Some A17 thoughts

[Viktoriusiii]

The problem with book gates is that it completely removes major portions of the game that everyone should see and experience if they want.

 

but levelgates are not a choice!!! How often do I have to tell you.

When you removed the levelgates, ppl were finally happy, because they could descide WHAT parts of the game they wanted to skip.

Dislike walking miles? Spec into intelligence and get vehicles first. Same with forge and steel tools.

Like building? Get strength and miner perks.

Dislike running out of stamina? Get agility.

Dislike dying? Fortitude.

 

But instead of giving the player the choice, you said:

"multiplayer is unbalanced, because everyone has steeltools on day 10"

which is not a problem that is solved with levelgates BUT BY REMOVING THE STUPID MULTIPLICATIVE XP.

There is NO WAY to balance 1(player)x xp to 4(players)x4(other player xp) xp thats a ratio of 1:16.

 

make the shared ratio

10% with 1 players

8% with 3 players

5% with 4 players+

 

EVERYTHING MORE is insane. And you go and ignore this and put in levelgates because something else is unbalanced!

MM PLEASE! Stop beeing so defensive about A17. It might be the child TFPs love the most... but a lot of things are going VERY wrong. And to say anything else is trying to find excuses.

 

10.000 LESS peak players than with A16, (can't say for certain about average players, but it doesn't look too good either when compared to A16 release) but when comparing to every other alpha, A17 is the worst rated, least played (when compared to the rate at which the game grew) and most heatedly discussed on the forums.

I've been there since steamrelease. I've seen some #gates.

And some of them I'm still not happy about, but have come to accept. A17 actually made me edit the xmls and told my friends to do so myself. I am even looking out for mods... and I have never modded my game till today.

 

Levelgates are ridicolously bad. Nobody should ever implement them if they haven't exhausted EVERY other option. And I have seen (and given myself) LOTS of good suggestions, which you ppl just declined. Yes its your game.

But as I have said before A17 released:

players will grow tired of this game very VERY quickly. And IF I'm right and less players play this game in January or february than in Oktober/November, you will dismiss this as its "not the final version of this alpha", ignoring that other alphas will only improve, if you actually acknowledge the mistakes you made instead of trying to dismiss everything players say.

Reviews are less that 30% positive since release of stable. LESS THAN 30%!!!

ATLAS (the EA title that is a worse ARK reskin that overpromised worse than NoMansSky) has 27%.

You are basically that. Its THAT BAD. So PLEASE realize that we are NOT just "haters", but actually have some points and TRY to communicate with us, take solutions to obvious problems into account. We are fans of this game. We give you these advice willingly.

 

PLEASE MM. Do it like you did with the bear, with the burningzombie and with other minor things AND LISTEN to the community.

Yes those were only textures and models and not gameplay related (there are still nonsensicle landmines on top of cranes and in the wasteland), but these scores should tell you that what you did was NOT a positive step.

At best it was a nice foundation for the future. At worst you just lost a big chunk of your playerbase and if you continue to ignore them, that chunk will grow. Be happy to have such a great modding community. Because otherwise this game would be dead on new years eve (hyperbole! Or as you would say with releases: "I never said WHICH new years eve... could be 2050 ")

[Ranzera]

All the plains biome did was increase RAM requirements. By nuking those few trees and the special grounds of the two uneeded biomes memory went from 5.8 gb to 2.8. That biome had nothing interesting in it, and too many biome transitions makes random gen a mess.

 

Since y'alls answer to everything is "mod it" Is this something that modders can reasonably put back in without going into asset creation territory?

 

I liked the Plains biome. I liked the Maple Forest biome. A17 had been one massive disappointment where you removed a ton of stuff I liked and replaced it with stuff I don't (and in this case with nothing at all). Every map feels same-y now. Every map is boring. The road system is brain dead. I'm falling asleep on this because exploration is as rewarding as a root canal.

[Sergoros]

You have some points, but isn't designing base you can survive in the reason you bought this game, not to be a bone farmer? I get really pissed and want to punch something if I die in any game so for me surviving is everything. There is XP to gain, I leveled up 3 times on the day 7 horde, so there is that motivation which is no different than skilling up your pistol in a16. We are going to increase the chance for loot drops a little.

