meganoth

That one I can already answer, we crafted our first wrench. We are not that far into our game right now. What you seem to be missing is that balancing magazines with loot drops is an ongoing effort by TFP. As I said before, In B313 crafting was ultra fast, in B317 it is probably too slow, but in B328(?) it could be the other way round again. Eventually you should be able to craft some and find some stuff. On q6 items: Madmole recently said that they are thinking about making q6 craftable again, because of the new crafting mechanisms. Partly I agree with him (for tier0 and tier1). But this won't change or improve the balance of crafting and looting in my opinion, that must be done by balancing the magazine drop rate and the quality of loot drops.

Had to edit my previous post heavily above because I missed something in the OPs description. But it seems clear that normally in groups of players everyone wants to have a piece of the cake, loot, magazine stack, ... . In my group as well, I myself pushed for our group dividing up the end loot room boxes of a POI because I wanted to open a fair share as well. (I said normally, I am sure there are groups who, after playing some and knowing what it will mean, might choose to give all magazines to one or two people and live happily ever after)

There are files in your savegame that define for each area what is changed from the initial world. If you delete such a file or the file becomes gibberish because of a failed write or a game crash then the area resets to the initial state. I would guess your base was sitting between two areas and one of the two area files got damaged. Normally this does not happen, except when the game crashes or the PC is too slow for the game.

EDIT: Arrgh, missed that you said that you HAD discussed it in the group before. So evidently P3 had a change of heart later after playing it and instead of talking to you silently acted on it. Urrgh. Maybe you should all have talked about it before and not two of you deciding for the rest (at least it sounds like you decided without asking P3). While P3 was acting rather childish, if he were part of the initial discussion, he probably would have said immediately he seems to have found out later that he wants to read magazines as well. Then you would have had an opportunity to assign magazines for group-relevant-items (workstations and farming/cooking come to mind) to the 2 always-on players and magazines for items only of interest to P3 to him for example. Lets say he chose to go into PER then he would want to use spear and rifle magazines, so what's the harm if he reads them? He could also get wrench-magazines in that case even though it means the others might sometimes have to wait for a day to get a better wrench. He could also get to learn magazines of weapons nobody else was using. Or Armor, since armor crafting isn't something that has to be done asap and you often find alternatives in loot and at the trader.

Where is your freedom for players of a group to decide their own group dynamic? Some groups might WANT to pool all recipes into one hand so someone is the crafter for the group (even if he needs to to other jobs as well to be fully occupied). Other groups want to give everyone the same number of magazines, or just distribute to whoever fits best to get the recipes. I don't think the game should solve social problems. Even without magazines a player could play uncooperatively in co-op, for example by storming ahead and always looting the loot room chests while the others are still removing the zombies or using up all the steel and glue for his weapons and armor. In an MMO with random pick-up groups you need an in-game solution for this, in a game where you play co-op with people you choose to play with they can and should deal with it themselves.

From my viewpoint it isn't. The fight between a perk system (no matter how the recipes are handled) and LBD is right now at 58% for perks and 42% for LBD. Recipe learning is just a part of the progression and already had learn-by-looting in earlier alphas.

How do you know? Modding may not work, but spawning with creative mode seems perfectly possible on console.

