Roland

Apologies. It was JCrook that brought up lies and I confused the two of you. As for winning debates on Steam, it's impossible because trolls don't care about the truth or logic. They just want to burn the world. Also, things sometimes really do change and what was planned at one point becomes obsolete. If that gives trolls ammunition to headshot fanboys well...maybe those fanboys should just report those trolls instead of getting into it with them. I also apologize for the "Who hurt you" snark.

Thank you for helping with the concurrent player count. We couldn't have reached our 70K record without your contribution. We are so pleased that people take advantage of the modability of the game to play it in all sorts of ways not always supported and we know that if we were to ever force everyone to only play the vanilla version of the game it would not have nearly the longevity it has had continuing to grow year after year. Thanks to all who play the game modded and to all the modders who create 7 Days to Die/alt for so many to enjoy. What this says to me is that they will be improving the netcode for sure to benefit their supported mp count and hopefully the improvements will be robust enough that it also benefits the larger server guys. Basic outcome: Big improvements for 2-8 player games but not much help for 9-50 player games Robust outcome: Big improvements for 2-8 player games and 9-50 player games are also able to function well enough for play Godly outcome: Big improvements for 2-50 player games such that that becomes the new officially supported mp count.

I doubt you will see anything for A20.1 as the new guys are still getting up to speed. It should also be noted that network improvements will be for the <8 customers since that is what is officially supported but hopefully whatever gains they make will also help the >8 customers as well. That is not how TFP operates. They are very open to allowing folks to mod the game. Setting things up to play with more than 8 players is basically modding what is default vanilla into something else. Whenever you mod the resulting performance and glitches that may happen are on you. They won't flat out disable anything above 8 just to sneer. They will simply continue to officially state that the game is supported for up to 8 players and allow players to choose how they want to play. On what grounds? That the game doesn't function well when in an altered state voluntarily jury-rigged by the customer all while it is still in development?

It is nice. I went to therapy to help me attain the ability to poke fun at myself.

Absolutely. Happy to help anyone reach a state of forgiveness in their life. PM me if needed.

I guess you're right. Plenty would sue. Plaintiff: Your Honor, TFP promised to add bandits as part of their stretch goals which is what I based my pledge on and bandits haven't been added even though they released their game. I either want my money back or for them to be forced to add bandits Judge: What does the plaintiff have to say? TFP: We have bandits slated as our first DLC Judge: Case closed!

Nobody would sue. Nobody would win if they tried which is why nobody would sue. TFP stated even in their kickstarter that some features might not be added until after full release. One of those features was originally going to be random world generation. Maybe you did not realize that at one time we had Navezgane, Horde Mode, and Arena Battle and that was it. There was no random world generator and it was slated for development after the game was released. Navezgane was going to be the only map that they shipped the game with (although they entertained the possibility of creating a second map briefly before they chose to go for RWG early) At some point they shuffled their priorities and RWG landed near the top and bandits as we have seen got punted. They could easily state that during development they determined that the features needed to switch and that bandits became one of those that would be added after full release as a free DLC to replace RWG which they shifted forward. >shrug< They won't do this. But I am betting "The Story" will be the feature chosen to be added as an after release DLC to take the place of their originally planned after release random world generation DLC. The point is that they can choose to do any feature after release as long as they follow through and do it-- and even if they don't, the worst they will suffer is bad press and opinion by the gaming community which may or may not impact their next game's sales. So it is better for them to deliver on all goals and I know they are planning to do so. Of course, there will always be debate by those who don't feel that what TFP offers actually fulfills the promise. Any feature that isn't done good enough to satisfy a rando's pie in the sky expectations will be seen by that dude as TFP reneging on their promise.

