Viktoriusiii

Its learning by doing, but without any of the positives and all of the negatives. I have no idea who thought this would be a good idea.

I will say it like this: dont play full stealth. Its just not worth it or fun to play. Instead, use it as a secondary attribute. Most stealthweapons are strong enough to oneshot appropriate level Z's and you still have your main attribute for these stupid rooms. Is that good design? F*** no! But at least this way you can still play stealtharcher, even if it is far less exciting than the alphas without auto wakeups. Since TFPs are known for redesigning @%$# they worked on for quite some time... maybe we get lucky and they scrap the system again... although past events do not paint a pretty picture for the redo... it is most likely something like "every Z' wakes up if you can see it. Once you turn around, it instantly teleports back to its spawn so that you can not kite it!" honestly wouldnt be surprised if they implemented something like this... Because it would "increase the tention and force the player to engage with the enemies instead of boringly trying to find ways to play intelligently."

correct.

Okay... so some traps I get... if you rush in head first, there should be some zombies to cut you off... thats fine. But you know why I know they didn't do it to make melee more enjoyable and purely to spite stealthers (and yes maybe their intentional reason wasn't spite, but their subcontious hates it 100%)? Making trap walls more than 1 HP and destroying it by trigger. That is SO MUCH CODING WORK and the ONLY effect it has is that bows/crossbows can no longer destroy them to get a better shot. A21 has a lot of things that corrected mistakes of A21... but my main points: progression and stealth are as bad as always... or worse...! and it saddens me...

I cleared most of the Z's but then I hid for a minute to do a pottybreak... now there is a zombie missing...

It is a kind of simple fix... but it would require the removal of some so called "fixes" they implemented to "fix" stealth. The first fix was great. Trash all around makes it harder to stealth. The second was positioning. Positioning zombies so that you can not snipe them, because they area lways around corners... already a really stupid fix. The third fix was traps into killboxes... not great, but oh well. Fourth was sleeper volumes with automatic wakeup Fifth one was trigger based zombies. Where they stay inside walls until you reached a certain block. And in A21 they actually made it so that trapblocks can not be destroyed with bows anymore. So you HAVE to trigger them... which is just the biggest middle finger "oh you found a way to circumvent our GENIUS plan for how the game has to be played? Well here we fixed it mothertrucker!! Solution: Nerf the damage, get rid of basicially every other change. If the player finds creative solutions, don't cross them out and say "MY WAY ONLY!" you aren't our 3rd grade mathsteacher!

I was just digging... and found NOTHING! The whole area of the remaining circle, just nothing... I started digging around the circle randomly until I saw this. Yes it is only one block, but this one block was kinda annoying because I triggered like 6 zombiehordes or something And it had to be outside of at least one more stage (because everything was already cleared at the previous stage) Not the biggest issue... still something that might want to be looked at (since it might only be a small numerical error)

Okay... let me preface this by saying: A21 is a step in a better direction... balance and art wise. But if you've been around, I am not one to focus on the positives. You have so many ppl telling you how great the game is... you don't need that from me. I'm bad at it and I dislike it. There are a lot of improvements and I can acknowledge that. But now to what I acktually wanted to say: WTF WERE YOU THINKING??? I mean removing LBD was pretty bad... but okay lets focus on this newly implemented point-buy feature... even if its inferior it has some positives (more streamlined progression, clearer hurdles, easier customizability)... AND THEN you introduce learning by Looting... which is just LBD but with all the positives removed (you took away agency from the player. Instead of being able to decide what you want to specialize in, you again have to luck out!) AND ON TOP OF THAT you implemented the "Forge ahead" problem back into the game... MULTIPLE TIMES!!! JUST WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??? I am level 25 and just now got my forge... I already have steel tools and modern weapons (pipe, simple, modern, futuristic)... but I wasn't able to smelt anything, because the town I settled at didnt have really any workstations to get those damn books from. 3/5 levels were from trader rewards. How in the world am I supposed to ever get to steel? (14x the amount I have) and getting the perk doesnt even increase the odds of finding the skillbooks! (or at least it doesnt specify like it does with most other skills) DO NOT LOCK PROGRESSION BEHIND RANDOM CHANCE!!! I can't believe... after all these alphas... and all the times you f*ed up (Levelgates as an easy uncontroversial example)... that you would not only create a newly worsened skillsystem, but that you would repeat the same mistake you already did again... I don't mind that I will probably never get my T5 weapon of choice because the skillbooks are so rare I have a better chance of looting it or getting it as a reward from the trader... but the forge? I feel like a caveman in full military gear... either slow down ALL of progression (loot 25% xp 50% duke gain 5%) which will surely upset the casual players because then every game takes 300h... or make the workstation books available in EVERY CONTAINER. Doesnt have to be a particularly high chance. But if I looked at 500 trashpiles, I'd like to see like 10 workstation books. PS: Why oh why does it autouse lockpicks? I just looted it and now because of the misclick its gone. It should be switchable. Once you have an endless amount you should be able to do it automaticially... but this was is just annoying

