Roland

What other type of sarcasm is there...?

How exactly do you obviously get kicked when trying to join the 7 Days discord with a new account but not notice because you’re joining a bunch of servers so fast? Does this really happen? I can give my condolences and my advice to…slow down? Pay attention to what you’re doing? Contact a discord moderator?

Can a player not pull out a spear from their own body? If not, THAT is the true bug. Any player who is unaware of a spear sticking into him deserves to be tracked.

My job description prevents me from enjoying such happiness.

Okay, you might get your feelings mildly hurt.

Maybe try having everyone leave the vicinity. Get in vehicles and drive like 2 km away and see if they keep spawning. If they don't, wait until morning and then return to see if it ended or not.

I hope with workshop support we can add individual POI's that are rated by the community. The POI packs we have now are mostly great but there are few stinkers in the mix.

Balancing is done with Nomad in mind. Nomad is considered normal difficulty by the devs. But default is set to Normal -1 for the express reason that gamer ego often prevents new players from reducing the difficulty to easy mode even if they should but never prevents new players from increasing the difficulty if they want. The default is the best level to learn how to play for many players so that is why it is selected by default but Nomad is considered normal difficulty. I play on Warrior, myself, because I it isn't too tedious having each zombie fight take so many hits but it feels good that after a few level ups I can see the difference of how many hits it took to kill a zombie at the start compared to how many times it does now. Plus I like the more frequent Rage occurrences. I've been thinking about Survivalist but just haven't done it because Warrior feels perfect to me.

I know. It's okay. If eight pages couldn't make it happen one more response won't either. Our values are completely different and that's fine. I've already said that I agree with you that under your conditions stealth and bows are unbalanced. Understanding your perspective, I agree that if I have a bow and find a machine gun that is much more powerful in every way, I should take the machine gun and since the machine gun exists it makes the bow completely useless and pointless. If I ever choose to focus on efficiency then I will remember all your tips and strategies. That's all we can do at this point. I just want to point out that I washed mine first which makes me a better hand washer by your rules.

The patch notes will be released on the day the Streamer weekend begins which would be December 3rd in your scenario. You'll have all weekend to peruse them before the update hits on whatever Monday it hits. There have been no major changes to the skill trees. Drones don't fire anything that could hurt anyone or anything.

It should be done now that we all understand each other better. I completely accept Bach's assertions given the conditions and context of how he plays the game and what is important to him. I can't argue that he is wrong.

I don't need to prove that fun is the whole point of playing. You've been told several times by multiple people but you can't understand it because it is alien to your way of thinking. This is not a dig. I'm just stating that we have no common frame of reference. Analogies don't work because you can't see the connection and so you dismiss them. Flat out telling you hasn't worked because you can't believe that people actually don't care about efficiency and are deceiving themselves as they play to maintain their fiction. It's taken us awhile to figure out where you're coming from but I think we are finally getting the gist of it. This is not to say that I don't think that bow and stealth can't see some improvements but it is to say that I am perfectly happy with how they play right now and have had many enjoyable hours playing the game focusing on these areas for the sake of playing survival with a specific type of character. So in the sense that you can play and have an enjoyable time and experience some challenge they are balanced nicely vs the gamestage progression of the game itself as it gets more difficult. You can be a stealthy archer and survive. But...all of this just sounds like a bicycle with square wheels to you right? I get that you are not saying these things to be insulting. You are just stating facts as you see them. The problem is that your sense of bad is all wrapped up in efficiency and speed which are qualities of gameplay that you value. So just saying people play bad because they made bad choices is to general. We have to know that bad choices means choosing actions that don't progress your character as quickly as another action that is available. This is why you will never play bow and stealth because as soon as you have a weapon that is better than the bow you must choose that weapon and dump the bow in order to make a good choice. People who value other aspects of the game will view keeping the bow and continuing the game as an archer as a good choice.

Wow. You used to be such a good player, too...

Speed is in Bach's nature. He is not going to accept any condition that does not include speed of progression. Fast progression = good player making correct strategic choices Slow progression = bad player making poor strategic choices For him, that is it. He cannot conceive of any other definition of good player vs bad player and being a good player is very important to him. No argument that tries to recontextualize the game in terms of something other than speed and efficiency of progression is simply not able to be processed or if it is it is dismissed immediately with disdain because then you are simply talking about how to play the game poorly again. Speedrunners will be the folks we'll see a week after A20 drops asking, "Was that it?!" They devour new content in days and then demand more. Meanwhile all the rest of us bad players will spend the next several months enjoying the new content and exploring all the changes. My goodness, it pays to be bad. (Yes Bach, I know. I've amusingly and unwittingly admitted that I'm a bad player...)

