Roland
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Posts posted by Roland
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5 hours ago, RyanX said:
Absolutely untrue. Remember when you had to get lucky on a loot box just to get the tool and die set to even make ammo? Remember when there were no pipe guns? How about back when there were gun parts you had to put together to get one that worked? All that wasn't obtained early game.
Sure it was more of a process to craft your own weapon at different times in the past but you could always loot weapons and ammo without needing to craft them. The game has gone back and forth between having craftable weapons and no craftable weapons but the constant unchanging feature has always been lootable weapons and ammo--even before traders and quests were a thing.
We have been discussing this game in terms of survival horror. I agree that there have been periods of time when weapons were easier and harder to obtain but even during the times in earlier versions when weapons were more scarce they were nowhere near the level of scarcity that you see in actual survival horror titles. For as long as I have played it, you've been able to get a lucky find during the first week that can set you up weapon-wise for the rest of the game.
Since the beginning people have complained that finding weapons in loot that are better than you can craft have diminished the crafting aspect of the game. A21 is the first time in forever that I feel like I can often craft better stuff than I can find.
5 hours ago, RyanX said:Now a couple quests at the OP trader and you're gold. Heck, this game is over now at like level 10, just put all your points into INT to build a motorcycle and you get everywhere quickly, don't need as much food, and you can snowball massive amounts of quests to buy whatever weapons you want early game. Everything is obtainable early game now and it definitely wasn't like this in the past.
Everything CAN be obtainable but you can choose to have a different experience without ever touching a setting or installing a mod simply by.....not doing quests. Ignore the quests. You can go a step further and ignore the trader completely if you want but for sure nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to spam quests. Any POI can be explored and looted without a quest attached. It is perplexing that you find questing such a detriment and source of making the game too easy but....you do them anyway?
People who want a challenge set limitations on themselves all the time. They reset the world if they die. They start themselves in an upper floor room of the hospital. And....they ignore the trader to varying degrees depending on the level of challenge they are after. You want a challenge. So play it in a challenging fashion.
5 hours ago, RyanX said:It's like a shopping mall apocalypse now. An asteroid of loot destroyed the population.
And of course you can mod whatever, and change whatever but that's not the point of this post. The point is that you are absolutely wrong when you say vanilla didn't use to be harder.
Yes, it can be that way if you exploit it. A21 has a better balance than A20 but perhaps hasn't gone as far as you might wish. 50% loot is a much tougher beast in A21 than in A20 since it affects your loot AND your ability to learn so that setting might be to your liking.
I don't think I said that vanilla didn't use to be harder. I feel like the challenge of the early game has fluctuated over time. I haven't really been talking about difficulty anyway. I've been talking about this game as a survival horror genre title.
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Go eat a pretzel!
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2 hours ago, RyanX said:
What do you mean "at this point?"
I mean at this time and during this phase.
2 hours ago, RyanX said:I think you mean to say "starting a few years ago".
I mean to say starting 10 years ago until today all updates are developmental in nature. Yes, some updates had exciting new content and features because they were building the game from the ground up but those were to implement basic features that hadn't been introduced. No update in this game has been of the type that acts as an expansion to the basic game. All updates have been for developing the basic game-- the list of goals on their original kickstarter. That's why certain people with expectations of updates being expansionary complain that TFP isn't extending the end game or adding more end game content. That is the essence of expansionary updates-- creating new experiences for veterans of the game who have already played all the basics.
Your desire for them to add new workstations instead of polishing up the existing ones is exactly an example of this. You want expansions to the game but TFP isn't going to do that until they have fully developed their base game and released it as their gold version.
2 hours ago, RyanX said:And I don't think there is anything else developmental or expansionary that's going to happen with this game.
And you would be wrong. Resoundingly. The good news is that you being wrong even benefits you.
2 hours ago, RyanX said:They are clearly done putting any serious thought into it and are keeping it running for the sales.
Based on what evidence? They are pouring bucketloads of money into this game because it is so successful and they see that it has a long future on PC, Xbox, and Playstation. What do you even mean by "keeping it running for the sales". If what they were doing wasn't successful there would be no sales. On the one hand you say they have ruined the game and it is going to die but then you say that it is this huge money cow they are using.
2 hours ago, RyanX said:I imagine whatever that game they said they are working on is their real priority. And good for them, I hope the next game is great.
