meganoth

Let me tell you in the most definitive words I can muster that I play with 3 friends where I absolutely definitely KNOW that I could play a fulltime miner/builder and I would get everything I would wish for, going just by what was revealed by TFP. I can guarantee you if I said to them "Guys, I'm behind in tools magazines, could you (or we) make a run through tool shops", they would not stop until that problem has been corrected. THAT is co-op. Simply going by how it is described by TFP I expect to have no problems at all. Now other players without such good friends might not get that much cooperation. I don't really know how all the other co-op players tick. So there is a wider field of "co-op" play where TFP actually has to find out how well it really works for the mass of players. Neither you nor I can predict how well most players play or can be trained to play co-op, so that will need playtesting. But I say nonsense to your premature prediction of "big chance". Which is exactly what I said. Correct. An extreme specialization that needs group play or a mod to function. There is an AI at work now that adapted the font to your pessimitic attitude 😅

Actually no. Josts argument was that extreme playstyles can not be balanced. That includes someone who just wants to mine all days without ever going out (in SP) and min-maxers whos only aspiration is to get xp as fast as possible whatever that means. Those playstyles would be ignored by TFP and have to fend for themselves, either by modding (in the first case) or getting burned out fast (in the latter case). Shouldn't we wait for actual proof that a miner/builder is not possible in COOP before assuming it? My assumption is that in Co-op it just means that real co-op players who actually cooperate will have no problems. Whether your pessimistic view or my optimistic view is the reality has to be tried out. Now if you generally assume that "co-op" just means some people group up for the xp and use a horde base some exploitable schmock built for them, then well, you may be quite right (in your universe)

Does it matter? The thing you really want is that the TFP developers improve the network. Acknowledgement from rando forum user won't help you a bit.

Mmh, wikipedia and news-media say that warband's biggest draw were multiple multiplayer modes. And that is just a very good example of something the developer can add much much easier than modders. ROFL. Seriously? Cleaning after blood moon is a complex task? Smell of flesh was a nice mechanic, but complex? Are we talking about pre-school gaming now? No, just no. You can't redefine a simple task as complex just because everything else in the game was even more simple. Moving cubes through quadratic holes will never be called a complex task for an adult even though you could find even simpler tasks like hitting a cushion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Authenticator Read this if you want to understand how it works. Note there is nothing said about any external accounts except the one you want to login to.

1$? You should wait for a steam sale some years later then 😉 I would call this hardcore crafting, but there is at least hardcore survival as a category as well, and I'm sure hardcore survival has nothing to do with 20 part vehicles. I'm very sure there are hardcore sims and hardcore shooters. Maybe Factorio could be called a hardcore construction game. Maybe you should simply say that hardcore for you is only complexity. Not everyone will agree to your definition, but lets say it is. We have at least one mod that has more complex crafting by the way, Undead Legacy. Strange, you often complain that modders can't do this and can't do that and now your opinion seems to be that modders can do everything TFP can and everything you may want will be provided by modders. What now? TFP has the whole code to tinker with where most modders can just change the xml and only a small group of modders is able to change anything below that. Have you seen any mods adding new quest types lately? I haven't. And TFP is canon, a mod by TFP that adds legendary weapons will set the standard even if there are mods that also add legendary weapons. I know so little about their future plans that I hesitate to make any guesses besides repeating that they have two teams now, and usually that means at least two games are made in parallel and at specific times even 3 or 4 because of pipelining. Didn't you imply hardcore for you is complexity? 7D2D was never complex (from what little I know about past versions). It may have been somewhat harder to play, had more grind and a more awkward user interface, but thats it. Oh yes, and it was darker. Which of these games had real EA (with emphasis on Alpha) instead of the usual beta test phase?

You get that when you don't buy into EA.

You don't need a google account and you don't even need google authenticator. This is not the same as the login via sites google or facebook acount, this is different. Authenticators just create one-time use passwords that depend on a shared number and the current time.

