Dead State - Beta Released on Steam

Couchpotato

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DoubleBear Productions finally offers a full beta for Dead State on Steam, and shares more information in the games latest kickstarter update.

Dead State Beta is LIVE!

The Dead State Beta is finally here! If you've activated your Steam key, your copy of Dead State should automatically update. If you never received your key or lost it, please message us on Kickstarter and we'll try to get back to you with your key as soon as we can.

Since I don’t want to keep you in suspense, I’ll kick off this announcement with our impressive changelog:

- 75+ new locations
- 30+ new allies
- 500+ new dialogues
- Crisis events
- New enemy types & factions
- Vehicle travel
- Skill perks
- Ally traits
- Thrown weapons
- Data system (basic)
- Dog allies and enemies
- Special weapons
- Neutral encounters
- Tutorial elements
- Pause menu
- New save & load screens
- New goals
- Allies tracker on Goals screen
- Fence attacks
​- New jobs
- Shelter upgrades

… And a whole lot more cool stuff!

Don’t skip off gleefully to launch the game just yet, though - read on to learn more about what you should expect when you fire up the Beta.
Now excuse me as I have a beta to play.
smiley-wink.gif


More information.
 
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I may have to break my rule about not playing betas and give this one a whirl.
 
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If anyone has played both this and State of Decay, was wondering what the differences were between the two, thanks!

I like both games but there are several differences:
In DS there is only one shelter and no outpost, but it is huge (a school). Because of that, there are a lot more upgrades and a bigger group of survivors.
The game doesn't use resources when you logout.
DS is an isometric game, SOD is 3D.
SOD has an open world map. In DS you have a 2D map like in Fallout 1 and 2. While traveling through that map you discover locations based on your survival skills.
In SOD you have several kinds of zombies with different strengths. In DS you only have one, but the biggest threats are other humans (looters and other factions).
DS have crisis events that can affect your whole group; you can make several choices depending on your skills and you relationship with the members of the shelter.
DS has only one main character, the rest are companions.
In SOD every character starts with a random set of skills that you increase by using them (like The Elder Scrolls). In SOD you acquire points that you can spend on your skills. The way you get the point is by completing goals, not killing zombies.
The biggest difference between both games is the combat. SOD has a real time action combat, while DS has a turn based combat like in Fallout and Jagged Alliance. Strategy is a lot more important in DS.
I hope this helps!. You should really try the game, it is quite fun.
 
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Thanks for the detailed comparison Arahael. Can you explain what you mean by…
I'm curious also as I'm playing the game right now, and it does not require you to log on to play. Maybe he meant something different, or it's a bad translation.:)
 
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@JDR13 and @Couchpotato: Cronis asked for a comparison between State of Decay and Dead State. In SOD even when you are not playing, the survivors keep consuming resources (food, medicine, etc), so you could for example load the game and find out that while you were not playing, your shelter run out of supplies and some of the survivors died. And because it only has an automatic savegame, there is nothing you can do to undo that.
That mechanic is not part of DS. In DS you can save and load whenever you want.
 
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Thanks for the clarification Arahael I thought you meant Dead State.:blush:
 
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That doesn't make any sense.

How could they be using resources when the game isn't even running?

It is a feature of the game called persistent world.
When you load the game it checks your system time (Windows or Xbox) against the time of the last savegame to calculate how much time passed and calculate resource consumption, in-game events and the passage of time in the persistent world. So if the last time you played was a week ago and you left the shelter with low supplies and surrounded by zombie hordes, chances are that when you load the game some of the survivors will be dead. That game is very unforgiving.
 
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Look at the last login date of the game
Look at current login date of the game
Then calculate death and mayhem based on the time difference...

Dying is easy in State of Decay and you have to change your main character several times, because your old one died violently... or you have to play really, really careful :)
 
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Look at the last login date of the game
Look at current login date of the game
Then calculate death and mayhem based on the time difference…

Dying is easy in State of Decay and you have to change your main character several times, because your old one died violently… or you have to play really, really careful :)
It's sounds similar to what Fable 2 did on the 360 when you were paid rent. I found an easy hack to get more money in the game by changing the date.

I haven't played State of Decay since it's launched. So have the add-ons and patches fixed the game, or made it better? Sorry for being off-topic.:embarrassed:

So to get back on topic I like what I'm playing in the new Beta, and I was worried about the game from the alpha. With a more fixes, and content it will be perfect to me at least.
 
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It's sounds similar to what Fable 2 did on the 360 when you were paid rent. I found an easy hack to get more money in the game by changing the date.

I haven't played State of Decay since it's launched. So have the add-ons and patches fixed the game, or made it better? Sorry for being off-topic.:embarrassed:

So to get back on topic I like what I'm playing in the new Beta, and I was worried about the game from the alpha. With a more fixes, and content it will be perfect to me at least.