I am surprised to see LBD being so highly ranked... every time I mention it, I get bombarded with downvotes The general playerbase probably liked LBD much more than the hardcore fans that are on the forums though. But seeing it still in first place just warms my heart. PS: *Be one of the Fun Pimps* *Dislike LBD for no good reason* (seriously, all the points were relatively easy fixes) *removes it to go through a 3 Alpha overhaul* *reimplements LBD, but simply worse* (learn by looting takes all the problems LBD had with far less of the character that LBD gave and combines it with THE FORGE BOOK PROBLEM!) ? Profit?

well yea... 5 years of early alpha (8-16) vs 6 years of late alpha, loads of promotions, humble bundles and more... I mean I would hope so... But yeah dumbing down the game from a horror RPG to a loot-and-shooter-TD game probably helped ^^ In all seriousness... I like the game again (A17 was horrific) even if stealth is useless (at least I didnt see any major changes to it in the patchnotes and it was useless in A20 because of sleepervolumes) but calling it an Alpha is just wrong on many levels!

Yeah but I meant like real quests. Not those treasuremaps and stuff... Those were added in A17, the worst update by FAR

Just throwing my hat in here... 7d2ds update cycle is kinda... weird. They don't add new stuff (except for overhauls and cosmetics)... but they do it in such a long timeframe that I already forgot the last alpha, so I start playing a bit again... until I notice (usually at day 30 or something) that it is just the same game again... And if someone SERIOUSLY still claims "this game is in alpha" they need to get their brains checked. That is like saying "oh Star Citizen will come out! It is just a big game! Give them time!" No! I don't care how big the game is. If you have millions and millions, you better present us with something. What new (not overhauled) mechanics were introduced since A13 I think (Traders and electricity)? Quests... but that is about it. And it is just a simple "go to x, kill, loot come back" quest... Where are the NPCs? The animals? The real agriculture? Caves (are they back? Haven'T seen any but also never play Navazgane), better Zombies? The game needs real quests, NPCs and bandits. And if they want to be fancy, they give us factions too. But the game has been basicially the same for 7 alphas, just with more pois and a tripple revised skillsystem and a double graphicsoverhaul. Oh wait no... zombie pathing has been... "fixed". To be fair, they got better over the alphas... but seriously... The way I see it you need to go "Gold" into a beta where you take all your features that are then hopefully locked in and just do another 5 years of balancing... :'D With a bit less spite: 12 years of Alpha is not an Alpha anymore. It is a yearly update. Its free so I dont mind. But calling it an alpha is just mindblowingly... oh well.

First alpha I actually dont post a completely new thread, as I haven't had the time or energy to extensively test/play... 1) eating and drinking feels weird now... why do we throw away the bottles and glasses? Feels arbitrary. 2) I dont even know if this has always been the case... but the first zombie that hit me gave me an infection as well as a concussion. That meant I had to effectively let something kill me so that I could go on playing again. Why is there a safetynet for temperature, but not for statuses? Especially when you only just get your first stone weapons. 3) quests are still faaaaaar too rewarding at the beginning. Like... in the same time I would have to clear 5 pois just to keep up. T1 and T2 quest need to give even less dukes and XP and give a smaller selection. 10 molotovs? That is incredibly powerful. So are 10 first aid on day 1. To lessen the grind let us skip T1 and T2 quests on new traders... if we got them on another trader, straight up skip to T3. Personal opinion: I dislike the difficulty display. It makes it feel even more gamy than it already felt. Just watched an old 7d2d video of someone being stranded in the desert... it was creepy... and survivaly... Now itsjust "loot as many houses and complete quests as you can". Can't say enough about leveling... might comment on here again... but the fact that I don't even open a new thread... well I am kind of sad tbh...

