Ralathar44

Imagine trying to explain Dark Souls to a new player. Yet Elden Ring is a smash hit. Same story with Terraria or even Valheim. Those chew new players up and kill them until they learn. We went through 10 years of coddling gamers and pretending they are idiots. The average gamer is 30+ years old, their kids likely game or can get help, and youtube tutorials are everywhere. There are also plenty of "noob friendly" games to play if someone wants simple stuff in the genre. Gaming is thankfully moving out of the phase where we assume every new player is a brain dead invalid. Much like Elden Ring you can play 7DTD without understanding all the nuances and do the loops, you'll learn the nuances in time. Your average player didn''t know the nuances of Apex Legends or Fortnite or DOTA 2 or Rust or etc. They just enjoy those games anyways and learn as they go.

I totally get that, but as mentioned it does mean that focusing vs being a generalist makes a difference and I also really like that. So I guess you could say I like the fact that it really makes choices matter more than I dislike the fact I have to play around it. Making choices always comes with tradeoffs by necessity. That being said i wouldnt worry about cooking. Not only will cooking max out pretty fast but most of the places cooking is in the loot table do not conflict with other magazines. You're not gonna be finding 50 shotgun magazines in cabinets, but you WILL find cooking magazines in cabinets.

Ironically that variability is good. As long as the bottom bound is high enough to ensure decent progression or the player is given some sort of agency or safeguard allowing them to keep progression at a decent level. People play alot longer when things are highly variable vs when they are much more homogeneous. The times where you get the towns without the crack a book or mailboxes or etc are what make the times you DO get them feel so good. This has alot to do with psychology and the methodologies of reinforcing habits. Variable Ratio Schedule of Reinforcement is heinously effective. tl;dr uncertain rewards. But you do need a minimum success rate of returns to maximize it. See casinos and the "wins" where you get your money back alot today vs just losing all the time like it used to be. It's well known and used constantly in gaming, though it's hard to find good publicly available examples. Talking about that kinda @%$# publicly just has a bad look so game dev normally tucks that one away in back corners in recording limited lectures and meetings never intended to see the light of public. The Jimquisition has covered it a few times and snuck away or dug up some footage before though :P. Essentially as long as there are sufficient protections against being RNG screwed you're good. And one thing I've learned about this update is that you kinda do wanna focus if you want to progress fast in an area because the loot pools get in each other's way. You'll see this really take effect when you start completing magazine collections of stuff you've perked in, other perked stuff speeds up. On the other hand if you're jack of all trades you're master of none for quite some time. So I think alot of issues have to do with people spreading themselves too thin.

You're the first person I've ever heard complain about any of this so its clearly not a common issue. I don't see anything egregiously out of place in the gunplay and not only do I not expect this to be Call of Duty or Battlefield or Destiny but I also think its not only fine but healthy for different games to implement their gunplay in different ways. As far as melee animations....communicating to the player accurately where their attack will land > else. Most other games with all the animation variations don't have near the same level of precision. And even something like Dark Souls or Elden Ring that lives off of its melee combat very successfully doesn't give you a left right left cadence when you take individual swings. We're not doing combos in 7DTD, we're getting in individual swings where they are safe. Which is actually very classic old school Dark Souls lol. Combos, for the most part, are not really a thing in actual martial combat. Certainly you'll follow up an attack if you see an opening but you're not gonna left right left kick dragon punch hurricane kick lol. You add in individual extra strikes only as appropriate to the situation. Go watch some MMA for a decent idea lol. The same extrapolates over to weaponry. I'm not gonna say "muh realism" but I will say that designing combat this way is another valid style and not everything has to be some sort of fantasy RPG where you bust out some sick 5 hit sword combo. We have the modern Final Fantasy games for that. Or Devil May Cry or God of War.

