Elwin00

That could theoretically work for single-player (i.e. game with one player) or a co-op game where all players would agree to sleep at the same time. It wouldn't work in multiplayer. The feature could work when there is just one player online. Or when everyone is in the same team and in bed. Otherwise, the feature would be inactive.

Scripted events are quite predictable, especially if one plays for longer time. Otherwise, it might still be fun. In the meantime I encountered also houses that were completely empty. So there is quite a lot of variation, which is good! @Laz Man Regarding hordes, I don't like the grind, as I explained. Could be that it's more fun to confront the horde "head on", as @zztong suggested. I just never got that far in the game that I would be sufficiently armed for that. Something to try later, I guess. @Matt115 I didn't want to go into implementation details, I just presented a broad idea. Sure there's a lot that would have to be solved from the design perspective. Good point with the bandits! That would be shame if the zombies would destroy the bandits before the player. But bandits are also not helpless, right? They could fight the zombies unless there were too many of them. Actually, that sounds like another good mechanic that would naturally follow from the world itself: players could send a horde into the bandit camp to help them defeat them. I like it! And don't worry about performance, what I have described is nothing too fancy to simulate on a contemporary gaming PC or any PC for that matter. As @zztong explained, there are ways to simulate hundreds of thousands of zombies quite efficiently. I never got that far, but worth a try. Thanks for the tip! You are, of course, right. It would probably not be necessary to simulate every step of every zombie. What I presented was an idea how the game could work on high level. How that idea would be implemented in the game is entirely different question. It would probably be enough if the game "moved" the individual zombies and/or groups of zombies every so often (only those too far from the player, obviously). For that it wouldn't have to keep detailed representations of every POI in memory, I had something much simpler in mind, e.g. if a zombie would be passing by a POI, there would be some chance it would enter the POI and stay inside; its exact location within the POI would be determined only if a player would actually approach that POI. You explained it very well and it could work as you described. What I had in mind was something slightly different. The hordes would not just grow, they would only grow if there were other zombies (individual or smaller groups) close to its path. They would _tend_ to join, but most would not join or perhaps eventually split away, otherwise it would be a few big hordes sucking all other zombies in a few game days. It would have to be probably balanced somehow. I completely understand this. That's why I suggested that this could be done as a separate game mode, even after the release. I also think the developers might have a different vision and for them current state makes most sense. If that's the case, we have to accept it and go with it... or find a different game 😉

Thanks for the answer! I also believe the current state might be just some intermediate stage. Increased food/water consumption is a nice and logical way to deal with said issues, however there is a limit to human metabolism. At some point I would freeze to death no matter how much I would stuff myself 🙂 I think situation could be a bit more forgiving about heat; drinking enough water should prevent me from dying. I would be afflicted with heat stroke for sure but unless the temperature is really high due to forest fires or artificial heat sources, the character should not die.

Hello, I have a feeling that the effects of both temperature effects are somewhat easy to ignore. Perhaps I never took them to proper extreme? Once I wandered into snow biome to get to an air drop and got into a few fights, some of which took longer than I wanted. I was almost naked, it was quite early in the game and all the time I had the Freezing debuff. I was expecting to die but it didn't seem to have any serious effects. How do they really work? I read player's food/water will go down faster if they are too cold/hot, is it all?

Hello, I came back to playing 7DTD after around 5-6 years. Much has changed and the game is much more polished with many great mechanics than what I remember and also with many more settings to change the gameplay/difficulty to one's liking. Very well done! One thing that had bothered me previously and that I've found out became even worse now is how scripted the game feels. I always hated blood moon hordes (esp. on higher difficulties) because of the grind; to prepare the defense and to repair everything afterwards has always felt just too much. Thankfully it can be turned off now. After playing for a few days I don't like POI gameplay either; all zombies are passively waiting, often in such places so as to be overlooked that they can ambush the player. Many are set up on upper floors and they drop down on some trigger. This feels very scripted and designed for dramatic effect. They tend to be completely oblivious to certain events, like shooting bolts next to them or bashing through a locked door with a huge axe, but then waking up if you happen to sneak too close from behind. (other mechanics that fall into the same category are the dog packs every 5 days or screamers spawning because of high activity in an area) I have always expected an open-world game such as 7DTD to be more of a sandbox. Things should happen due to how the world mechanics interact with each other and not because they are scripted to occur. For example: zombies, who individually are slow, dumb creatures, should have a way to be dangerous but in a way that is plausible, not because from time-to-time the game comes to a point where the player should have a good fight. Let me go deeper into the example with zombies (that btw is my main gripe with the game right now). Instead of spawning zombies all the time, zombies could be spawned into the world when a game starts. New zombies would be pouring into the world from outside: edges of the map and perhaps some special places inside of the world like some tunnels or bridges whose other end is outside of the world map. Rate of how many new zombies enter the world could be increasing with time. Next, zombies would tend to keep moving (this is to make sure they would diffuse into the world map). They would tend to follow each other and herd together, which is how they would progressively become more dangerous. (they could get increasing speed bump and damage bonus when more and more of them are near each other) There would be these hordes that would keep growing and moving around; players would be incentivised to deal with the hordes before they grow too large or before they stumble upon players keeps etc. And there could be multitudes of ways how to deal with the hordes; shoot all zombies, split them up, have them chase you/something to change direction, lead them to a mine field etc. Not all zombies would always have to stick to other zombies; some of them could be "solitary" and tend to go away from other zombies (this would mean the world would be populated more evenly, with a lot of individual zombies aimlessly walking around, entering houses if door is left open; some of them could eventually become sleeping zombies). What would this mean for immersion? It would feel more natural. Sometimes a daytime horde comes from a direction I just came from. There's no way they could have been there two minutes ago. I could clear an area, then build some obstacles and be quite confident that there are no enemies around. Sure, eventually some would trickle in but that would take time. I could clear up to some distance around my base before nightfall and then happily and loudly party all night, why not? I have actively prevented any trouble by doing the sweep but right now I will likely have to deal with a screamer visitor and their friends during night time and there is no way to prevent it unless I accept to quietly sit still all night. I think at this point everyone gets the idea 🙂 A few assorted thoughts: - at this point in development I don't expect the developers can (or want) to change the existing system, but perhaps it could be implemented alongside as a different game mode? - it should be technically possible to simulate thousands of zombies in memory if they don't have to be rendered on screen - if not, there are options: simulate hordes as one entity and tracking how many zombies joined, or merging many simple zombies into fewer higher tier zombies (same punch with less CPU) - noise system would have to be revamped to draw those hordes from a larger distance with very loud noises like explosions and gunfire and give more options to create just-right noises by the player as distractions. Also to make the gameplay more challenging. - there should be some way to scout large hordes from great distances (lower-LOD crowd of zombies, dust in the air, visible tracks on the ground etc), finding the biggest herds before they find you should be the core of the late game play - something like "hive" mind for large hordes where they would be more persistent and more sort of intelligent the bigger they would be, if they would catch the scent of a player. - I am fully aware of technical complexity of such system; to design it, to implement it and to tweak it to the point where it would work as expected. It is magnitudes more complex than to add some scripted spawning. In closing, I am aware that the main premise of this game is to kill the player (hence 7 days to _die_). This is perhaps how the game was envisioned and designed; to be dramatic and horror-like. Doing it in a more sandbox way doesn't mean it would have to lose these properties, on the contrary it could amplify them. There is a difference between a cheap "scare" horror and a masterpiece that instills real fear 🙂 Same difference as between "oh that zombie around the corner scared the **** out of me" and "oh no, this horde is way too big for me to deal with right now and it's hanging out near my base".