And if those people have been playing a playstyle that is outside of the scope of what TFP is balancing and testing, then that happens. And that is inevitable with a game where additional mechanics are added or experimentation still happens. There was one person who needed the player character running as fast backward as forward for his "playstyle". When TFP changed that he was correct that it destroyed his "playstyle" but there never was a guarantee given that it would be in the game for all eternity. If you can't change your habits or have no fun doing so, and if you are not willing to install mods, then a new alpha can result in this game being not for you anymore. Many do not accept that and some of them resort to drama. Drama is if someone posts his disappointment for multiple alphas into the forum when it is clear the game is not going back to supporting his way of playing the game (not saying you do or did, just a general example). Drama is when someone claims that "TFP deliberatly destroyed my playstyle because they don't want me to have fun". No they don't do that deliberately, that just happens with "playstyles" that are not part of the design goals or balanced play style that TFP is going for. (Again, not saying you said that). Drama is when someone claims "There was no reason for this change" even after he gets told why the change happened (usual disclaimer, not you AFAIK). Yes, because TFP does not give you or anyone design rights. And no developer does. Not even modders do that. Please try to tell one of the modders that he should make some big change because his mod would be better that way and in almost all circumstances he will tell you where you can put your opinion. "Hey Khaine, your mod is excellent, but I don't like the LBD in it, please remove it". Don't think he will appreciate my suggestion. And even if 20 forum users demand the same he will not budge. What you seem to be ignoring completely is that all heavily critiizised systems also had a lot of positive feedback for them. We had lots and lots of controversial changes but never one where the forum was of one opinion. And often even many critics have changed their opinion later after some balancing happened. It is. And TFP corrects those dropped balls by hammering on that ball until it fits. That is their right. They can decide HOW to fix the problems. Well the development time is simply a dead horse flogging topic. Many users are even happy about getting a new game every year, including me. Nobody mentioning the 10 years brings something new to the table. It is just senselessly repeating the same old fact. So what? It is what it is. And many like it that way. If development is too slow for a game of that scope then maybe MM didn't order enough crunch time, or they all are too slow. Doesn't matter, this won't be changed for your pleasure, that is an internal issue TFP has to decide over or deal with. You are not on the board of directors. I as a player think they have done everything right, because I still have fun playing this game, after 5 years of alphas, and that is at least as unusual as you think the 10 years are. I bought lots of other games that were probably developed in less time and they were $/%§%, some subjectively some even objectively.

Please be careful with prediction you make from a single run or even a few runs. Random IS random and there have been even mathematicians who made serious mistakes when trying to find statistical truths. People are also really really bad at judging events that are random. You can not really make that determination above without having analyzed a hundred runs at a minimum (or peaked into the XML). This example, you put 2 points into something and 2 quests without a drop? That is statistically so insignificant, it is like you were throwing two dice and when they show 5 and 6 you then conclude that these dice will always show at least 5. Once you have played that same scenario say 20 times and never got a magazine of that type, then you are ready to voice a suspicion that maybe, just maybe the magazine could be delayed in dropping.

And he said it to a poster that was claiming he sees lots of unhappy people. Which happens every experimental and has statistically no significance at all. So Madmole gave his opinion, not sugar-coated at all. And he may have reasons for it, because he can observe some drama every experimental of every alpha again and again, but up to now they were more popular than ever each alpha and the drama was unwaranted. At the moment it is probably just his opinion, though in the past it turned out to be correct. Seeing that many of you use rather drastic words to describe what TFP does I think he has every right to not mince words as well. There is a simple fact, there will always be some players who were happy with earlier incomplete versions and who will be left behind because the direction that TFP goes with the game will not suit everyone. There will always be disappointed players. For them there is no difference between this game getting **objectively** worse and worse or the game just going away from their tastes. But there is a difference and no forum poster is able to see the difference just by looking at the forum, especially not prematurely after just 2 weeks and one patch in the experimental. I was replying to you above because you said something which is obviously true (that sentence posted a lot recently) but you made the also obviously wrong conclusion, because it wasn't used to dismiss people again and again, but was simply quoted a lot by some forum posters. You maybe have not noticed this or in the heat of the discussion forgot that or just got the wrong impression. No matter, that sentence did not get **used** a lot, it just got **quoted** a lot. I also was giving my opinion that it was used mainly to generate drama. Just my opinion, because that quote is, taken in context, quite ok in my book. I don't think it means that TFP ignores everything negative, it means they don't prematurely make conclusions from a few forum posts.

Please write carefully. If you claim something it better be true or someone will take you up on it and the discussion drift away from what you really want to say. They will make magazines drop faster, but what you may not know is that the bonus is quite small, 2% per perk point. It is just designed as a safety net against too much randomness in magazine finds THAT is why I think people should not think about magazines all the time when they perk into something. Look what the perk gives you and only think about magazines if that small bonus makes a difference for you (i.e. if you had bad luck with a magazine type just not dropping it might make sense to help a bit) Crafting was no joke in B313, I could craft a tier1 weapon at quality 5 at day 5 when I only had looted quality 2 stone weapons. It may or may not be a joke now. Shows that it just depends on some further balancing to get it right, or some smaller changes where and how you get magazines. To sum it up: Magazines are important in my view, the magazine find bonus from perks not that much. And drop chance is still getting balanced When I can find a lvl6 pipe machine gun, but have the option to craft a q3-q5 AK47 I will craft and take the AK with me. The lvl6 pipe machine gun is the joke then. I think the q6 weapons are just the placeholders for the legendary weapons. Until they are in the game this is all just talk about a temporary measure. And the drop chance of q6 tier3 weapons is probably still much too high (at least it was in A20, not idea if they changed that)

But then you already found it, didn't you?