They have a completely different team on that from those working on 7 Days to Die. You've never spoken to or seen anyone working on that next project and whatever they are doing has nothing to do at all with the people working to finish 7 Days to Die. It is inaccurate in the extreme to think that the staff working on 7 Days to Die puts a few hours in on this game but then spends most of their time on the next project. It isn't even the same people. The people on 7 Days to Die are completely dedicated and working constantly to bring it to completion. It is their only priority.
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1 hour ago, RyanX said:
Don't you have phones?
Best answer ever.
What did that have to do with what I said other than the fact that we both referenced phones? That line is infamous because Blizzard announced a mobile game for casuals to an audience of hardcore Diablo fans that were expecting more content
for PC. My point was that if playing a modded PC game is unacceptable for extreme casuals, at least they have mobile games to keep themselves occupied. In other words, 7 Days to Die on the PC doesn't cater to extreme casuals. They can play, of course, but the expectation is that you will play the base game and then move on to modded versions of the game for additional experiences. Therefore, modding is the solution for changing the gameplay from the default version to some other desired way to play.
1 hour ago, RyanX said:You seem to think I expect them to tailor the game for me. I never said that and I don't expect it. But I'm glad you are around to decide what is acceptable for me and what is not.
No, I seem to think that you reject modding as the way for players to tailor the game for themselves. It seems that way because you stated it clearly. Whether you expect TFP to tailor the game the way you and your wife like to play it, I have no idea. I only have what you actually said to go by and it sounds like you can't or won't use mods and don't think they should be what people are expected to turn to if they want a different experience than vanilla.
1 hour ago, RyanX said:And I'm certainly free to state my opinions and say my piece on what I would like to see and my preferences. It's not really a thing that these forums promote.
You certainly are. Don't interpret my disagreement with your opinion about the role of mods with this game as some kind of statement that you can't post at all. I have no problem with you listing your own preferences and what you would like to see the game become. I never refuted any of your personal preferences. My disagreement with you was solely about your statement about mods not being the answer. I believe that mods are the answer. The developers planned from the very beginning that mods should be the answer because they built this game in such a way that PC gamers who aren't afraid to use mods or who are somehow too busy to install mods could tailor the game for themselves.
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Repair Kits will be a secondary fuel for your vehicles depending on where and how well you drive them...
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Not to mention that they will hire someone specifically for this purpose and it will not add any development time. The team, when they were smaller, did a lot of these things themselves and while it is true that they are "good enough" or "functional as is" they made a decision to hire specialized talent to polish the game and make it look more professional. Getting a programmer/artist that specializes in the look and design will bring the game to a new level. The TFP team at the time of A13 were good but they didn't have specialized talent/skills in these different areas. Now they have people dedicated to level design, environment art, character art, AI, sound, etc. that they've hired to up the quality of the game.
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15 hours ago, Old Crow said:
Agreed. There's way to much hostility on these forums towards people who have dissenting opinions.
In almost all these cases it is hostility breeding hostility. People who come here looking to be invited find an inviting community. People who come looking for a fight and to burn bridges find an uninviting community. The lion share of the responsibility for fitting into a community is on the individual who is joining the community and not the community itself. That's not just true of forums but of life in general.
With how IzPrebuilt openly admits that he feels about this game and his non-future as a player of it, there is very little chance that he was going to fit into this community. He hates the game, has no respect for the developers, and is too ingrained in caustic sarcastic and insulting methods of discourse. He isn't really a typical example though.
A more typical example is someone who really does like the game but is angry about some part of it or about how development has been conducted but communicates that criticism in a hostile, insulting, and ignorant manner. This person is probably not going to get an inviting community response but if they can chill and step back from that behavior they will find that this community is super forgiving and willing to let the past be the past. Plenty of people post their dissent about the game and development without hostility and toxicity and they are treated very well.
This community is predominately positive. We like to joke and have fun. We admire TFP and the work they've done. We trust that they will continue to develop the game and finish it and go on to new and great projects. We may not be happy about certain design decisions but we can discuss those things without being angry about it.
There are other communities for this game which are predominately negative. They like to insult, mock, and be derogatory about TFP and the game. They are convinced the game will die and never be finished and nobody will support any future game that TFP puts out. They are not happy at all and cannot post about the game or the developer without a tone of anger. Their assumptions for every decision TFP makes are always nefarious, dishonest, lazy, anti-player, etc. In those communities, if someone posts something positive they are immediately leapt upon and insulted in the worst ways possible.