Yes, I was talking about the most extreme on the spectrum. I also stated myself that there are degrees. By stating the most extreme, people can now read what you post and evaluate how you compare to the extreme. Going by your posts (I don't know you after all) I would say you are closer to the extreme end and I'm betting most who have read your viewpoint would agree. I mean not only can you not stand to play inefficiently you can't even stand to watch inefficient play. It is one of your admitted main objections to streamers and it makes so much sense and fits why you could never be part of that culture. Yeah, you win. Since efficiency is the only context that matters to you-- in those terms-- I fully admit that bow and stealth are worse perks than barter and adventurer. I also admit that by concentrating on bow and and stealth I would never be able to have a jeep, concrete base, best tools and weapons, and otherwise win the game under your conditions by day 7 on Warrior or higher difficulty. Now the big question that has got to worry you is whether the developers of the game believe that efficiency is the only context for balance that matters. And now I admit fully that they are simply unbalanced by your criteria. I completely believe you when you say you can achieve your win conditions by Day 7 with one particular combination of perks and play strategy but that you cannot replicate that using other combinations of perks and play strategies. My argument has ceased to be whether you are wrong or right about the balance of the game. You are 100% right. The perks are not all balanced against efficiency. My own enjoyment of the game is completely unconditional upon whether one strategy is more or less efficient than another, however. In fact, my enjoyment of bow and stealth is due to the fact that it is less efficient because that offers a new experience and unlike you I don't have to work hard at all to ignore the fact that the way I am choosing to play is going to be slower and wasteful. So I really have no need or desire to avoid admitting that the imbalance as you have described it exists. Do you realize that your very definition of what makes someone a bad player vs a good player just adds more evidence about how extreme you are in your views about efficiency? Not only are you obsessed but it has become the very definition of good and bad to you. "Good choices" are only those choices that are the most efficient. "Playing well" means purely that you are progressing as quickly as you can maximizing efficiency and minimizing waste. A streamer who pauses to talk to their chat is a bad player and makes poor choices because chatting with your audience doesn't help them advance their progression in any way. A player who decides to focus on bow and stealth is a bad player because on day 7 they will be in rags crouching behind a bush while someone else who started at the same time and is a good player will have a truck and a machine gun. A player is a good player if they mod out the trader so none exist in their game but a bad player if they leave the trader in but just choose to ignore or limit how they use the trader because then they are making inefficient choices and ignoring the best possible choices to advance as quickly as possible that are available to them. I very much doubt that the developers are going to rebalance the game (the entire game needs to be rebalanced I believe you said) to suit you. They are not nearly so focused on the thing you hold most dear.

I'd read you as someone who just has strong preferences as to how you like to play and which perks are important to you for your enjoyment so you tend to gravitate to those in general. It sounds like you are willing to play different builds and focus on different approaches. What it comes down to is whether you are happy and having fun. If you are then you are doing it right. If you are not and if the developers don't change things in the way you want them to be then your choices are to mod the game to your liking, try to change your own perspective on how you are playing, or move on to another game. Who's that? New guy with a cool last name? Nobody would call it lying or pretense in your case...

Min/maxing is minimizing suboptimal choices and maximizing progression in as efficient a manner as possible usually in regards to time. Of course there are many varieties and levels of obsession with optimizing but the last few years (since A11) has been a very good education. I really don't think I am misunderstanding. Bach has been very clear in describing his thought processes and he isn't the only one nor is this the first time. Pretty much all the discussions surround xp for crafting and later lbd had to do with those gamers who ultra focus on efficiency. You can call some of them optimizers and others min/maxers and some may be a bit of both but the key underlying issue is always efficiency as the governing value. I've never thought of you as a min/maxer in your arguments for what you want for intellect. You see a particular model that was used for the other builds and you want intellect to follow the same model. You aren't talking about playing in an optimal way in regards to efficiency, you are talking about a build that has holes and imperfections when compared to the structure followed by the other builds. That is a different issue and I do disagree with you on the premise that all the builds must be organized and structured the same but it is a different conversation. That right there disqualifies you. You are willing to play different paths and try to play as best you can within the limits of that path. Efficiency players would call that "self-indulging" and "lying to yourself" and "pretending to make up for design deficiencies" because to them it really is like that. They can't not think of how they "should" be playing while they try playing in a less efficient manner. You may often wish the path you are playing had better options associated with it but you still replay the game trying out different builds whether they are imperfect or not. A true efficiency player doesn't do that if the build isn't the most efficient way to progress. They couldn't care less if there are a couple perks missing or a tier 0 weapon missing if adding those components won't bring that build up to the pinnacle of best most efficient path because they would be pointless to be chosen anyway otherwise. If the devs filled out intellect and then it became the most efficient path they would all switch to playing it....a couple times to confirm....and then once again demand a rebalancing of the game to "fix" the fact that there is no replay value.

