Feedback for The Fun Pimps on Alpha 17

[Aldranon]

About the roof-fall zombies: a general delay in floorplates disintegrating would solve the unfair situation. Floor makes a lout crack sound, but gives way 1 second later. Enough time for the experienced player to jump backwards.

 

Or you do what I do and ether start at the basement or nerd pole up to the goodies. Some basements have good stuff too so...

 

 

A17 is a tougher game leaning more toward a shooter than survival. Still fun but as I prefer survival games.

[Roland]

Or you do what I do and ether start at the basement or nerd pole up to the goodies. Some basements have good stuff too so...

 

 

A17 is a tougher game leaning more toward a shooter than survival. Still fun but as I prefer survival games.

 

Every move TFP makes to push the game towards more meaningful survival choices they get major pushback from the "why are you punishing us?!?!?!" crowd. True survival games are a niche genre that many players cannot seem to stomach. I don't blame TFP for moving a bit more towards the mainstream genre of zombie shooter when every single time over the past several alphas whenever they do anything that makes it so that the player can actually starve to death (for example) they are met by waves of complaints that the game is a tedious food eating simulator.

 

People like Vic here in this thread only want rewards and label negative consequences for bad decisions as "punishing the player" and call it "bad game design". The worst possible result in a survival game is death and yet thread after thread after thread fights against TFP for instituting any kind of a death penalty. Recently, people have again been asking for a "drop nothing" on death option because going back to get your dropped gear is seen as too much of a punishment for dying.

 

Very few players seem to want to play if they have disadvantages. They want to be strong in all categories and never have to suffer consequences or fight back up to full strength when a setback happens. This is not new to A17. It has existed since the early days of the game.

[Lanadon Conners]

Myself, I am all for "penalties" for death .. "IF" the reason for my death was of my own doing or of my own choices.

 

At this stage of the game development, the Pimps have a Lot of "Plates spinning" and some are going to wobble while they tend to others. Elemental conditions, Food and drink buffs, Zombie AI, Building stability from RWG are just some of the factors. If I freeze to death or die due to their impact but the Food and drink buffs like coffee are not working yet, or Heat radius from camp fires are still being worked on, then I am going to be upset. If I accidently fire my Shotgun deep inside a POI and pull a million Zombies down on myself that kick my arse , "THAT" is my own fault.

 

My favorite "Death" was falling from a 2 story building, hearing that nasty "Crack" and limping towards a small wooden cabin, zombies hot on my heels. While I was desperately trying to craft a splint, they started to tear the cabin down .. for me, THAT was Classic Zombie Survival.

 

I am going to be patient and hope that they keep the plates spinning and don't start to implement penalties for situations that are not completely fleshed out.

[Deadalready]

Having sunk a number of hours into the game I'm LOVING A17, it feels like a new game and adds a new season of life to the game. The POIs are fun to explore and all the hidden locations are fantastic, not all locations should become POIs however so that variety exists. Perks are excellent, many of them have ramping improvements which feel like we are being rewarded for investment but not all perks are created equal, many of them are obviously better than others.

 

 

 

The points that I feel need fixing right now are:

 

*FIX BLEEDING - it procs too often, does far too much damage too quickly and the blurry eyesight doesn't make sense. It's frankly stupid that I lose 30 hp each time because I can't in game react fast enough to limit the damage - item swap speed/recovery is too slow. One of the Fortitude perks should reduce bleeding - perhaps Healing Factor.

*Wood chests should not be broken by vehicles driving over/into them

*Greatly improve Agility tree - currently its subpar compared to the other schools and sneak doesn't work properly in POIs due to the ambush trigger locations - arguably the number 1 situation a player would want to sneak. The lack of a faster run/walk speed perk is mind boggling.

*Buying and Selling needs to be scaled back up, so things sell better. Perhaps allowing us to sell 4 god damn pistols instead of 3 every three days would be nice, as they appear in loot with extreme commonality. The barter perks should allow us to sell more items per rank too.

*Allow us to combine tools again to tier them up, otherwise you're making buying (CHA) and crafting (INT) the only options for players to get better tools.

*Bring back special effects for foods, if they all just heal stamina/drink then people will just gravitate to the best/same ones and stick with them. The removal of Yucca juice forces players to move away from desert biomes.

*With stamina drain from lack of food and water being so prominent - it should NOT take multiple clicks through the menu each time to find out how much food/drink I have. It's so critical to the gameplay now I feel like it should be a bar somewhere or at very least appear in the inventory menu straight away.

[Roland]

The lack of a faster run/walk speed perk is mind boggling.

