meganoth

You might have standards, the game industry does not 😉. Especially indy games have a lot of leeway anyway, with graphics and anything, but even big AAA publishers bring out games sometimes that are only graphically at "full release" standard. Lets say they released A16 after 5 months of polishing/fixing bugs. Then started Early Access for the follow up game 7d3d with what now is A17, which felt as the biggest break of continuity for many players (aka just like a new game) and continued. All the players still playing the game now would have followed and bought into the new EA, at a minimum to check out the new stuff which you call "re-doing things". Sorry, I find that "re-doing" argument silly. While they have been experimenting with their progression all the time (the "re-doing"), a lot of new features appeared as well. But they never promised to **increase** content (for example new workstations, new weapons, new recipes) beyond what there is now and it seems they have no intention to. Understandable because they might think about adding that stuff into 7D2D 2 or an expansion. I suspect what TFP is doing is the same thing that Blizzard did (without the public watching) when it still had standards to bring out the "perfect" game, i.e. experimenting until every part of the game feels right for them. Naturally whatever is perfect for them is not perfect for everyone else. Good point. 👍 But here you got lost somewhere. "some people thought"? Some people think the earth is flat. The only serious communication out of TFP (AFAIK) was a guess that the console version would come out late this year or early next year and that was the typically optimistic guess by Madmole if I remember correctly 😉 My guess is that A22 for PC will be delayed because they want to release it for both PC and consoles at the same time (at least one of the stable versions though, not experimental) Console version only materialized as a project less than a year ago when they presented their publishing partner. Before that I would guess the only guy working on it was their lawyer and one of the studio heads probably to find and make a deal with some publisher. I assume that the publisher is also funding the external workforce for the porting and is paying the "bribes" to MS and Sony, so this might also be one of their investors (just a guess). At least one game they are developing right now is simply because of the pipelining every mid-sized developer has to do as game designers have no work to do when the previous game is fully designed but still in production. This does not cost them anything extra as it concerns people among those 60 who would otherwise be reading newspapers or drinking daiquiries. The new studio they created for the other game may be contract work where whoever hired them fronts the bill. Or they actually have enough money that they were confident enough to create that second studio. Probably. Which means they either have made sure to give themselves enough time when negotiating or not. In the latter case they will have to release whatever game they have financed by this as is (with bugs and all). But it doesn't mean they have to add microtransactions (your original point) unless they specifically had this in mind when they made the deal with the investor. Lets get back to your original point: Your theory seems to be that they were in financial trouble and so they have added investors to fill the gap until they get money and are now looking for ways to get money, like microtransaction. But we don't see any indications of this, no hasty release of 7D2D, no changes in schedule, no shrinking of staff, no crunch to get out bandits in A21 already. My theory is that they are not in financial trouble (at least in their own view) as they have been expanding, adding new developers and a new studio. Which also often results in taking up investors, but does not mean the company has to take drastic measures. A lot of what I used as indications is either official knowledge or has been hinted at from TFP sources. And a crude calculation of their income and costs seems to check out as well. Not really "the same crap". Notice how many players regard what followed A16 as fundamentally different than A16. I don't play the FIFA games so can't make the comparison, but the differences between A21 and A16 are probably much bigger than between any two consecutive games in that series. And don't forget that they easily could have added "fluff" content like more recipes, workstations and weapons to make A21 into a sequel instead of another alpha. And they didn't need to release in two years again, if they made 7d3d with Early Access again, much of the money would have immediately appeared in their coffins.

