zztong

I was playing with ChatGPT -- an AI that can be conversational. I asked it for feedback on 7 Days to Die... What do you like about 7 Days to Die? What do you hate about 7 Days to Die? What is the best way to fight zombies? Write a script for a commercial about 7 Days to Die.

I think they look great. I'm also excited to hear you did them as Parts. I love Parts; they're awesome.

My guess is it might have led to a scarcity of POIs available in some city districts, and perhaps some other parts of the world. But yes, I do miss the ability to put "destroyed" versions of my POIs into the wasteland only.

Both of those options are available in the Prefab Editor, but I'm not aware of them being exposed to players within the game itself. There are two "Pimp Dreams" (discussions) with similar goals:

There have been other suggestions regarding the spear. My favorite was to let it strike through bars as if it were a gun or an arrow.

With KingGen, you have to provide a data file listing all of the POIs it is to use along with information about the POI. I don't remember the details since KingGen didn't make the leap to A20. There's a KingGen discussion somewhere on these boards, but it is basically dead. I suggest you read the KingGen documentation about its configuration files.

I'm not sure I understand any subtlety you might be expressing. I can't imagine a modern business that doesn't use this approach in some way for some services, typically when we start talking about teams that deliver services to _internal_ customers. Perhaps you'll consider these: (1) "Best effort clauses" are often found in contracts where somebody providing a service cannot be specific, including being specific about a delivery deadline. These contracts are common in many industries. You can read up on those clauses and get numerous examples. (2) My current employer (Ohio University) has an IT department where "best effort" is all they promise for certain services they offer to departments. Basically, take a number and they'll get to you when they can. The service level agreements state as much. (3) Internal project teams that work on projects with an iterative approach that focus on features, not deadlines, are quite common. They have internal customers. Easily the majority of project done by my employer's custom application development team are of this type. Sure, they also do project with deadlines, but that's usually when the project is being driven by a business need to hit a certain date. Not all projects have that need. (4) I've worked in a couple of places where "when it's done" is effectively the working arrangement. For example, I was a contractor at a US West (a "Baby Bell" phone company) that published Yellow Pages. Internal developers to a legacy system were gone and the company wanted to add new features. When could I have the features ready? No idea. I'd never seen the system before. We developed a feature, tested it, released it, and then the sales people started selling ads using the feature. Of course the sales people wanted to start selling ads with the new feature once they knew we were working on it. Management wisely knew to forbid that. Management didn't want to promise something to a customer, make a sale, and then be unable to deliver. We worked that way the entire time, even after I was able to make reasonable estimates. Management never wanted to risk being in a situation where they would make a sale and then be unable to deliver. I see TFP's approach being consistent with all of those. "When it's done." You can interpret it as being said with arrogance or stubbornness, but I really just think they're using it a a concise expression of their philosophy.

Just curious ... With the hidden wires, do you still see the wires running between electric fence posts without having a wiring tool equiped?

I think the Desert is the easiest. All the animals are weak. The ground is bright at night. You won't one-shot a mountain lion (snow) or a bear (forest) with a beginner's bow while sneaking. As you say, in the snow biome you can avoid the mountain lions because you can see them. At night in the forest you might not see the bear or the wolf. In the desert, you can one-shot everything AND see them, plus vultures bring you feathers and the rabbits/chickens kill themselves on cactus.

I'm all for EVs. I drive an EV in real life and think that if 7D2D is set in the present or near future it would make sense to represent them, even if just for salvage. If they're going to be operable, I think they should be the same speed as a 4x4 and have the same carrying capacity. My current car has roughly the same performance as my former Jeep Wrangler. Really, my EV is faster and accelerates faster, but not significantly so. My Wrangler was never able to get over 85 mph. A Jeep is not a performance vehicle, handles like crap, but is lots of fun. The EV will surprise you, but won't let you take the doors and top off for a run to the beach. I could spend a bunch of time talking about how to accurately represent an EV, but there's no point since the gas vehicles are abstracted. Let an EV's capacity be the same as the game's battery bank. Let players plug the EV into a generator, battery bank, or solar panels and just recharge just like the battery bank does. Solar panels on the EV don't really make any sense (currently) but who cares. Make it a module and make the module recharge the EV's battery bank at something like 1/5 or 1/10 speed. If you want, add a some game objects to support the concept, consider two types of chargers: Dealer (stands alone) and Home (hangs on wall). I suggest not letting players recharge from them and just having them for salvage. Trivia: I've been sprinkling in EV chargers into some of my POIs. True. At speed, road noise is pretty much the same. At low speeds, the EV is often (but not always) quieter, depending on the ICE. Obviously, a poorly maintained V8 ICE with no muffler ... or a Harley motorcycle ... can rattle the dishes in a house nearby. I couldn't "rev" my EV's motor to even joke about having a drag race.

