventory, I have to sell something to make space so when I buy the med kit it stacks on the one I already have, wtf?

Eh, it doesn't sound that bad...

My only real gripe with the UI is the lack of being able to press 1-8 or whatever to select a weapon and have to use MMB instead.

Wait, seriously? You can't use the numkeys to select weapons? Do those keys already serve a special purpose or something? That's bad news, seeing as I use my trackball a lot and don't have a scrollwheel. What kind of FPS doesn't let you do that?

No way for me to save, I don't mind checkpoint saves or autosaving, but in an open world game, BAD move.

WAT

My desire to buy this game has dropped significantly. The only way I managed to trudge through most of Far Cry 2 was because they implemented a quicksave key for the PC version. No quicksaving in Dead Island? lol. How far apart are the save points then?

 

[PrayForDeath]

My desire to buy this game has dropped significantly. The only way I managed to trudge through most of Far Cry 2 was because they implemented a quicksave key for the PC version. No quicksaving in Dead Island? lol. How far apart are the save points then?

I haven't played the game, but I believe it's closer to Borderlands (and Diablo to an extent) than it is to traditional FPS games. So it's no surprise that it doesn't support quicksaving.

 

[kamikazekyle]

[snip]

My desire to buy this game has dropped significantly. The only way I managed to trudge through most of Far Cry 2 was because they implemented a quicksave key for the PC version. No quicksaving in Dead Island? lol. How far apart are the save points then?

A lot of people misunderstand the save system in the game. It has two systems: character and quest. They're separate from one another.

Character progression -- XP, skills, inventory -- are saved constantly as far as I can tell. I never had the game crash or bug out, but I never lost character progression. I could log in, kill ten minutes for a level or something, then quit. The next time I played I'd have all my progression and inventory.

Quest progress is saved at major objectives during the quest. However, it's not a "universal" quest save -- it's per quest (as far as I know). Meaning if you get 10% of Quest A done but don't checkpoint that quest and then randomly decide to do Quest B to completion and quit, Quest A will revert back to it's last checkpoint since you haven't hit that specific quest's checkpoint. Quest B, however, will be marked completed. If you had gotten to Quest A's checkpoint, it should be saved to that checkpoint even if you go off and do another quest.

Kinda weird, but most sidequests tend to be fairly short and clustered together so they're easy to complete in a short sitting, while the main and larger sidequests have plenty of staged checkpoints. I never had a problem with the quest save system. I also didn't really have any bugs or crashes, so take that into account as well. Like PrayForDeath said, it's a bit like Borderlands in terms of saving.

 

[Dankk]

Ah, I gotcha. I didn't mind the save system in Borderlands at all, so if it's kinda similar to that, then that's cool.