LuvShiramine

Don't you already never have to loot ?? the looting play style is dead, do a few poi with traders and do a few other quests and you're done by day 20... magazines have made this worse though... they ACTUALLY force looting but you have to understand this is a scavenging based apocalypse survival game, what did you expect ? stuff to pop out of thin air ? 90% of this game is progression and looting so idk what you mean by "looting play style" exactly as thats basically the entire game on paper that just comes out as "less zombies = more zombies updating " which defeats the whole point of having large hordes get more zombies, realize with this new setting that they are delayed and buggy , back at square one of want more zombies because half of them don't work

spawn 64 zombies and just run around, jump on stuff and run around stuff. for example if you have them pile up on something you're on and jump off half of them will still keep hitting it as you run away, some will run the opposite direction ect ect, just try it for yourself. there is a mechanic in place to make them different then ferals for the exact reason but it doesn't work that well, because if you spawn in 50-60 ferals and just run around and jump on stuff and run away, some straight up get their ai disabled at the very worst, with the same issues i said above meaning high zombie counts are impossible due to this as well as the performance interesting never seen it but if im yet again wrong by saying this, he should fling them, similar to when you throw dynamite, and the blocks get flung so everyone else can have an opening this might be hard to explain so bare with me. thats why i said "you need more underlying mechanics and game health changes " such as making it so you can't farm so many resources, especially stuff like infinite ammo with mining, stuff like "your protection is not guarantied but earned", as you progress you find toughs, ferals and irradiated more and more common so you need higher tier weapons and qualities and perks, that is GOOD progression, because for once you're pressured to loot and scavenge to have a better chance to fight back , BUT unfortunately you probably get max stuff by day 25 anyways, lets completely slow down progression, by nerfing trader quests and balancing their stocks, trader stage was a good change, it makes sense and is balanced, its the beginning of the apocalypse of course hes not going to have guns from the military you can only get high tier items from the wasteland cities or really high tier stuff from regular cities AND make them more dangerous,, which biome tier helps with this thankfully which i LOVE, this makes the game have more emphasized visible progression make balances to early game stuff like cobblestone blocks crossbows, and traps like make them less farmable but more rewarding, or vice versa (blocks and traps especially) changes to stuff like mollys grenades and over all the balanced of infected like i said stuff like more mechanics is play, make them get stronger over time in some way to incentivize going past day 40, and as days go on make everything more dangerous such as higher infected counts to make end games have more spice as well as add a bunch of changes to make this work as effective as possible, i'd need to have to play with it to really give you a good insight ALSO, to make progression feel better plain and simple, and even if my ideas are a little unrealistic or bad this one isn't and debate me on it if it isn't Make as many weapons as you can unique and have their own prepose outside of builds and perk effectiveness, make them unique, pump shot gun has amazing range but a felt cooldown for missing, pipe shotgun does random damage because of how unreliable it is, auto shotgun has high spread but doesnt have the cons of those 2, steel sledge vs iron, one swings faster and does this and that and one swings slower but has a higher decap chance and not be just better versions of themselves, that should be what quality and attachments are for, raise quality up to 20 for end game preposes to scale with how they get stronger, some hordes would feel like a death grip on your throat because you only have a few grenades your traps are broken and your m60 is a low quality and does less and less damage as the day goes by, you cant repair stuff because you didn't want to loot that high tier chemical lab full of wights and didn't start a farm for buffs and didn't go mining for minerals for base upgrades and repairs so now you have to work with what you got, and others where you did and got a new shiny rpg and a new spinning blade trap with some steel and resources and the horde is easier, those demos didn't hurt as bad and that rpg kept the pressure off make it reward proactive players and make end games be just as good as early games with scavenging and such

