Yesterday CalamitysEchoes was play-streaming 9 Dayz.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1916440249

For me this  was an epic experience leaving a ton of valuable impressions, feedback, emotions, observations and ideas. 

Today I compiled all of that in the following three groups.

Feedback from CalamitysEchoes and his fellow Stream participants

• Luring costs too much energy
• The vignette communicating low player stats causes visibility issues
• How much overall damage/health inventory items have in battle?
• It is hard to tell where your character is, it is all too small (zooming needed)
• Checking inventory during battles would be helpful (but also mentioned the downside of that)
• In populated places the Cards stack way too dense and are too hard to access  (dropdown  or  scroll-through or scrollbar)
• Interacting with a weapon to see its damage/protection output would be helpful
• Having the weapons at hand in battles would be  a fair change
• In cooking recipes, identifying some of the needed ingredients as well as the  expected result is hard
• Does meat contain any liquid? (Goole says it does, around 75%)
• Occupations/career (providing choice of different characters having different stats/props)
• Journal (dialog/summary per day, finding notes in houses from other survivors)
• In-game Wiki for extensive Cooking  and  Crafting  information
• Where are all the other survivors?
• Searching Zeds randomly spawns keys/lockpicks for locked houses (might be obsolete with fixing weapons durability)
• “Oh Tree gods, please!”
• Luring Zeds with items or sound devices (batteries) instead of investing energy – it shouldn’t be that costly  to  Lure
• Ovens and other equipment in Houses
• Provide a difficulty option
• Companions/survivors for advanced tactics in later maps and mission (ambush, stats improvement)
• Make the character feel more personal and relatable
• Check out the Don't Escape Trilogy

Collection of ideas based on the above feedback and from my observations

Only listing new ones here - all other feedback mentioned is already present on my 9 Dayz Milanote board.

• The “Luring failed” audio feedback alone is not enough information
• I will use the vignette only for low health – as this is the only real threat, for all other low stats I switch to a less obtrusive visual feedback
• Tutorial card text is covered partially by the upcoming action button, in one case this is leading to a wrong information
• Attack buttons and “Dangerous Search” buttons both have the same visual criticality, but they should be different
• Spawn a “Low Energy” tutorial card first time energy goes critical, explain the consequences and counter measures
• Spawn a “Cut & Cook” tutorial card first time a dead animal Card (duck/rat) is coming up
• Disable Cook button when there is nothing to cook
• Add cooking / crafting symbols to all relevant items (in inventory, in battle)
• In Game Editor, track the number of items in inventory over time and location (makes balancing easier) – would be nice if this could be tracked in real gameplays, asking for consent via opt-in?
• Find the Zombie Audiobook story that was written in diary style (“(Date), Dear notebook…”)
• Involve interested people in writing short survivor notes for the game, like they did in The Long Dark
• Continue the story when players reach the ship, there is a whole town on the map that is not accessible, maybe starting with a mission for collecting supplies so that the those on board have enough food for the journey
• Sacrificing items in Churches to please the Gods and change RNG for certain types of Cards (Gaya -> Plants, Mars -> Battles, ??? -> Buildings etc.)
• Make the tutorial run easier / more favourable
• Adding a doggy companion might be nice – me loves doggies!

Issues and bugs

• In first game the house was spawning broken rat cards, house itself was not marked as “infested” (missing icon) (around 01:20:00 in stream)
• Rats sometimes steal food but do not heal accordingly (check if this is intended)
• First Zed attack (running into them) is weaker than normal (check if this is intended)
• Starting from second fireplace, some images in the cooking options are missing
• The game breaker demon – is already fixed…