I wonder... if the game were to implement some kind of group event system, if finding a group event at the end of a T5 POI might be a compromise that extended the utility of existing POIs? Elaboration: Your group engages in a skyscraper T5 POI as a Clear Quest. You complete a clearing of the building as normal and you can get to the final loot. Included in the final loot is some object only becomes usable when the Clear Quest is finished. Interacting with that object would kick off a group event. The object could only be activated if the interacting player's group members were all within some radius of the object. The group would then face the group event. If the group event were completed, the final loot would be augmented in some way. Group Events could then take place within the T5 POI in whatever manner we think up: Group Horde (a sample type of Group Event): Horde mechanics would spawn some number of waves within the POI. Group Fetch (a sample type of Group Event): The players have a time limit to each find and retrieve their fetch quest item. The POIs existing zombie volumes would be rearmed. Obviously these are rough ideas and the devil is in the details.

I also agree, even if it were just an option that could be enabled. I assume a great many things are possible via a Mod right now. I recall looking in the XML briefly. Those tags and definitions are off the beaten path for me, but I had hope of perhaps being able to make extreme temperatures more punishing.

I assume it will be possible for a Mod to change it so that you can use your hand to gather a jar of murky water from a water source. Then you could either drink the murky water or carry it away. It would take longer than A20 to gather a bunch of murky water, but I think that's fine. I'm hopeful this would be only an XML change. I wouldn't say the presence/absence of an empty jar is itself good or bad.

I don't see where we vote, but I'm going with forum.

Interesting. Are those additive? That is, a T5 in the Wasteland would result in +255? Or are you suggesting the T5 bonus overrides the Wasteland bonus?

I don't think I'd focus entirely on numbers of zombies to define the tiers. It is a factor, sure, but I think "density" of zombies is also an important way to look at it. That is, how many zombies you face at once. I do think size is a factor because it influences time and I think you want tier 1 quests to play faster, but also because combining reasonable densities with higher number of zombies will mean more rooms, thus size. I think you also start to gate in different POI features/complications over the tiers such that by tier 5 all of the dirty tricks are viable. Plainly stated, there's a big difference between a POI with 60 zombies scattered over a sixteen rooms and a POI where you fall through a weak floor into the midst of 60 instantly active zombies. For a solo game, I agree completely. RL has a way of intruding and it sure would be nice to be able to treat a save as if it were a pause so you could pick up where you left off after three days.

I don't know that I'd rate nerd poles as a problem, but I'd likely be surprised at what people do with them. If this mental exercise is the topic du jour, then... I could see changing frames to be very weak - one hit by a zombie or friendly fire breaks one and they break under the weight of a player character should the player (or a zombie) climb, jump, or land on one. In these cases, the player has to spend time and materials improving them into a significant block. This doesn't stop somebody from building a way up to the top of a POI. It just slows it down. Nothing will, nor should, stop the construction of solutions. It only really stops tactical placement to escape zombies. I'd be okay with fragile frames. It kind of sounds like a neat mod.

That's one perspective, and I'm not saying it's wrong, but perhaps not the entire story. I would have said when I played with friends we were cooperating when dividing up the loot. A team blows through POIs super fast, resulting in the looting of more POIs in the same amount of time. I'd even argue a team takes the challenge out of nearly all POIs. I'm not always a fan of "The Level Treadmill" found in many games either. I don't notice is so much in 7D2D, but in other games (like Pathfinder 2) I'm right there with you. Maybe some would say comparing a computer game to a pencil-paper game is a bad comparison, but the mechanic exists in both. I know some POI developers hate that relatively new characters can take successfully on Tier 5 POIs.

Steam says 2,946, which is going to include time in the Prefab Editor.

It may not be a popular opinion, but I think managing a constrained inventory adds to the game. You either have to make tough decisions, multiple trips, or maybe put a chest in the stairway at each level as a kind of hybrid approach. I get that not everybody finds that interesting. I largely see T5's as a source of experience, but that opinion is based on game realities, not necessarily anything I might think of intended design goals. In terms of a time investment to clear one, on a server they clear really fast with a team of players. In solo, play I don't often bother with T5 quests. I may still clear the POI depending on my whims. I'm not overly concerned with the loot because the game stage is generally taking care of me, not any specific POI tier.

I'm not necessarily a fan of the idea, but... When somebody opens a T1 Crate, T2 Leather Chest, T3-T5 Final Loot Box then the game can look up the POI's name (or whatever relevant ID is available) in a manner similar to the F11 feature and change the POI's "last looted" time. ... it isn't perfect because the idea isn't perfect. What does "a looted POI" mean? Do all of a POI's containers have to be empty? What if I take the "good stuff" and "leave the junk" ... is the POI looted?

Most people are familiar with John Henry's sledgehammer, used in his epic race against a steam-powered drill. But ol' Sodbuster was used in the mid 1920s by Barclay Grainger of Navezgane AZ to out plow a tractor of the time. You still see ol' Sodbuster on display in Western Town at the Navezgane Museum. Now I'm wondering what the Legendary Auger will be. That'll be popular.

In game terms I'm sure it makes sense, but I get a chuckle out of the notion there might be a "legendary shovel." Hear now, let me tell you about ol' Sodbuster. 😜

Aww, leave the buzzards be. They're DoorDash for feathers. Just stand on a cactus in the desert for a few seconds.

I'll put my track shoes on so that once I join the masses I can run and jump at you guys.