Roland

Just mind the zipper.

That’s who I’m talking about too. 😀

Possibly... I think whenever a game chooses a design that makes a survival element more involved the people who are really into survival love it and the people who just want their toon hydrated so they can go do "the fun stuff" will feel annoyed. Keeping yourself hydrated in the early game is definitely more involved in A21. You have to measure your hydration against your health and the risk of dysentery if you drink straight from water sources. You have to gather quite a bit of materials one of which is rare in order to craft a dew collector which doesn't really solve the hydration problem until you have a few of them going. You can't boil murky water until you find or craft a pot and now the only liquid you can commonly find is murky water so no more inventory full of good water, teas, and smoothies just from looting around. You can't take empty bottles to fill them up and build up an easy storage of excess water. Hydration still eventually becomes solved in A21. You will get to the point of having a crate full of stacks of drinks but it comes much later than in A20 and the journey to get there involves a lot more tasks that of course compete with all the other tasks you want/need to do and there are more times when you find yourself forced to drink bad water and possibly end up with dysentery. Now, if you enjoy survival mechanics all of that probably has you feeling very excited and you can't wait for the gameplay of getting a dew collector farm set up and having to deal with the consequences of being forced to drink murky water occasionally probably has you thinking, "Finally! Dysentery will actually show up in a playthrough!!". But if you find that you just tolerate survival mechanics and are happiest once food and water concerns are solved and you don't have to deal with that part of the game then, yes,......its gonna be annoying.

He said DX12 compatibility was up to Unity. He never said that using more threads was up to Unity. He did say that it wasn't his first priority on how to spend his time because he would rather work on solutions that will improve performance for everyone rather than invest the type of time necessary to switch the game to using more threads. It's not even a decision he would make by himself. It would be up to the owners to allocate resources and time to doing that. You said this while quoting him where he literally said that his focus is on improvements to help all rather than improvements to help the few of "us guys". He never said it couldn't be done. He was telling you he won't do it unless that is what he is directed to do by the owners. Also, his name is Shawn. Not Shirley.... Don't worry. That is exactly what @faatal was saying he is doing. There is just a bit of selective listening happening by those who don't like the way those words were put together...lol

Hey man! Good to see your name!! Perks govern how well you use the weapons and what abilities you might gain with them that an unperked person wouldn't have. Magazines simply provide the recipes for crafting them. So no redundancy at all really. There is no change to the organization of perks. They are still tied to their exact same attributes. There is always that possibility but I'm pretty confident we will see at least an initial implementation of bandits in A21. They are not confirmed yet because the developers haven't revealed anything yet. But that doesn't mean they won't make the cut. There are a few things not on the list as of yet that are very likely to be landing in A21. The list will expand a lot once the devs start showing off what they've been working on in their streams.

I'm kind of thinking your title was....sarcastic.

Not necessarily. You get a wide variety of magazines when you open generic containers and you get targeted ones when opening a specialized container. For example, if you open a Shotgun Messiah crate you will have a good chance of finding a mag and/or part that matches what you perked into but you still have a fair chance of getting any other weapon themed mag and/or part. If you open a kitchen cupboard you have an excellent chance of getting a cooking magazine and very very low to zero chance of getting the weapon mag that matches what you perked into. It is still not a noticeable or marked bonus at all as far as I can see and I'm almost certain we will have threads from people wondering if their perk bonus is actually working. I have never had a situation yet where I couldn't find any magazines or parts for what I was perked into and I think that rather than a noticeable avalanche of a particular magazine title is the better result. But we'll see if that frustrates people or not once they start playing. We'll see what feedback comes back. I prefer it being subtle, myself, but if generally people keep thinking it is buggy because they can't tell then the devs will probably look at it.

When they eventually release info and screens and gameplay of their next game I will be very surprised if you will be able to resist the call to participate early. Its easy to say now near the end of 7 Days development that it would have been better to just wait but if/when TFP Game #2 becomes available to early access it is going to be hard to ignore by anyone who has been a part of this journey. I would even say those who have soured on 7 Days because of development fatigue still have a good chance of feeling major FOMO when #nextgame reveal happens....lol

It is interesting that Madmole has said publicly that if he had it to do over he wouldn't have chosen fully destructible so it is very well within the realm of possibility that part 2 will use UE, utilize voxels, but not 100% through and through. But by time they cycle back to do part 2 tech advances might make things possible that currently aren't. They have definitely said they plan to do a direct sequel. They have a couple other projects they want to do before they return to Navezgane so it will be awhile. Simmer down Lloyd Christmas.

No, that is the technical definition of "official" in the TFP playbook. However....in this case there is no way that they will switch to Unreal for 7 Days to Die. Not now, or in 6-9 months, or ever. Now, 7DtD2? We'll see how they manage Unreal with their next game and that will probably determine if they stick to Unity for 7DtD2 or make the switch. But THIS game will remain Unity until the sun goes nova. (yeah, yeah...that'll happen moments after this game finally releases. I'm saying it before anyone else does)

Official answer: No.

The perks are WIP. What they are today may not be what they are tomorrow so its best to wait and see what is finalized. A21 may not even be the finalized versions. Once players get their hands on it and play with perks & magazines I'm sure there will be a resulting adjustment to this part of the game.

Sometime this year is the goal but other than that no timelines. It's done when it's done. Dev streams won't start until the team feels the new features are ready to show. Madmole is doing a lot of playtesting for his seal of approval on balancing and what still needs polish.

Mythical in the sense that it actually mattered and is the real reason Alphas take a year apiece. If you think the Pimps take so long for each alpha simply because a poll locked them into it then you are deluding yourself. If the poll had gone the other way, we would still be in the same place today regardless.

