Roland
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Posts posted by Roland
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11 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:
There was one for A17 death penalty though.
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!
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6 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:
Did anyone ever think of advertising those polls on the steam forum, twitter and the facebook site?
2 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:That doesn´t change the fact that if only forum regulars vote on polls on here that they are basically useless.
1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:My point is that polls are useless if only members of this forum vote. Nothing more. Not implying anything else. Literally just about the polls.
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.
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17 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:
Other than 'Because the Devs don't want it,' is there any serious reasoning behind not having that which the developers don't seem interested in entertaining; on which some players are; in my opinion, vehemently, unreasonably, and almost pathologically against, a hybrid system?
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.
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13 hours ago, Mister Forgash said:
Roland, if you move my first post, I'll be mega-sad. ;(
I'd get you a jar to collect your tears but there aren't any anymore.
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47 minutes ago, Prydonian said:
So, what happens to our various skills and perks when A21 hits? Will we be starting characters from scratch in the world we’ve already fortified?
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.
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2 hours ago, theFlu said:
Anyone with good suggestions?
Nerdgasm
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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.
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34 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:
The people Roland talked about that say 7 days is hardcore are surely not players with 2K hours. Hours played isn´t relevant in this discussion.
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.
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3 hours ago, Rotor said:
A simple way to look at it is: If the game mechanic does not dictate a change, i.e. Snow blizzard in your tidy whities no repercussion, then is just window dressing...aka casual.
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.
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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.
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*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.
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4 hours ago, meganoth said:
Now for survival to be hardcore I would list criterias like:
1,2,3,4) Which of water, food, weather, sickness are directly lifethreatening?
5) Is death a real punishment? (This agains calls for a subjective judgement call, sorry)
6) Is it possible to get into untenable situations/death spiral because of wrong survival decisions?
7) Is it possible to get into untenable situations/death spiral because of bad luck?
8 ) Do you need to invest more than say 40% per day for survival? (this one is really hard to fulfill for any game that does survival as a side job)
Now this is a good argument for coming up with a criteria for "hardcore survival" as a technical term for the gaming industry. If such a criteria was adopted and applied universally then I would agree that TFP would have to remove their description. But...it is not and for now "hardcore survival" is simply a marketing term open to interpretation by all and I maintain that a great many gamers are going to play 7 Days to Die and view it in their own minds as a hardcore survival game compared to others they might have played. So until, either the industry adopts the phrase officially to meet a set criteria or we start hearing outrage from the masses instead of just a few super elite survival game fans, I don't think it really needs to be changed.
I know I said I was done but TheFlu brought out his Goblin, Mega brought out his list, but more importantly, Kuosimodo gave me the first dislike reactions I've ever gotten from them so this is truly unexplored territory and I feel I must not abandon it.
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6 hours ago, theFlu said:
Modding? Sure, then I shall propose adding "And Goblins!!" to the description. Just mod em in, no biggy. Someone already did.
Any argument can be made to look absurd by taking it to absurd lengths. I agree that just because anything could be modded in the game, they shouldn't claim that it has those features. In this case, the game already has survival features that modding can push either to more extreme or more casual results. We aren't talking about something completely foreign that someone else added to the game in their overhaul mod. We are talking about survival features that already exist which TFP, themselves, implemented and who also left a lot of values exposed that can be edited easily for game-changing results.
Also by modding I'm mostly talking about simple edits to the xml configuration files in this context which are basically like adjusting settings but in a more advanced fashion. You said the options settings are fair game to claim so why not xml edits as they are just advanced options.
I'm not talking about modding in the sense of needing to know C# and bringing new assets into the game.
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35 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:
It´s only about the description of the games default settings in the steam shop.
Why must the description be limited to the default settings? Did you know that based on real feedback, the devs decided to lower default to adventurer from nomad because so many people were rage quitting and calling the game impossible but also unwilling to turn down the difficulty. Once the change was made the default version seemed much more accessible to new players.
It seems that gamer ego makes it so that gamers will never turn down the difficulty but they will turn it up. So we could make 25% loot the default and then make easier settings from there or we can have the default be where it is at and allow people to change the settings to 25% for a tougher survival experience. All of those settings are part of the game and not just the one starting setting that developers choose as default.
But even the current default is tougher than other games most people are used to playing. I know you can’t imagine anyone having a hard time surviving in what you consider a cakewalk of a game. That’s where the real disconnect is in this conversation: lack of perspective of any viewpoint but your own.
