Your thoughts on State of Decay 2 ...

[Al Sacco]

So State of Decay 2 is now available for Xbox One and PC. And it's (mostly) glorious, or at least Team Windows Central thinks so. Our Xbox maestro Jez Corden called it "mindlessly addictive" and even gave it our site's Choice Award, which we only give to products and games we really love.

What do you think of the game so far? Are you loving it, hating it, or somewhere in between??

 

[jkelek]

i play co-op games with my brothers so we got this the day it came out and played probably 20 hours so far and we understood going in that we had to play in one of the player's environment as we progressed through the story and found out pretty quickly the nuances of doing it that way (make sure your characters are healthy before going into another's game). the game/idea is great and we were having fun with it but that died off pretty quickly after multiple sessions with difficulty connecting into another's session and the general bugs in gameplay. the bugs are goofy at first but then they get tedious. for example on pc my first character died after many hours of playing because the mouse lost focus with the game and the cursor was just moving around on the screen overtop the game. every other time this happened you could click or move around and it would regain focus but not this time. I quickly tried to get into task manager and kill the game but couldn't in time. the doors in the car not opening after opening your map. the doors in houses saying they are open but are not. grabbing is buggy and is frustrating on the juggernauts. the game is very confusing at the start but once you figure it out and how you can use/repair/drop your items it then seems logical enough even though it's still not easy. after mostly playing co-op it's very hard to go out and play single player by yourself after seeing what you can do with a group. you can have multiple vehicles and bring back tons of rucksacks and take down plague hearts and large groups of zeds more easily. so you can tell it was geared towards playing with others more than not but the multiplayer bugs are just too vast for now so we are anxious to get back to playing after they have the first patch outside of the release day patch. I couldn't find anything about a patch coming anytime soon but I sure hope it does. good game though, just patch some of this stuff and it'll be ripe.
**I just saw the tweet from undead labs yesterday that they are working on the patch and will release it ASAP so that's good news but I would guess it would be another couple of weeks. and didn't see a list of things they are working on, maybe someone can reply if they have more info.
***I was wrong they posted the patch today with many of the known bugs fixed, should be better i'm hoping. see guy's post below if you are a hardcore state of decay player, he's got some good insight, I never played the 1st one.

 

[LMN118]

Refunded a few minutes of this post.

The devs have had two weeks to issue fixes to problems they must have known about before release, I'm not talking about bugs with doors but game breaking issues, like the Sheriff Leader Legacy missions. All they can say ASAP. Not good enough.

In a nut shell on the Xbox One X I faced:

Complete failure of the mission line with multiple individual problems that leads to the mission failing completely (Sheriff legacy)

Hard crashes requiring the app to be restarted.

Every so often the game will get sluggish

UI disappearing, sometimes taking the options menu with it

Poor frame rates and performance

Excessive use of motion blur, furthering the poor performance

Graphical issues such as graphics flashing, white lines at night, textures disappearing

AI bugging out, killing the undead only for them to come back...again Enclave survivors disappearing and then dropping from the sky later on or just bugging out completely zombies getting stuck or not responsive, zombies spawning on top of the survivor while you were in the same spot for awhile

Enclaves disappearing from the map, and their missions not showing up resulting in you losing the enclave

Missions failing all the time. One mission I had to kill the plague zombie to protect the NPC but there wasn't one so I had to travel to the other side of the map to find one to kill. Clear infestations more infestations and none spawn or don't register cleared. Mission markers placed outside the map area.

Zombie series deducting ammo but no zombies appearing, sit outside your base ready to shoot them before they get to your walls and they won't spawn but the game counts it as happening.

Car issues, hitting invisible walls, running over previously killed bloaters for them to explode again. Cars randomly exploding, zombies clipping through them and not dying. Disappearing into the ground underneath the car when you walk near them NPCs randomly being ejected James Bond Style

Game camera detaching from player staying at a fixed point while you can run off screen.


Gameplay wise

The game lacks many options from the first one that gave the game replay value, such as breakdown which should have been ready at release, hero unlocking and collection through trackable achievements.

Your article mentions in depth morale and base building which is nonsense they are not in depth at all. All they've added to base building is mods and a couple of new options. You are still forced into the same you can build a base but only at these locations mode as the first one. Morale doesn't serve any purpose, sure when you start out they will complain but after that its cheerful all the way.

You don't need half the facilities, the one you do need such as stores you can only have one.

The game is also excessively easy. There is zero challenge, a horde is not a horde when it has two zombies in it. Ferals don't dodge cars anymore and are a lot weaker in general. In the first game, its the ferals that kept you in check because they could kill a fully levelled and geared character easily.

I can kill any Plague Heart with 3 rounds without attracting any attention (Timberwolf suppressed 50 cal) . Even killing human AI, supposedly more dangerous than the zombies is silly simple with head shotting them.

My last play through, the sheriff, before I refunded I had 8000 influence but nothing to spend it on. I had a surplus of everything and was generating so much ammo rucks it was being wasted. The only thing I ever ran out of was parts from repairing weapons.

You don't need outposts, you don't need plague cure (used it once in 3 play throughs), looting is pointless as the loot you get is often the same gun (anyone want a .22 revolver or a model 70 rifle as I have hundreds at least I did until I salvaged them). Or you don't actually need to loot anything as you just don't need it. Hit the military outposts, since police stations tend to give you a shotgun, mp5 or AR15.

The loot and survivor attributes are really badly weighted which is why you often get identical looking survivors and why you read about people being annoyed at that.

Loot often spawns in the same place in similar houses.

You don't need enclaves, especially since once you have sold them enough stuff to them they don't regain influence so once tapped out they stay tapped out.

I've never run out of anything and my morale is usually empowered.

