Roland

I’d say that this is all we are asking pedestrians to do. Actually cross the bridge and report on oscillations. The good news about our venture is that no real lives are in danger by doing so.

What glue problem? The only glue problem that exists is in your fears. Until you play A21 you can’t know whether there is even a glue problem at all. The loot tables are different, the trader prices and product balance is different and even the glue crafting recipe is different. Everything you are worried about as a potential problem are things that should be worked out or changed after we get feedback from players who have played. Even hardcore builders should actually play A21 first before concluding they are completely screwed. There are magazines available to buy at the trader and you get nine magazines as an optional quest reward per quest not to mention all the magazines you’ll find while questing. Bookstores are the mother lode. Honestly, filling vending machines with even more magazines would be overkill. The food and drink prices were adjusted to better balance the survival game as they were too easily purchased allowing the player to ignore completely murky water. They raised the prices on purpose. Why would they then erase that change by increasing quest reward money? Again, this is something that should actually be played first and then give your feedback on whether you think prices are too high and keeping yourself fed and hydrated too difficult. Well, we wouldn’t want to be odd alpha pattern breakers…lol It’s impossible for us to convey in words all the changes that make A21 work. I’ve noticed that people keep slipping into thinking that player progression is tied to the magazines and that builders will be stopped in their progression. I can understand this because even when playing it the first few times I would forget that I could still spend skill points to progress my skills independently of what magazines I had found or what I could craft. The change code wise was simple and design wise just a step apart from what we have in A20 but gameplay-wise it’s a whole new meta that you absolutely have to play to fully understand the new puzzle of early to mid game survival.

Okay but if we are going to choose two voices out of the cacophony, why choose that one and call it the voice of “the players”? What makes that voice vs the dev’s vision the black and white choice? What if the devs listen to that voice and deviate from their plan to follow that voice and it turns out that voice they followed was only 2% of all the players and now 98% are unhappy? I have lost count of the times I’ve read in game reviews that the game was going great until the devs listened to a loud minority and ruined it. That simply is flat out false and the result of you trusting Saven’s reporting where he picked out two instances and represented the totality by those two examples. That’s been my point all along. If you go back and read the whole thread around the time the feature was revealed you will see plenty of information and questions answered and tons of courteous reassurances that the new changes work well. In the one example he shows of my supposed insulting response it turns out to not be an insult at all. I wasn’t even saying what he claimed I said and if you read the original conversation, the guy was here to stir up trouble and demand that the devs should obey player polls when choosing new features for the game. He wasn’t interested in having his concerns massaged, he wanted the new features to be cancelled outright. I don’t know what you keep referring to about nobody addressing glue. There have been a number of conversations about glue and in none that Inrecall did anyone at TFP tell someone to not use bows and bolts. Whatever…most of the information we’ve given predate Saven’s video and there’s been no change in how info is released as a result of any of this discussion. We’ve been giving answers about glue, team dynamics, empty jars, and dew collectors all along since the feature was announced but Saven searched (while not logged in) for two instances that rubbed him the wrong way and presented those as how we always do it. I certainly plan to continue to mix in humor with straight answers so there may be another quote coming up for a future Saven investigation. Look, if you want your guy to get credit for a new era of TFP openness then go hit those like and subscribe buttons. That was his motivation all along anyway.

All of that has been taken into account. I'm not sure exactly how they will deal with it. Raising people up to the surface seems probable. Since it is just an option I'm sure servers will land on a setting that works best to avoid any situation where active players would find themselves logging into a reset chunk. Also a player can drop an LCB or bedroll to prevent it from happening.

