Roland

Well, we have to agree to disagree. Thank you for your thoughts on the original promises and current status of the game.

1) Do players assume the role of the character on the screen? Most definitely yes. I’ve belabored this point so I’ll stop with that. 2) Is the setting a fictional setting? Most definitely a zombie post-apocalyptic world is a fictional one. 3) Do players take responsibility for acting out their roles? Absolutely. The game creates a setting and a structure for the player to act out the role they develop through choices. The game doesn’t force the player to do this but players can certainly do it and it has been specifically designed in this fashion by Joel Huenink who does play the game in this fashion. 4) Is there a narrative? Not a scripted narrative but the open world setting does allow for emergent narratives that can be played out. A more structured narrative is planned but even that will not force players to play out a linear scripted story. 5) Does literal acting occur? On some servers it does I know for certain. Are players forced to literally act out a role? No. But they can. There is enough structure to support a group doing literal acting as they play. 6) Is there structures decision-making regarding character development? Yes. The whole skillpoint system and especially with desirable perks being in separate trees makes for some definite decision making and those choices greatly impact how you will play the game. A strength structure choice is going to be a much different role than a perception structure choice. Is that enough alignment to the definition you provided of what an actual RPG is for us to claim that “RPG” is one of the genres that makes 7 Days to Die the game it is? I think so.

Except you’re the only one calling it that. If you’re bugged that I made the point about a nameless character being easy to step into as a player a couple of times then you must be going crazy over how many times you keep calling this game an RPG. And not only that but you keep stating that TFP is claiming that this game is an RPG when they clearly are not. Let’s finally agree, shall we? 7 Days to Die is not an RPG. You can stop saying that now. Is 7 Days to Die a cross genre amalgamation of some elements from 1st person shooters, survival horror, RPGs, and tower defense? Absolutely. The character progression system is obviously inspired by Fallout. If it wasn’t obvious then you can take the word of the developers who have stated that their game is almost an homage of one of their favorite game series. Is Fallout not an RPG? If it is (it is) then we have proof that the character progression system directly came from an RPG. So it doesn’t just happen to have a similar mechanic that lots of non-RPGs also just happen to have nor did it take its inspiration from an RPG that has no character progression system. The character progression is role based was inspired by an RPG and is obviously an element of many RPGs not the least of which is the Grand Daddy of RPGs, itself, Dungeons and Dragons. Next. 😺

So debate over then. You concede that the progression was taken from the RPG genre which means you acknowledge that this game is a mix of genres of which RPGs are one. Since neither I nor TFP ever claimed that this game is an RPG, it seems we are in the clear. BTW, no one ever claimed that the game was EQUAL PARTS 1st person shooter, RPG, tower defense, and survival horror. Perhaps that’s an assumption you made that TFP was trying to make a game that was perfectly balanced across those genres? If so, you can dismiss that notion entirely. Now, maybe you wish there was more RPG in the mixture and maybe @Matt115 wishes there was more survival horror in the mixture and maybe @RipClaw wishes there was more tower defense in the mixture and maybe each of you could be correct that it would make the game better and more fun for you. (And maybe there IS more to come) But none of that negates the fact that if the game released today the devs could confidently and honestly market this game as a mix of those genres in an open world and with plenty of sandbox options to boot.

I went back and reread this part and I have to say that I realized that you are correct about the personality of the toon in the game but, for me, that actually makes it easier to slip myself into the role. I’m not playing out his story….I’m playing out my story. He doesn’t make any decision—I do, and there are plenty in the game. He doesn’t speak but in my mind I am muttering to myself my plans and goals and even giving a response to the traders who don’t speak to him—they speak to me. So does it have to be a named and defined character for it to be a role playing game or perhaps do some RPGs actually get in their own way making it so the player is playing out that character’s story instead of being able to unconsciously inject themselves into the role? I hope TFP keeps the nameless blob as the protagonist.