So there are plenty of communities that someone can go to regardless of how they feel about the game and feel that the community is inviting. If you want to be insulting and crude and flame others who like the game then don't come here. Go to the community that will reinforce your behavior. If you can be friendly, good-natured, and respectful towards the devs and other players even if you don't agree with all the decisions that have been made then come here and you will find an inviting community.
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Updates at this point are developmental instead of expansionary. That's just the way it is. If you are bored with the existing base game then put it aside and wait until after release when they start expanding it beyond the base game.
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1 hour ago, Scyris said:
Yet many mods brought back being able to Hoe the ground like it used to be and it works perfectly.
It seems to but it is also a hacky methodology. The developers operate differently than modders and have more considerations than modders do. I don't fully understand the coding aspect of it other than that I know that TFP chose not to hack the microsplat technology and instead chose to change farming to farm plots for technical reasons. Maybe they had secret design purposes they didn't share with me but at the time their stated reasoning was technical concerns. I'm glad there are mods that get around it and work though for those who don't like farm plots.
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53 minutes ago, RyanX said:
And the game used to be that way.
No, its never been that way. Ammo and weapons have always been plentiful. A wooden club is a zombie killing machine and it is craftable on day one and always has been. The game was less puzzle-like in the past with POI's just being open empty shells with no maze to traverse which also brings up visibility. The game was much less limited in what you could see back then. Open a door and immediately see all zombies in the room. No, the game has never been a dedicated survival horror game although it has always been able to be played that way if you made adjustments-- just like now. Except that I would even argue that it is easier now to get a true survival horror vibe than it ever was before--again thanks to the POI redesigns since A17.
58 minutes ago, RyanX said:Now as soon as I spawn in with a new character if I see a zed I run to kill it for the xp.
I agree that XP rewards for killing zombies ruin the simulation survival aspect of the game. It makes it more arcade and gives the player incentive for hunting zombies when in an actual scenario players would more likely avoid zombies as much as possible and only engage with them when absolutely necessary. That being said, you don't have to go out of your way to farm zombies for xp. That is a choice you are making.
1 hour ago, RyanX said:I don't think "there are mods" is an acceptable answer for extremely casual players.
That's why iPhone games exist...
Extremely casual players by their nature are stuck with whatever they are offered. Its always been that way and it will always be that way. "There are mods" is always an acceptable answer for anyone, casual or not, who wishes to play the game differently than it is designed. If someone can't be bothered to mod because their life is so busy, then that person has to take whatever is offered and the developers can't be expected to tailor-make the game they want for themselves.
It's right there in the label YOU chose to describe yourself: extreme. Extreme anything is exactly why mods exist. The base game is going to have broad appeal to most new players. Players in extreme categories whether that be extreme veteran, extreme hardcore, extreme casual, extreme survival sim, etc. need to mod the game to make it the extreme experience they want.
I feel bad for you that the game has moved beyond what you enjoyed and that your life is so filled to the brim with obligations and work and whatnot that you can't take any time to try out mods. But, those are choices you are making and probably more important than a video game anyway.
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3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:
LBD in this game was horribly done. Crafting a ton of stone axes while running around the campfire the whole night was the meta. Or sitting in the forge menu watching arrowheads beeing made.
For the future updates i really hope they focus on getting the content that is missing done and don´t fiddle around with unecessary things that are fine as they are right now, like the UI. Leave the UI alone and do the content please.
Oh, they're going to overhaul the UI. Just get used to that idea. It is definitely happening. They are polishing the game for gold. It is going to be a boring process for veterans of the game. They've stated that they plan to add expansionary updates post gold but for now they are just trying to get the basics in and polished.
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3 hours ago, RipClaw said:
I remember Roland calling it a placeholder. But that doesn't really matter. LBD was nice as long as we had it and except in mods we will never see it in the game again.
I've never called LBD a placeholder as I never felt like it fit that label. The problem with LBD is that people just look at the trees instead of the forest. The forest is "player progression" and TFP has done a lot of development in that area starting in Alpha 11. There is an obvious general arc of development if you can step away and lift your gaze from LBD itself. When progression began it was a rudimentary system of crafting where your tools and weapons would advance through crafting them-- pure LBD but limited to crafting. Over the next several alphas LBD advanced into skills but there were books and skill points added as well. After A14 LBD slowly but surely declined in its presence in player progression first disappearing from crafting where it began. It finally disappeared altogether in A17.