See? You answered your own question. In the end you progress and overcome. That's what games like this are all about. You start out and it is a struggle and you are vulnerable but over time and with experience it becomes easy and you are virtually invulnerable. This is how you know when you are about done with that playthrough. You won. Farming used to be easy and nice from the get go with no need for putting any points into LotL. It was essentially as easy to do on Day 1 as it was on Day 100. Where is the progression in that? Where is the struggle at first to make you appreciate the ease later? Chopping down trees with my chainsaw or steel axe later is EASY and NICE but not so much with my stone axe in the beginning. Why not change things up to make it alwyays EASY and NICE from the beginning. Just give everyone Steel axes and plenty of stamina to handle them from the very beginning? Because it would wreck the feeling of progression. Farming in A19 was out of sync with the rest of the game. Your own description of it being easy and nice at the very beginning confirms it. This game isn't about getting easy and nice for free from the start. The way you describe A20 farming as a struggle and always vulnerable of failure at first but then slowly reaching that end state where you have 100 crops growing and you aren't worried any long seems to be perfectly in line with the rest of the game. It is literally the over-arching theme of the game's design. Yeah, it's probably time to change having one "farming person" in the group. That ship has sailed. You know what else I don't do solo when I play with my group? Quests. We do them together. We also get together to mine and we get together to fight the blood moon horde. The game doesn't force us to do it but we just choose to do things together. Why not farming? Do it cooperatively so that no one feels like they are stuck doing the boring role. Come to think of it, the one task that the game forces you to do on your own is shop with the trader and take jobs from the trader. But we even do those things as a team through our conversations. We ask each other which reward we should take in case someone really wants one of the things being offered, we announce what we are going to sell just in case someone wants it instead, we ask about which quests everyone wants to do before selecting one. Even those parts of the game that are designed to be individually done can still be done as a team. Farming can be too. I think people play our game because they enjoy the journey of going from weak to strong. When you are used to starting out strong in an area and then it gets changed to allow you the opportunity to grow into your strength, that can be a tough change to swallow but people starting in A20 aren't going to have feelings of how easy it used to be compared to now. They are just going to get another enjoyable journey if their sense of fun comes from making that journey. Not everyone's does as you demonstrate. But that doesn't mean everyone thinks that having it hard in the beginning and then developing into being able to do things easily is crap. It's fun and rewarding.

Thats because once faatal started looking at it in preparation to actually begin he decided he didn’t want the bandits to just be smarter zombies. He wanted them to have their own AI tasks and pathing. What does it matter when they have dumbed down the zombies from what they started in A17 anyway? They still had to start from a position of perfect knowledge whether their pathing was going to end up being the bandit pathing or not. Conditions change. The game had a completely different performance footprint back then. Both statements are true because they were not made within days of each other. Personally, I think the slider will still come back. Who hurt you so badly that you see everything as lies and deceit? Sometimes things change.

An entity in the game that could be played by a real person but is played by the computer. Could my character controlled by me stand behind that counter and sell stuff from my inventory to people who came in and tell them to go clear a particular POI and then come back for a reward? Yes I could. As a player character I could do what the traders do. The traders even have different personalities. They are not just blackboards indistinguishable from each other. Your litmus test for what constitutes an NPC is way higher than anything I've ever seen. It's great to have high standards and I'm not arguing this to try and convince TFP to not strive for excellence and just go with what we have now. But you are just way off on what qualifies as an NPC. The traders definitely do AND I hope TFP doesn't leave it at that and does more. I hope we have Noah and The Duke and that at least a few of the bandits might be lieutenant rank and have some personality and interactivity besides simply attack and kill. Honestly, the zombies themselves are NPCs when it comes right to it. In fact, one of the stretch goals was that players would be able to play as zombies. So if zombies are going to be player controlled characters then that makes the computer controlled ones NPCs. I get you don't want TFP to define NPCs so loosely but that doesn't mean you have to morph the definition of an NPC past all recognition. I think your personal definitions of "NPC" and "content" are unrealistic enough to lead you to disappointment again and again-- and not just with this game. You can call the traders bulletin boards but the fact is that they weren't implemented as bulletin boards. They were implemented as characters. You are correct that their functions are pretty limited and I agree with you completely that TFP should reach as high as they are able. I'd like to see better NPCs for sure. I'll have you know I have completely and lovingly re-written them every single time!

Hey Laz! Why are you peeking through the window of that POI over there?!?!

I would love for more interactive NPCs and I would be just as disappointed as you if TFP points at the traders and says, "NPCS: Check" However.... you opened the door with your link and this is quoting from the top definition from your link: Traders: Characters: Check Not controlled by players: Check Controlled by the computer: Check Predetermined set of behaviors: Check Use impacts gameplay: Check Not the product of true AI: Check Let's just hope the devs don't find your link, Vik, because if they do then they probably will go "NPCS: check!"

Just play the game in front of you and interact with the zombies you come across. There is zero confusion about that. You understanding why Football Player was removed while Biker Dude was kept isn't going to change the game you are playing. Nobody wanted to update the Football Player because he wasn't deemed important enough due to his limited uses, therefore he was removed. If Madmole said he was removed because he had limited uses and I say he was removed because they didn't want to update him and you are confused by that, you can still log into a game of 7 Days to Die and play.