Look, while im all for adding a little magazine progression outside of looting and trader to soften things a little, (my own suggestion earlier being that 1 magazine knowledge point be given per perk level and to all underlying skills per attribute level) but end of the day the scavenging is supposed to be part of the core loop. Asking to be able to progress well without scavenging is alot like asking to be able to progress in Borderlands well without spending points in your skill trees. You can't just let someone bypass a core loop entirely without invalidating that core loop. It no longer becomes core, it becomes optional, which radically changes the design of your game. 7DTD without scavenging is just a tower defense building game where you can completely turn off the town defense aspect. If someone wants that....go to creative mode. That's the place for them. Spawn magazines for every X milestone they think is appropriate or find a mod that does it for them if they're too lazy to do it themselves but somehow not too lazy to complain about it. 7DTD or the devs are not trying to be dicks, but the game cannot be all things to all people. It has to have a concrete focused design. No matter how much people throw around terms like sandbox, sandbox games still have a focused concrete design and core loops you have to go through. Which is why Minecraft, Skyrim, Just Cause, Goat Simulator, Grand Theft Auto, etc have their own very defined and unique feels.

Then IMO its a bad introduction area because its so easy to wander into the higher danger zones which new players will totally not be ready for lol.

With intellect build and daring adventurer I had the trader offer a Q4 steel pic at Teir 2 quests. Ironically this is before the capstone for T2 that gives a workbench. So the trader rewards were way ahead of even the other trader rewards lol. On a completely separate note I'm not sure I like the current Navezgane. You start out near Joel and without a long long run you're gonna end up with the same general starting POIs every time. You've got snow to the north, burned forest and Wasteland to the south0, and east/west are long distances before you get to other areas you'd want to settle. POIs are fairly sparsely put outside of the city and all the cities are located in increased danger zones...with the easiest being the burned forest. Desert is not a real option either. This leads to some very samey repeat play throughs unless you're very comfortable with tackling increased challenge areas. And even then you have a good long hike starting out to do so in the nearest POIs in them. And if you decide to stay in the Pine Forest your early, mid, and even late game options for POIs are strikingly limited. You'll see almost all of them in 1 play through. It's good at introducing challenge areas and getting you into them, but RWG seems like a vastly superior experience atm.

Anecdotally I was finding magazines at good pace with an intellect/perception build, Had Quality 5 stun baton shortly after day 20. Iron tools 3. Almost to chemistry station, good foods, etc. Only thing lagging behind really was vehicles with mini bike a couple magazines from unlocking. At this point I was offered a Quality 4 Steel pick from the trader. Granted I had daring adventurer 2 but that was still an entire tier ahead and i was nowhere near making steel but progressing quickly. It definitely felt off. Especially because It was a Tier 2 quest, later on the capstone reward offered me a workbench as a reward lol. I was like "clearly tht should have been a Q4 Iron Pick, not steel.

I think I agree with what a friend of mine said and maybe we need a bigger % of POIs that are not dungeons. Just for variety. I love the dungeons, but I can understand some people feeling like its a little overkill atm. The non-dungeon POIs would prolly need lesser loot rewards because they're easier, but I think people could live with that.

It's definitively not the best armor though. If you measure it by the job of being armor its the worst armor in the game hands down. Even if you're concerned about mobility and stamina and sneaking with mods leather and military are just as good. Now cloth armor may be best at a particular role, but even that I contend is no longer correct. It WAS correct back when mobility and noise mods were usable and you could get bonuses, now military and leather are highly competitive in that area. In fact in this update it is even worse because injuries happen much more often and its got the least injury resistance. Its the best armor in the game only by ease of crafting and cost. And if we're going by that then the Stone Axe is the best pick and best Axe in the game :D. As mentioned before this is only true until mods. Once you add mods in leather and military do the stealth and mobility job just as well. There was a time long ago this was not the case because cloth armor could also use those same mods to be even faster and stealthier, but they wisely removed the use of those mods from cloth armor multiple updates back. So baseline cloth is more mobile and sneaks better, but with mods its just an inferior version of leather and military. I should know, I used to be one of those people who would wear cloth armor end game :D. But after those mod changes there is no reason to.