Can we at the very most call it "the Sentiment of some players"? I have fully thought out what I said and would 100% say it again and 1000% disagree that it was an insult in any way. Just because some people would like to re-engineer what I said into something else so they can spin the narrative to their way of thinking, doesn't make it so. Telling someone they don't have any friends is insulting. Pointing out to someone who publicly shares how they're being treated poorly by their friends that they should make a change is not insulting. Real concerns and legitimate concerns are two different things. I acknowledge that some players have real concerns but if those real concerns are based on false assumptions and faulty information then they are not legitimate as real as they might be. I have helped several people understand the crafting feature who came here angry about the change because they heard about it from on online personality who completely bungled what the change actually was. In all cases, once the person understood what the change entailed their level of concern went way down. I know it may be hard to believe that I was helpful and courteous to several people who didn't like the change but I have a pretty good sense these days for those who are here to learn and want to actually know the reasons and who are here just to bash and troll and cause trouble. As far as the fun pimps betraying or failing the consumers of late, I really don't get where this comes from. I can only surmise that "of late" must refer to the last few major updates as in A18, A19, and A20. Well, every one of those updates has resulted in growth and popularity of the game. I'm sure that there are some players who feel betrayed because their favorite feature was changed or the way they liked to play became more challenging to do, but the game and business is not going to go away because of some of the players. Maybe if it was a majority of the players there would be some risk of that happening but the majority still seem to be playing the game and trusting in the direction TFP is going or at least are willing to reserve judgement for when A21 comes out and they can try it out for themselves. I don't remember anyone from TFP telling someone that they can't play bows/bolts anymore. Bows/bolts are still in the game for A21. Maybe you can show the response by TFP staff that said for someone to kiss their bows and bolts goodbye. Maybe there have been voices in the community making fatalistic doom and gloom statements that bows and bolts are going to be dead in A21 thanks to the change in water jars but not TFP. You say this is just one of many examples but I encourage you to try and find some. In my recollection TFP actually coming out and telling players that their playstyle has been developed out of the game is extremely rare. It is usually players making that claim-- which is usually proven false not much later when other players report successfully playing in exactly that playstyle. TFP usually claims that a particular playstyle might be a bit more challenging or have some risk associated with it that previously was not there but rarely tells anyone they can't play a particular way any longer period. The three instances that come to mind are using an underground base risk free during bloodmoon, treading water risk free during bloodmoon, and driving around in vehicles during bloodmoon without risk. They absolutely did tell people in those instances that those playstyles would no longer carry zero risk to them. I agree with this. Fortunately, we are standing so far away from the edge of that precipice that there is zero danger of there not being a game. The game is more popular than it ever has been among the general player base. All evidence points to the players mostly wanting what TFP is giving. There will always be a few unhappy elements of the player base and if they congregate together on a couple of Streamer chats they might feel like some kind of majority to themselves. But TFP monitors several outlets of player sentiment as well as having tracking software built into the game to give them feedback on how players like to play the game and what type of gameplay is going on so they do have an early warning system if it appears what they wish to do is going to alienate a significant portion of the player base. I'm all for the ideal of continual improvement. We will keep communicating what we can. Again, I'm not sure exactly what you are referring to in terms of glue. I don't remember anyone at TFP posting that glue would be broken in A21 nor that people who crafted a ton of glue would be out of luck. Glue crafting isn't even governed by a magazine so you can do it from day one without having to rely on RNG for the recipe sooner or later. I'm just trying to figure out where this concern about glue originated from-- TFP? or baseless fears of folks who haven't experienced A21 yet? I suspect the latter but if you can show me a TFP employee telling people that mass glue crafting is no longer supported or possible, I'd like to see it. Yes, we make mistakes and we are human. But....listen to "the players" will fix our mistakes? Which players are you talking about? You can't honestly believe there are only two voices that exist: "The Devs" and "The Players". The only way to develop is for the team to stay true to their vision and hope that most of the players continue along through the ride and more players hop on the ride as we go. There is not just a single "The Players" voice to listen to. Philosophically, I agree with your stance that the game is only going to live so long as the player base agrees that it is worth their time to play. I suppose where we disagree is whether the voice of the people have drawn the devs right up to edge of that precipice where the game is in danger of failing and sinking into obscurity just like boxee box. I don't believe they are even close enough to the edge to even see the edge. Part of that is that for the last several years we have had individuals coming here predicting that the game won't survive the next update because TFP isn't listening to the people and in every single case it wasn't the people-- just that individual. The closest we came was the A16 change to A17 and yet not even that turned us into boxee box. The game has grown in popularity far beyond what it was in A16 and in that case there were a lot of individuals coming here to express that THIS time TFP had angered "the players" and unless they reverted the game it would be doomed. I was a bit worried it might be true seeing as how I'm the closest of the staff to the forums but the devs weren't worried at all and the historical evidence is all on their side. Did we lose some individuals due to the A16/A17 changes? Absolutely. But did we lose "the players"? Not at all.