In response, of the 2 posts you've said i want to make a few points Even if 64 zombies works and the ai doesn't bug, stand still or just not update its pathing, that's only 6 zombies, and in optimal fashion lets assume that these zombies aren't the bugged ones, there's no guaranty that this zombie will even reach the block its trying to break, or stick to it, or have another one finish its job, i don't want to say "and its not 100% going to be attacking something optimal" because that brings us back to engineer zombies. so that's a huge problem with the buggy ai. and it would barely make a difference on its own, you'd need to raise the horde cap to like 72, and update the ai so it doesn't bug, then increase this to like 25% to see a concrete difference in this. but yes i stand with the difficulty, w take. I found this to be engaging in its own way, (im not saying it was flawless, no this entire article i've been leaning into the idea of a16 ai) and the qualities it had, because it felt more like a hold out, kind of stressful where you had to be aware at all sides, because like you said they run quite literally right at you, into your walls stairs ramps fences perimeters ect... but obviously like you said certain stuff like spike walls and stuff countered it very very well, and the big old jumped up block meta, however demos spiders and vultures we have now could make that mildly less effective speaking of traps and spikes a zombie that could charge though traps and slam into your walls with that charge would be kinda cool and interactive, like literally just copy and paste the charger from left 4 dead, but he flings your spikes and cant get electrocuted by fences yes and no, if you tried to over build sometimes the zombies would just chew through everything and you were helpless , some times the boring based with 99999 spikes and a cube so you could see all your sides yes, BUT like i said new demos and vultures (with a buff ) chewing open your walls and a 1-2 more special infected could change up that meta to something more unique, however to achieve that +that true hold out stress inducing gameplay you need more underlying mechanics and game health changes this is absolutely fair BUT i wish they were louder with their voices on what they were working on, eta, how they honestly take the community's opinions, what changes they will do regardless, what changes they won't do, what changes they would go back on if we hated them. a W.I.P board of future stuff exists but if it were layed out into a complex road map on what they want to do, and what they are doing that would help also what stuff they actually want to do would be nice as well

my god i wish you were a dev, yes i completely agree with the randomness part, im sure alot of people don't want to die and just want to live forever, but if a game is just too easy and i have to handicap myself and TRY to die then i get bored, if a single player game/ PvE game gets you excited over achieving something or escaping a harsh situation, its doing something right, beating a souls boss, clutching up a tough scenario for your squad ect... IMO thats way better then being OP and just killing everything over and over again. additionally: TFP seems to like the current zed fighting strategy/AI, preferring it over others they have made (like a16) according to my albeit limited sample size, people don't enjoy the current zed ai, so maybe they should reconsider or compromise 7 days to approaching 1.0 and it will attract ALOT of attention, and i hope and pray to god this gimmicky weird all knowing cheese ai doesn't turn off new players and gets improved to something else.... that and it could be so so much better there's no way they're going to settle for just this. obviously this whole thread is dedicated to this topic but yet again the current ai is pretty 1 dimensional and non interactive so enough said on that, additionally this thread is proof of the many ideas they could do, and a few i could def see in the game and fit the theme and overall gameplay. """BUT a small fraction of them did not follow that same strategy (say: 10%), it would add a touch of randomness to the game. Your base might be "perfect" and maybe even AFK possible, but that 10% being "not following the default AI playbook" might be enough to ruin your perfect base. """ this is perfect ^^^ TFP This is a happy medium and a plausible idea that would fit and isn't gimmicky this is a genuine take that if you're reading this i'd like to know some opinions vvvvvvv whether its a different ai on its own, or they spawn in a certain way as well, even if some ideas or mechanics in this thread, TFP wouldn't add this seems like something they would at least consider. i would also have that they have some slight visual indicator or something audibly different about these zombies as to not have to be a weird confusing mechanic to new players, and def not something you have to look up, it should be obvious, "oh yeah this zombie is more lively and still has some human intelligence" "this zombie seems slower and more stupid, i can tell its giving into its parasitic instincts now that its rotting" whether its an eye color change it makes weird sounds it should be apparent . """"saying "a16 dumber" implies a lot of really dumb zeds (spinning, etc) """" obviously i didn't mean that lol, but i believe somewhere i said that alpha 16 ai mechanics and pathing, (not counting the bugs) with alpha 21 zombie mechanics such as crawling and climbing and head looking ect would be perfect. additionally the chaos in having zombies just swarm everything, having to defend every corner of you base, from above your walls, protecting traps, main entrance, is so fun. it also encourages people to try new bases and new strategies, that aren't always going to work the same way every time meaning that no base is truly "end game unkillable" and really makes the game play loop, of horde nights really interesting and replayable

