Roland

Okay, fine. I change "the entire" to "an entire". Still doesn't scan with historical evidence. A17's spike was not as high as A16's spike, true, but the player base of A17's lifecycle was on average very comparable to A16. I admit A17 didn't gain us much popularity because LBD had just been removed and the enemy AI was still a WIP and very different than it had been before which rendered most classic base defense metas obsolete. Also POIs were completely PACKED with sleepers (which interestingly hampered the looting game). But if LBD removal was truly the largest complaint about A17, then A18 should not have been such the large increase that it was because by then people knew that TFP had decided to not go with the feedback to bring LBD back. Instead A18 was mainly a more polished A17 with the AI further along and the progression system of central pool xp and skillpoints firmly established. One would think that the loss of LBD would be the event to lose us an entire playerbase. But things have just grown hugely since we've refined and polished and doubled down on the A17 version in A19 and A20. Besides LBD, the importance of looting over crafting has grown since A17. Each alpha the dominance of looting as a means to progress has increased more and more. This is the whole reason we are discussing this now because A21 looks to emphasize looting even more-- and yet, despite your prediction that this trend will turn people away, we can clearly see that the game has only become more popular. It is my opinion that the devs have actually recognized in the playerbase that most people who play this game actually like looting and exploring POIs. And what have they been focusing on over the last three alphas? Emphasizing and enhancing looting as a major part of the game and providing hundreds of new POIs to explore-- and the result is that people are flocking to play this game. Here we are 8 months after the update in the doldrums of A20 and the numbers are still higher than A16's best day spike. Does that disenfranchise those who never really cared for looting but were able to play their mole game while the game was still underdeveloped for them to do so? I agree that it probably will. But TFP is actually doing what most of the fans want. Of course, those whose playstyle isn't the popular way would call that "selling out". Game studios can't win. Either they are prigs who don't listen to their player base or they are greedy @%$#s who McDonalds-ize themselves to the majority to just make money and forget their original dream. I thought you said you didn't have a problem with exploring or are you again channeling the desires of that other group whose torch you're carrying and you want different approaches for them? The truth, is that you can ignore exploring and you can survive. You will be stuck with your primitive gear but you'll be able to become very very very good at using it as effectively as it can possibly be used. If you want more than the basics you are going to have to go and find some of it and leave your molehole. I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation in a game where exploration and looting are major parts of the game and for which TFP has spent lots of time and money tripling and quadrupling the explorable content that we've had before and with no signs of slowing down for A21. There are even more POIs already added to A21 plus more coming and the purpose of those POIs is to explore them and loot them. I think it is also reasonable to expect people to mod the game to de-emphasize exploration and looting if they wish. This isn't "fixing" the broken game but simply shifting the design to something they like better and it is great that it can be done. It's easy to believe that the way you want the game to play is the 5-star restaurant of design while the way you don't like automatically means that it is the McDonalds of design. I think it is just a different 5-star restaurant those other people don't care for but calling it McDonalds makes them feel better. No, but it is more likely to make listeners roll their eyes rather than take you seriously. I think it is always best for people to just voice their own opinions and not to try to champion the cause of some other group they aren't a part of. It is definitely more compelling. I've always been interested in your opinion on what you don't like. I don't necessarily agree with your portrayal of some things you don't like as being poor game design. But I generally like those ideas you whip up in 20 minutes.

I think the biggest complaint we will see is the loss of control over being able to quickly level up in the ladder we want to quickly level up in. People are used to being able to farm points quickly and race to the top the perks and be able to craft the best they can within days of starting. @KhaineGB said he faced this and the solution he had was to allow people to spend points in lieu of books in order to return that control to the player. It will be interesting to see if TFP follows in this same design path eventually. Khaine was warning TFP to just do it now and save themselves the headache later. We'll see.