Good point. You would expect to get out with "heaps of clothes" though, just like you would expect to get heaps of (healing) bandages when raiding the hospital

And is your guess a 50/50 guess or do you have any information that makes it more likely than the alternative? 😁 . Since they said that they would develop the console version inhouse it seems likely that at least those are included in that figure. It also seems likely (and may have even been mentioned by TFP) that some of the PC developers are at least part-time working for the console port. I know of at least one person doing that, the newly hired network guy. Though he isn't proof of the work splitting as the network work has to span all platforms anyway. They could have released a much smaller game years ago with a short polish beta (a rather rudimentary form of bandits was already in the game files once). Nobody would have batted an eye. Forget finishing, in a way the game will never be finished. But it will get released eventually as TFP surely don't want to release multiple alphas on console!! They already hint at the console version with "soon". They can't do that for years. I don't see what the money sunk into the legal battle has to do with our argument. Ah ok, so they do have investors. I don't think they would take them in except to finance expansion, like the second game studio, or the new effort to go into console space. And what could they have promised investors in return? Probably a cut of the console sales or the second game sales. And releasing the game 4 years ago would have been even easier as they could eventually sell what will be "7D2D" as "7D2D 2" (or "7D3D") instead. And have almost double income with much less trouble and from a much larger userbase than just the whales.

About progression and gamestage: You progress by getting XP and finding stuff, but you also get more difficult zombies when your level grows, and your gamestage depends largely on your level. So it does not matter much if you play slowly, the game will adapt to you. It does not matter if you don't get the XP from traps or your level is lower than someone else at the same day. It is important that your equipment (weapons, armor, mods, workstations) grows in equal measures with your levels. And it is important that you have a place to fight the horde night and continually repair and upgrade it week after week.

Not sure if the stack size needs adapting as you still find the same amount of cloth as before. Which for example lead to about a full line of stacks of cloth in our groups parts chest after 4 weeks. Just now there will be an additional drain so there would be much less stacks there. Sure, you may collect more cloth now because you actually need it, but I doubt you will normally get more than 250 cloth in a single scavening run before you head home to your base

You don't discard the jar. Whatever container you are using, you probably take it with you and fill it with water again. It just isn't simulated, exactly like the gas cans or the containers you store food into like meat stew (or did you think you were storing meat stew by itself, just filling the rather fluid stew into your backpack?)

15 million copies would be even after steams cut somewhere about or over 50 million. TFP did only grow slowly and is now at 50 people(?), but the biggest growth seems to have happened in the last few years, so as a crude estimate we could assume an average of 30. At 100k expense per employee per year they should still have a few millions left. Though some of that may have been already invested in getting developers for a second team that is developing a future income source (I don't know if that team is already included in the 50 people mentioned above or not). And the release of the console version happening presumably in less than a year should get them new money. I don't know if they have investors, but it is entirely possible from the numbers that they are still fully independent and with a cash reserve. And they seem to have a lot of options besides getting whales or doing microtransactions even if that were possible.

Interesting. Maybe I had the same happening to me a few days ago, but I am not entirely sure. I thought I had downloaded the stable server (for a test where version didn't matter) only to then find out that it was identical to the experimental in a file to file compare.

There is one tiny info bit in it which I wasn't sure about lately: The console version will be more than A21 which doesn't have new character system and plant fiber armor and that must mean the version will be Alpha22.

Hope I remember to watch the video once I have played the POI myself, but just now I don't want to watch spoilers.

Black border around the shape of the numbers would make them readable in all situations Maybe make a bug report

At the moment there are two folders where you can put mods, but that is only for a limited transition time probably ending with A22. Then your mods will only work if you put them below appdata/roaming/7dtd.

Spoken like a brute squad 😁. In any war information is one of the most valuable resources. So when would you spend XP points as a new player? Since you first have to read the descriptions to know where to put points and what you don't need at the moment? Wasted time to read? You read something and you get valuable information for that, right? Similarily what about if you die of thirst on day 2 as a new player because you don't have a clue how to get water? Would it have been wasted time to read the journal entry then? I am not saying someone should read through all of journal pages on night 1, but he has ample opportunity to be aware there is a sort of info system where he could look up stuff if something isn't clear to him, like where to find water or food. Time is only wasted if after that time you are not better prepared fo whats coming. And getting the info about the water filter is surely worth more than the few hundred xp you get for shooting zombies from your hideout in that first night 😉 PS: Actually as a single player you can pause the game while reading such a page with ESC

There is a big icon on the menu line on top among other options. I don't have any pity for players who don't click at least once through those options and check out what there is in night 1 or 2.