A variety of games is probably the best solution. If you can't have fun playing one game in a variety of ways then simply play many different games the one time you need to solve their efficiency puzzle. The problem is expecting one game to continually remain fresh if you can only accept one way to play it. So far 7 Days has offered a "new puzzle" with each update but once the game goes gold and is done then it really will be done for efficiency players.

The answer for you is never. You cannot suspend your need for an optimal path. Bow and stealth will never be an option for you. For someone else the condition would be that they wish to challenge themselves by playing a game using bow and stealth and play as that type of character. For that person it would be fine because they would not be constantly preoccupied by the opportunity costs and self deceptions over how quickly they could progress using other means. For you it would be disastrous. They are currently balanced in such a way to anyone not obsessed with optimal efficiency. A player not obsessed with efficiency and who is playing stealth/bow won't have an AK-47 and several hundred ammo on day 2 because they will be going through the quests more slowly and stealthily and probably choosing other ways to spend their money. They also won't hear a voice in their head yammering on and on about a much more efficient way to play the game than they currently are playing. Instead they will be having fun taking the game at their pace, popping those day 2 zombies in the head with their stone arrows killing some in one shot and killing others with a few follow up hits but not caring in the least that maybe somewhere on earth another player started a new game at the same time they did and probably has an Ak-47 with several hundred ammo. That would kill you, we know. To you with your mentality it would be self-indulgence because you cannot let go of the compulsion to maximize efficiency. But we don't have this issue when we play. We aren't playing to solve the efficiency puzzle. And it most definitely is still survival. It is the survival that a particular character would go through if they survived the zombie virus and lived in the post apocalyptic world. We are playing that character and striving to survive as that character. THAT is what goes through our mind when we make choices. Trust me, we are not fighting to avoid thoughts of how to be more efficient. We are thinking about what our character would do and then make those choices to be true to that character. You are never going to understand and will always suspect that we are secretly struggling with everything we have to avoid slipping back to trying to be efficient but just indulging ourselves in our fantasy but you will just have to trust me that we just don't think that way. There is never any suboptimal angst boiling under the surface of our enjoyment of the game.

It always comes back to the fact that min/maxing the game and focusing completely on efficiency ruins replay value of the game because for min/maxers there is simply only one conceivable way to play the game-- the single most efficient way. The irony of the min/maxer argument is that no game can be designed to have multiple absolutely perfectly balanced efficiency pathways. One method or strategy will always slightly edge out the rest and so that will become the new one and only way min/maxers can play without "lying to themselves and deceiving themselves" about how to play the game. Thus the only way min/maxers can get much replay value of the game is to convince the developers to change the balance so that they have another new brief puzzle to solve. Three weeks after a new update the new most efficient strategy emerges and once again the game has no replay value for them. We have seen it time and again over the years as those who care only for efficiency complain that they are "forced" to do X by the developers. Sometimes X was upgrading blocks, sometimes spam crafting, sometimes killing zombies, sometimes spam questing, ...one time for a couple of weeks it was chopping down grass thanks to a bug. I'm glad that I enjoy playing the game at a variety of settings and without regard to efficiency. The developers have designed the game to be replayable through conscious player choice --sometimes by changing settings, sometimes by choosing self-limits, and sometimes by choosing challenges and goals. When you don't care whether the way you are playing is the one solution to the efficiency puzzle you can suddenly do whatever you want. And the great thing is that I'm just having fun and it isn't that I have to self-deceive at all. I just plainly don't care whether the choice I want to make is or is not the most efficient. The min/maxer can't comprehend that I simply don't think about it. So, @bachgaman, there has been another balancing pass to traders for pricing of goods, types of goods sold, and rewards for quests for A20. There has also been a pretty significant change to loot in general. It might be enough of a change to create a new puzzle for you to solve. I hope so, since I want everyone to be able to have some fun with the game.

What's the point in joking about that the site is about board games when the article discusses the game design concept that Jost Amman mentioned? I told you what is common between PVE balance and PVP balance. You can read it here You misunderstand me. BGG is one of my favorite sites. I was glad of your reference— not joking. When I answered my screen had not refreshed and I was unaware of the other replies. I’ll need to go back and read them but I did read the article and it was most definitely talking about competitive game design.

oh good, because I have Skynet on conference call. Patch them through.

