ivory junco
Wider scope on Character Creation when it comes to Occupation, Buffs and Debuffs etc.
As I'm writing this, I'm going back and editing things, for example, as I was writing the Occupations, I had more ideas, so if this is all over the place, apologies, I came across this game recently and fallen in love with it.
First off, me and my girlfriend did a 3 hour stream where we dived into this semi-blind, we spend 20 minutes learning the controls and messing with some stuff, then went from Redford to the opposite side of the map in a crazy adventure and we shared some ideas and I'll go through some right now.
Most of this centers around the idea of Roleplay, I've got years of RP experience, even being a dev for a FiveM RP server, so like I said, this is all RP based.
Occupations should come with their own (optional) debuffs for a more immersive character story.
I'd call them "Hardcore" Debuffs in a way.
I'll use a couple examples of this:
Veteran. What if every time they fired a fully auto firearm, you end up hallucinating? Impaired vision. A little PTSD in a zombie apocalypse.
Janitor. What if they don't smell good, almost all the time. They get dirty quicker, but harder to scrub the smell of rotten food off them, meaning they attract zombies easier?
I did have some other general debuffs, that I also consider Hardcore too.
For example:
One Eye - Offset camera position to simulate having one eye. Let them be the governor of Redford. Ifyouknowyouknow.
Pacifist - Killing something, even if it's already dead, stresses you out.
Cannibal - Is what it is, you gotta eat something. I guess you'd need to let them eat zombies, so I guess this comes with a buff of being able to eat zombies without being infected? The biggest factor here, is you could make them stand out, like blood shot eyes or pale af skin. Make them look like a zombie.
Addict - Randomly be addicted to something, like Vodka, painkillers, cannabis or something.
Deaf - Throw a hearing aid ingame, needs to be charged from time to time. But without it, you're not gonna hear everything clearly. Or nothing at all. Just makes for an even more hardcore experience.
Also, here some other debuffs that I wanted to suggest as just small things:
Claustrophobic – Spending too much time in small rooms in houses makes you stress.
Clumsy - Occasionally, you might drop something from your inventory.
Sweaty - Being an extreme sweater, you might just get wet through stressful situations.
Finally, I had some other occupations that could be fun sometime down the road with some more crazy buff/debuffs then what the game has offered so far
Uber Driver
-All map locations revealed
-Driving and Sociability buffs
LARPer
-Start the game with a sword
-Better aim with a bow
-Fire arm handling sucks
Mafioso
-Start the game with a silenced pistol
-Sneaking is easier
-NPCs may not like them much
Convict
-Start the game inside a police/prison cell
-Lockpicking is easier
-Like Mafioso, NPCs might not like them, or may even attack them
Scientist
-Ability to make cures for zombie infections
-Immune to zombies
-Weak in fights, sucks with a gun
merry vine
outer ocean