I'm only in the low thousands, since I have not really played since A17 (still about 400hours, which is a lot if I look how I feel about the games development :D) Been here since A8 And I would wish for the game to get a sense of direction. Its great that they said Gold is close... But they also said that A19 (or 20?) was the last biggest update so that they can release updates in shorter timeframes... sooo... -The leveling still after 4 Alphas feels like a tacked on feature (lets hope A21 changes that as advertised) -Looting has become much too straightforward for my taste. Where is the sense of exploration if I know every POI will have a room with the best loot? SOME can have it... but most should spread out these goodies as much as possible. -guns have too much influence over the game. Especially early game. I mean... there is a reason why I have called it a Looter-Shooter since A17. Never had any problem getting enough ammo if I didn't run around guns blazing and shooting in the air. -A bit more randomness. Not only lootwise, but POI wise... if I know exactly how hard a POI is... that takes away the fun of exploring. Some of the best moments I ever had was in big POIs where there were nearly no zombies, so I just went through it easily... only to realize the exit is covered with a roaming hoard. -Crafting is a mess now... its not any simpler to understand, has become basicially useless in 95% of cases since looted stuff is just that much better and the only thing you'll really be crafting isnt equipment, its ammo and blocks to build.

A bit longer ago... A9 or 10 I think... Back then custom spawns were... something else ... Well... I spawned in the wasteland and right in front of me are 2 dogs. No wood to build, no cars to climb on... just... instant death, no questions asked. And i respawned like two or three times close to it... yeah... fun times

Since I just started playing again and a topic reminded me of my old enemy, here I wanted to ask if any modded has this same problem but never found the motivation to do it: A mod that reworks guns (and tools? I will henceforth only mention guns, but tools have the same system and problem). What do I mean? Currently, the gunsystem is nearly as bland as the skillpoint system. It works, but it is so much dumbed down that I don't care what quality a gun has (except maybe fullauto because of the durability). What I would want: instead of every gun being basicially the same with only modslots being of any significance, I want them to be more special again. I do not have the time anymore to do any modding... but I am pretty sure that someone else has already thought about this... And since this mod basicially only changes a few numbers and MAYBE adds a few buffs/debuffs... it should be pretty easy to do In the basegame the variation between guns is always nearly the same. So every gun feels the same. Damage for a Q1 pistol is always 12-14 and firerate is always 50-55 What I want is greater variety. Back in the old days this was done with weaponparts that would give different stats so the endresult was always different... the new system I am thinking off is similar: Bigger ranges for stats while at the same time fixing the total "pool" of points based on tier. So a Q1 can have 12 points to spend on all attributes, while a Q6 has 24 (as an example). These points are semi-randomly assigned (depending on how complex you want to make this :D) so every weapon has a strongpoint and a weakness (even if the strength is just and allrounder and the weakness is no particular strengths :D) And for bonus points you can add buffs/debuffs to the weapon based on these stats. A short list could be: but that is expert stuff... a more varied range of gunstats is already a HUGE improvement on the current system. I just need weapoins to actually be special. I just switch out the gears to have one more slot increase... so if you could make modslots random as well (the mods themselves and the base buffs dont need a change... but could be done if bored :D)

The problem is that the system is super basic. The gunquality is nearly completely unimportant. Back before they reworked it, every gun had different stats that had modifiers. So you could build an AK with crazy high damage but low firerate or high firerate but low ammo and so on... Now everything is the same. And since every gun is basicially the same, only modslots matter. Which means a Q6 pipe weapon is better than a Q1 high tech weapon. And since every weapon is the same, every weapon also needs to be somewhat worth it... so low tier weapons are weak on higher difficulties (don't use pipe weapons on insane waste of ressources), but on normal difficulties they kill just as much as the high end weapons... They have this incredible potential of kind of going back to the old customizability of weapons (I know no takebacks... I know TFPs by now) but they stick to this super simple +2 damage per qualitytier and attachment... which also means certain weapons will always be better or worse no matter what.

HEY! If EVERY one of these special infected worked that way and it was clearly communicated (like it has eyes all around its body... you know... visual storytelling :D)... as well as basicially every perk having their weakness... I am fine with it If suddenly EVERY special infected can't be snuk up on... you might actually be right... good thing I'm from europe and healthinsurance is REALLY good... so don't worry about me

