u/Eagleeater_141

Let me start by saying I loved SoD ever since I started playing it in Highschool after my cousin introduced me to it. But I've always thought some things could be better but couldn't voice them out loud to an entire community of people who loved the games like me; so Below I've listed most of the gripes that I have.

1. The Zeds aren't compelling and feel very generic and artificial;

Other than the survivors that get turned every zombie is generic often looking identical to another zed and it's even worse with the freaks they all literally look the same; these were never people they were always zeds which takes away from one of the most compelling part of zombies which is that they could be your turned friend, someone you knew, or just someone who had a life, job, and family once; the SoD zeds have zero connection to the world and are more like an assortment of drones or aliens in the world. This can be remedied by simple additions like notes, zed's clothes for different spawn points (construction worker, doctors, army, civs, etc. could help with visual storytelling too). And adding a more diverse set of physical aspects that can be randomized for the zeds. (Hair, face, rotting stage, etc.) And for the freaks even the smallest bit of visual addition could help, just 3 or 4 different shapes than the standard one. (The Juggernaut is the worst, he always looks the same).

2. The Survivors aren't living, at least not in a way that we can see; they do not mingle, don't engage in small tasks around the base physically other than sometimes standing guard or going to rest when you tell them to and there's often no reason for you to engage with them either, you just use them as a means to an end, the base is there but you don't stay there ever, it's not home, it's a shop, or a hotel, you go visit it grab some stuff you're gonna need for tomorrow and head off to complete your next mission, you should want to spend your time at home enjoy a nice meal, talk to friends and family about different mundane stuff and your opinions, maybe engage in a leisurely activity that you love; this can be fixed with the addition of perhaps some mini-games to do at base with other survivors, maybe working TVs and radioes when you have electricity. Maybe even playing music. Also adding text dialogues just for speaking with a survivor about mundane things, (they're favorite activity, what they did beforez how many zed they've killed, and what they wanna do rn) my favorite moments sre from when a follower tells you something personal on a car ride or a story when scavenging and I think if we could talk more we would be more attached to the community (maybe even being able to get gifts for some survivors based on how well we know them like a cowboy hat for an old west enthusiast in our group or a rare gun for an old gun nut in the community). I think generally SoD1 did characters better than 2 so that could be a good starting point to expand from. Note for point 1 and 2: a survivor could also have personalized lines for when confronting a zombified survivor based on both their traits and relationship. (I'm thinking more about how TWD scenes looked like Daryl killing zombie Merle.)

3. Going to the world with a group in single player sucks;

It's often better to go alone and prepared for what you want to do alone than in a group mostly because there's no reason for it, people are always a liability, they can get hurt, killed very easily, and most importantly are very hard to command; you can't tell them to be silent, use only blunt weapons, or run away we're gonna definitely die if we don't runaway! And then it's like that scene from the start of 28 weeks later😅 really the problem is lack of commands and the presence of a group not being necessary for tasks being done well in the game, if scavenging became faster more thorough and more rewarding and you AND your followers were safer together then that would be a start also it'd be a blessing if you could tell them to hold a certain position. The next couple of Gripes I got will be short since I don't believe they're as deep as these 3 and are mostly just a me thing.

4. Mechanics left behind; some things like boarding windows, higher community max number, the scene after the death of a character in the base with some personalized talk about them at base by Lily (who is very nice btw, I don't get the hate I saw on her in some yt vids); from SoD1 not being in the next games.

5. Nights aren't more dangerous than the day; I swear I got jumped by 2 Ferals during the night while stealthily scavenging in a house and my Marcus got ripped in half by them but that didn't happen ever in SoD2, I could just be imagining this one but had to say it.

Once again I'll point put that I said these just cuz I wanted to more like thinking about what my perfect additons to SoD would be, I know how hard game making is and most of these are probably unreasonable and I'm adding this part to not sound like I'm an ingrate asshole who just wants everything, I love what undead labs has done and these ideas came first and foremost from playing their works, nay, their art. And I love them and this community for it.

Let me start by saying I loved SoD ever since I started playing it in Highschool after my cousin introduced me to it. But I've always thought some things could be better but couldn't voice them out loud to an entire community of people who loved the games like me; so Below I've listed most of the gripes that I have.

1. The Zeds aren't compelling and feel very generic and artificial;

Other than the survivors that get turned every zombie is generic often looking identical to another zed and it's even worse with the freaks they all literally look the same; these were never people they were always zeds which takes away from one of the most compelling part of zombies which is that they could be your turned friend, someone you knew, or just someone who had a life, job, and family once; the SoD zeds have zero connection to the world and are more like an assortment of drones or aliens in the world. This can be remedied by simple additions like notes, zed's clothes for different spawn points (construction worker, doctors, army, civs, etc. could help with visual storytelling too). And adding a more diverse set of physical aspects that can be randomized for the zeds. (Hair, face, rotting stage, etc.) And for the freaks even the smallest bit of visual addition could help, just 3 or 4 different shapes than the standard one. (The Juggernaut is the worst, he always looks the same).