 

Just so you realize that to do this they would have to nerf the current run/walk speed first to allow us to perk up to what we already have because what we have now is already so much faster than the fastest enemy pace it is a little ridiculous. I'm not sure how people would feel about being forced to move slower and then perk up to what we have right now. I'm thinking they would be upset about it. But when even the "nightmare" speed setting is still slower than player run speed you know that there is only one way to go for a progression on player speed.

[xXBadDreamXx]

just to throw this out there. what is a survival game? does it mean survival from starvation or the elements or a creature attacking or all of the above? theres alot of definitions of what a survival game is. is fallout a survival game? my internet searches tend to bring up comments from people saying fallout is not a survival game. is a game that wants you to just shoot monsters a survival game? no it isnt in my opinion. i guess maybe a survival game needs a balance of fighting and food and resource gathering...and with 7 days to die you get a pretty awesome building aspect with it as well. i think all the problems with 7 days currently are linked to the imbalance of trying to blend different genres into a game and trying to turn it into something that it isnt and never will be. by forcing zombie grinding to the forefront of everything you do it sways the balance of resource gathering and building to the point of literally ruining the game experience for people that want to focus on these things at least in a balanced amount as zombie killing.

so when people ask like Roland stated "why are you punishing us?" i think they may be saying "why are you nerfing the parts of the game that we like?" and to me thats what it feels like. i loved mining and building and farming and resource gathering and all these things took a HUGE hit in alpha 17. people have a limited amount of time to play a game in the day and if they have to spend the majority of it doing things they dont like as much just to progress in the game then it feels like a grindfest and enjoyment goes in the toilet. and lets be honest here. a game that wants you to kill zombies as your main activity will at least have better looking,scarier, and more varied examples with some proper boss zombies thrown into the mix. not just zombie x y z OR green zombie x y z

[SyKo]

Just so you realize that to do this they would have to nerf the current run/walk speed first to allow us to perk up to what we already have because what we have now is already so much faster than the fastest enemy pace it is a little ridiculous. I'm not sure how people would feel about being forced to move slower and then perk up to what we have right now. I'm thinking they would be upset about it. But when even the "nightmare" speed setting is still slower than player run speed you know that there is only one way to go for a progression on player speed.

 

 

I'm posting this to get your personal attention. I've been reading your posts for pages now, and it's just you constantly having to defend TFPs decisions when it comes to the direction the game is heading. Choices they made with regards to the game, and you defending those choices. Post after post. Well, since you're actually here, please answer my question. About a month ago, I made a post in this thread and it was ignored. Months before that, I had posted on the same topic, yet no one will address or reply regarding it.

 

You yourself said in a previous post that new players leaving negative reviews had mainly to do with performance issues. Yet, the number one performance impacting thing in this game right now is distant terrain. I asked a month ago and many times previously for a simple toggle switch in the menu to turn the *expletive* distant terrain off and that it ruined my immersion in the game and also was tanking peoples frames. You can roll back the game to a previous A14 or earlier version without distant terrain and the difference is shocking. Your frames jump 50-100 frames upward with that small change. So why, WHY IN HELL, can't we simply turn it off? Allow us to turn that ♥♥♥♥ off. There is absolutely no reason to not put a toggle in the menu settings to turn that useless ♥♥♥♥ off. I don't care how proud TFPs are of their stupid hologram of retardation. Turn it off. Allow me to turn it off. All these complaints from people regarding performance, yet the one stupid feature both hated and loved by so many that impacts that exact issue SO BADLY is unable to be disabled, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You allow the console players to turn this bs off, but PC players are brute forced into using it? I don't want to see for miles and miles. I don't want to ruin my own exploration of the map. More importantly, it impacts mine and everyone else's framerates. Don't believe me? Simply roll back to a previous non-distant terrain (pre a15) version and see for yourself. It's night and day.

 

My complaint is not one of the games direction, or questioning TFPs choices in that regard, but rather, why can't we solve this performance problem & allow the freedom of the player to make the same choices the console players are allowed to make, whilst probably solving a lot of the performance issue related negative reviews by new players at the same time? Why can't we turn it off? Why brute force tank PC players frames and not give them the same choices in their playing? Why isn't there a simple toggle to turn this off? Let me have fog. My game, my choice. I hate it and want it to die. I'd thank you in advance for your response, like I did in every one of my other posts on this issue, but nobody will *expletive* reply. -.-

[xXBadDreamXx]

LOL syko bwahahahaha ...feel the frustration tho....more options more gooder

[OzHawkeye]

You yourself said in a previous post that new players leaving negative reviews had mainly to do with performance issues. Yet, the number one performance impacting thing in this game right now is distant terrain.

 

Proof?