You’re trying to make “hardcore” out to be some technical jargon of the industry. It’s not.
35 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:But well i am not surprised you take that route in the discussion now, seen that too many times already that if you can´t convince someone, that you try to question the motivation of a post, no matter how clear the actual intention is.
Man you have me pegged as all kinds of nefarious today. That is absolutely not what I was doing. I didn’t know you had given up on pushing the game to change. Especially after you agreed and liked the suggested changes that Jost posted. <shrug> At any rate, I’m not trying to attack your motivation. I thought I understood it but I guess I was wrong. If your motivation is simply that you think the hardcore description should be removed with the game’s current and likely future state as it is then fine. I accept that. I disagree but I accept.
I think Im done. It probably should be changed just based on who cares the most. Now, it’s just about getting the person who can change it to care…
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13 minutes ago, Rotor said:
I think we are down to whose #1 digit is bigger here.
"Excuseme while I whip this out"
/bonuspointsformovierefi.d.
haha…I think the real issue here is that @pApA^LeGBa has been disappointed in the loss of tough survival features in the game and has been asking for the game to focus on the survival aspects for years. I don’t think he’s really calling for the removal of the label so much as he is using this as an opportunity to once again say “we need to focus on the survival game and make it tougher” like Jost was suggesting.
Im not against those suggestions either. I’d like debuffs to persist after death so it isn’t a quick cure. I’d like an official Ironman option. I’d like to see food get a balance pass. I’d like options to remove the trader and limit quests. I think food spoilage and weapon degradation are important but I also know those features would alienate a lot of people.
But I also think that the game just as it is, is still on the hardcore side of the spectrum. It’s cool that other games exceed 7 Days but they don’t disqualify 7 Days in my opinion.
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Personally I don’t think games with high information menus translate well to small screens. I’ve run into problems with my Switch where because of the size while the game is technically “playable” it is only enjoyable when my switch is docked to my television. I wonder how many PC game menus are going to be a pain in the butt on the Steam Deck screen? I guess there’s always reading glasses…lol
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21 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:
That´s just a made up argument trying to defend the description now. Wow.
Im not trying to defend the description. I care way way way less about it than you do. I don’t think it’s worth the effort of changing it I think it matters so little. This is an interesting conversation and I’m throwing out thoughts that occur to me but I’m not arguing to defend.If I’m arguing for any point at all it is that just because 7 Days to Die is easier than those other listed games it doesn’t automatically mean that the cut-off line for “hardcore” lies between them and 7 Days. You are arbitrarily drawing the line in the sand which is your right to do when expressing your opinion but I disagree that your line is THE line.
In my opinion any discussion about what this game is or is not should include modding because it was designed from the moment of conception to be modded. The files are set up as an advanced configurations menu. You say a developer can’t make claims based on mods but what about options. Can they claim their game is hardcore knowing players can turn off loot respawn, change the game to 25% loot, and delete all on death? These particular three settings do increase the hardcore survival factor of the game and they don’t require any modding knowledge.
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10 minutes ago, warmer said:
This exactly what I meant by difficulty being inversely proportional to number of hours in game. Both of the games have severe penalties for ignoring basic character health maintenance.
If you want it "more" hardcore. Mod your debuffs to be deadly. End of story. There you go, more hardcore. the entire argument is based in the "survival" elements not being hard enough.
How about 7 days to heal a broken bone, 1 day to or an infection kills you, edit the biome.xml for more severe temp difference between areas making cold/heat more of a killer. How about playing "dead is dead" like I suggested?
If you remember that is the definition of "hardcore" difficulty for many games, and you also have "survival" elements. There you go. Harder to survive. Its not the problem of the games framework when the tools exist, it is a problem of your expectations that is remains difficult once you know and understand the mechanics.
Some people complain food/water are already too hard for them. Why? Gameplay experience. That is it.
Anything ceases to be hardcore once you have mastered the basics unless the game ramps difficulty with you, ala gamestage, and that only helps for so long. You have beat vanilla, accept that achievement as a win for you, and not a fault of the game when there are 100's of ways to make it more hardcore if you wish.
I think you make a good point that modding is part of the intended game design. I don’t know how moddable The Long Dark or Green Hell are but I’m pretty sure this game could be modded to be just as difficult to survive as those games are if not more so.As you said, simply editing the consequences of critical debuffs to be more dire and making their remedies harder to obtain would ramp up the hardcore aspect of the game by quite a bit. It isn’t tough “modding” to lower the food drop rate— just playing on 25% loot drop significantly makes food tougher and that’s a main option without need for editing any code.