Aye, I get your intent, I'm just saying that it definitely is a large impacting global balance change and it could have larger ramifications than you may realize, often to specific weapons or tools. These would be difficult to identify without alot of testing or just letting the individual players get upset at the nerf and bug report it if their weapon/tool is affected more than feels good. Ultimately its a preference thing and something is being lost no matter where you move the air in the balloon. I'll play either way ofc, I just push back against the idea that these kinds of solutions actually solve the problem. They do not. At bet they reduce it somewhat while potentially causing new problems :).

This is now like 3 separate conversations. Choose 1 at a time and we can do this. Otherwise its just going to be huge walls of text :D. Qaulity upgrades have been covered. So I'd say either choose mods or cloth armor. Though with hyperbole like "Cloth shouldn't be the best armor in the game" (misleading at best, just flat wrong at worst) I would prolly avoid the cloth armor conversation :D.

Nope, I actually did think of that. You're not thinking of this with balance brain. First of all it is a global balance change, you're changing the balance of literally every weapon and tool lol. Q5 stone gets nerfed by 8% globally, which might not sound like much but if you cross any hit thresholds it becomes substantial. And that's going to happen across the range of quality/weapons/enemies/tools. So it won't be 8%. Let's take the common zombie. Lets say pre-nerf it took Q5 stone 3 hits and a power attack on the ground to kill...all headshots. Now it takes 4 hits and a power attack. That's effectively a 25% nerf for the most common weapon in the game. Players are going to notice their stone tools are weaker. It also STILL runs into much the same problem as currently. Right now its a question of "x is literally better than y", but even if you squish everything numerically you're forgetting about the repair costs. Stone Spear does not have repair kits required to maintain. If Iron upgrades are only a tiny bit better (and with the mod amount differences they'll prolly still be worse) then its not better at all unless you have infinite repair kits. In a game state where the water economy has been hit and glue and duct tape have significant value then Stone Spear is still going to be the better choice for smart players until roughly the same quality break point...iron 3. This is even worse for Stone Axe since its good for everything and now Stone Not only that but you've made this change at a cost. Quality now matters alot less. Not only might you still skip Quality 5 stone to Q3 iron, you might just skip qualities more in general now because it takes 2 qualities to make the difference of 1 now. 5% vs 6% for two compressed qualities.

I didn't think someone would be able to make a suggestion that would actually bother me. I have opinions and preferences ofc but im normally ok with rolling with whatever even if I argue for one thing or another. But congratulations, you've suggested something I would actively hate. This would be a monumental nerf to stone gear and a moderate nerf to iron gear. We'd go back to how it was, where you'd upgrade to the next tier ASAP and quality meant nothing, only low tiers would be much weaker. Right now Stone stuff is not bad and iron is pretty good and steel is basically just bonus awesomeness. This would make stone stuff actively bad, iron good, and steel seen as required progression. Mods make a huge difference in durability, damage, and stamina efficiency. This would also put alot of stress on progression. You wanna make people @%$# themselves about magazines more? Go around nerfing the low tier stuff significantly. And I'm not even touching armor. Cloth is the lowest tier armor but its not the "worst" armor. Its a highly specialized armor for stealth. You'd just be nerfing it for no reason when this update already makes it notably worse. And again you'd be putting stress on progression since now people would feel leather is alot more needed and thus be alot more worried about magazines. No, no, 100 times no to this suggestion. Thanks, I hate it lol.

Then either we have to nerf down everything below steel 3 to make room for that additional power gap between each tool or we have to make the character even more overpowered at high end. You cant just manifest the power ranges that don't overlap out of nowhere. As mentioned above, this is very much not a tweak, tis a global balance affecting thing.