I would concede this point if 7 Days to Die was styling itself as a dedicated RPG solely within the RPG genre. But it does not. It advertises itself as a hybrid blend of genres taking elements from each. I maintain that 7 Days to Die has enough RPG elements to 100% complete its claim to be the mix it has been designed to be. It would be false advertising for TFP to claim that this game is “pure RPG fun” but it does not. BTW, sports games that have a career mode actually do rock an RPG vibe to them because it puts you the player into the role of your character progressing and developing the story of your career. Finally, while there is no overarching scripted story for you to experience in 7 Days to Die, I wouldn’t go so far as to say there are no stories that emerge at all. There are, and when people share those stories you’ll notice they always tell them from first person perspective because….the game pulls them into the role of survivor. It quickly becomes them in the story playing out their own survivor stories which is why this game is so infinitely replayable compared to a one and done script. Your interpretation of the definition of RPG is much too limited. This game hits the RPG target pretty squarely for the elements they’ve included from that genre.

Most likely the skyscraper is the corporate office building for the Crack-a-Book chain. I'd guess that even in real life the corporate office building of Barnes & Noble has fewer books to sell than a much smaller Barnes & Noble book store. Then, of course, there's Amazon which is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside...

Roadmap to Gold are the minimum features that still need to be implemented before Gold. Learn by Reading is the planned final version for crafting recipe acquisition so it is unlikely to change. But who knows? Learn by Reading is already listed as an implemented feature of A21. Hence, it is not listed on the roadmap of future features that still need to be implemented before gold. Learn by Reading is very likely going to be the final version of the crafting part of the game.

Right. They've been made for years and always reference controversies and debates that happen on the forums regarding the impending release. To ignore a reference to Saven's rant video regarding the forum would have been a big oversight. The brief line of "Its okay Saven" to the crying girl is a pretty tame joke and I'm honestly at a loss for how his fans are twisted up inside over it. He criticised me and other TFP staff for not being professional in our responses to honest questions and I made a joke out of that whole event in the video with Hitler being too scared to post on the forum because of how mean Roland was to his buddy and Saven crying about it in the hallway outside. Anyone who is bent out of shape about that needs to lighten up and relax. Maybe its because they feel like it is a real problem and I shouldn't be flippant about it because of how serious the issue is. Well....too bad. In the heirarchy of serious issues this one doesn't make the top 10,000 and I would 10/10 include that joke in the video every time even after the couple of posts by Saven fans afterward warning of a huge impending blow-up over it. My guess is that Saven, himself, will probably take the joke in stride if he ever even hears of it. As usual, when there is offense taken it is usually by Nancies who are offended on behalf of some other party without even checking to see if that party is desirous of being advocated for. The entire video was made in fun and for laughs over arguments that have appeared for A21 just as previous videos did for A20, A19, A18, A17, A16, and so on back several years. Most likely nobody even remembers the issues that became jokes in the Hitler videos of those past alphas because it is all just a bunch of nerdrage generated by pre-release frustration (of the new alpha, Snowdog). By time the A22 Hitler video is made, nobody will remember what has anyone grumbling about "too soon" with this video.

yes. These are not the droids you’re looking for.

Sure, sure…more likes and subscribes for him. His part in the parody is the mildest and shortest bit of all. I mean it’s not like Saven fans are going to hold him to be more sacred and will be less forgiving of a joke at his expense than they would be about using Hitler as reference humor in the first place right?

The actual compound looks remarkably similar to that concept drawing! All of the trader POI's have been similarly upgraded.

That’s interesting since, to me, A19 and A20 seem so similar in my recollection. There really were no controversial changes that angered anyone going from A19 to A20 that I can recall. With the pipe weapons adding much needed variety to early game loot and the awesome city tiles making such awesome urban areas it just seems like A20 would be the most preferred between the two. What exactly was so much more fun about A19?

The WIlson Bros are great!