I've never had to use explosives, or Molotov's which were coveted in the first game.

I've always had an abundance of meds so never needed to make any.

I've not needed to use facilities to boost stamina or health which were life savers in the first one. You also don't need training facilities as you will level up very quickly. It used to take ages to level cardio but you can do it in minutes.

For some reason suppressors don't wear out the gun does, which means if you put one on a bolt action rifle you can kill indefinitely without cost, yeah great change there.

Not that it matters, as firing any gun doesn't really do anything, before not being careful, using a shot gun or a fifty would bring tons of zombies and freaks, now you might get a couple.

The never ending and often material losses are annoying, as are the constant requests for help, the lack of any story elements to interact with except with the broken legacy quests and the missions variety is terrible.

The game is nothing but a port to a new engine. Many of the assets are the same, a few tweaks here and there but no additional changes. They even ported some of the bugs from the first one too.


There were some nice changes sure, loot staying in the containers even after logging out is fantastic (they used to disappear when you logged). The base mods is a nice touch but didnt go far enough to make community management fulfilling. The leader aspect is OK but ultimately pointless and the legacy cards make it even easier. Car upgrades were nice, but since the modified cars spawn in why bother. They often don't add anything tangible either and in case of a couple of the vehicles make it difficult to repair them.

So generally disappointing and I suspect many of those 1 million users were people with gamepass or using a free trial to try the game.

 

[Andoor1999]

So State of Decay 2 is now available for Xbox One and PC. And it's (mostly) glorious, or at least Team Windows Central thinks so. Our Xbox maestro Jez Corden called it "mindlessly addictive" and even gave it our site's Choice Award, which we only give to products and games we really love.

What do you think of the game so far? Are you loving it, hating it, or somewhere in between??

State of decay 2 would be in my opinion a 'total' rip off.

It's crappy as all hell, and still have a LOT of issues even after a staggering update of the size 20+ GB...

Not only that but state of decay 2 is really just mindless gameplay.

- it has no story at all...
- no immersion...
- no thrill...
- not much new... Actually a lot less...
- base building is pointless like last game...
- it's absurdly dark, even with base lights on...
- there is not a lot of love in the details...
- sloppy zombies, and a juggernaut with an impenetrable skull...
Looting for food and guns is hard as hell... I thought America was full of guns and food...

And this list can go on.


But let me shorten it out, and cut it out on a cardboard box.

State of decay 2 is just state of decay with a new engine and fancier graphics, with one new type of zombie that makes no sense.

So State of decay 2 is basically just state of decay just without a storyline... And not that the story was good, but atleast it had one.

To be honest, I'd throw my money at state of decay, not 2. It's nothing but a rip off...

There, I've said my absurd peace.

 

[Andoor1999]

it's basically just state of decay, just without a storyline

 

[jhannw]

UPDATE: Just bought YOSE on sale. It has new bugs not seen in SoD 1. Wow. At this rate, I will never ever buy SoD 2. I thought Early Access was bad, where games went unfinished and promises unfulfilled. Undead Labs has managed to create a new kind of "Don't Buy This Game" type --- sell it full-price, set up a bug category named "Hush. If the gamers haven't picked up torches and pitchforks, it's not a bug". This isn't a premium title. It's Premium Abandonware!

You know, for $30, I actually would whole-heartedly support Undead Labs if they simply branded SoD 2 as Early Access. $30 for the current state of SoD 2 is a fantastic deal.

The point of Early Access is this promise: the devs promise to polish up the game until it is the dream game that most (80%) of the fans want.

If Undead Labs will simply give that promise, I will put down that $30 right away.

By the way, I'm still enjoying SoD 1 (not YOSE). Enjoying the role-playing, the scavenging (for weapons), clearing the map (by full-searching all houses). The main problem is the lack of documentation, which draws a lot of hate from gamers who misunderstand the game mechanics.

Caveat: I have to save-scum to role-play properly, of course. SoD 1 is totally broken, and I doubt YOSE fixed these bugs. I very often have a happy healthy ally who goes missing, then I save the ally only to find the ally stuck on a perpetual unhappy "Ran Away".

The Fate Cards are seriously context-insensitive.

--- Scenario 1 ---

Doctor_A: This doesn't make sense. She was a well-fed well-rested fitness guru, great psychological health, fantastic gear, strong immune system. Yet she got this common cold so bad and so long that she died from it.

Doctor_B: Enough with this autopsy, lest we get this weird common cold too. But I do agree that we need to figure this out. The whole community is at stake.

Nurse: *Gingerly chimes in*. Have you... heard of the... Fate Cards?

*Cue eerie music*

--- Scenario 2 ---

Survivor_1: Alright! We were hard at work combing the whole valley for hordes and infestations. Now our Materials consumption is low.

Survivor_2: *Grabs a whole crate of Materials and starts nailing planks onto the undamaged walls*. (Materials stockpile -10, morale -1)

Survivor_1: He got a Fate Card, didn't he?

Survivor_3: Yeah, I think so.

 

[Jesus Hernandez585]

I've become a zombie

So State of Decay 2 is now available for Xbox One and PC. And it's (mostly) glorious, or at least Team Windows Central thinks so. Our Xbox maestro Jez Corden called it "mindlessly addictive" and even gave it our site's Choice Award, which we only give to products and games we really love.

What do you think of the game so far? Are you loving it, hating it, or somewhere in between??

I LOVE this game... it is addicting yes! But the amount of things you can and have to accomplish get me going. I'm currently on my 2nd go around. Just a little disappointed that #UndeadLabs didnt reward those of us who have played the 1st installment of State of Decay. But the game is, IN MY OPINION, better than the first because you must survive... not much is given to you, you have to go out and get what you need.