Every alpha you warn that we are about to lose the entire playerbase and every alpha our playerbase increases. Just speak for yourself, man. As for realism vs gameplay, I was not defending the learning by reading by realism. I was simply showing that it has a basis in reality the same as learn by doing. Exploring and scavenging IS fun gameplay for many people. I think that you are correct that playing as a mole is becoming one of the more challenging gameplay options. Will that turn off all mole people or only those that wanted to be moles and have it easy? Perhaps they will be able to develop a Casual Mole Mod within their community to make the game more enjoyable for them. Who can say since we can't really speak for them. Will they all quit the game because being a mole is tougher now? Maybe. But I doubt it. And based on history, I doubt the prediction that entire playerbases will be lost as well. Would you even want something like this? If so, then this is the point where you just enable the creative menu and take those books you want and not worry about it so much. I agree that gameplay trumps realism. But what can I say? Looting and exploring is fun for me. I'm not speaking for some hypothetical swath of people who may or may not like looting or exploring and yet bought this game. Some people have listened to the description and already decided it is more or less fun. When they actually play it that will confirm it for them or change their mind. I think the game continues to be fun which is why I still play it. The changes for A21 introduce new situations and choices and I like it.

Ummm.... I rewrote/summarized my response in the same post that you quoted me. You didn't need to go digging back in the thread or miss anything. You claimed that the trend was to dumb down the game for console and I refuted that point and asked questions of you to hear your thoughts. It had nothing to do with your experience on Steam or past run-ins with forum moderators. I don't need to go to steam and browse anything. You posted here that in your opinion the developers are trending towards dumbing down the game for consoles and I challenged that idea and would like you to provide the evidence that drives your opinion. Lets drop the stories of what happened on another forum and stick to the topic.

Thanks for this feedback. You are describing the difference between a sandbox and a game. Sandboxes are completely do as you please with no limits. Games introduce rules, limits, and challenges. This game started out much more like a sandbox because a lot of the rules and limits were not yet introduced. But you should understand that it was always planned to be a game first and foremost. You can still make it a sandbox by enabling the creative menu and godmode. These two settings will allow you to do whatever you want to do without limit or constraint. For example, with the creative menu enabled you never would have to loot at all or use a trader and still be able to advance. Good question. I've been playing A21 completely solo and I read every book I find. I am progressing along all the different ladders at a different rate without much control over what I can progress in other than perking into those skills that will give a slight boost to the types of magazines and parts I'll be able to find. It has significantly increased the "make do with what you have" aspect of the game. I've completely maxed out my skills at times--say for example machine guns-- and I still can only craft a green pipe machine gun and there is nothing I can do to break into AK-47s except wait until I've read enough magazines. That doesn't bother me overly as being a very very skilled machine gunner using a pipe machine gun is still pretty effective. So the answer to your question is that as a single player you are going to have to find or buy or earn all the magazines yourself and whether or not that ends up being tedious or not will probably vary by individual. My own opinion is that looting is more fun in A21 than ever before because there are now so many more containers that are worth looting and feel rewarding for you having taken the time to open them.

How about we all just post about our own feelings and experiences and not on behalf of others. They can post on their own behalf. I think just speaking for yourself is always the best policy. What I'm hearing from you is that you personally see that scavenging and exploring is a big part of a zombie survival genre game. I agree with you. It still is a 100% sandbox if you enable the creative menu and optionally godmode. Do that and all of the complaints of people who don't want the constraints of rules and game limits will go away.