There are several very good mods for SOD since they started supporting them in nexusmods. Try the one called QMJS Extended Functions. Of course, only for PC.
 
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That doesn't make any sense.

How could they be using resources when the game isn't even running?

A while since the last time I gave a run to state of decay.

What was happening in those days is that the game was updating the resources upkeeping consumption on an ingame day basis but check the clock of the computer.

You could play an ingame fortnight without be bothered by upkeeping, log out and relog the next day to notice that the game had updated figures to match the new levels.

SoD was intended to a MMO at start, at release, at least, they did not even bother to fix certain features that belong to MMO.

I havent checked since that point, maybe they fixed it, maybe not, because SoD is such a failed game it is a waste of time to go back and see.
 
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Just got my butt handed to me by a bunch of stinking humans around a corner in DS. Should have had the copper pull out the shotgun earlier, and my character got a bunch of unlucky misses with his sledgehammer. Misses really hurt when you're using a 2Her. :(

The offline nonsense was definitely the worst part of SoD. Does that mod mentioned above or any other remove it? Incidentally, SoD is currently on sale through the weekend on Steam for $5.
 
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So I gave a run to the beta release.
People interested in the story should not try the game at the moment.
More on that point later.

Game came with several flaws in design and getting to know if they could be corrected.

People state that the turn based "igougo" is better to combat are going to be served with this game. Good luck arguing that point with DS in their backyard.
Several problems like zombies not roaming or troubles in engaging the opponent (the transition between real time and turn based is appaling to say the least, followers hang behind and when triggering the turn based phase movement is paid in AP so penalties for followers two or three tiles away) are still there.
Hard to think that this is going to be corrected, they took measures against that like allowing less depth to the point of view (you can zoom out shorter now) so you see less of the place and increase the chances of being surprised.

Story: as it stands, you might more than often outpace the storyline. Since looting is such a given, you will get yourself ahead by looting places and later being pointed by the story to go and loot the places you did loot)
One cause is the overencumbrance mechanics do not look as implemented. So you can raid places after places without bothering to select the loot you want to bring back. You also do not have to return to places etc
 
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Spot-on points there. Not only are the zombies -and human enemies- completely static unless engaged by the player but they also don't react to each other in any way. You can lure a single zombie or human away from a tight crowd and the others will be completely oblivious to it.

However, patrolling or otherwise dynamic enemies would be a complete disaster for the player anyway because controls are so poor. You can not select specific characters directly via keyboard but can only cycle through them (in single direction) via Tab key. Group movement is a disaster and is very inconsistent with regard to when and where the followers stop.

And it is very disappointing that the game fails to account for such simple things as doing things out of the expected order.

A few other points from the Mitsoda interview thread:

what disappoints me about the game is the discrepancy between their references, their goals and how simplistic the game actually is. I understand; limited resources + simple game but I really don't think they are playing it to the right audience with game mechanics on this one. I enjoy the game but it still feels fairly like a console game.

- No tile-based environmental fog of war; you magically know every in and out of a building the moment you enter any part of it. All the tension and mystery of exploring buildings are gone the moment you enter one. Not to mention all the debris and decals in the outdoors (I'm excusing the building lay out itself).
- Dodgy camera and reveal/hide switch between indoors and outdoors.
- Dodgy LOS through glass doors and windows.
- No shooting through glass doors and windows.
- No crouching/crawling to avoid being seen through windows.
- No choice to sneak/walk/run during combat, which is quite an affront for a zombie game, I think. All combat movement is standard.
- No mechanics for zombies piling up on and breaking doors and maybe PCs holding a door off.
- Shitload of non-combat resource items that you should be able to use for other simple purposes in locations but you can not (eg. you should be able to throw any item around to make noise, to attract or divert attention at the risk of spoiling or breaking it, with the throwing distance, difficulty and chance of spoiling/breaking based on the item).
- Dodgy grid and character selection.
- Silly and uninteresting carry limit. When a character hits his carrying capacity, he's fixed on the ground. Absolutely no gradual scaling up until that movement, which eliminates more interesting scenarios as "do I drop some of this stuff to save my ass or do I risk my life taking everything?". That's basically one of the staples of the zombie genre, one of many which DoubleBear is entirely skipping every so easily.

And then there is the writing. A rather sad state of affairs. Characters aren't all bad and can be convincing but the player lines are downright abysmal. The same sad state of quality also reflects to the "story", what with the game sort of ignoring the player's pace and enforcing its own.

My general impression is that it's a very poorly handled game that is sorely lacking on the design and mechanics side, following 30 years behind (seriously, lacking something as basic as direct character selection? That's the original Dune level of old and that's just for beginners) but is otherwise a fun game, especially if you have been wanting a disaster/apoc TB party game like I have. But I don't see many people in that particular floor.
 
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I would agree the combat feels clumsy, particularly the transition between real time and turn based.
 
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