They make the biggest difference for each individual player. But an experienced player will take a CDDA character (scenario where you start with a bad character, naked, sick and with bad wounds all over in a flaming building in the middle of winter) and somewhat easily make them into the ultimate survivor, whereas you can give a seriously op character to a newbie with all the skill already maxed out and no negative traits and they’ll probably die to the first zombie encounter.
A lot of words to say that PZ is neither a numbers game nor really a mechanics game. Ultimately it’s more of a knowledge game
Doesn’t Zomboid rely on numbers in terms of skill levels for shooting, running, etc?
Mechanics come into play, sure, but the weapons and skill levels seem to make the biggest difference.
They make the biggest difference for each individual player. But an experienced player will take a CDDA character (scenario where you start with a bad character, naked, sick and with bad wounds all over in a flaming building in the middle of winter) and somewhat easily make them into the ultimate survivor, whereas you can give a seriously op character to a newbie with all the skill already maxed out and no negative traits and they’ll probably die to the first zombie encounter.
A lot of words to say that PZ is neither a numbers game nor really a mechanics game. Ultimately it’s more of a knowledge game