Technically you get better at mining by spending points on your mining perks which you can earn by mining plus doing other stuff. You get better at crafting mining tools by reading magazines and trade journals so that your knowledge of how to put together things increases. You don't have to do a single bit of looting in order to actually mine. In order to learn how to craft better and better tools you have to either have a craftsman teach you (sorry they are all zombified now) or you can read up and learn. Now you can trivialize that by saying its all by looting but I'm not sure how you imagine obtaining magazines with the knowledge you need to learn if you don't go looking for them or have someone bring them to you. Okay, I see you realized how it works. But you are missing the point of what the learning is. You are not learning by looting. You are learning by reading. You like LBD because you learn (thematically) by trial and error. You start out doing a shoddy job but as you keep doing that somehow bit by bit you get better and better. The funny thing is that nobody learns like that for specialized work. You go and search for a video or you find an instructional manual and you read up on it to learn the specialized skills you might never stumble upon if you just kept bumbling along doing amateurish work over and over and over again. So when I want to fix something on my car and I search for a video on YouTube and watch that and then replicated it myself having learned what to do. Is that "Learn by Searching" No. I did have to search to find the video but watching and listening and internalizing the instructional information of the video is how I learned. You can do the same by reading manuals, trade journals, etc. So people who want to be dismissive of this change can just call it "learn by looting" but what it actually is, is learning by reading the instructional information of experts in the various fields to gain their knowledge for yourself. The problem is that the apocalypse happened and they are all dead and there is no YouTube to watch. All you can do is gather what you can find from magazines and teach yourself how to become more and more a master craftsman. So then, given that we are going to learn by reading and not by doing, where would you like those magazines with all the knowledge in them to be placed? Scattered all over the world to be scavenged or all just sitting in front of you when you spawn? What seems to make the most sense in a post apocalyptic world?

One issue with save sync is the nature of this game in that it saves itself every few seconds. If save sync was a thing, when would it capture a particular save for the cloud? On log off? That would bring new problems like someone's save get's corrupted but they are still able to log into the game. They see they've started over at Day 1 with no skills and all their gear gone and so they log out and now the cloud has been overwritten with the corrupted data. Some might be aware enough to just hard close the game without logging off but most users wouldn't consider it and just log out. So then why not have a manual button that the user can press to capture a save to the cloud or make a backup on their own hard drive? Because then that defeats the gameplay purpose of having the game save every few seconds so that survival decisions are final and can't be redone. People can't hedge their bets and make a backup save before trying something tough. Sure, people could go into the files and make a backup and still save state cheat a quest or erase a death but it is too cumbersome to do veru often for the average player. Making it a convenient button press, though, would result in all sorts of abuse. Its not that I care what others do to cheat in their own game so much as it is a flaw in the design that makes it so that our decisions matter and can't be undone. Its not a simple problem with a simple answer.

I won't demand a game from him within a few months but how about a mod? If he has all these better ideas for how the game should be and knows unity, then building off the 7 Days to Die platform to create a mod should be a piece of cake. I'd be happy to play his mod. Maybe he's working on his own road map before he starts....

If you are exploring a lot of POI's then as Dr Pepper Smurf said 20 - 30 easily. In my current world there is a city with two Crack-a-books right across the street from each other. That day was epic. But then if you are mixing in mining, and building in with scavenging and then prep day for blood moon and repair day after blood moon and then you will be finding and reading fewer.

Hey man, switch out your mean translator for a kind translator. Nobody ever said your comment was stupid and useless.

I can tell you that the developers haven't stopped playing 7 Days to Die. They play it regularly. One of them even plays on Twitch regularly. TFP has never ignored any community and tester feedback let alone all the super critical important stuff that pours in. They don't always end up agreeing with the conclusions that some voices in the community suggest as needed changes but they don't ignore. They also leave the possibility for community desired changes to be modded into the game so that their vanilla version stands next to the modded versions as choices for people to play. Well by your own criteria, TFP is in a good place and steadily making progress to deliver their finished game. Woah...how'd you get five?

Murky water is an uncommon find compared to A20 but I wouldn't call it rare. Early game you will be drinking everything you find but once you get dew collectors going your supply of murky water will start stacking up and you'll be able to use it for paint. I would say it delays painting out of the early game rather than taking it out of the whole game.

It's imperceptible to me. In my last run by day 13 I had found and read more spear magazines than I had archery magazines even though I was perked into bows. Was it annoying that I could craft a better spear than bow? A bit but the key is that I was still progressing in bows and never could point to a period of time where I just could not find ANY archery magazines. I definitely didn't feel like I was getting less of everything else.