 

At the end of the day we want everyone to enjoy the game. Its not taylored for the builders yet so that is something we're working on. I'm building a mega castle so we'll see how hard it is and make adjustments as needed. Playing as a rogue scavenger who uses mostly melee is working well but other play styles need some love for sure.

 

Everyone has different things they like or ways to play. For you its a reward, for me its not dying because I take pride in 0 deaths, and building a nice castle I know has so many fall back rooms that no matter what horde comes I'm not goind gown. I have my escape hatch and coffee maybe a vehicle ready to run as long as it takes. Preparation and plans pay off usually.

 

Okay, now we are talking. Why designing a cool survival base is fun. In most builder games you build to make your life easier/better, one way or another. The point is, base is there to make your life better. Not worse.

 

If I put an effort of a real life month in designing and building a base. I expect it to be top notch. I should be able to sit back and relax for several bloodmoons doing nothing. Only having to repair minimal damages (Not at the big loss, mind you. Base should be almost self sustaining. End game base should work on you. Not be a constant resource sink) and harvesting my gardens/picking up whatever dead zeds left. Inviting other players to securely trade with me at my grounds.

 

This is a high life I would expect for putting up so much effort into my base. This is why many players build their bases. In dreams of having their own secure fort, where they can live an easy life. This is the end game I was looking for every alpha.

 

And game wont be ending for me there. I was playing on pvp servers, so I was always aware of other players wanting to raid my fortress. So I had to keep improving it day after day. More turrets, more traps, more claims. (claims are made of 4 diamonds on my server, so you can imagine I put alot of effort into gathering them too)

 

In short, when you design a game, you should mind, that when people put an effort into something, they usually expect a kick back. If I work hard on my base, I later expect my base to work on me. Right now, in current version, your base is a horrible needy baby, that always demands your attention, time and resources. No matter how late game you are. This is just wrong.

[Guppycur]

Is it that weird though? I mean you got his helmet but what about his cool utility vest or his tool belt? Most zombies have clothes we can visibly see but can't take. Home come only a small percentage of the time you could take his helmet? What about the other times the zombie didn't drop one?

 

Is it really strange to you or just something you were used to and having trouble adapting to?

 

Since they /never/ consistently dropped mining helmets, it still remains weird. That is not changed.

 

It was weird then, it remains weird now. Now it's just a more exacerbated weirdness.

 

Want a chance of a mining helmet, kill those guys. Want a chance at medical, kill the nurses. Etc.

 

Now it's just blah.

 

Your attempt at a straw man argument was cute though, but unsuccessful. =)

 

@madmole, like spam crafting and so many other design flaws, rather than fix the flaw you replaced the system. Bringing on new flaws.

 

If your testers were reaching int 10 by day 3 then increase the int cost.

 

If you were not able to use mini bikes because you cannot find a minibike book, then create multiple ways to accomplish the goal.

 

If you did not like that people could create purple crossbows because they spammed Stone axes, then do not link the two things together.

 

Instead of continually replacing systems that just needed fixing, fix them, leaving you more time to add more content. In the long run you would have saved a lot of time.

 

Now we are stuck with an imbalanced version of yet another system. Waiting for it to be balanced, or more likely, waiting for it to be replaced. Again.

[JoelleEmmily]

but levelgates are not a choice!!! How often do I have to tell you.

When you removed the levelgates, ppl were finally happy, because they could descide WHAT parts of the game they wanted to skip.

Dislike walking miles? Spec into intelligence and get vehicles first. Same with forge and steel tools.

Like building? Get strength and miner perks.

Dislike running out of stamina? Get agility.

Dislike dying? Fortitude.

 

I agree with you, my personal option is that gating is objectively terrible, and should be removed, it hinders freedom, restricts play, and generally has no point. I tried to have a debate about it... But I think someone sicked a couple AIs stuck in feed back loops on me... just kept repeating the same things like a Max Headroom twitch... Was kinda scary, I felt like I was becoming one with the borg.... my resistance futile... arguments are irrelevant... points of contention are irrelevant... your play-style and avatar will be made to service us...

[Guppycur]

@sergoros

 

Worse than that, with game stages, the harder you work, the harder you end up having to work.