Game time

I think it just returns to its pregenerated state. I started a mine before I knew and went back to my base to get some coffee. When I returned everything I had dug and placed was gone and the original iron node I had started from was there again. So I don’t think it rolls an entirely newly randomized chunk as much as it reverts it back to the way it was when it originally generated—but others would know more. It’s not just terrain though. A city not visited for the timer length will completely reset. It’s an option so it can be disabled if you want your scavenged cities to remain emptied or your excavated mountain to remain a crater or if you’re glad all those cars you wrenched are gone for good. But all you quest poi double dippers are about to get the mother lode…lol.

Yes! The picture of the three feet represents “options” and of course it’s all on a menu. The boy depicted is “chunk” and the symbol on him is “reset”. At the time I did the clue, 15 days was the planned default time for MP but that might change. For SP the default will be off. A placed bedroll or LCB will prevent the reset and you can choose from several preset time frames that you wish. The timer counts down from the last time a player entered that chunk. Probably not the most exciting feature people have been looking for but still pretty cool and nice for server admins.

I guess that’s true. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt since, you know, I wouldn’t want to misrepresent him… Yes. I see that. It just goes to show that when you don’t present the whole picture you can easily get it wrong. I admit I probably got it wrong simply by highlighting two dates and not considering everything. Good thing I didn’t broadcast that out on YouTube and am willing to see the flaw in my reasoning when it is pointed out…

Okay, this is my last one...lol He's obviously not doing his own research. He definitely did not read any of the original conversation nor did he use anything that I gave him. He got screenshots sent to him with some guy's interpretation and he went off of that. He never even visited afterward to check the source or read the whole conversation. It does seem to be about par for the course based on the rest of his video. So if unprofessionalism is the deal-breaker for you well.... NOW, I'm done.... haha

Fixed that for you. I did just go back and read all that original conversation and that guy I responded to did not come here desiring information about his concerns. He came to rant that TFP doesn't poll the community before making any decisions and that he should get to help with the direction the game takes since he paid money to play it. I did answer him point for point without any snark or condescension and gave him true answers for all of disagreements and he completely ignored my answer but went on for pages drawing people into his arguments that were never going to come to anything. If @Saven really wanted to get to the truth and share actual information he could have highlighted those answers. But he didn't because he is an entertainer and not a legitimate source of actual news regarding 7 Days to Die. Saven made the same mistake the guy, himself, did in misreading what I wrote. Here is what he said in response to my advice that he should find new people to play with that won't yell at him. I said you should find new people to play with that are less abusive. I never implied or stated that you have no friends. You were the one complaining that your friends yell at you when you open a container. I pointed out that they are not being friendly and that not all groups treat each other like that. Don’t try to spin that into me dissing you as a friendless person because you dared to criticize the lack of community polls for development. To be clear, I think you probably have lots of friends and probably a nice family. But your own description of the people you play the game with is something I would never put up with. I would take the passion you are using to criticize TFP and stand up for yourself in your gamer group or go find a new group who won’t yell at you. My point was the game doesn’t make people act that way. They’re just jerks. You deserve better. Anyone does. If you go back and read exactly what I wrote to him originally you will see that he is wrong about me implying he has no friends. That isn't even close to what I said in even the most loosely comprehensible interpretation. Yet, for his show, @Saven did the same level of "research". Why didn't my full explanation about my own remark make it into his show? I'll tell you why. It would have wrecked the segment. This is about all the time I care to spend on this. You don't have to like the way I post but I'm not going to change. I think my style is in keeping with a video game website about killing zombies. If you want hotel front desk customer service professionalism then go stay at a hotel for a night and get your fill or visit a forum on more serious subjects where I'm sure nobody jokes around ever. If someone comes with legitimate concerns and asks questions then I answer them courteously and with a desire to help them understand. If someone comes just to rant and bash the developers and the fans of the game then their claims and accusations are going to be challenged.

Heheh..I’m pretty sure he picks and chooses what information fits his narrative because that is exactly what he did. He definitely didn’t use the entirety of the information I give. He can’t since the information itself would debunk all of his speculations and also show that I’m not dismissive and condescending to people who simply disagree with the Fun Pimps. What a gross over-simplification. I actually spend a lot of time protecting the ability of people to disagree with the Fun Pimps. But obviously Saven can only work with what he’s given…lmao. Look, if you’re a fan of the guy and love his episodes then enjoy yourself. He’s doing entertainment for views and if it feels good to do some TFP bashing and feel super worried about the direction of the game together in his chat then I’m glad you have a place to do that. We don’t allow TFP bashing here, that’s true. TFP disagreeing is okay but not bashing and some people have a tough time figuring out the difference. They are probably the type of “friends” others should try and avoid…😂 Parce THAT @Saven…

I admittedly do many of these things from time to time but not in the quoted case. It was good advice, not gentle mocking. Their team dynamics as described aren't healthy. Period.