 

Keep in mind, distant terrain is generated, and generated once only, at start up. It's not showing you how the map is, but how it was when the map was first created, so I would be surprised to find out that its display is the great frame rate hog you claim it to be.

 

Also, suggesting that A17 be compared to a prior version for a comparison of distant terrain versus no distant terrain, is an entirely false comparison given all the other things that will have changed between versions that could just as equally be impacting performance.

 

That said, I think player choice is a near universally good thing, so it would be good, at some point, to have an option to turn distant terrain off, if coding that is a relatively easy thing for TFP to do.

[Roland]

I'm posting this to get your personal attention. I've been reading your posts for pages now, and it's just you constantly having to defend TFPs decisions when it comes to the direction the game is heading. Choices they made with regards to the game, and you defending those choices. Post after post. Well, since you're actually here, please answer my question. About a month ago, I made a post in this thread and it was ignored. Months before that, I had posted on the same topic, yet no one will address or reply regarding it.

 

You yourself said in a previous post that new players leaving negative reviews had mainly to do with performance issues. Yet, the number one performance impacting thing in this game right now is distant terrain. I asked a month ago and many times previously for a simple toggle switch in the menu to turn the *explicative* distant terrain off and that it ruined my immersion in the game and also was tanking peoples frames. You can roll back the game to a previous A14 or earlier version without distant terrain and the difference is shocking. Your frames jump 50-100 frames upward with that small change. So why, WHY IN HELL, can't we simply turn it off? Allow us to turn that ♥♥♥♥ off. There is absolutely no reason to not put a toggle in the menu settings to turn that useless ♥♥♥♥ off. I don't care how proud TFPs are of their stupid hologram of retardation. Turn it off. Allow me to turn it off. All these complaints from people regarding performance, yet the one stupid feature both hated and loved by so many that impacts that exact issue SO BADLY is unable to be disabled, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You allow the console players to turn this bs off, but PC players are brute forced into using it? I don't want to see for miles and miles. I don't want to ruin my own exploration of the map. More importantly, it impacts mine and everyone else's framerates. Don't believe me? Simply roll back to a previous non-distant terrain (pre a15) version and see for yourself. It's night and day.

 

My complaint is not one of the games direction, or questioning TFPs choices in that regard, but rather, why can't we solve this performance problem & allow the freedom of the player to make the same choices the console players are allowed to make, whilst probably solving a lot of the performance issue related negative reviews by new players at the same time? Why can't we turn it off? Why brute force tank PC players frames and not give them the same choices in their playing? Why isn't there a simple toggle to turn this off? Let me have fog. My game, my choice. I hate it and want it to die. I'd thank you in advance for your response, like I did in every one of my other posts on this issue, but nobody will *explicative* reply. -.-

 

Well, all righty then... I’ll *expletive* ask them....

 

My first thought is that it was probably Iron Galaxy that coded in that option out of necessity as part of their port of the game to console and so perhaps such a thing hasn’t ever been on TFP’s radar. But I’ll bring it up.

[OzHawkeye]

Just so you realize that to do this they would have to nerf the current run/walk speed first to allow us to perk up to what we already have because what we have now is already so much faster than the fastest enemy pace it is a little ridiculous. I'm not sure how people would feel about being forced to move slower and then perk up to what we have right now. I'm thinking they would be upset about it. But when even the "nightmare" speed setting is still slower than player run speed you know that there is only one way to go for a progression on player speed.

 

Hmm, my take on this way be to increase both actually.

 

Just personally, but A17 does feel like I'm walking slower, even if that's a false perception (it also feels like tool swings, such as a swinging an Axe to cut down a tree are a lot slower to, certainly a lot slower than prior Alphas). I would definitely want a running zombie to be able to (at least) keep up with me, so I'd personally be in favour of both them and us moving quicker.

[Roland]

I suppose the best way is to play it both ways on your console and see if there is a performance difference. That way it is the same version to same version with just the distant terrain toggled.

 

As for speed, I’m all for increasing both. It’s just the relative speeds between player and zombie that don’t need to have an even greater disparity. Nightmare speed should be faster than the players’s and sprint speed should be a hair below it IMO.

[faatal]

Just so you realize that to do this they would have to nerf the current run/walk speed first to allow us to perk up to what we already have because what we have now is already so much faster than the fastest enemy pace it is a little ridiculous. I'm not sure how people would feel about being forced to move slower and then perk up to what we have right now. I'm thinking they would be upset about it. But when even the "nightmare" speed setting is still slower than player run speed you know that there is only one way to go for a progression on player speed.