[Bifferd]

Hey MM. Just curious any idea if the next update will give RWG some love. It really is not vary good at the moment in my opinion. I do love all of the other changes though. I believe you all have done a fantastic job with this update and look forward to more tweaking. Also when any idea if the next update will be out before the end of the year or are you all taking a much needed rest until after the New Year. Thanks again

[SilverWolf]

Yet another Guppy wisdom

I swear man, if mobile forum template wasn't so awful and plain, this lurker would upvote all of you posts in this section every single day, as you and few other mod oldies always seem so concise(without random gifs and my prof said "wisdoms") and on target.

 

I would maybe only add onto this, we expected some innovations to the system, content, buuut... Yea, I'll go back to lurking, don't want to step on anyone's toes.

[Roland]

Please explain what is being balanced, and how an imbalance of that would impact game play to a negative degree... and how it is not arbitrary... Wait... never mind... I get it... no argument I put forward maters, no example I give will be sufficient... this is not a discussion, it is you telling me what you think... full stop. I'mma gonna try force of nature now... I really should look at my inventory more often.

 

Here is an actual example. 25% loot option is now broken because of the changes. I’ve seen at least two posts and a started thread demanding/asking TFP to get 25% loot fixed.

 

Well guess what? 25% loot isn’t the core of what they want to be working on right now. It’s a distraction. Now add 20 more options, some of which will completely change the progression and get broken by future changes.

 

I’m not sure what you keep going on about with your “full stop” and “are we having a discussion?” stuff but I suppose everyone does the forums in their own way. I agree with you that lots of options will be great but I disagree that right now is the time to do it especially as a way to avoid what the devs want us to test. Once their default desired settings are in place and they are done with the major changes..that’s when major options and alternative can be added.

[Sergoros]

@sergoros

 

Worse than that, with game stages, the harder you work, the harder you end up having to work.

 

Well, I partly agree. There are some ways to make your life easier still. Gardens, better tools, better weapons, better skills. I think it balances itself out on the level of "you always have to grind for your base at about the same pace, no matter how good you made your base".

 

Might have been an intention all along. To keep newer players interested for the whole journey. Makes the whole "tower defence" aspect pointless tho. Once player realises that he has been fooled into walking circles, he just loses interest to the game. This is why many veterans hate the changes, I guess.

[HerrKingsley]

Skyrim and fallout two of the best selling franchises of all times are level gated. Do you think the 1 billion players hated that?

 

Both skyrim and fallout are story driven and therefore helps the player through the progression.

That way the gates are not so obvious.

Also If you ventured to far away you would get slaughtered by high tire enemies and learned the hard way to get back to story progression.

 

7dtd dont have a story or high tire areas. Just unreversable game stage.

[JaxTeller718]

Since they /never/ consistently dropped mining helmets, it still remains weird. That is not changed.

 

It was weird then, it remains weird now. Now it's just a more exacerbated weirdness.

 

Want a chance of a mining helmet, kill those guys. Want a chance at medical, kill the nurses. Etc.

 

Now it's just blah.

 

Your attempt at a straw man argument was cute though, but unsuccessful. =)

 

@madmole, like spam crafting and so many other design flaws, rather than fix the flaw you replaced the system. Bringing on new flaws.

 

If your testers were reaching int 10 by day 3 then increase the int cost.

 

If you were not able to use mini bikes because you cannot find a minibike book, then create multiple ways to accomplish the goal.

 

If you did not like that people could create purple crossbows because they spammed Stone axes, then do not link the two things together.

 

Instead of continually replacing systems that just needed fixing, fix them, leaving you more time to add more content. In the long run you would have saved a lot of time.

 

Now we are stuck with an imbalanced version of yet another system. Waiting for it to be balanced, or more likely, waiting for it to be replaced. Again.

 

Finally. You are dead on.

 

I agree 100 percent on this philosophy of NOT balancing or fixing, but yanking and overhauling. If they weren't happy with 16's actions and perks then fix it. Hell my Scavengers mod I reworked the entire progression system PER WEAPON AND TOOL. Meaning every time you used the wood club ONLY the wood club levelled. Then I dropped spam crafting by tying the craft quality INTO the action on the weapon. So crafting 30 clubs did not make you better at it, but using the club and REPAIRING the club levelled the craft quality.