There was no mistake. Adding features in first and then optimizing afterward is an industry standard because it is most efficient. Your plan would likely double the development time which is funny since you already want to be finished with development. They have been optimizing all along but only with the goal to successfully add the next features they need and keep the game performant enough to be playable for testing. Once they are in final feature lock, all their optimizing efforts will be to improve the playability of the now finished game and then they’ll be able to make decisions for adding more enemies or more players. You say that this game is the longest running game in alpha like it’s a bad thing. The game has been playable for this entire time. What they add or remove from the game always brings some individuals to predict that the game is dead…and yet it gains more popularity with every alpha. Lol, this was almost word for word one of the jokes on the recent Hitler video. It’s pretty ridiculous to purchase a game that is in active development and expect it to stay the same without adding or removing anything from it. Sorry, but your expectations are way off. If you don’t like the development process which necessarily involves changes by the creative directors of the project, then don’t buy and play a game while it is being developed. Wait until it’s done and set in its final version. So far and based on evidence, there are a significant number of people willing and happy to play the game the devs would have them play. The new changes for A21 fix a number of issues, add a new dimension to early game survival, and improve and enhance both looting and crafting. We are getting some posts from people who don’t like looting who are unhappy about the changes but people who hate looting are a very small percentage of the players of this game. Their views are not going to stop TFP from enhancing a part of the game that will please the vast majority. Their views WILL inspire modders to patch things up for them to the way they like it which is another planned for and sanctioned feature of the game by the devs. They want the tiny minority of players who hate looting to still be able to play the game the way they want so they’ve designed the game so that it can be easily modded. The same goes for water or pretty much any feature of the game.

This isn't really the place either but it is better than the dev diary. There should be a red banner at the top of your screen that says "Report a Bug". Click on that and report it there. Thanks!

It's probably a really simple true/false value that can be edited in the xmls. I don't know for sure but hopefully so. You also can still strive to build so the wires are hidden even when holding the tool just to meet the challenge of it. Glad you liked the video

I liked all of my jokes in the video but my absolute favorite was when Hitler tells everyone who likes looting to leave the room and almost everybody leaves. I don't think its going to be a problem.

I’ll bet the chicken or the egg question keeps you up all night…. 🤣

Sorry. No. That was simply me poking fun at the argument that friends who play together apparently dictate who gets to open chests. It’s not a game mechanic that gates people from opening chests—it’s just people doing it to each other. 😜

It is. I hope you're happier about making it into a Hitler Video than you might be mad at me for poking fun at the argument.

The issue as I see it is one of expectation. If you spent all the points to max the stealth perks and have quiet armor with dampening mods and are using silent weaponry then there are some that expect stealth to work every single time in every room for every zombie unless the player makes a mistake and steps into a pool of light or on a crunchy piece of garbage. Because of that expectation, the fact that there are rooms that are designed to have the zombies possibly wake up (if checks are failed) and already targeting either the player or the location where the trigger happened feels wrong to them and they want the game fixed to match their expectations. However, plan B would dictate that rather than the game being changed, players may need to change their expectations to align better with the developer's own design goals that this game will offer players a variety of interactions with zombies and that there has never been nor never likely to be a plan to allow players to 100% stealth every single room every single time. Even having spent so much time and dukes kitting out in stealth there still will be a small percentage of rooms where gameplay is going to change up and instead of killing an immobile, unconscious figure, you may have to kill a moving and alert figure. That can be accomplished by either abandoning stealth and going full throttle on the machine gun or it can be accomplished by retreating and restealthing and then killing the conscious zombies wandering around and hitting random walls. So there is choice and variety and that is all by design. Now, if there is a weird little unnatural action where you have to let the zombies reach the trigger point so that their special trigger point aggro completes and then you must let them see you so they start a normal player targeted aggro before you then retreat and re-stealth, then that sounds like some kind of a bug that faatal could probably fix.

I teased you in it but don't take it badly. Just funnin!

How about this? https://www.captiongenerator.com/v/2283687/hitler-learns-about-a21

We're not your bank, we're not your boss, you're not our boss. Let's have an end to this. You don't like the phrase. Got it. You don't think we should continue to use it. Got it. If you want to keep coming up with completely non-relevant relationships in which this phrase would be questionably inappropriate in a face-to-face conversation be my guest but this is not going to clutter up the dev diary any longer.