If you refer to the fact that you need xp for progressing in perks then you are forgetting that it would have to be called learn-by-loot-shoot-craft-harvest-blockupgrade. Factually that makes all worthwile activities xp generators and the way of progression is still perks. Yes, even crafting in workstation gives small but diminishing returns again and it may have been this way even in previous alphas. It never will be used as major xp source though because TFP saw how bad it was for the game with people crafting stone axes through the night. Even many proponents of learn-by-doing do not want this back. If on the other hand you just wanted to express your feeling that the game puts too much emphasis on the trader-loot-loop I even agree with you in parts but I don't want to muddy the issues. Crafting progression by the way has principally not even changed from before since finding recipes or finding magazines is all learn-by-loot. The only principal difference now is that the fast track of getting recipes by perks has vanished. TFP at the moment is rebalancing in an experimental inside an alpha version. In Version B313 it seemed that looting did not matter, I could craft a q5 tier1 turret while I did loot nothing above q3 tier0 stone stuff. In B317 now crafting may be the loser again. Is it weird? I don't know, I would say from previous alphas that is the normal effect of how TFP does its balancing. How immersive was it that you could loot gas and gas cans would materialize without fail? I tell you, it was totally immersive because you were used to it. Did you every complain about it? In all my years here on the forum I have not seen a single post complaining that gas cans materializing when you need them was an immersion problem. Everyone accepted that you just had containers when you need them and that they were simply not represented in the game. So, my advice, don't think about it, in 2 weeks you will be used to it and it becomes natural, just like using an acid bottle and not getting an empty bottle back. Just like eating a meat stew and not getting any container back. The only real immersion issue is that you can't really get water from lakes. But even to this you will get used to, just like you got used to that you never need to really use the toilet. Or that you can't brew coffee in coffee machines, that lamps still work but refrigerators not. That you can built a working intelligent drone but install no weapons, that you can built a 4x4 but not add a machine gun on top. That you can't simply glue your weapon flashlight mod to your helmet. All of this could be immersion breaking if you let it. Space is irrelevant. I am happy that I have new necessary objects I need to place somewhere in my base because I build for function. If you build for beauty just put them outside on a field and they won't impede you in your artistic expression. But I agree that a dew collector upgrade would be very nice. Though I also would predict that in mid or late game a single player will check the collectors only when he needs water and that will be twice a week at most if he isn't into explosive arrow production. And I also agree that the trader-quest-loop is overdone. My solution is reduction of the trader rewards. But I don't expect any changes in that regard in the next few patches. That is a longterm goal. Just stop there. Lots of people come here and post their prefered scheme. But first of all it IS premature, we are in the second week of experimental. TFP will first try to make the current scheme work and only if it fails horribly will think about a replacement months from now. Secondly lots of people don't even spend a few minutes getting the kinks out of their schemes and post broken ideas. Even if you DID think about carefully about it for a while your scheme will get lost in all the other broken schemes posted. And there is more: TFP said that **one** of several objectives was to get glass jars in line with other containers in the game, i.e. like any other container they should simply not be in the game. IF you propose any scheme that brings back glass jar now, you will be ignored. Vanishing glass jars is not just a result of the redesign, it is one of the reasons for the redesign.

Yes, because everyone who tries to generate drama quotes that one post of Madmole. No one else has said it.

There is lots of stuff you can craft in the game and often the stuff you craft is important for your survival. But you are also very fast with crafting and you can do it on the side, so you can't really do that as a full time job unless you craft more than anyone can use. As I don't see a line "The Survival Horde Crafting Full Time Job Game" up there that seems ok to me Would you like 7d2d being a game with full time crafting? Where you need to click and move the mouse and do all sorts of tasks for 10 minutes to craft a single knife? THEN the crafter would have a more important role. The crafter we wouldn't have as nobody in our group would like to do such a job. While we're at it, lets make farming time-consuming as well, so we need a full-time crafter and a full-time farmer. Which we also wouldn't have ... 😉

I can buy better gear at the trader. Sometimes. Sometimes not. Often not the weapon I want. Often it costs a leg and an arm and is still just a small upgrade. At the same time I have those perk points and when I put them in a weapon perk I also get an upgrade, practically free. And the best of it all, it stacks with any improvements from buying better weapons. So no, I don't agree. I invest in important ultility perks AND in weapon perks. I don't see how crafting q6 gear is changing anything. Sure, it seems a sensible move at least for lower tiers, but it won't help anything with the crafting/looting balance.