 

I cant fathom how anyone can say THAT idea is dumb and not engaging gameplay but killing 200 zeds and dropping random points into random categories IS.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Here is an actual example. 25% loot option is now broken because of the changes. I’ve seen at least two posts and a started thread demanding/asking TFP to get 25% loot fixed.

 

Well guess what? 25% loot isn’t the core of what they want to be working on right now. It’s a distraction. Now add 20 more options, some of which will completely change the progression and get broken by future changes.

 

I’m not sure what you keep going on about with your “full stop” and “are we having a discussion?” stuff but I suppose everyone does the forums in their own way. I agree with you that lots of options will be great but I disagree that right now is the time to do it especially as a way to avoid what the devs want us to test. Once their default desired settings are in place and they are done with the major changes..that’s when major options and alternative can be added.

 

25 percent loot broke because someone decided we just HAD to change every single aspect of the game, including loot probability templates. It was fine BEFORE 17. If the entire system had not been yanked, that would have never happened.

[Viktoriusiii]

Skyrim and fallout two of the best selling franchises of all times are level gated. Do you think the 1 billion players hated that?

 

Skyrim levelgated? Did I miss something?

Where does it say: "You can not level up your 1h right now, since you aren't level 30"?

And I cannot speak about fallout, but I harshly doubt that they would implement that sort of thing...

I feel you do not understand what a "level gate" is.

It is a level requirement that is gating skills behind a level requirement (who would have guessed)

If you can't learn a skill because it requires a certain skill or progression in the story, that is not levelgated.

Perk-gated, progression-gated, whatever. But levelgates are something special. They incentiviese hunting for xp and ignoring everything else. Which is why it is sooo much worse than any other sort of "gate".

[JaxTeller718]

 

Ark is level gated because you need to gain levels to buy engrams. Skyrim and fallout two of the best selling franchises of all times are level gated. Do you think the 1 billion players hated that?

 

 

Can someone gift MM a survival game package on Steam? One with The Long Dark, The Forest, Fear the Night etc in it? Fallout and Skyrim are great and all don't get me wrong but I definitely didn't expect the direction of 7 Days to sway towards those games.

[Roland]

25 percent loot broke because someone decided we just HAD to change every single aspect of the game, including loot probability templates. It was fine BEFORE 17. If the entire system had not been yanked, that would have never happened.

 

That was one example of a simple option. You can’t know what would’ve happened but that’s not the point. The devs are not going to work crosswise against their own development by adding in user requested options before it’s time to do so. The game is complex and it is impossible to predict what will or will not break because of changes. If it was so easy to know then there would never be any bugs.

 

Optional play modes are a distraction during this phase. They are working hard to find the right balance for the current default progression. Why would they want to add theee more optional progressions to test and balance before their main one is done?

[w00kien00kie]

Jax, stop playing with the forum trolls and send me the dll!

[Deceptive Pastry]

Just jumping in to agree with the absurdity of claiming a flaw with one aspect of a system requires scrapping the whole system instead of fixing the flaw. There were multiple easy solutions to stone axe spam crafting that I've given on other threads. Diminishing returns, or higher XP multiplier and higher XP gains on next tier of materials so once you hit lvl ~30 in crafting stone axes barely level you and you need to start making iron tools to keep leveling, or separate stone tools from iron entirely, etc. There are lots of discussions to be had about balance but nothing gets on my nerves more here than people saying a minor flaw or one very specific leveling exploit required the whole system to be scrapped. Ultimately it is the way it is now because they thought they came up with a cool system for perks and wanted to implement it, perhaps also figuring it would be easier to balance.

[SilverWolf]

Can someone gift MM a survival game package on Steam? One with The Long Dark, The Forest, Fear the Night etc in it? Fallout and Skyrim are great and all don't get me wrong but I definitely didn't expect the direction of 7 Days to sway towards those games.

Maaaaybe skip the Long Dark, else we won't have any skill system, broken or not.

[PoppaTot]

We're increasing passive xp and I've never used any chese exploits on my bases. Just a box with railings to walk on and a lot of spikes. We plan on making zombies attack in a circle I think, so not all will go up the cheese ramps, just some. This should make attacks more interesting and cheese methods won't be guaranteed.

 

Awesome, glad to hear it!

[leaderdog]

I don't disagree that the loot dropped IS better, but it's fracking weird killing a miner and his hat isn't in the loot... Or a cop, farmer, nurse... These variants used to mean something.