That was not an official poll put out by TFP as far as I know. Rick has been very clear with us moderators that if we make polls we make it clear that they are not official TFP polls and in general discourages us as moderators from making polls at all just in case someone thinks it is official because we made it. Polls created by other users are, of course, not official. Rick is very wary about doing things that force their hands and make them beholden to a promise that may go against what they really want to do. His perspective is that an official poll comes with a promise that the devs will honor whatever the outcome is and TFP is only ever willing to do what they feel is best for their game. Hence, Rick avoids any situation where control of development is taken out of their hands. As for the mythical development time poll, I remember when they wanted to do Fun Pimp Fridays and have an update every Friday and as we all know that turned out to be impossible. There was a lot of talk about shorter vs longer development cycles but I don't recall the actual poll or voting in it myself and I was very active back then even though I was not yet a moderator. Poll or not, I think we all know that TFP need long development cycles so its good the "vote" is perceived to have gone that way. The problem though is that people then are mad that they weren't in on that vote and that if the poll had been better advertised maybe it would have gone the other way and we would magically be getting monthly updates. That is just ridiculous. If the poll had gone the other way I'm sure TFP would have tried their best and then would have ended up apologizing and declaring that short dev cycles just don't work for them and we would be back to how it has been regardless. I just hope that everyone realizes that TFP takes 10 - 16 months per development cycle because that's what THEY need to do rather than because a few people got in on a poll and skewed it the wrong way and now TFP must do it that way because that's the way the vote went. Poppycock!

Good point. Problem is there has never been an official poll put out regarding game development ever. Developing by popular opinion has never been their model. Any and all polls created here have always been unofficial polls put out by community members for fun and to stimulate discussion. so yes the polls on here have been useless but not just because they aren’t advertised in multiple locations. TFP doesn’t poll.

I'm not sure why "Because the devs don't want it" isn't good enough for you. Why does it even matter if some players are against your hybrid system? Other players don't have any control over how the game is programmed and designed. The only people who do have control are the devs and the fact that they don't want it is the beginning and the end of why the game doesn't and wont have any kind of dedicated LBD or hybrid LBD system. I've already given you the official stance of TFP that there won't be LBD. Its time to move on and stop beating this dead horse. Your LBD/Learn by reading hybrid system would make a great mod. Put your energy into getting to know a modder who can help you realize it. But trying to drum up support among players in this or any other forum for such a system is futile and off topic for A21. Even if you got all of us on board it wouldn't matter because......the devs don't want it. The current system that has been implemented for A21 is not going to go through any changes or edits until after players get their hands on it during A21. If there needs to be some balance adjustments they will happen after people try the changes out for themselves.

I'd get you a jar to collect your tears but there aren't any anymore.

Yes. Just like every major update. But don't worry. Alpha 21 will release to experimental first so you don't have to opt in if you don't want to start over. You can then opt in to Alpha 20.6 before A21 goes stable so that you can remain in your A20 game until you feel you are ready to start over. But if you decide you want to play A21 the day it goes to experimental you will have to start a new game.

Nerdgasm

I’ve always felt that there should be two sets of AI. The sporadic variable pathing among zombies for horde night so they all don’t just do the same exact thing and the single-minded relentless terminator AI for the rest of the week like we had in A17.

It’s relevant because all that matters for a marketing pitch is perception. If the majority of players never play the game for 2k hours so the description seems apt, then it is a good description. That’s why there is a difference between industry standard terminology and just words that make the game sound badass. 7 Days can’t claim to be a racing game because that term has become standardized for the industry. But it can call itself “extreme hardcore survival” because it is survival and the adjectives are brags to make it sound badass and most people are going to have less than 2k experience and agree. When they play The Long Dark or Greem Hell they will think that those games are even more hardcore but they most likely won’t think that all of a sudden 7 Days was casual. Players in this forum are survival game nerds. That’s what I meant by the adults in the comic book store arguing about the details of the newest issue. Nerds are never happy and always critical about details that nobody else ever notices or cares about. Nerds would rage that a particular issue should be recalled and erased from the current cannon. Their demands never come to anything other than them enjoying the activism they feel talking to their fellow nerds and agreeing with each other. All of us are nerds about whatever we are passionate about so I’m not exempting myself from the condition.

I agree that weather survival right now is window dressing but that isn’t the intended final state. Weather survival is gone back and forth over the years and right now the pendulum is on the “not functioning” side. That’s part of development and I believe the Early Access label should be factored in if at any given moment the survival aspects are non functioning. Bandits are tied in with the new outfits and clothing which is tied in to weather survival. It’s a tangle which should get sorted once bandits are in and clothing and outfits finalized.

You guys make great counter arguments and I agree that TFP shouldn’t factor in modding capability into their claims of what the game is or is not. I concede that point. My 0-xp mod is not all xml edits which is why it lies broken and abandoned. I’ll get help to fix it once the game is done but I’m not going to go around begging and bothering people who are busy with their own projects every single alpha update. Maybe when the game is done it will be possible to do 100% xpath but as of now the hooks needed are missing and so that takes more knowledge than I have time to learn. I do not concede the point that the game must remove its hardcore survival label. I still believe that 7 Days qualifies especially with already existing settings (not of the xml variety) that can be selected. Nothing I’ve read yet has convinced me that as a marketing term and superlative for advertising, the phrase is perfectly legit and most people won’t feel buyer’s remorse having read that ad and then playing the game. If Mega’s criteria was an industry standard for the official technical jargon of “hardcore survival” then I agree it would have to be removed. But we aren’t there yet so companies can claim it as long as most consumers don’t care or agree and I think that is exactly where we are at present.

*taps mic* Test..testing…1..2..3… ahem…Could we please have The Committee on What Nobody Asked For please come forward? We have some questions for you. Thank you.