Linking to an article at Boardgame Geek scores you some definite points with me. However, that article on symmetry vs asymmetry is primarily from the perspective of boardgames that are directly competitive. Players start either on equal or unequal footing and have options that are the same or different (depending on how asymmetrical the design is) for the purpose of gaining more victory points faster or area domination or whatever the goals of the particular game may be and they are actively working against each other to do so. In 7 Days to Die the asymmetry is not competitive between the trees. I'm not playing Intellect build against your strength build and seeing if I can be the first to reach level 50 or dominate more areas of the map or create the most efficient engine for gathering resources and crafting them into game winning prestige monuments. In this game the asymmetry is in running through the game in different ways for a different experience and different challenge. There is no one I'm competing against that makes it unfair for me to go slow with a bow vs fast with a machine gun. If this game were primarily PvP with direct competition between players and TFP wanted a perception player to be able to be directly competitive with a strength player or an intellect player then I agree that they would have to do some serious rebalancing. But they're not making a PvP game in which they expect an Agility player to be able to go toe to toe and progress competitively with a player doing something else in a different way. Therefore, they can set up the different attributes to be wholly different and not equally viable in terms of efficiency and it is perfectly okay. If playing pure intellect is impossible to do on Insane then lower the difficulty until it is possible. Simple as that. There is no need to "buff up" intellect so that it plays out exactly like strength but just a different skin. On another note, I just picked up Maracaibo and am really excited to get it to the table and hope to be able to do so a few times next week!

And see? You stating that zombies are so simple to kill and don't even pose a threat is another reason to not also give them loot. By your own admission the individual zombies haven't really been built to be a risk so why then tie a reward to that non-risk? If we do a risk vs reward analysis against individual zombies then by this standard they should also have no loot. Their risk doesn't warrant it. Now on horde night there is more risk but you also get more loot bags dropping as reward. Smarter and more deadlier enemies might warrant it and there may be loot on the bodies of the bandits we kill in the future for that reason. I didn't mean to say that the whole game was turned into Turok the Zombie Killer. I meant to say that the relationship between the player and the enemies in the game changes more in the direction of Turok the Zombie Slayer when there are more direct rewards for killing in play. You're killing zombies to get loot rather than acting in your best interest to survive another day. 1) With no loot and no xp, if you see a horde of zombies passing nearby, you just hide until they move on-- just as you would probably do if it wasn't just a video game with respawning. 2) If you see a horde of zombies pass by and there is no loot but you do get xp then you might check your bar to see if you're close to leveling up and then go kill them to get your next skill point. That has no basis in how you would act if you were actually there and starts popping you into video gamey type thinking. 3) If you get loot and xp then you are killing every horde you see left and right and instead of survival horror it is horrific farming. You are basically unwrapping presents to yourself wrapped in zombie flesh. Each steps brings you away from survival horror and more towards first person shooter and affects how you think about zombies. In A20 feral mode brings outdoor zombies to you much more often so you get engagement galore. You can't finish hardly a single task without getting interrupted and engaging. You could probably change all respawn delay numbers to 0 so that you were always getting a stream of zombies harrying you and increasing engagement regardless of what loot they might or might not carry. I fully agree that the death penalty is too light. Playing with the option destroy all items on death definitely helps and I recommend that setting to everyone. It is fantastic and when you die and lose your best gear and have to start over it is a struggle to return to where you were.

In my opinion, this is the flaw in your argument for loot on zombies. I think this philosophy is probably shared by those who don't really care if they die and respawning infinite times is just part of the game. For those of us who really strive to never die, the reward for engaging with a zombie is that you are still alive at the end of the encounter. Incentivizing players to run around hunting for zombies to kill for their loot is actually not reminiscent of survival horror gameplay at all. It is more like a classic shooter arcade game where you want to kill all enemies and dying is just a respawn so no big deal. In survival horror, sneaking past or evading is just as valid as killing. I played several modded games where zombies gave no loot and no xp and you only earned levels for staying alive for a full 24 hour period. I often hit zombies simply to knock them down and then ran on leaving them behind. If I died, I knew my timer would start over towards earning a skill point so I really did not want to die and so I did a lot of avoiding and alternatives to flat out killing in order to minimize my risks and it felt a lot more like survival horror than ever before. IMO, the zombies still carry too much reward for killing them and there is no reward for avoiding them which (if this were not a game where you can just respawn) is what most people would be doing whenever possible. Awarding the player loot and xp for killing zombies turns the game into an arcade shooter. Removing those incentives so that the only incentive left is simply staying alive is much better if what you want is survival horror. Since you brought up realism, if a zombie apocalypse could actually occur, you would be unlikely to seek out zombies just to kill them for what might be in their pockets. Maybe if there was a bounty placed on them by whatever government was in power I could see people seeking out opportunities to kill them for the bounty. But that isn't how it is represented so it really is a jarring feeling to feel excited about seeing a wandering horde because of what goodies I might get out of killing them if I'm trying to realistically play a survival horror game. Now if I just finished a session of Doom and I'm still feeling it then, sure, lets go kill all those zombies and get their stuff. Finally, when looting zombies was in the game there were OFTEN bodies that had nothing.... but you still had to check all the bodies just in case. It was incredibly tedious checking empty body after empty body and then get a jar of water and then a bandage and then nothing nothing nothing etc. Personally, the best reward for no loot is to not have to check bodies any longer. As soon as you survive the encounter you move on if no bag dropped.