These sorts of details are best left to discovering when it is released to experimental as it is still in a state of flux. The weighting feels different now than it did when I first described it and it will probably change again before you get it. The general idea is that you won't be stuck unable to find what you've perked into and thus feeling like it was a waste of points to perk into what you did. It also means you don't have to wait to spend points until you've amassed a bunch of magazines to see which you have the most of and then do that. But as for the exact formula, you will have to wait until you taste the secret sauce before you get its recipe.

You ain't kidding and I largely ignored those from A6-A20. Now, when I see a house I run to it intending to hit the mailbox first thing with a smile of anticipation on my face. That smile changes to a scowl if it turns out to be one of those sucky houses without a mailbox... Oh, A21 mailboxes! How beautiful your profiles are as I look down a yet to be explored street and see you there in a line, your little red flags bidding me to come and read your contents!

Not exactly. It will be used for transporting water voxels in order to do landscaping effects for your base.

1/2.3k the dream is real.

Agreed. Most people who post here are fans of the game AND fans of the developers. So most posts are going to be positive and when people disagree with how the development is going they still post in a respectful way because they are cognizant of the feelings of the developers. Some people who post here are angry and don't care about or maybe don't even like the developers or members of this community. Because they are angry they are aggressive and perhaps rude and because they don't have any respect for developers or community members they are very willing to insult right along with their rudeness. Look at @Sal calling everyone on this forum who is happy with the game, "nut huggers". WIth one breath he and @youcantgetridofme claim that people are too afraid to come here and post their negative opinions and yet they post negative things themselves and their posts remain. Even the "nut-hugger" name calling is still there in a couple of Sal's posts and hasn't been moderated out. The truth is we give people a lot of leeway before taking action and the actions are progressive and very rarely an immediate ban regardless of which side they are arguing. If the bias here makes people who plan to post negatively check themselves so they word their feedback without flaming then that is a good thing. If someone doesn't post because they are afraid that their opinion will be challenged, that is weakness of that person and not of the forum. Forums are here so that all opinions can be challenged and discussed.

And I wrote a response to this "trend" that you have not seemed to have observed. I asked some pointed questions asking for evidence of this alleged trend. Can you provide it? The console version was released with Alpha 14 and so when you look back at Alpha 12 and 13 you can definitely see changes that had console in mind. After that, it was pretty quickly clear to everyone that console would never be the same as PC. Console got many of the A15 features but not all and only a small number of A16 features. If the claim that the game was being dumbed down to work on console was true then why were the two versions so completely different within two Alphas? Then, from A18 development until now TFP knew the console version was never going to change since Telltale went bankrupt so why would they be dumbing things down in those alphas for a console game that was not going to get those dumbed down updates? Now, for A20 and A21 the framework for cross-platform networking is being worked on which obviously has consoles in mind but what other gameplay examples can you give that are dumbing down for the benefit of consoles? Please, share.

I know you were just using cooking as an example and I get your point. But I will say also that in the case of cooking as well as several other non-combat perks, the crafting recipe portions of those are gone now and separated to magazines. So a big portion of absolutely needing to max those out is gone in A21. Secondly, I understand the costs. It's expensive. The difference between us is you see the benefits of the second attribute wasted because I guess you won't use a suboptimal weapon even if it does the job. So if you are fully perked in Machine Guns you won't touch a shotgun even though you are fully maxed in Strength in order to max cooking. In my case I'll have machine guns and shotguns on my belt and use both even if I haven't spent a single point in shotguns. Just the full Strength bonus alone makes shotguns pretty amazing as a secondary weapon. The fact that the 16 points is of no benefit to you is your choice by you ignoring those benefits. But they are still there. Finally, the way the perks are separated makes it so that in some games you are a master cook but in other games you are not and you have to adapt and play differently. If cooking was separated into a generic category and its cost was set then every time you played, it would be the same. What determines which type of skill points you get when you level up? Do you get one of each type? That just sounds like eliminating tough choices. You no longer have to choose between purchasing a combat perk or a non-combat perk. Now you can do both. Maybe I'm not understanding what you are proposing with two separate skill points but I see that as a loss of hard choices. I like your ideas. If they were in a mod I think I would have a lot of fun playing that mod. I think all of these ideas about how to organize the perks are interesting but I think TFP's version is also interesting and has pros and cons but...doesn't need to be fixed. It isn't broken--just different. If your ideas were the game's default version and TFP's was the mod I would enjoy playing the mod with their version as well.