I just want to be clear that I wasn't mocking the guy or even insulting him in any form. I was absolutely seriously advising him to get new friends to play the game with based on what he shared about his experience with them. He literally needs to be playing with different people if they are treating him that way. As a teacher I advise students all the time when they tell me how their "friends" treat them or encourage them to do bad things and there is no mockery. There are plenty of use cases when someone could tell someone else to get new friends and it is not an insult at all. Just because Saven interpreted my response as mocking doesn't make it so. 10/10 I would tell that guy or any guy who shares on the forum that his friends yell at him and stop him from opening containers to find new people to play with. Those people are not his friends and if there is any insult involved it isn't vs the guy getting yelled at, it is vs the people calling themselves his friends. It is true I did not address the rest of the guy's rant directly to him even though I had already addressed those concerns within the thread. I didn't mock or insult his concerns. I just ignored them since the answers were already posted.

I feel like typing something that is sure to appear on a future episode of Saven's World... The guy has to frame everything in absolutes in order to deliver on the shock value of his click baity titles. Its all about likes and subscribes. Saven has no inside information and is simply choosing to use the worst case scenario and doom and gloom philosophy in order to get views. Later he will either claim that he was always right (If bandits do end up getting delayed) or he will claim that the pressure he and the community brought to the concern successfully pushed them into doing the right thing (If bandits make it into A21). Either way he makes himself the hero of his own world....uh....Saven's World.

So what? As long as they are funded enough to do so there is nothing wrong with continued development. They have been saying that they'd like to go gold "next year if possible" for the last few years and not just last year for this year. They could keep their goal and rush out the rest of what they want to add. Why would anyone want them to rush out the rest of the features just for the sake of hitting a sooner date?

@schwanz9000 would most likely know these answers. He is incredibly busy right now with A21 right around the corner but I just pinged him so he might be able to give some answers.

I think anything that makes the game more of a sim in a particular area is usually best left to mods. Most of the people that I read who are unhappy with the base game and who love to use mods, do so because they love the detail and complexity and immersion in particular areas that they like. But not everyone craves that level of detail or complexity for the same features in the game. Some people just want the result and are happy if it only takes 1-2 steps or tasks to gain that result and would become quickly fatigued with the gameplay if they had to take 5-6 steps to gain the result they want. Some people can't stand to play the game if the weapons are not perfect representations of real world guns that they are intimately familiar with while others only care that when they push the button and aim a bullet goes where they want. For every player who can't get enough of an overhaul mod that provides more real world complications and detailed multi-step objectives there is another who uninstalls the mod because it was "too much". People who are happy with vanilla probably align pretty closely with the developers' own sensibilities on what aspects of the game to go deep and which to keep shallow whereas those who are unhappy are misaligned with the devs. Where the devs want it streamlined and abstract, they want it detailed and realistic. Where the devs are more on the arcade side of the spectrum they are more on the sim side of the spectrum and vice versa. As far as the water and crafting changes go, once you get used to them they really don't seem as radical as it must seem like to people who can only read about them. I keep hearing people talk about the water change and crafting change as "another complete rework" but it really doesn't feel like something completely new. When I find a Forge Ahead magazine it actually feels a bit nostalgic. It will be interesting to see whether people who have been hating on the idea of these changes come around to actually liking them before the modders can manage to erase them from their consciousness. Of course, some are still bound to hate them after giving them an honest playthough. What I am really interested in seeing is whether people who play without jars and get used to the early water survival mechanic and think they hate it, go back to playing with jars once a mod exists to do so only to realize that it practically feels like playing with the creative menu activated by comparison and also come to hate getting them in all their loot. When I watch people play A20 and I see jar after jar going into their inventory instead of the stuff I am finding I'm so glad they are gone. Then again, maybe in that area of the game all they really want are the stacks of easily obtainable water and don't like the process of acquiring them. With the crafting change, the divide is going to people who want deterministic gameplay. These folks would revert back to A20 and breathe a sigh of relief once again having full control over what crafting recipes they can learn and when. The "making do with what you have instead of what you want" isn't for everyone and no matter how much bad luck mitigation is built into the code, the pace will not be fast enough for some people to learn the higher tier recipes they want. Development is so interesting to experience.