 

The loot is better? I've gotten a candlestick and hmm.. something equally useless a couple times. You see that bag drop and you typically think it should be good. but then...candlestick. pah.

 

The rest of the time is a gun you'll scrap or some ammo which is ok.

 

As for not getting specific gear, I agree it would be nice to have the stereotypical stuff they drop, but they wouldn't always have it of course.

 

And for miners/workers with the helmets not always dropping a hat, I just look at it as I'm wanging the dude in the head with a spike club (pre alpha 17 anyways when it wasn't so hard to get) and figure I've wrecked the hat. Same with the clothes, punched all kinds of holes in it, so it's not usable.

 

Would be nice if the game was accurate enough that when they're wearing clothes, if you shoot them only in the face to kill them then the hat would be unharmed. but that may be more work than it's worth.

 

I'm sure there's some guys on here that wish they could be running around in the nurse outfit. Could be pretty funny on a MP server.

[OzHawkeye]

Hell my Scavengers mod I reworked the entire progression system PER WEAPON AND TOOL. Meaning every time you used the wood club ONLY the wood club levelled. Then I dropped spam crafting by tying the craft quality INTO the action on the weapon. So crafting 30 clubs did not make you better at it, but using the club and REPAIRING the club levelled the craft quality.

 

When the game goes gold, I expect I'll be modding a similar system to this (if we can). I'll have to remember to keep an eye out for your mod when that happens.

 

0 xp for crafting, skill leveling solely through use. 0 gates. (I'll also be looking for a way to remove XP as much as possible I guess).

[leaderdog]

Maaaaybe skip the Long Dark, else we won't have any skill system, broken or not.

 

That would be lovely. Skills in a survival game are quite unnecessary, much like the forest and stranded deep and pre alpha 13. Totally not needed, you make what you need, hence survival.

[JoelleEmmily]

Here is an actual example. 25% loot option is now broken because of the changes. I’ve seen at least two posts and a started thread demanding/asking TFP to get 25% loot fixed.

 

Well guess what? 25% loot isn’t the core of what they want to be working on right now. It’s a distraction. Now add 20 more options, some of which will completely change the progression and get broken by future changes.

 

I’m not sure what you keep going on about with your “full stop” and “are we having a discussion?” stuff but I suppose everyone does the forums in their own way. I agree with you that lots of options will be great but I disagree that right now is the time to do it especially as a way to avoid what the devs want us to test. Once their default desired settings are in place and they are done with the major changes..that’s when major options and alternative can be added.

 

Good point sir, and an excellent example, you're truly insightful, the 25% loot option is way more important than whatever crap I was going on about. I'm just selfish, I want to too much, and I should be far more concerned with how TFP wants me to test their product. And thank you sir, for correcting me, it makes me a better person. I will surely wait for the appropriate time to bring up my selfish desires you so skillfully lambasted during our discussions, because they don't really matter, and the game requires what I'm against. You've made me a better person.

[Deceptive Pastry]

As far as level gates, I was thinking while modding progression that it is a bit difficult to balance progression properly without the level gates. Like you wouldn't want people crafting rocket launchers at level 20 right? But then I was thinking...if someone wants to spend 25 levels putting points in nothing but intelligence and forge to get steel at say lvl 25...why not? They are accepting the downsides of having no combat/quality of life perks and having the game be a bit more difficult in other aspects as a result. Like Viktorious said, it's people deciding "WHAT parts of the game they wanted to skip." If people want to focus on building right off the bat, they can go straight for building perks and accept the downsides of being worse at combat/having to eat more/not being able to carry as much when looting etc. Or they have a more balanced build and get the tech a bit later. I was on the fence about level gates for a while but I think I'm finally coming down on the side against them.

[Guppycur]

I swear man, if mobile forum template wasn't so awful and plain, this lurker would upvote all of you posts in this section every single day, as you and few other mod oldies always seem so concise(without random gifs and my prof said "wisdoms") and on target.

 

I would maybe only add onto this, we expected some innovations to the system, content, buuut... Yea, I'll go back to lurking, don't want to step on anyone's toes.

 

Never worry about people's toes. Fuggem. =). We are all here to push our own agenda.

 

Lurk less, post more, that's my motto.