meganoth

While the success of Valheim provides some valuable lessons, just copying what it did would be a mistake. Games have success because (a) they get the crucial word of mouth and (b) because they find a niche that isn't filled at the moment. The first can't be copied. It is a function of luck and in some cases the right decision to hire the right streamers on the right platform(s) and generally the feel of the first 2 hours of gameplay. With none of the current hypes there is any guarantee that they will have long-term success. Lots of people already stopped playing Valheim and lots of people only bought it because EVERYONE was playing it. I know, I bought it exactly because I wanted to know why it got all that buzz. Now it doesn't matter for Valheim anymore, they got enough sales to last them a few years whatever happens. But such a hype can't easily be replicated and in the case of 7D2D being on the market for 8 years makes it twice as difficult to generate a sudden hype. Not impossible, but very very hard. The latter (occupying the niche) can not be copied directly as well. Because now that niche is filled by Valheim, simple as that. There is space for multiple games in any niche, but it is a clear case of diminishing returns the more games try to go there. But I concur with Guppycur on the general principle that difficult, complex or grindy games can have a lot of success, they just need to find a place where a demand exists that is not met by other games. And that is the problem when you try to cater for the mainstream players. There lots of bigger shinier AAA and "easy listening" games fill that demand and a game by a small developer would need to compete with all the AAA companies on THEIR home turf. That is why 7D2D may still need ways to make the first 2 hours fun for any beginner, but after that needs the complexity and depth to keep its core audience for the long-term success.

The story is in the Journal. You just need to read it. ...oh wait. 😉

Don't sweat over performance, event-handling done right is very very cheap. You have the drying events in a list sorted by time (sort is done by a fast insertion sort) and each tick just check the first entry whether it is due.

Agility says "Welcome to the club"

Hyperbole doesn't help your argument. I have played INT in my last game and it was great. When attacked by a few zombies I could "play" with one of them while the turrets removed the rest. I didn't feel underpowered. At all. Not like Perception does. INT also has the only tier 1 weapon that is useful in end game horde nights. It offers the most variable gameplay you can find in the game. It actually is my second favorite build after agility. Now possibly my impression of INT is wrong, after all it is a subjective. Like yours I guess. There is no rule that non-specced weapons are not allowed in your hand. If you feel somehow "dirty" or uncool with a nonspecced weapon in hand or feel the need to handicap yourself because of a self-invented principle then accept the consequences or mod the game. We don't know what the drone will bring to the table. But even if the drone were useless, INT can't get worse because of it, nobody really is forced to use it. And even if the drone were overpowered it might not be unspecced. Instead of sounding the doom clock now we could simply wait for its appearance and test it. "player expectation"? Are you speaking for all or lots of players? Or just you?

At what distance did you test? It seems to me the turret is disadvantaged in the game because it shoots while the zombie is still too far away. While the player has the sense to use the shotgun on short range mainly.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Some future feature and its unknown impact on gameplay has little to do with a current feature. Or non-feature, depending on view point. You have two more guesses on the criteria for nirvana movement 😉

The building changes are part UI improvement, part streamlining of materials. And I would assume the former is undeniably positive and without downsides. The latter is a two-sided coin. On the one hand it is safe to say that the majority of people will use the better variant of any material almost exclusively whenever they build something. I.e. they will always use reinforced concrete when building with concrete. So in this respect the removal of simple concrete is generally similar to the removal of wooden sticks even though in actual gameplay there are lots of small exceptions to the rule. I actually often think about upgrading specific blocks or not, while my 3 co-players deftly apply upgrades to everything in reach. Another difference is in POIs. Here we will loose a finer differentiation in buildings. I.e. when we are taking over POIs as bases there are weaker and sturdier stone buildings depending on the stone used. Or a building with lots of concrete still might need some upgrades but could be easier to adapt for a low level character (hacking away those stairs before nightfall takes a lot longer if the blocks have HPs doubled). Still, the impact is small In summary, as a long time player I don't like the removal of the material variants and it isn't just because I'm used to them. But I can live with the change.

Occams Razor: If they just add up the hp of lower tier stages to higher tier stages they don't need to change anything else to keep the current balance (with a minor exception). If they don't they would need to waste hours of development time for a rebalance of everything else. A compromise could be that one of the mods you put into the workstations also reduces fuel use greatly. So once you have that you just need to put in say 100 or 500 wood and never need to add to it for the rest of the game. If you remove all resource sinks for wood, why is there even a need for steel fireaxe and chainsaw in the game? They would be the next to cut.