1. Still in flux. Damage values vs blocks and vs other entities will probably change several times. They are pretty weak at the moment as that is not the purpose for them being enabled right now. 2. Maybe. 3. I don't think so other than having new POIs placed somewhere within it. 4. Not from the devs before release unless someone does something as a secret side project but nobody has included me in such a secret. The Pregen maps have not been updated to A21 and don't currently work so those will most likely be the priority in regards to map making so that there are four ready to play maps when A21 launches. Cool story bro... Sure. They hire people from the community who were modders of one kind or another. @Laz Man is a recent example of someone they hired to help with level design. If they feel that bringing modders on board to help with bandits would be advantageous then they will do it. There are plenty of precedents to show they are willing. If they don't do it then you can be assured that it is because it wouldn't be a help. They are completely absent from the game as of October 25, 2022

Those models could all be mutations and experiments performed on zombies that went wrong. The behemoth is a two-story tall humanoid that looked like an alien and nothing like a zombie or even a mutated zombie. Maybe if they decided that the zombie virus was aliens and the behemoth was one of those alien bosses it would have fit but saying that the behemoth was on the same level as a zombie having sharkish teeth or another zombie having mandibles is really pushing it. I agree that there are basic zombies and some mutated zombies that were obviously altered artificially in a lab rather than through random mutations of the virus in nature. But the behemoth was on another level. At least Gracie who is giant still looks like a boar and is just big. I wasn't even bothered or triggered by the behemoth but even I with my much higher threshold of genre angst than you was able to recognize that it had absolutely nothing in common with anything else in the game while the other mutants still do have some commonalities.

The behemoth was as tall as a two story building. So more like 2x4x8 and it was the pathing issue and the final decision that such a creature didn't really fit the theme. Its arm was the size of a regular entity.

It’s definitely not no on bandits for A21. We haven’t reached content lock yet so anything is still possible. Don’t listen to people who want to sensationalize the situation for their own gain. As to modders helping, it wouldn’t work. The code they are modding for NPCs is old legacy code and old legacy models. Everything being worked on for future bandits is brand new from models, to animations, to AI, to implementation and spawning. There’s nothing that current mods could contribute to speed things up because the “versions” are completely different. “Bandits” are not just bandits. They also reach into and have connections to 3rd person player animations and clothing and armor sets. There is a lot being worked on and it is impossible to know how much will be ready and whether or not some initial aspects can be parsed to be included in A21. Right now faatal has wandering bandits enabled while he tests. Will that much remain in A21 when they release it? I don’t know. I hope so. It’s still a maybe. We are in the final stretch though!

But what if the devs shafted us...?

My post was just a joke. Don't take it so seriously. Sorry if that didn't come through in the text format.

This game is not a dedicated fully featured RPG. It has RPG elements. Therefore, your expectations on exactly how sophisticated NPCs will be should be measured. There is supposed to eventually be a reputation system which seems to indicate that some bandits will be hostile and others friendly depending on the reputation we have earned with their faction. Does this mean we can take them as followers and they will live in our base and be able to do tasks? I wouldn't count on that. Does that mean they might give us a quest or trade with us? Possibly. Will we have long conversation trees with them and learn their backstories? I doubt it. I think it will probably simply be that if you go into a bandit occupied POI and your rep is hostile with them it will be a shoot out but if your rep is friendly with them you can move within the POI and not be attacked and they ignore you. Could you upgrade that POI and fortify it and then fight a bloodmoon with all those friendly bandits by your side? Maybe. It will all depend on how much time the devs have. Of course they have to get bandits in the game in the first place and at first the bandits will always be hostile. Reputation and rules governing how they behave in your proximity when friendly will come later but I wouldn't expect things like conversation trees and commands and attracting characters to create a settlement. If those things are your base level definition of the game having a legitimate NPC then its possible the game won't ever have legitimate NPCs by your standards. I don't know your standards so I don't really mean YOU, I mean somebody.