Will 7D2D be on consoles too? Yes. You really seem to forget that you yourself put so much importance on "official" DLCs/expansions or a 7D2D 2 being better that you would surely buy it from TFP. So would I because as you said a DLC or expansion or 7D2D part 2 from TFP would automatically be canon. And it will be canon for a lot of mods as well because they probably want to use features newly introduced in such a DLC. Just as a simple example: If TFP added a few workstations, legendary weapons and 1-2 new quest types. Would anyone buy such a DLC or expansion after the supply of new alphas had dried out after release? Certainly. Would the work to do that take more than 1 or 2 typical alphas now? Surely not. At the moment TFP has a lot of support for modders who add xml changes but nearly no support for graphics mods. This depends very much on what TFP adds there in the future. But I suspect steamworks support alone will already improve the situation as it allows easier copying of whatever mods the server has installed to clients. Sure, but according to your theory you yourself wouldn't be here anymore, right? (EDIT: As I haven't played anything before A15 I can't say anything about whether earlier games were more hardcore or not, I'll just assume they were for this discussion) And had 7D2D been "casual" all the time then no harcore players would ever have played the game and stayed with it in your theory. Now at least you can assume hardcore players exist who pine for old times. But lets look at Bethesda again, their games were never ever hardcore. Do you really want to tell me there is no hardcore mod for Skyrim or Oblivion? https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/2430 https://gamerant.com/skyrim-hardest-difficulty-mods-ranked/ Sure, anything harder than vanilla can be called hardcore even if it isn't much and in your theory we are starting at the casual bottom. I won't test them out to find out if I'm right or wrong, but lets at least agree that there will be mods for 7D2D as well that add some "hardcoreness" EDIT: And as Kosmic Kerman reminds me we already have harcore mods for 7D2D. You might not like those mods for other aspects (like uneven style or new magic zombies) but that doesn't change the fact that hardcore mods exist, right now. M&B to Warband was just 2 years because they used the same engine and most assets. Voila. And did Warband sell well? While we don't know, player satisfaction with Warband seemes to be great and they released 2 DLCs for it so it can't have been a failure. What else does your example tell us? That it can take from 2 to 10 years for another version. Sure, if TFP really thinks they need to make a new engine for 7D2D then yes, they will need a lot more than 2 years. Higher tier of quality? Do you think that warband was made with a lower tier of quality? If not and they did warband in the same quality as Mount&Blade, why did it take them only 2 years? And why couldn't TFP do the same? Yes, they are working on more than one game. As you probably know that is very normal to have designers switch to designing the next game while the previous game is still in production. And we know they hired new staff for some unknown game in the unreal engine, so it is not impossible but also not likely that it will influence development on 7D2D. Whether all of this leads to less developers for 7D2D 2 we don't know, but TFP has all the cards in their hands. If they want the same team and team size on 7D2D 2, there is nothing preventing them.

Are you sure the compo pack-included t5 POIs are "quest" POIs ? Maybe ask the UL or CP devs how many of the t5 POIs are supposed to be quest enabled. Vanilla has the problem that there are only about 7(?) tier 5 quest POIs at all. Naturally you'll get practically the same buildings every time.

What nonsense. https://elderscrolls.fandom.com/wiki/Official_Add-ons_(Skyrim) Did the avaliabilty of mods prevent Bethesda from producing addons? No. And since one of your other complaints is about graphics and style: Are there mods that improve the visuals of Bethesda games or add stuff in the same style? Yes. And since one of your other complaints is about hardcore: Are there mods that make 7D2D massively more difficult? Yes. And another point: 7D2D 2 won't need 10 years of development. They will not start from zero, they will most likely start with 7D2D and just add features they didn't have time for to include in 7D2D.

This is relatively new. By the way,there are alternatives to google authenticator, for example FreeOTP. Does exactly the same thing.

Well, we certainly have dodge. Not as a perk, but accessible through the "adsw" keys, especially "s". Heavy armor has a big dodge malus. Now sometimes it doesn't work because of network lag or slow PC, granted. But when it works it works very well

I don't know Outlaws of the Old West, but if your only indication is that they stopped developing the game then you should take into account that EA is a method of financing a game that is much like gambling. A developer gambles on getting enough interest in a game so that sales finance his development. In a game that isn't a big hit that might mean working with just enough money to make the next patch in the hope of getting some more positive reviews, exposure and sales from word-of-mouth. Any new alpha that is down-voted on steam can spell the end of your financial means. You can blame such a developer for not finding his audience and inability to make a good game, but not that he was dishonest and trying to scam. Again, I don't know anything about Outlaws..., maybe it really was a scam.

You said "I really don´t get the mindset of forcing playstyles.". That is why I commented and doubted if that mindset even exists. Furthermore the distinction is important. Because I am sure all game developers will fix a problem with their game as it is normally played even if it handicaps a smaller subset of players who just use a small part of the game. You can lament that but the priority is set in stone. A few alphas ago someone complained his particular playstyle of how he fought zombies on horde night in the open street was made impossible by a change. That change was (presumably) not done to eliminate his playstyle but to balance combat for everyone else. End result was that he was the victim of a change that made the game better for everyone else. Call it hell for him that he can only play an older alpha now if he wants his playstyle. But just because someone finds some strange playstyle in some alpha of this game does not and can not create an obligation for the developer. Would you as a developer have done it differently? If yes, then I can't see you ever doing a public EA in an open world game, except to promote a beta phase when everything is fixed already. To quote another saying: "You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs"

If you are talking about the concrete case of the magazines, IMHO their reason for implementation was NOT to exlude any playstyles NOR was it to force people to do anything in the game. The central reason to make this change was to fix crafting. That it could force people who did not do any looting to at least adapt in some way or quit the game is a side effect. One that doesn't seems to make them have sleepless nights, but also not their design principle either.