2. The Survivors aren't living, at least not in a way that we can see; they do not mingle, don't engage in small tasks around the base physically other than sometimes standing guard or going to rest when you tell them to and there's often no reason for you to engage with them either, you just use them as a means to an end, the base is there but you don't stay there ever, it's not home, it's a shop, or a hotel, you go visit it grab some stuff you're gonna need for tomorrow and head off to complete your next mission, you should want to spend your time at home enjoy a nice meal, talk to friends and family about different mundane stuff and your opinions, maybe engage in a leisurely activity that you love; this can be fixed with the addition of perhaps some mini-games to do at base with other survivors, maybe working TVs and radioes when you have electricity. Maybe even playing music. Also adding text dialogues just for speaking with a survivor about mundane things, (they're favorite activity, what they did beforez how many zed they've killed, and what they wanna do rn) my favorite moments sre from when a follower tells you something personal on a car ride or a story when scavenging and I think if we could talk more we would be more attached to the community (maybe even being able to get gifts for some survivors based on how well we know them like a cowboy hat for an old west enthusiast in our group or a rare gun for an old gun nut in the community). I think generally SoD1 did characters better than 2 so that could be a good starting point to expand from. Note for point 1 and 2: a survivor could also have personalized lines for when confronting a zombified survivor based on both their traits and relationship. (I'm thinking more about how TWD scenes looked like Daryl killing zombie Merle.)

3. Going to the world with a group in single player sucks;

It's often better to go alone and prepared for what you want to do alone than in a group mostly because there's no reason for it, people are always a liability, they can get hurt, killed very easily, and most importantly are very hard to command; you can't tell them to be silent, use only blunt weapons, or run away we're gonna definitely die if we don't runaway! And then it's like that scene from the start of 28 weeks later😅 really the problem is lack of commands and the presence of a group not being necessary for tasks being done well in the game, if scavenging became faster more thorough and more rewarding and you AND your followers were safer together then that would be a start also it'd be a blessing if you could tell them to hold a certain position. The next couple of Gripes I got will be short since I don't believe they're as deep as these 3 and are mostly just a me thing.

4. Mechanics left behind; some things like boarding windows, higher community max number, the scene after the death of a character in the base with some personalized talk about them at base by Lily (who is very nice btw, I don't get the hate I saw on her in some yt vids); from SoD1 not being in the next games.

5. Nights aren't more dangerous than the day; I swear I got jumped by 2 Ferals during the night while stealthily scavenging in a house and my Marcus got ripped in half by them but that didn't happen ever in SoD2, I could just be imagining this one but had to say it.

Once again I'll point put that I said these just cuz I wanted to more like thinking about what my perfect additons to SoD would be, I know how hard game making is and most of these are probably unreasonable and I'm adding this part to not sound like I'm an ingrate asshole who just wants everything, I love what undead labs has done and these ideas came first and foremost from playing their works, nay, their art. And I love them and this community for it.

So I just finished The Sound and The Signal and there are so many things I have questions about, like what actually happened to Old Jim? What did the Tyrant do to him? What happened to Cass and what is this "accident" they keep saying happened to the real Cass, what happened to The False Daughter? Why'd Jack try to kill his old friend? I could have missed something or maybe it's in the next chapters but rn I'm confused as to the situation.

Got this idea when thinking about another question which was: "do doctors diagnose and prescribe for themselves when they get sick?" And Witchers or at least Geralt are similar in that way, they take some money from you and help you solve the problem that you have (Curse, Monsters, etc.) so if there was a cursed witcher would they just get to brewing potions and reading lore books or would they go to other witchers to take a look at them?

Now a note on this I've already read The Metro series and some Crime and Punishment but even though I liked the ideas and the way the imagery builds up in the mind I didn't care for the writing, it seemed particularly dry, emotionless, like reading a school textbook for the mere purpose of memorization, C&P was even worse because in addition to that it was using that "pretentious" victorian lingo; now I put these two in one question because they were so similar that if they didn't share the same translator at the very least both of them had the same problems for me which I listed above, so I'm looking for translations that aren't like that.

So this is something I've been thinking about in both games, is it even possible? Has anyone done it? Looting everything on the map, what happens then? How do you get resources? Do the houses just "regenerate" resources? How do you even get resources? Though I think if you have looted the entire map at that point you have no use for any resources but, just assuming that maybe you do, what happens then?

Obviously I've got a full education on teaching but didn't do much reading outside of what was given to me by uni, I've focused more on teaching itself in academies and schools but I feel like I need to know more and need to know more in a way that I like, thought about mixing it up with my hobbies, mainly reading, I would much prefer books on the subject of teaching or teachers, so I'm looking for multiple book suggestions here.

It's like the writer tries to put a unique twist on the usual Dark Lord army (Orcs), but ends up going for another generic enemy by using the undead (White Walkers, The Scourge, Darkspawn etc.); other fantasy stories also try to put a unique twist by replacing that with demons but the results are the same and what's worse is that it never explores how having these as enemies affect the story and world they're just a generic evil army for the villain, a mere block for the protagonist(s); I'd appreciate your thoughts on this and i don't mind being told that I'm wrong and why (I appreciate that actually); and also I'd love it if you could recommend good books that go against this pattern and actually do it well.