I was making a point on how using your own metas and ideas is fun in a sandbox box obviously but you said that when you use the best stuff it gets boring correct ? Because the game isn't balanced for it, my point was that helldivers difficulty DOES which adds so many layers and depth in general to the people who love min maxing their own strategies and having fun that way. It's best compared to new game plus in certain games, imagine if you've played through your favorite game five times and loved it but then you unlock a new game plus the story and the game is the same but it adds new mechanics and layers to think about as you're playing it again, keeping it fresh, fun and most importantly challenging. So imagine if 7 Days to die difficulty did something like that, added new mechanics changed up the core gameplay of a lot of stuff, there is so much you could do. But back to your other point, you mentioned how eventually someone will mod in what you're looking for and while that might be true, alot of people would agree with me that having to handicap yourself by building in pois and installing mods and avoiding certain aspects, isn't the most enjoyable experience and I'm not talking about just having a mod to have more fun that's perfectly a okay, but when it feels like more then just a qol and more of a necessity or can't live without, or the thing that you need to mod just feels bad to play with without the mod says alot. And of course I understand that the strength of sandbox games is that you can play how you want and that's amazing, but so so many mechanics and things in 7 Days to die could be drastically improved with just a few changes, as an example of something that I personally don't care for but a lot of people do is that farming feels terrible to a lot of people in vanilla

i don't think it would be possible, especially for a game like this, 7 days is a beefy game, allbeit the devs do their best to optimize but this game eats everything it can, simply put you'd need a nasa computer to play split screen on current 7dtd, i have 32 gigs of 3800 (tuned) ram and a 5600x and i still barely get 60 fps in cities at low settings, i know im not gpu bound as well.

balance plays a huge part in enjoyment for alot of gamers, i love games that stimulate my brain to try and improve on stuff because its hard, whether its efficient farming, resource gathering, mechanical skill, game sense, or iq, which 7 days has all. but my main gripe with modding stuff is, you shouldn't have to patch and fix everything you don't like the game should just be good as is. you lose all the authenticity of playing 7 days when you do that, you download a few mods, revert a version, and change a bunch of settings you like and dislike, are you even playing 7 days to die anymore ? ill paint a picture for you, you tell your friends you made it to day 100 without dying, and then say this and that, and you have to explain that you have the mega super zombie overhaul, no (insert arbitrary skill issue mechanic here x3), your settings are cranked, and you have the "we fixed traders" mod, and your playing on a version a year old because you didn't like how the zombies give you more boo boos now i could go on but you get it. and the last part is yes i get PvE games aren't supposed to be taken meta meta (most effective tactic available) 24/7, BUT similar to the arguments of "just don't do that" "i play like this instead and don't do that " you're ripping all of the creativity of that style and players should have the option, hell divers 2 for example, has 9 difficulties, and it doesn't just change damage and what not it changes how the game is played and adds straight up mechanics which is cool, similar to insane nightmare which we have., BUT it adds that option of playing for the challenge using the best tactics and using team work and playing that "meta" but having it be fair, and playing and winning because more satisfying because its so hard you'll have stuff like: patrols are now a thing enemies gain new attacks certain enemies now can spawn all the time, and if you scale up some more they become more common ambushes now spawn more enemies outposts are bigger and have more defenses, and more stuff like jammers and turrets like stuff like that is so cool and could also be leaned into, i feel like im a box of ideas because i think about what 7 days could be allll the time because i want to like it but certain aspects of the game are so good, the ideas are there but execution is off, if you get what i mean