You aren't wasting points. You are paying a higher cost for some of the non-combat perks that you want. Again, I'm not understanding where the actual difference lies in what we have and your proposed system other than those non-combat perks being in a generic category. You stated that you are okay with some non-combat perks costing more. If you can forget for the moment that the extra points you are paying to cross over are giving you abilities that you don't necessarily care about and simply see those extra points as the more expensive cost then you'll understand that you've already got what you want. When I cross over to get perks in a different attribute than I've been spending in, I see those perks as being more expensive with some added benefits for a few other weapons. When you cross over to get perks in a different attribute than you've been spending in, you see those perks as being more expensive with additional benefits that are totally wasted because you don't care about them. If we change it to your method the higher expense will be there for some perks but none of the extra benefits which I guess will make you happy since you don't want them but I like them since I often use a variety of weapons besides what I am most fully perked into. We agree that at least some of the non-combat perks should be more expensive. I'm happy with the way they are more expensive now and like it better than the way you propose. The way you propose whichever non-combat perks are chosen to be the more expensive ones will always be the more expensive ones. The way it is now it depends on what your primary attribute is. Those non-combat perks will be cheap and the rest expensive. It makes it different when you choose different paths. I do agree that more perks would be fun though.

If you are willing to have some skills cost more points to level up then the current organization handles that exactly. The non-combat perks that are in your chosen attribute cost less and the ones that are in other attributes cost more. Under your system, the same non-combat perks would always be the same every time you played. If Living off the Land was chosen to be an expensive perk to level up it would always be so every single game. In the current system, Living off the Land is cheap whenever you decide to do Fortitude but expensive whenever you choose to follow one of the other attributes so there is some variance in play. I don't understand why you are willing to allow some skills to be more expensive and some to be cheaper but currently hate paying more for skills that outside of your chosen tree. It is the same thing but with the added bonus that you also gain some ability in other weapons. Your Way I choose Strength for my main attribute. I want to farm so I pay the more expensive upgrade costs of Living off the Land All I get for those extra costs are the perks and skills granted by living off the land. Current Way I choose Strength for my main attribute. I want to farm so I pay the more expensive upgrade costs of Living off the Land I get the LotL perks plus my headshot chances and damage increases whenever I use machine guns and knuckles. Extra cost is extra cost. You already admitted that you would be fine paying extra cost for some non-combat perks if they were moved out of the attribute trees into a general category. So if you are fine with that added cost why are you not okay with the current added costs? I like how you organized and showed the relative strengths and weaknesses of each tree where it concerns combat. I think that what your organization doesn't show is the advantages some attributes have in noncombat skills being cheaper if you pick that attribute (because you removed them). This is important because it makes the attributes asymmetrical in nature granting different challenges and higher difficulties depending on what is chosen.

I use it by default now as well. It does double service as a kind of gear degradation. Once all your best is deleted, you have to make do with inferior stuff until you can regain the best again. It makes the game feel a bit more rogue-like since you lose all your gear but retain your skills. It definitely shouldn't be vanilla but it is the best death penalty that exists at the moment. Well, I said it was part of the reason. The biggest reason: They don't want wellness. And, hey, that gives DF another way to differentiate itself from vanilla.

They didn't simply remove it without going through some iterative changes. In fact, I can't think of any feature removed from the game that they didn't explore first and experiment with balancing and making changes to it first. Rewriting history to suit your narrative is pretty typical of you, though.... I like this idea-- though not instead of on hit debuffs. They really just need to have the debuffs remain after respawn so they aren't solved by death. But I would also be for some unique maladies that hit a player upon respawn that need special medicine to fix in addition to those things. Also a proper death option in the top menu so people can choose ironman, debuffs persist, etc. Dang! Maybe in 20 minutes we can download your full game...