If the devs knew at the time of writing the description that they were going to make modding such an integral part of the game to allow users the ability to make it as hardcore or casual as they wish wouldn’t it be okay to give it the hardcore survival label?
Maybe the best “marketing brag” would be to simply state that the game is infinitely adjustable to make it the hardest of hardcore survival games to the most relaxing of casual living games in existence.
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31 minutes ago, Matt115 said:
l4d2 don't have this but it's explain why there is no zombie animals and kids.
So all we need is one note that can be found in a lab where a scientist logs that the turning process has been observed to be too traumatic for children and they always die before the process is complete and you would never bring up child zombies again?
I’ll write the note today and ask @schwanz9000 to add it in this week!
31 minutes ago, Matt115 said:So i don't want just thing edgy to be edgy but i want "serious" stuff
*taps mic*
Hello! Is this on? Ahem! Could we have The Serious Pimps come forward please? We need a game design by TSP stat!
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Regarding boiling water: It is an abstraction of making water safe to drink. The devs don’t intend for this aspect of the game to be a simulation. The water in the toilet comes from the tank and not the bowl. It is most likely to be water rather than some other kind of disgusting fluid no one should drink boiled or not. I think a more detailed complex system for getting drinkable water could probably be done with a mod.
Critical injuries including infection seem to be a touchy subject. Make them have tougher penalties and harder to remedy and people get mad and quit playing. Make them too easy and people get mad about labels like “hardcore survival” in the game’s description.
I think the answer here is modding again to tweak the critical injuries whichever direction you want to go like reduce the drop chance of honey or make it cure less of a % of the infection so you would need five honey to stamp it out.
More mods….yes, please. Why not learn how and join the ranks of creators to get more mods. There are tutorials and the easiest modding doesn’t require programming knowledge. You can accomplish a lot of changes just by editing values in the xmls.
The spear is getting some love for A21.
Nomad is default +1
Warrior is default +2
Survivalist is default +3
Insane is default +4
But those simply make the zombies harder to kill. Changing loot to 50% or even 25% will make the game more difficult. The setting “Delete all on death” makes dying a bigger deal and can set you back. Then there are limits you can self-impose for the sake of challenge like only do one quest per day or even, don’t use the trader at all.
There is a solution for what you describe but I can’t remember the details. It involves making a new game using the same name and same map and then transferring some files from the original to the new. If you post in the support forum someone should be able to help.
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8 hours ago, BFT2020 said:
Nobody's forcing you to play any funny games or use funny mods. Not sure why you are so tired of them.
There exist no games at the level of horror, debauchery, shock value, and infanticide that Matt desires and so all he can play are games that to him are just a mockery of those things. 🤪
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I’ve not played The Long Dark or Green Hell. Do either of those games start to feel trivial from a survival aspect once you gain enough experience with them and come to know exactly what you should do and where to go in order to overcome whatever might be threatening your life at a given moment in the game? If not, why not? How do those games remain hardcore survival for the fan with 1000+ hours? @theFlu brought up the point about gameplay loops that trivialize survival and that the gameplay loop that does that in 7 Days involves the trader and is easily discernible after not too many hours playing the game.
In these other games that deserve the title hardcore survival, what is it that makes survival difficult no matter how experienced you are with the game?0 -
25 minutes ago, Melange said:
Thanks for your input, but it didn't help clear up what the OP intended.
That's probably because I was responding to you and not the OP though my comments relate to the OP as well. I was responding mostly to this:
On 8/30/2022 at 2:50 PM, Melange said:Each time I play a committed 'long' game I will inevitably reach a plateau of indifference and perceived futility for continuing.
Be aware, I do not fault TFP for this. So hold your horses if that's what you're thinking. I have read TFP are addressing the late game experience, and I look forward to it.
My point was to not get too high expectations. Much of the gameplay in the late game will still be the same only there will have been a final boss challenge event and then credits and then it will be what we have now: hordenight - repair - loot - craft - hordenight etc until you decide to start over.
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14 hours ago, MichaelL. said:
@Roland - Since the subject of voxel water has come up (a subject i have a vested interest in
) : If you can say, will the new water system utilize imposters in prefabs/tiles, or will it be the same/similar LOD view we get now with the RWG water (oceans/lakes)?
That is a question best for @faatal
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Are the Devs just dumb?
in General Discussion
Posted
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.