So, the problem with adding random mechanics like that at all is, for 1 you don't want to over convolute stuff. adding a bunch or gimmicky mechanics on stuff makes the game less immersive as it gets more goofy. for example the mastermind idea the greying the line with realistic and sci-fi game stuff, not gimmicky just goofy and it doesn't fit the games theme. another example is if you've ever played dead by daylight, the player base has an issue with getting targeted when getting off of the meat hooks the killer puts you on because that player is vulnerable, so the devs added a base kit mechanic to when you come off of these hooks you get a bit faster and you can endure 1 hit for 7 the next 7 seconds.... like you can make an argument for realism of "adrenaline fueled" ... yet again gimmicky and odd... but again there's ANOTHER related to this. the player base also has an issue with the killer "camping" the hooked survivor or puppy guarding them, because you need help from a teammate to get off of it or you eventually die... so what the devs did is if the killer is near the hook long enough the survivor can just... pop off of it... like that's the definition of gimmicky random mechanic that doesn't even remotely make sense, like why wouldn't they just do that all the time? but enough of that. A chance a zombie who enters rage mode marks a block for all zombies within 8 blocks to focus on until destroyed. ^^^^^^^ a way to make this fit the game theme and stay in realism would be, make a zombie that pukes all over blocks and those get weakened and take more damage, and zombies will target those if within a certain range and not occupied, similar to the boomer from left for dead (def inspired to be the cop we have in game) ... actually now that im writing this why doesn't the cop have 2 pukes ? one is green yellow which is for damaging the player, and a red one that smears on blocks ???? also what i meant by old system is, they were random, zombies would attack @%$# break stairs walls, some would climb to you if they saw you, like every night you would have a different siege on your base in some way it was really fun guessing and reacting to the randomness... the devs should lean into that in a few ways: 1 zombies come from all directions and stay on their sides and attack many angles of your base 2 have a mix of all zombies (after awhile its all ferals and rads) and because of that they should make every zombie unique, females move quicker toughs do more block damage ect ect, add more specials, that us the WHOLE reason l4d and its franchise was so popular is the specials were so fun in the game play loop playing against. 3, lean into zombies being different, some break stuff but won't hesitate to barrel at you if they see the chance, some bang on your front door because they know better, vultures and spiders on your ceiling ect ect yet again because the biggest problem with 7 days in general for me is that horde nights genuinely feel the same every night of every play through, once i get a base down and play with it once or twice, i know what the zombies are going to do every horde night from now on, not counting random spawning directions which could cause oddities, but isn't leaned into enough like i said, and also specials like spiders and vultures and cops blowing @%$# and demos tanking @%$#, like you see how just 2 specials changes that ?? (spiders dont really do anything vultures eh ) it changes how you play and how you defend so quick. you'll eventually find that even when you do, do this the problem still stands, let me quote a different reply i had because the biggest problem with 7 days in general for me is that horde nights genuinely feel the same every night of every play through, once i get a base down and play with it once or twice, i know what the zombies are going to do every horde night from now on, not counting random spawning directions which could cause oddities, but isn't leaned into enough like i said, and also specials like spiders and vultures and cops blowing @%$# and demos tanking @%$#, like you see how just 2 specials changes that ?? (spiders dont really do anything vultures eh ) it changes how you play and how you defend so quick. you know what's going to happen every time almost and thats what makes to seem so repetitive, no matter what base or poi you use, nothing changes between day 70 and 77 and so on, and not from a difficulty stand point once you get all the specials in play its the same, besides this night i had 2 demos and this night i had 3, when between that the regular zombies still do the same thing every night when you look past specials

This post is exactly how I feel about the current zombies, just feels samey no matter what you do, not engaging, and when you're one of those people who love difficult experiences with high block damage max count on insane, it still isn't that difficult. I want blood moons to be dread as "is this the day my base will fall?" Where you're actually encouraged to upgrade and prepare that's a really fun aspect of the base, and when you do fail it's "how can I do better and improve?" It's a very underutilized aspect I think the devs need to lean into

Honestly that's pretty nice to hear I'm glad the mechanics will be polished and improved especially as it seems to be an overlooked feature that deserves it. More over, when I said "hive mind" I meant it as combining multiple zombies as 1 collective so to hopefully reduce the lag of larger hordes, such as "follow the leader" in a sense, I can understand if having alot of different pathings and zombies types could lag a bit, hopefully over the years you guys can effectively continue to optimize and innovate. Do you guys have any early renditions if any at all of any polishing/reworks/changes and or mechanics of blood moons in the future ?