I mean the difference in all previous versions of the game is that the moment you touched iron or steel you no longer used stone or iron. High quality meant nothing and might as well not have existed. Now quality matters more than simply what something is made out of. No longer with a dull, off center rusted axe head tied onto a random stick be better than a master crafted meticulously balanced stone axe shimmering in the halfllight with how sharp it is. I like this version better and I don't know what you could do other than make the total difference between best craft steel and worst crafted stone even larger. If anything the current version is more true to life. Iron didn't immediately replace copper and stone, steel didn't immediately replace iron. The expense, maintenance, and quality were big deals. New metal techniques and learning how to get the impurities out and etc.

Considering the disagreements Ive seen you have with others I think my earlier suggestion for giving small amounts of knowledge progression via attributes + perks and an additional minor amount of magazine chance weighting via attributes is about the best you're gonna get lol. Most people don't seem to be interested in the trader being made strong enough to be able to ignore scavenging and already consider the quest rewards it has to be too strong. (outside of the obviously bugged ones) Source of the suggestion I'm mentioning:

Survived the infection, got my last honey to cure the final bit on day 7. Ate it. This apparently summoned a dog pack. I saw a dog chasing a deer and I laughed instead of instantly running to safety and that's all she wrote lol. For bonus points I ran to the nearest POI (too late) and there was another @%$#ing dog there waiting near his dog house to see what Hello Fresh Meat had delivered him. Survived ludicrous odds and 50%+ infection to die to the paw patrol. Would do again :D. Literally next POI, scratched by a pig, up to 10% infection again, GD IT lol.

That's nowhere near enough information. Bare minimum you need to include all relevant perk levels and if you're super concerned about it then recording raids on relevant POIs would be best. And even then as many data points as possible as RNG is RNG. You could raid 2 days and get nothing then visit a new trader and get 3 magazines from their defunct workstations.

Overall I'm having a blast. Navegane. My fort/agility playthrough is at day 25ish and got its arse beat at first. I rolled the int/percept build n the post/screenshot to take another shot at reproing people's magazine or progression issues with another data point playing it more quest/trader heavy like man other players do. Outside of the injury/infection struggle buss though its been an absolutely smooth first 5 days.

I think I might actually have a good suggestion for the devs that most people would be happy with. It'd help those with poor RNG where getting just a few more magazines matters, it shouldn't overly swamp those already having good RNG who are already swimming in magazines, and it makes intuitive sense. It even helps the hardcore builder/farmer types a little. Right new putting points into perks influences magazine drops. But what if it also gave you a single knowledge point in that area? For example if I took my first 7 points and put 3 into intellect for int 4 then skilled 2 points into Advances engineering and 2 points into locksmithing this would give me 4 points into Workstations and only be 1 magazine drop away from the forge. That's not going to break the bank or get you workstations instantly, and its not like the old system where poof, you suddenly know the things and its day 2, but it gives people who invest a headstart into getting those first crucial upgrades on top of the RNG magazine bonus which may or may not pan out. You still need to find that first magazine to get the forge (which will prolly be at your trader in one of the defunct workstations!) and you'll still need the materials to build and use it. And you'll have spent all of your initial points on non-combat stuff. But the option is there for a day 1-2 forge if someone deeply specializes.. This still ultimately leaves most of the progression to RNG magazine drops, it doesn't stop you from having to go out and scavenge, it's not going to get you to 60 magazines, but its guaranteed measurable progress right out of the gate towards what you want. If you want to dump those first 7 points by putting 4 into fortitude and then 3 into Brawler then you'll have 4/5 knuckles knowledge already good for quality 2 knuckles wrap with 1 magazine away from quality 3 and THEN increased magazines drops. Also lets use Attributes too! Lets say every attribute point gives you a point of magazine knowledge for a random perk under that attribute. AND every point into an attribute adds a tiny amount of magazine weighting for its perks. Let's say 1/5th as much bonus weighting as a perk does. So if you went agility 5, you'd get 5 magazine knowledge spread randomly between Bows, Handguns, Blades, and Armor and you'd get 1 perk point worth of increased magazine loots for all of them.

