Dead State Forum Activity

This week’s Monday Design Update consists of a Q&A thread, where posters are offered the chance to ask questions off of Brian Mitsoda that were left unanswered in the Q&A and interviews (like ours). The first answers are coming in, a selection:

How many NPC there will be? How many party members can go on mission with me? Do you plan party memberes that can´t be used in combat but have another use?

There will be a lot of NPCs and potential allies. You can take up to three out at a time for a total of 4 people in the party. You can take practically anyone out into combat, though you’ll find that many aren’t suited to it and that they are better suited to another role at the Shelter.

How do you guys plan on scaling enemies? By level? By location? Over time? Will it be completely random? Or something else?

Enemies don’t scale to your level. More dangerous enemies tend to be encountered over time as you spread out your scavenging range or they do. Sometimes encounters may just be difficult because of the amount of enemies or the layout of the level (area exposes you to attack or provides no easy route of escape if zombies mob you). Dangerous enemies have better stats, equipment, and AI (they won’t panic).

Reading through the other FAQ, it seems there will be a length to each game. Has there been any move towards making a “sandbox survival” mode where the game simply continues until you die or stop playing? Having set time limits in which a game is played is fine, but countless players would enjoy a general sandbox mode where the only way the game ends is if they lose or if they quit. You could even continually increase the difficulty as the game goes on – this way only the smartest survivors will last a long time. Having a game with only set durations for a game would seem to get old after a while – surviving the same 30 min game (just an example) only lasts so long.

No, “sandbox survival” mode, just levels of difficulty, one being much harder and “more realistic” and is more about how many days you can survive. Something like you’re describing would take enough work that it would need to be released as an expansion. We’re still hoping to allow some modification to the rules for subsequent playthroughs, but nothing that would change the core gameplay too much.

Will it be possible to get friendly with other human groups, even make them allies and or have them join you and strengthen the shelter or will they always be enemies?

It’s possible you might come to an arrangement that will keep each side on friendly terms. Most of the time, the other groups have no real reason to ally with you, since from their point of view, they were doing just fine before you came along and have no reason to trust you. Other leaders have their own people to think about and their own way of doing things.