There was a definite iterative process to the player progression aspect of the game. It was not a situation of an LBD placeholder being implemented and then replaced all at once by the true Central Pool XP mechanic. It was not TFP flip flopping back and forth. It was a legit development process and we were witness to it because of early access. This type of process is exactly what I like about early access but I realize others hate it and wish that TFP had finalized all its actual development before releasing on Steam and that all the updates were purely expansionary updates instead of development updates.
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2 minutes ago, DanLW said:
Realistic water simulation in a voxel world will be cool once it becomes reality. Likely won't be in this game, but one day...
Roland (I think) posted a video of a game years ago that had voxel water that would fill volumes. I don't remember if the feeding volume would lower and drain out.
Working flowing Voxel water that can fill, flow, and drain realistically would make for some interesting builds. Imagine being able to build a tank that a pump would fill over time, and releasing the water in that tank into a trough to "flush" a whole bunch of zombies at once. Or having an island base in the middle of a flowing river. Or the dread of having water that could actually flood a mine if you aren't careful.
It was Portal Knights. Yes, water volume would fill and drain. But in that game the world is destroyed and blown apart into remnants so that you are only playing in very limited arena-- a few chunks at a time and floating in space so that digging down can only go a dozen layers or so-- so much less demanding than 7 Days to Die.
Still, a very cool water mechanic and hopefully something that could be done someday on a larger scale. I would love a fully voxel first person Terraria-type game someday with the insane spelunking depths and water/lava draining/filling mechanics of that game--not to mention all the rest.
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5 hours ago, Gatsu said:
Anyone else think that tools should degrade in quality with each repair like they use to? I think that it is dumb to make 1 top notch tool and never have to worry about making another one.
The dev's changed farming from being tilled on the terrain to having to craft farm plots for balance and to me, adding back tool degradation seems a good step in balance as well, at least for me.
I agree with you about item degradation. I think it is needed badly. However, it seems to be a polarizing issue with as many people for it as are against it. Probably best left as a mod.
Also, farming was not switched from being tilled on terrain to farm plots for any balance reasons. It was simply that they switched to a new tech for generating terrain and it no longer allowed for changing terrain within a biome away from its basic type for that biome. To preserve farming at all they switched to the box plots.
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14 minutes ago, sillls said:
Ummm... Did you notice the date on the video? 😁
It's ok Roland. *pats Roland on his head*.
Your video? Sorry, didn't open it. I was discussing the forums and the date I joined was February 9, 2014.
*karate chops sillls in the throat*
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I found out about this forum from the Steam forum since they talk and complain about its existence ALL THE TIME going back 9 1/2 years ago...lol
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Back when smell was in, the developers briefly considered having bathing be represented where you would periodically have to get wet and "use" soap in order to get rid of a smelly debuff that would attract zombies.
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11 hours ago, RipClaw said:
I would disagree on that.
It's also a big deal for the streamers who can participate in Streamer Weekend. They have to make preparations for that and they can't plan anything else for that time period. I have seen streamers who were accepted for the Streamer Weekend not being able to stream because they were unfortunately out of town. So at least for the streamers in the green room it would be quite handy if they knew 2-3 weeks in advance when the streamer weekend will take place.
They are getting direct updates and information through the event Discord straight from Prime and Crater Creator as soon as it is available. The streamers aren't looking for news in the dev diary thread or twitter.
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I think this past weekend would've been ideal for the summer sale if they could've been ready. It would be best to be able to finish up experimental and have stable A21 be the version that updates along with the sale instead of stable A20. They still might have time to get to stable before the sale as A21 is probably the most polished version yet but that window of possibility shrinks with each weekend that slips by.
That being said, marketing concerns are always secondary to programming concerns. It is exactly for this reason that indie studios exist and why working conditions for programmers in triple A studios are often criticized.
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2 hours ago, LilGraece said:
The moderators are our friends
We for dang sure aren't food!
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Fit its genre? SInce 7 Days to Die borrows elements from several genres to define its own hybrid style, I'm pretty sure that whatever it does is going to fit its genre. If you want to emphasize one particular genre like Survival Horror then you'll need to adjust your playstyle and/or change the settings and/or mod the game. It isn't sad. It's fantastic.
Survival Horror typically involves severe limits on ammo and weaponry and relies mostly on mood, setting, creepy sound effects and music, limited visibility, evasion, and puzzle solving.