So far in my two runs my workbench was up on day 21 in my completely unspec'd run with no trader quests. My spec'd run with trader quests is on day 5 and already has 7/10 magazines needed for it. Prolly on track for a 7 day workbench, 10 at worst. 1 point in advanced engineering, 1 in lock picking (also raises workstation magazine chances!). This run I've pretty much just been straight looting and doing POIs starting out. Though I spawned right near a POI with a zombie dog and while I killed it I've been infected for 5 days straight, currently at 42% infection. FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU lol. EDIT: Achieved Workbench on Day 5, but Oh Jesus it got wwwoooorrsssee. How am I still alive? :D. That is literally the most hp I'm allowed to have through the injuries haha. s://imgur.com/wcNa

Farming and Workstations are non-comparable. Farming has always unlocked way faster and is intended to max out early mid game while workstations and steel max out end game. Farming in the last update took 7 points to unlock everything. Workstations int he last update took 15. Why are you expecting them to take the same amount of time simply because we're using magazines now? Most people will prolly be getting steel/cement at day 30+, like normal. I'd expect somewhere between 1-2 weeks per workstation, depending on how you play and your spec. Maybe a bit longer. And trust me you can survive just fine to day 35+ with cobblestone and iron. Steel and concrete isnt even needed until demolishers, its just bonus.

Never play a game based on what you think it might be one day or what it could be. That route leads to Star Citizen lol. Even IF the devs have your exact ideas in mind (which is highly unlikely, not just for you but for any of us) it doesn't mean it'll work out. Ziplines were intended, the behemoth was intended, But they were cut. Could they still happen one day? You never know, crazier things have happened, but this is the game we have. Similar even the game that exists today is not guaranteed. It may play completely differently from now 5 years from now. And honestly there is nothing wrong with that. Gamers have this flawed idea that games have a final destination and perfect end result and vision. But that's false. Games simply stop being developed at some point. For single player single purchase games this is usually when the developer either hits the goals they want to or starts work on a new project because sales of single purchase single player games drop off and become smaller over time, which is why its called a "tail". However in the realm of infinite money continued development there is still no end goal. There cannot be. The moment you are happy and stop development the playerbase stagnates and starts to shrink and die. Maybe 0.00001% of games sustain at this point. A small handful of names like L4D or TF2, but those games are either free or so close on sale they are effectively free...otherwise even they would not have sustained. And they are either monetized or used as loss leaders for an entire platform. Like it or not, multiplayer or singleplayer, development always has to keep a game changing so it doesn't get stale and die. and ironically even bad changes that you can later follow with good changes are still better than no changes for 99.999% of games. One of the first games I know of that learned this lesson was Starcraft 1. It got so well balanced at one point it was near perfect and they didn't want to touch it. But then the unexpected happened, the game become completely "solved" and strategy mostly disappeared. It became a game mostly about APM and knowing the existing strategies. Interest fell off, the playerbase started shrinking, and Blizzard did the only thing it could...it started making changes again intentionally balancing the game so the cycle of balance could begin again and the game recovered its interest and playerbase. So the previous goal was perfect balance, the new goal was staying close to perfect balance but having continual change.

IMO nighttime darkness inside of buildings during heavy rain that blocks out the sun is great. Bring torches, when done take the torches with you. Same with the darkness outside. And when it happens at night you basically can only see yourself and the road and glowing eyes :D. And fog happens reasonably often too. I LOVE it! It also means you need to put more torches at your base meaning slightly more heat :P. The only bit of feedback I have though is that rooms do not respect you removing blinds and curtains. I wish that if you took out blinds and curtains in a room it got a little brighter, even if its only a little. Or if you bust a few holes in the wall. But im sure that's prolly complicated to code lol.