If you have a melee base then yes, you absolutely need steel at specific places but not everywhere. If not, just concrete works even with demos and you can always double or triple it in places that need more protection. And if some defense position only holds for x hours you can create two of those for x*2 hours or 3 of them for x*3 hours ... . With the amount of concrete a miner can produce redundancy is simple to do. I don't think that previous balancing done by TFP was ever for min-maxers, because 1) we know that Madmole and Co. are not min-max players themselves and because 2) in all alphas there were min-maxers that boasted that they were bored to death because they had already the best stuff by some early day, which means they can't have been the role model for the balancing. So I don't expect this to happen. It doesn't hurt to mention it, but it shouldn't be our expectation and the basis for the discussions of what this change will bring.

I like how you put a negative spin on games of chance 😉. But the reaility is that outside Vegas, Atlantic City and loot boxes there is a world of games of chance that does not involve money. I have played card games and board games involving chance and risk-taking all my life. And in my country card and board games are still very popular. Even on the computer games like Slay the Spire and Monster Train are very popular and provide decisions between safe and risky route in spades (pun intended). I have often experienced totally different horde nights with basically the same horde base. Without that I would think that horde nights would be boring for me now. Recently one of my groups had horde night day 56 and our horde base was nearly overrun so that we thought we maybe should even build a new one. But we forgot about that idea and didn't even upgrade, just remembered to repair stuff at the last day before the next horde. Now on day 63 horde night came and the zombies did break through in an unexpected place and could get to a door that was considered a secondary defense line. But we had such a good firing position for that door that the horde night went through easy-peasy and with minimal damage. Naturally that does happen more seldom if you make a minimalist horde base that has exactly one spot where the zombies can run at. But I like to reuse existing POIs and let the layout of the POI influence the design of my horde base. And since the POI is normally larger than needed I have the space to add multiple positions from where to fight with different weapons like a sniper gun or explosives, or multiple access ways for the zombies with a different trap setup. Depending on what positions we then use, where zombies break through or demolishers explode or simply from what direction the horde comes most of the night the horde night often plays out differently.

As an afterthought, a more realistic idea would be that a specific trader or one of the vending machines (or in the future a wandering trader?) does not want dukes but has an offer to trade magazines for diamonds/gold/silver. Because he thinks that is the only currency that has value.

Sure, but are you not underestimating the power of a good build? I would expect a builder to be good at building bases so that he doesn't need the best weaponry as the base keeps the zombie away from him

The real decision is between taking the safe route and the risky route. In card games many of the decisions are exactly like that. If you could predict the outcome of a horde night with 100% accuracy then you might have a point. But the guy taking the risk and losing by not finding the recipe has still a good chance to live through horde night (probably with some more damage to the horde base, but ok, you can't win em all). And the guy taking the safe route might still get into trouble because he underestimated the horde or he made a mistake.

The industry making it a technical definition? Will never happen, why would they make criteria official they could be sued for. Didn't happen with RPG either. No, it is just one inofficial way to get some handle on a subjective term. Absent that it will be back to experts or knowledgable ṕeople in the field judging available games and drawing the line somewhere. Now I don't have any overview over the field, neither the hardcore nor the casual survival games. My opinion should be classified as ignorant as best. But if pressed I would say that 7D2D would be somewhere in the middle. Now my viewpoint is also shaded by me having played 7D2D for so long. There is some merit in saying that 7D2D has not much handholding at the start, but on the other hand one would have to include all the information in the journal (even if ignored by many) and I think there is a lot of info there.

There is no easy definition for "hardcore survival", just like many other labels you can pin on a game (or movie or book). Still there are ways to make such judgement calls, for example by asking many experts in a field and check if they agree (though not possible here) Another way to help in the determination could be establishing some criteria and saying that at least x of them need to be fullfilled. Such a list was made for the question whether something is an RPG for example. Now for survival to be hardcore I would list criterias like: 1,2,3,4) Which of water, food, weather, sickness are directly lifethreatening? 5) Is death a real punishment? (This agains calls for a subjective judgement call, sorry) 6) Is it possible to get into untenable situations/death spiral because of wrong survival decisions? 7) Is it possible to get into untenable situations/death spiral because of bad luck? 8 ) Do you need to invest more than say 40% per day for survival? (this one is really hard to fulfill for any game that does survival as a side job) Since I'm totally not knowledgable about survival games I'd say there could be a better list. And I don't know whether actual hardcore survival games would get much points in this list. I also would not know where to set a sensible cut-off point. But I don't see 7D2D getting many points in the list I drew up.

Wait a moment. Are you saying Factorio has Survival in the game? Where?

You can make ANY zombie fast and he will be hard to target, or group him to make him dangerous, or let him infect you. You don't need child zombies for this. Remember that you said above that you don't like animal zombies because they are hard to hit? Why then do you bring that as an advantage for zombie childs when it is a disadvantage against zombie animals?