To me, pure survival horror would be doing a quest at Higashi Tower at night with a handheld flashlight and no weapons and the settings put to maximum difficulty so that zombie HP is too high for you to be able to actually kill them. They could be set to walk at night or perhaps jog but you would need to constantly run and evade, shut doors behind you, build barricades, get knockdowns with your fists to buy yourself time as you loot and try to accomplish the quest with relentless zombies constantly on your tail. Will you get cornered? Will something jump out unexpectedly from the darkness? That is what adds to the suspense. That would be closest to classic survival horror but I'm glad the game isn't purely defined by that. I can try doing it as a challenge or to get that survival horror feeling but then the next time I can go in with plenty of ammo and do it more like an arcade shooter or I can go in the next time and try to stealth as much as possible.
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5 hours ago, Kiwi69 said:
Dear Mr. Roland, forgive my ignorance, may I know what’s your position/job title at TFP? And more specifically, what are your responsibilities on this forum? I’d love to hear this information if you’re willing to share it with us. I think it might clear up some misunderstandings, maybe? worth a try, right?
I am a volunteer moderator of this forum. I have access to the TFP team and know what TFP is working on but am not employed by TFP. I am one of a team of individuals who enforce forum rules of conduct and it is my job to warn people who are being unruly and if they ignore those warnings to ban them from the forum. Bans are always initiated by council and not by individual moderators.
I'm glad you have decided to participate fully in the forums rather than just lurk and I hope you can have a positive experience here. Happy to start over. Be my Chekov!
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17 minutes ago, tman1up said:
I guess that make me a whinner
Or maybe a winner...
It is too late for this thread. Maybe the next one...
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1 hour ago, Kiwi69 said:
but isn’t the way the officials talk sometimes a bit too “casual”?
We don't have a caste system in the United States. Sorry.
Many people feel perfectly comfortable with officials acting and talking casually. I feel perfectly comfortable being an official who is glib, friendly, jokey, and at times sarcastic. If you don't like it then don't engage with me. As I stated before, until now, I have never spoken to you directly and really won't feel like I'm missing out if we never speak to each other again in the future if that suits you. Every post you have made so far has been fixated on me-- someone you've never directly interacted with before. If you don't want me to be "casual" with you then don't initiate conversation with me and just let others decide for themselves whether my style of interaction is something they are okay with.
1 hour ago, Kiwi69 said:Like you said, from my perspective, if he had been a little more polite to other players at the time, maybe I wouldn’t have been unhappy?
When was I even impolite to someone? I'm at a loss here. And, again, it wasn't even to you? You got angry because of how I posted to someone else and not even THAT person has complained or spoken up for themselves? How can I even begin to possibly post in a way to keep you happy if you are going to not only feel insulted by imagined personal attacks against yourself but also vicariously for every one else on the forum.....? I know some people are easily offended but you have found a new level, my friend.
1 hour ago, Kiwi69 said:Some people might think I’m being nosy, but that’s just me. If I see something that’s not fair, I have to express it. That’s legal, right?
So you just gotta be you but everyone else has to be the way you want them to be. Well....I just gotta be me.
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Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow
in General Discussion
Posted
Remaining in early access and spending money for ongoing development and hiring specialized talent is not milking. You may not be able to see all the labor-intensive work that has been done on this game over the past 18 months but I can assure you that the amount of development put into this game has been epic. You want extra content because you're bored of the current content and so are dismissive of the type of work that has been done but that doesn't change the fact that TFP has been busy.
Nobody on the 7 Days to Die team is ignoring this game to work on some future project. They have an entirely different team working on their next project and nothing that team does steals any talent or resources or time from this game. There really is no more to say about non-7 Days to Die projects though since that is off-topic for this thread. The 7 Days to Die team is 100% focused on getting this game finished which is why they are not spending time doing extra content that expands the base game even though there are those that only want those kinds of updates.
The change to vehicle damage was not simply increasing vehicle damage. It was balancing vehicle damage with environmental damage and damage to zombies. It was adding graphical indicators of the damage that vehicles are taking and when that damage is getting close to complete vehicle failure. It was also adding graphical indicators to zombies for their damage from vehicles. It also included changes to the Grease Monkey perk and the balance of how much damage repair kits fix. It also involved play testing to dial in the right amount of damage and fixing to make the feature balanced. It was a bit more than one line of code.