if I wanted efficiency, I'd go fortitude/str. Nothing more efficient than that, PERIOD. The best perks are in there. Usefull in every situation. Mining, check, food, check, surviviability, check, clearing pois, check, hordenight, check. Its not about efficiency. Its about every playstyle having their thing. FOR/STR is direct confrontation PER is the open field and looting INT is the trader and turrets AGI is... pistols? I guess. I just want to be able to sneak without confrontation. I like the feeling of Z' dying to my blade. I dislike confrontation. I like knowing that I only cleared that POI because of my skill, not because my rolls were lucky. If I wanted that I would be playing Dragons dogma and be savescumming. I just want to be able to sneak without being forced into fights. Make sneaking harder. Make me crawl at snails pace... as long as 'silent' weapons are silent (meaning if I shoot a crossbow or bow, zombies dont wake up) and I can get to decide when I want to slowly crawl forwards and when I want to rush in... I am fine with that. Basicially what I am asking for is: give me the possibility to 100% that poi if I bring the skill. Make it ridicolously hard... I dont care... that can be tweaked... but even a 0.1% chance of zombies waking up even though I was doing the best possible play is too much in my opinion (HYPERBOLE!!! I am sure there is a percentage where I wouldnt even notice. That does not mean that the principle is a good one. Only that the effects are negligible enough to ignore it... but why have a system if it has to be tuned down so much that the player doesnt notice it anymore?) PS: @Roland I will now try to always mark my hyperbole and state what is factual... lets see if that will actually help... I doubt it since I think most forum users just dislike critics... but who knows... maybe I lived a lie for the last... when was A17 released? that long.

Give me one game where the game is not about chance (like P&P games or others where sucess is always a %) where there are fixed situations (not cutscenes) where you fail your stealth based on dice. Could you imagine in hitman if in 10% of cases, they just blast the chest you are in? Or in Splinter Cell when you are in complete darkness, the enemy suddenly goes "THERE HE IS SHOOT HIM!" Consistency is key. If you advertise stealth as chance based (I mean ingame explanation)... okay. I' dislike it, but at least now we know. But sneak is advertised as skill based (every zombie can be snuck up to, if they are not in a poi) until suddenly BOOM out of your control. sorry not my native language... but yes, you can use hyperbole in arguments too to make clear what exactly is wrong. I am not a gametester that gets money to find @%$# out. If they want to pay me, I will note explicit percentages, I will do that work. Right now, I speak as a @%$#ed off player. If I say "99% of zombies are wallzombies now" do you think I actually think that? OR is that a hint at my feeling that there are too many of them in there? 100% unless advertised differently. Why does sneka work 100% outside of pois and then suddenly, it doesnt inside? It breaks a fundamental gamedesign: continuity. The player learns by watching out for this continuity. If the trader was how he is today and then one day pulled his magnum while you are browing and shot you, the way you argue is "well not everyone in the wasteland is nice. Maybe you angered him!" NO. Either give me hints as to why traders can be dangerous, or leave it. "But every POI is the same, so that is continuity" yes... but WHY? Zombies outside are not the same as zombies inside. You are playing two different stealthgames. One where it is skillbased and one where it is chancebased. I do fail. But I also have a very competative mindset and want to improve at the things I love. So I USUALLY don't make mistakes (overlooking trash, going too fast and so on) but you know what I consistently fail, even though I have nearly the best gear, my sight meter was <5 there is no light anywhere and I inched forward inch by inch (slow sneak with only forward taps)? Chance based rooms. My entire kit is meant to avoid this (unless I fail). But I am forced into it because of stealth. Give me one good reason why (efficiency wise) I shouldnt simply get a real gun, more hp and resistence and just clear the poi within a minute, instead of sneaking around for 10, only to have to fight them anyways? And diceroll don't replace human failurerate, they add ONTO it. The human still fails from time to time. Take any game (again not a game that tells you its chance) and you won't see chance replacing human failures. The human does the mistakes. If mistakes are programmed in, it feels REALLY BAD. Take Fifas momentum (before they "removed" it they actually defended it like this): I just want to play an actual survivor, not a rambo. In my eyes guns are the absolute last way out. I would want to be a farmer, a cook a scavenger and a cutthroat. But TFPs don't allow me that playstyle because A16 was BAD and we need to innovate! So now I at least want to be a stealthy survivor that saves his ammo for hordenight. NAH, here is a random chance encounter for you to fight! ACTION! ACTION! ACTION!!! WOOOOO