If you can see any difference between the lighter and darker shade of green you either have a better graphics driver, monitor or better eyesight than me.

This is a valid concern and I don't understand why TFP does not make the effort to change the store pages to make it evident that the console version is a different version than what is available on PC. I can only assume that it isn't easy to do that, unlike Telltale TFP likely has no contacts to Sony and Microsoft at all. Still, they are owner now and there must be a way to update that store page. On the other hand there are some indications that there is a difference, the version on playstation is from 2016 and telltale is given as publisher. not TFP. While youtube videos made by TFP are recent and talk about alphas and early access, which would not normally be sold on console (AFAIK). If you are refering to videos made by players, well, TFP obviously can't do anything about that. Still, the console store pages should have been updated with a warning a long time ago. As a moderator my only job is to make sure people obey the forum rules. I'm not an employee of TFP, I don't get payed for this and I am speaking only for myself. Expect me and other moderators on this site to be as friendly or unfriendly as everyone else. In my opionion TFP failed at informing console users on the console store pages and I have said this before. But most frustration and protests from console users comes from the fact that the console version will not be updated and a new version will have to wait for the PC version getting finished, and in my opinion TFP has enough reasons for doing exactly that.

In those cases I tend to not ask the person for anything except possibly to keep a lot of distance between us.

What are the chances that he makes the effort to remove the bullet from the cartridge so he can give you just a bullet ? 😉

But it also common in German to say the equivalent of "bullet" ("Ich habe nur noch eine Kugel im Revolver") for smaller amounts of ammunition, while ammunition itself is often used when talking about it generally or for huge amounts.

Yes, I can see it now: It isn't a bullet, it's a toy model of a Saturn 5 rocket. 😁

But if the new people block the coffee machine, 7D2D developer#s time is wasted!!! 😉 (a joke belonging to a different era)

Obviously, since I was talking about a way to improve the AI. ... need a pair of reading glasses?? 😉

No. 7 minutes is not a short video in my book. Which is why I said "and only retarget if they actually have a path to you"

Zombies don't need to change targets every few seconds. Their chances to destroy your structure increase anyway if they continue to hit blocks until destroyed (and only retarget if they actually have a path to you. If you have more real estate than the zombies can destroy in one horde night you haven't anything to fear anyway.

Exactly. The behaviour is as expected (they hit a random block if they can't reach you). On the other hand it could hint at a possible improvement to the AI to make it look more "intelligent". If Z wants to hit a block it should prefer blocks nearer to the player.

You mean an AK47 ? 😉

Why? TFP is aware that the game is used in a lot of contexts for which they don't and can't balance and optimize for. They know that for example people play with more than 8 players or try 16k worlds. Or persistant worlds. But they stated repeatedly that that is outside their focus. And that moddability is there to allow people to do stuff outside the "vanilla range".

I'm not seeing that they can afford to split of programmers "soon", they have too few of them at the moment. And usually it is designers who start pre-production on new games. I expect Madmole to be one of the first to switch over to a new game.

"Depending on how the ..." 😎 Your "game-breaking" ability magically appears by your assuming that Gazz f** up royally and nobody noticed this even though this perk is in since A17. Lets assume it just removes 10% of the damage after everything else has been added and removed (as an example) and it becomes a nice present for everyone but nothing too OP Surely a large group won't stay together for long. If they do they waste a lot of their power because they constantly stand each other in the way. I already get this with 3 and definitely 4 players. Everyone can and usually does save the points of the last rank because of +1 gear, so this is not something that can count as wonderful advantage of the perk. And in this game (in vanilla) you are practically past any serious danger once you maxed out one attribute. Some people, especially builders, might play on for various reasons and incidentally level up other attributes, but that is just some sugar on top. You are already king of the hill at this point. Remember TFP is only concerned about vanilla. I don't think TFP balances or cares much about anything that happens long after a player has one attribute filled up. They surely expect most players or groups of players to restart at that point.

Did you turn off your helmetlight? What did your stealth meter say? If it was at 40-60 you have not really been stealthy Please tell us how you will abuse it. Do you want to save the 3 perk points for attribute level 10? That is nice but to stay at that level you have to follow your charismatic leader around all day. Most players would not want to do that and pay the points instead. At the time it would be most beneficial (right at the start of a nw game to get a forge right away for example) you don't have the attribute bonus anyway