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Tensions over the confusing effects of a character trait in the game have left at least one State of decomposition 2 fan feeling burnt by developer Undead Labs, who has now released a apologies and clarification, PC player reports.
Steam Marines developer James Seow had innocently tweeted about their State of Decay 2 gaming experience over the past month, until they found out one of their characters possessed the ‘hallmarked Nazi’ trait. The gist of the trait is that the character quickly resolves conflicts through physical violence, especially when the arguments stem from firmly held beliefs.
Materially, the trait simply adds bonus damage and makes your character more irritable to others and has been reported as a negative trait.
As Undead Labs refined State of Decay 2 after release, that trait became less and less nuanced. All of the arguments between the characters had ended up being put under one umbrella, making any firmly held belief, no matter how ideologically different, the same penalization.
Noticing this, Seow tweeted on the Undead Labs and State of Decay 2 Twitter accounts, asking why the game contained “Nazi shit”. Seow was quickly blocked by the Undead Labs and State of Decay 2 Twitter accounts.
Undead Labs tweeted Thursday that Seow’s blocking was the result of automatic blocking software that was inflamed by negative comments regarding Black History Month.
Undead Labs went on to say that the ‘Hallmarked Nazis’ trait was created long before the State of Decay 2 release date in 2018 and was never intended to be a negative trait.
“A designer told us firsthand stories about Nazis smashed into the underground music scene,” Undead Labs tweeted. “We loved it and boom, the trait was born. It was designed as a positive overall trait with a skill bonus – it grants four stars of combat experience and also makes the character more likely to argue passionately for their beliefs. We figured someone punching Nazis in a mosh pit was going to have strong feelings.
State of Decay 2’s morale system, which came later in development, changed the reading of the trait text to highlight the damage bonus as a positive and the propensity for arguments as an exclusively negative.
“So today this trait has a positive skill bonus (white text) and red text in the UI due to the likelihood of arguing,” Undead Labs tweeted. “It’s been like this for years and we never realized how confusing it seems until tonight. This is not common, we have over 1300 traits. “
Undead Labs concluded by saying that their next patch will fix the issue by making the trait only have the positive damage bonus and remove the “irritable to others” sub-trait.
Now that we know it, we fix it. We are removing the negative morale effect from the trait and it will only have its positive effect on combat experience in the future (this has never changed). This change will be in an upcoming patch (how it will appear before and after) pic.twitter.com/URDlsq6RuJ
– State Of Decay 2 (@StateOfDecay) February 25, 2021
“We think it’s better overall that no one ever sees it as a negative trait again,” Undead Labs replied to a Twitter user.
IGN reached out to Seow for comment, but Seow says on Twitter that Undead Labs contacted them via a private message.
“[I] I would have accepted the design explanation and ‘we’re going to fix this’ eight days ago, now looks very effective at controlling corporate damage, ”Seow tweeted. “I’m glad it only took me a week for the others and I to scream.”
Joseph Knoop is a writer / producer / shambler for IGN.
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