We do only limited running while we are short on food or water. Costs some time but also saves a lot of stamina. 2 of us in our 4 man group had to travel >1km as well. I would say because I walked a lot I was still more or less at half water on end of day 1 and I think even had my one jar of water still to drink. Oh, and I did a shortcut and did not go to my trader because it would have been a detour of more than another km. It will be a lot easier visiting him when I have a bicycle and I don't win anything visiting him now without dukes. On a previous game (which we had to abandon after the patch) I bought myself a vitamin and then used it to eat lots of rotten sandwitches and drank from a pool, then healed myself with first aid bandages.

I heard that it may be difficult drinking from shallow water less than a block high. Maybe he just found the right angle and you didn't. Only an idea. Maybe drinking lowers the water but I think it is very unlikely that the water is replenishing. So I don't think it is because he drank first both times. But as I said, just guesses.

10-12 bottles for one player? That seems very high. Maybe you have a very stamina-draining playstyle. Do you already wear heavy armor? Run continuously? As a group you should be able to get dew collectors faster. If say 3 people do 2 clear quests on day 2 they get 800x6 = 4800 dukes aka 2 filters + 3 teas from the vending machine. And they even could take the most expensive quest rewards and sell that to get some more dukes.

Ah okay, I misunderstood you about the mountain of food. In earlier alphas you would have simply eaten lots of burned meat and drank as much water as needed to offset the water drain. Now water is limited and suddenly burned meat's supposed downside is actually one.

Some forum users are very good in inventing moronic reasons why TFP does this or that change so they look better as critics of those changes. Don't believe everything Digging zombies were in the game in early alphas, but that got turned off for a few alphas because of the inflexible AI making swiss cheese out of the landscape. After Faatal came on he rewrote the AI and so they could turn it on again. So digging zombies were always intended that way. And it was always intended that there are no completely safe areas and especially not just already 2 blocks underground. But some players got used to it and now it was TFP out to destroy their playstyle. Furthermore underground bases are still possible with digging zombies, you just need to do a bit more work and actually safeguard that base like you have to do with all overground bases. When zombies began digging, that was the first time for me that I was interested in building underground bases. Because without a threat the design of such a base does not matter at all. TFP made that change for themselves and their game and because it was always thought that way but also for all players thinking like me. Not to drive Sycris out of the ground

Thanks, that clarifies it some more. I will check with our game, the q3 AK must have replaced something. It will be interesting to see what quality was replaced in our case.

Sorry, I edited my post later to clarify a bit. Yes, there is a "secret stash", just that the additional items are mixed in with the normal loot.

Here: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/28129-alpha-21-dev-diary/page/314/#comment-523976 https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/28129-alpha-21-dev-diary/page/315/#comment-524168 and here: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/32184-why-lvl-6-gear-cannot-be-crafted/#comment-524360 Please take a second and actually play the game with DA before you make any conclusions. The money bonus can be safely ignored. DA gives you access to the new secret stash. And that may or may not be the way to catapult you out of the stone age (too) early. I don't know myself, I haven't played far enough and have only seen a glimpse of its power when a q3 AK was offered with DA1 at a time when nobody of us has more than q1 or q2 stone tools and weapons.

I think everyone finds more cooking books than anything else because kitchens are so common. Which isn't too bad because at game start finding cooking magazines is good, but by mid game many players will likely have unlocked all food recipes (which seems too soon) but be far behind with all others magazines On the other hand weapon boxes or weapon-themed POIs are rather scarce, especially at the start when normal players don't want to tackle tier3 POIs like the shotgun messiah store yet. At the moment that means many players have no way to craft better versions of their chosen weapon in early game and also do not find them commonly in loot as you find more weapon parts for tier 1 weapons than complete pipe weapon There is space for improvement here.