One problem is the usual, a corrupt player file. Whoever operates the server has to delete the files in the savegames Players directory with your EOS number. Your EOS number can be found in the logfiles for example. Then you will have to start from level 1 again, but with the givexp command and creative menu you can get your levels, books and items back. Two further suggestions: Make a backup of the save game on your server before your game sessions. And the router in front of the server should open the ports 26900(TCP) and 26900-26903(UDP) so you can connect to the server with litenetlib. The first logfile you posted has a more unusual problem. I can only guess, it seems that you did get malformed data from the server or from the xbox network that could not be decoded. Maybe using litenetlib would fix that, maybe not.

Did you notice there is a Journal in the game with lots of information? If you are stumped again, take a look. There is a section about water and the water filter for example

Sorry, the exception doesn't tell me anything. Maybe post a full log?

I assume it is about this line (for auto shotgun): <passive_effect name="EntityDamage" operation="base_add" value="10" tags="perkBoomstick"/> <!-- damage offset --> And this line didn't exist in A20 for shotguns while something similar does exist for higher levels of other guns. The initial creator obviously knew of the problem of adding damage to the base damage for the shotgun. Seems like either he forgot why he initially didn't add this line now, or someone new tried to balance it and didn't know. If they want to cleanly use base_add for the shotgun they probably have to specify the base_damage for shots as the total damage (i.e. 100 for shots) and then divide damage by RoundRayCount (in the C# code where gun shots are handled) IMHO surely not intentional, needs a bug report. Or maybe @Jugginator is still following this thread.

What that probably means is that you are starting the game server as root user. You can do that, but it is not a good idea from a security standpoint: If somone knows a security vulnerability in the game he immediately has full control over your complete server machine. You normally should run the game server as a normal unpriviledged user, not root.

Maybe you missed it when I said that serveradmin.xml will be generated the first time you START the server, it is not downloaded. And you will then find it inside the directory where your saves are, either default .local/share/7DaysToDie/Saves/ (note the dot at the start, it is a hidden folder in your home directory), or whereever else you store your savegame by changing and uncommenting a line in your serverconfig.xml

serveradmin file will be automatically generated when you start the server and it isn't there. It is located where your saves are stored. If you didn't change it that would be in .local/share/7DaysToDie/Saves/

I agree there really is no use for antibiotics. The 5% of honey mixed with the probability to find them seems to be a good balance though for making it a race against time. A single honey often doesn't cure you, it just gives you the necessary delay to (maybe, probably) find another honey. And that might cure you or you didn't get it in time and it is again delaying it and the race continues. The big problem with this is that the race itself is frightfully boring (you hit the nail with that), you have to run around empty forests and hit tree stumps. I think it would be a lot more fun (besides being more logical) if you needed to find medical POIs and loot them for the chance to find whatever gives you the 5% of either cure or delay.

You could use "app_update 294420 validate" so it also checks everything is loaded. If there is something missing maybe call app_update twice. Never heard of serverpermissions.xml and I don't find it on my server. serveradmin.xml still works

The herbals that cure 10% infection are for mid game. I don't have anything against the honey, but either it is sometimes found in medicine typed containers or there is some new pill with anything between 3-5% cure that IS found in medicine cabinets. Or there is an early recipe for such a pill you can craft with stuff you find in medicine cabinets. The way people get into trouble with infection and having a hard time finding a cure is surely a positive and adds to the survival theme. I have a problem with that there is no way to find out where to find the cure and the sensible place has none. A normal player won't even realize he is looking in the wrong spot and put it up to bad luck. Especially when he eventually finds antibiotics in a medicine cabinet, but not because luck returned but because he finally reached the necessary level.

I'm doing fine being obnoxious here.