I disagree. It never gets old when you see one of your mates step forward to take down that zombie and you see the spear drop at their feet. Hilarious! But yeah, it could be improved.

Or its both and the reason they didn't want to update the ones that they didn't is because they felt they weren't worth doing since they had limited use. Nobody is lying. I'm telling you the overall reason the zombies that got cut were cut-- because they weren't updated and they look bad next to the new ones. Madmole was telling you the reason they chose not to update certain models. Now, if they later decide that they want the Football dude after all they will update him and he will be back. You guys put way too much importance in statements made off the cuff by the devs as some sort of Law carved on the back of the Ten Commandments. The devs decided they wanted to update the zombies. They didn't want to update all of them because it was too much work to do so. So they prioritized the ones they wanted to do by how useful they perceived them to be. There are no conspiracy theories here.

Jenn isn't a blackboard. Blackboards are flat.... (sorry Dude who is tired of Jenn boob jokes)

Both of you can ignore each other officially by going to your profile and putting each other on your ignore list.

HOW It is supposed to be tested by subjecting it to larger and larger sample sizes in order first get all the obvious bugs and then get all the intermittent or rarely emerging bugs that you will only see if hundreds out of thousands are experiencing them and hopefully reporting so that they can then be reproduced internally and then solved. Internal testers --> experimental testers --> main branch testers WHEN It is supposed to be tested during the development phase of the game. All testing should be completed before the game is released as a 1.0 finished product. Builds should be kept secret and tested internally at first while the feature is still being actively developed so that TFP doesn't get 1000s of tickets about things that aren't working that the dev already knows isn't working because he isn't finished yet. The initial internal testing team will then find the common and easily manifesting bugs, once again, to avoid getting 1000s of duplicate bug reports on obvious things. Then the build can be pushed to experimental for a few weeks to gather bug reports from the much larger population now playing the game and experiencing bugs. Finally, the game is put to the main branch so that final testing and any additional bugs can be found with the largest sample size yet. Please do not let yourself be concerned about whether TFP is doing it in the right way or at the right time. They are doing exactly what they should be doing when it needs to be done. The updates they push out to us are builds that they know will have bugs and will need fixing. If your expectation is that the bugs you are experiencing should never have been allowed to get through the internal process, that is an unrealistic expectation to have for playing the game during the development phase.

Let's all keep the focus on the game. There is no need for trash talk or insults.

I'm definitely going to try a more shallow underground base and see how it goes. The thing that is weird is that if you are in a POI you will get zombies outside who cannot see you and can only hear you and they come and start pounding on walls and doors to get into the POI and never seem to stop. I would think that it would be the same in a bunker just 10 blocks underground and you would constantly have wilderness spawns digging down towards what they can hear.

Hmm...maybe a bug... Should I check into it...?

While that may be how it may seem, it is not the case. The major updates are focused on developing the game pure and simple. That means feature cutting in some cases, feature reworking in other cases, experimenting with an implementation to see if it sticks once the general population plays with it, adding new features (sometimes from scratch and sometimes by replacing a placeholder feature) and lots of debugging and optimizing. Also, even though they seem like major features to those who don't have access to the testing branch, for the testers who have been playing all along, what you guys experienced as A20 EXPERIMENTAL!!!! they experienced as just the next build of what they'd already been playing. There are no marketing meetings in which they brainstorm ways to capture new players by picking and choosing what they release when. They release features when it's time for them to be put in and to best facilitate development. In other words, if they had had millions of dollars to develop the game behind closed doors for the past 8 years they would have done things exactly the same. When you really think about it, most of the development is accomplished behind closed doors and you guys only see a snapshot of where they happened to be at the time they pushed the game to the main branch on steam. Farming for example went through a couple of changes that you never experienced before it landed on the farm plots we got in A17. Remember that while you guys were playing A16 for 18 months, the game was changing and developing unseen and unexperienced by anyone external to the studio.

Too late. They already removed vomiting and thus stepped firmly away from hell.

Well when you say it like that. But, I suspect the reality to be much more simple like... "Plant your own damn seeds people!" Done.

What he should be mad about is that all of his Lottery luck was used up rolling a Demolisher in the downtown area during the first week. Too bad. But at least he can run around naked during his next lightning storm and feel perfectly safe.