hello and thank you to whoever is taking their time to read this idea pitch. This idea is coming from someone who has be playing since early 2017, I've played pc and console as well. The reason I'm making this pitch is because of my own as well as many players feed back on ai, i made a few posts asking for: 1:a poll on your favorite alpha, #1 was A21(107 Votes) #2 was A20(40Votes) and #3 was A16 (38Votes) with more smaller numbers on other alphas 2: the players honest opinions on the old alpha 16 ai. below i will paste a few other peoples responses NOT mine. vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv Honestly if they somehow combine the old and the new one it would be the best. Maybe play with the rules of rage mode and how it works (as it is essentially what the old one was). Or have some zombies be always in rage mode around the player on horde night, while others are more intelligent. Kind of like fresh infected still have some intelligence left, while those infected for longer time were striped from any intelligence whatsoever and only their rage and hunger control them. I hate the PHD zombies we have now. It's so boring. The old style of them spawning and running forward was way more engaging. You had to be alert all around, not just at your funnel. I also can't stand the new AI. It takes away from the unpredictability to the point where the game rarely even makes me jump anymore. Never found it scary exactly but it used to catch me off guard a lot more. Has anyone managed to mod it somehow to bring the 16.4 AI rules back to the newer alphas? I heard it's impossible but @%$# off. I would love a combo of both. Some act in an optimal manner like civil engineers and some wander about wrecking @%$#. Best of both worlds. I'm missing the offguard jump scares...holes everywhere in my start base haha... They should revert it or someone should mod it :/ Its so booring atm and you cant make it rly hard cuz they just find they own way to the same exact points every night. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ So from that limited data we have here, players on average dont enjoy the new zombies and how they function before we go on how to fix it here are some of MY reasons why it should be changed. It encourages boring gameplay no matter what kind of base, play style you chose. The funneling they do punishes new players and that's a big no no and its frustrating having all of the zombies pour in from 1 mistake in your build it feels punishing as hell and confusing when you're new. it also ruins the hell out of the creativity of base building in some circumstances. Once you learn the basic mechanics of the zombies in horde night it's kind of boring, and not from a "sweaty" player perspective, it ends up being "that's all they're gonna do ???" They funnel and die funnel and die. even when you don't specifically make a funnel they manage to funnel themselves every time through, guess what, the least path of resistance / the best way to get to you thanks to the engineer zombies introduced in alpha 17. i love the improved pathing made in the newer versions and mechanics like the head look, crawling and stumbling over stuff to get to the player but the current zombie ai we have is not fun to play as, as the alpha 16 zombies, but we can have both to have an even more creative engaging gameplay loop below is how i think we can achieve this with in game mechanics that make sense and fit the 7 days to die theme How do we fix it ?? Some people suggested that we should have something like the virals from dying light, freshly infected zombies that have intelligence and are feral and have that perfect pathing straight to you (what we have right now) maybe make their eyes a different color, red would be good and scary too they could have additional movement speed as well. And along with that we should have zombie that are regular zombies that beat down your spike walls, walls and supports to you bases... they know you're there... they don't know to get to you.. but they're hungryyyy. This should in theory add depth to base building and shake up gameplay by a large margin, also meaning. Every horde night will be different in some way they will attack all parts of your base focus some the next night or evenly spread out on everything another, also adding lots of replay ability with the OTHER feature below Make a lot of optimizations to the zombie ai and game so we can have bigger hordes, if you've noticed when you kite 40-60 zombies alot of them get stuck and go into idle and lose you (even when feral) I think this is due to game limitations and I'd love to see this improved over the years, if l4d2 can spawn in upwards of 50 zombies plus regular idle ones around the map that seamlessly path to you I think 7 days can as well i can see this being a end game only thing by day 30 ish it would go over that 64 count limit it would be really fun to play against The walking dead type hordes as a way to add an end game. Im not horribly experienced in coding or game making but a way you could try to fit this is with an ai "hive mind" system, if a lot of zombies have the same objective i.e.: to break blocks chase the player etc. zombies the the area will collectively combine their ai to prevent the idle zombies and maybe even machine lag in *theory* This would take some balancing if they chose to increase sleepers biome patrollers, wandering hordes, along with more bloom moon enemies, health would be fine to adjust. I apologize for any spelling, grammatical errors, but i'd love to hear what the team thinks of this pitch of a horde night rework/ ai rework through an email, lots of people did infact seem to take a liking to it, so hopefully you aswell. my email is [email protected]