You are right that I have a certain expectation of stealth (not a fallacy tho :D). But it is based upon a simple concept: stealth is all about control (funny, because its in the AGI tree :D) I control when I start the fight (if I dont mess up). I am the person that has to decide if its too risky or if I can do it. This control is yanked away, as soon as it is a roll that every zombie gets upon entering. Compare the two "types" of Z' state: normal in the wild ("awake"): it is ONLY triggered by noise/sight. If I am careful enough, I can stand right behind the Z' and it will not spot me, granting me the chance to do a stealthkill. in a POI this is not the case. I can do everything right. No armor, no light, no trash on the floor no meat stew in my pocket (oh wait :D)... and yet the game forced this fight upon me. In A16 (I don't know when this change occured) if I did everything perfectly, sneak would get me through every POI. I still had to fight once in a while, because no human is perfect. And with a bit of tweaking, this system worked perfectly. Now, it doesnt matter what I do... because the decider is still the game rolling dice based upon stats. And I disagree: if I am confident in my ability, I don't take anything with me in hitman. There is no reason why I shouldnt just specialize in a perktree that is actually useful, instead of having a half-working perk that does nothing except this (hyperbole again!) I would love for TFPs to measure stats by percentage: Tree most skilled in: (I think Fort >50% then STR and then all the others) So we have: STR: direct confrontation FOR: direct confrontation PER: shooting from afar or blowing stuff up AGI (based on your playstyle): sneak until seen, then direct confrontation (but more evasive) INT is the only path that needs actual setup. Place turrets, wake a few up, get the stunbaton... Why does every Path lead to direct confrontation? I don't want to fight Z's. I have bloodmoon for that. I want to be a survivalist and not fight unless I have to or use stealth going one by one... but now even stealth leads to confrontation... 🤔almost as if there is a designdecision behind that that would explain these changes...

Well I was able to do it before... use silent weapons (that scale with sneak) and go slowly and get results. It was very strong, yes. But it also had drawbacks. Now, the only benefit of sneaking is outside at night. At least there it works as intended.

@BFT2020 almost as if people from all around somehow feel the same... must be coinkidink. Is there a way for me to not engage Z's? And I don't mean "sneak -> get spotted -> run for 15+ sec &hide -> repeat" I mean without being seen and having to fight and backtrack. I do not care if my class makes me useless on hordenight. I will have to find another way to deal with that. I don't care if my loot isn't as great. I don't care that I can't farm ressources, get good prices and items at the trader or have any way of dealing with larger groups of zombies... but if the ONLY THING that I can do still doesn't work... the class is fundamentally broken. If you like to sneak until you get spotted and then start hopping around... great ❤️ I am happy for oyu. I can simply tell you that going in a poi with only a knife and crossbow will either get you killed (depending on difficulty/POI and Gamestage) or will take so much longer than just shooting your way through because oyu have to run and hide half the time, that it is simply not worth it. @Roland en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole And what else do you think I want to convey, when my favourite way to play is simply not possible anymore.

Immersion should never impact gameplay negatively. And building your character to do one thing and that thing failing 50% of the time... feels really REALLY BAD. But we had this discussion before... so let me just @Mantel sorry bro... they won't fix this. They think it is totally fine for one of the 6 fightingstyles to not work 50% of the time. You are pretty new on this forum, so let me tell you: TFPs will do ANYTHING to force confrontation. Some of the changes have been reasonable (like fixing exploit bases). But most of them take away from how ppl want to play (you can still play without bloon moon, just disable it.) in favor of fake action. So... don't hold your breath on stealth getting fixed. They are determined to keep this 'wake up based on chance' system. They might tweak it a bit so its not AS bad anymore... but it will always be flawed, because in these rooms, zombieawareness acts differently to any other zombie (which breaks continuity... and is a big no-no in gamedesign). If they at least explained in detail how this system works... how to avoid it... that would mean we could counteract it... (remember how trash was introduced? THAT was a great anti-stealth mechanic. It was just intuitive enough that you understood what you did wrong and just hard enough that you could still avoid it if you were careful but now it is just rolling dice and you have to deal with the consequences...)

By that definition, everything is a roleplaying game. Minecraft? You roleplay as steve, with progression being nether and end as well as items. Fifa? You roleplay as a trainer that builds up his squad, getting better players. MW2? As stated you roleplay as a grizzled veteran who just wants to die and charges head on. You get better by leveling up and getting better weapons and gear. Pacman? You roleplay a round blob that wants to eat dots and is being chased by ghosts. His progression is obviously harder levels, which will at the end lead to the demon ghostkings castle. Just no one ever got that far. Skillpoints are not a feature that define the RPG genre. It supplements it. But is not an indicator. I don't know what role I play. I am just some dude. There are no choices that affect the gameplay. If you want to skill into farming or looting is a choice. But buying 5 grandmas or one Cookie factory is also a choice. Doesn't make cookie clicker an RPG. You want to know the only thing this game has in common with an RPG?