 

Animal and zombie move speeds will be faster in A18, since there was a bug that was causing some animation root motion to be lost. I actually had to tone down some animal speeds like dogs, because you could not loose them.

[Snowydeath]

Well, all righty then... I’ll *expletive* ask them....

 

My first thought is that it was probably Iron Galaxy that coded in that option out of necessity as part of their port of the game to console and so perhaps such a thing hasn’t ever been on TFP’s radar. But I’ll bring it up.

 

Actually reflections is what lowered frame rate. Turn them to low or off and you’ll have 60 FPS almost all the time on most hardware. I turned reflections to low and always have good performance (except on horde nights) and that’s because lighting isn’t finished yet. I know you werent the guy who complained but I figured I’d reply to you. A civilized normal human.

[madmole]

Hmm, my take on this way be to increase both actually.

 

Just personally, but A17 does feel like I'm walking slower, even if that's a false perception (it also feels like tool swings, such as a swinging an Axe to cut down a tree are a lot slower to, certainly a lot slower than prior Alphas). I would definitely want a running zombie to be able to (at least) keep up with me, so I'd personally be in favour of both them and us moving quicker.

 

There are perks that let you swing about 35% faster though, so initially could be a bit slower, but later game with perks you are swinging way faster.

 

I'm not sure why players want to move faster. We already upped the speed, I did a football field sprint and got there in 17 seconds and it took 22 seconds in Alpha 16. Its plenty fast. Take some mega crush and you can run about 25 miles an hour.

[Tin]

Animal and zombie move speeds will be faster in A18, since there was a bug that was causing some animation root motion to be lost. I actually had to tone down some animal speeds like dogs, because you could not loose them.

 

Just a thought:

If you get around to unifying the timid and hostile animals to operate the same; You could alter the hostile animal speeds through buffs.

like: @max health they are faster then the player and can catch them but if you damage them some, their max speed drops.

 

You can do this with the timid animals and zombies, but the hostile animals (with 17.2) you can't. It works well and plays nice. Smack them once or twice and you can get away.

 

If you want here's a PoC of it with the zeds:https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?111332-Tin-s-Modlet-Tweaks&p=953610&viewfull=1#post953610 Look at the dynamic damage buff.

ofc I have my own twists in it, but it's set up to make easy tweaks to it also, so ppl can change it to suit their own needs.

[OzHawkeye]

There are perks that let you swing about 35% faster though, so initially could be a bit slower, but later game with perks you are swinging way faster.

 

I'm not sure why players want to move faster. We already upped the speed, I did a football field sprint and got there in 17 seconds and it took 22 seconds in Alpha 16. Its plenty fast. Take some mega crush and you can run about 25 miles an hour.

 

As I said, it's a perception thing I think, and quite possibly tied (psychologically and unreasonably) to how we move starting out. Pure perception I expect. Tool swings are definitely slower, but I'm comparing that to A11, where I could chop up every window in a house with my axe in a few seconds, to A17, where it takes a good deal longer because of the slower Axe swing (I use the chopped out windows as a visual marker for myself that I've already looted that particular POI).

[madmole]

So why, WHY IN HELL, can't we simply turn it off? Allow us to turn that ♥♥♥♥ off. There is absolutely no reason to not put a toggle in the menu settings to turn that useless ♥♥♥♥ off. I don't care how proud TFPs are of their stupid hologram of retardation. Turn it off. Allow me to turn it off. All these complaints from people regarding performance, yet the one stupid feature both hated and loved by so many that impacts that exact issue SO BADLY is unable to be disabled, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You allow the console players to turn this bs off, but PC players are brute forced into using it? I don't want to see for miles and miles. I don't want to ruin my own exploration of the map. More importantly, it impacts mine and everyone else's framerates. Don't believe me? Simply roll back to a previous non-distant terrain (pre a15) version and see for yourself. It's night and day.

 

Distant terrain isn't the issue, the distant terrain is nearly free its so cheap. Its the new pois have much greater detail and the trees are probably denser with more polygons, and 100 other changes combined. Reflections were upgraded and more costly, etc. We're working on performance but disabling distant terrain would look horrible without a bunch of changes to fog and we're not going to go back to that. Try disabling shadows, reflections, use low quality trees, etc.

[AtomicUs5000]

Could the perception of moving slower be due to field of view?

[madmole]

As I said, it's a perception thing I think, and quite possibly tied (psychologically and unreasonably) to how we move starting out. Pure perception I expect. Tool swings are definitely slower, but I'm comparing that to A11, where I could chop up every window in a house with my axe in a few seconds, to A17, where it takes a good deal longer because of the slower Axe swing (I use the chopped out windows as a visual marker for myself that I've already looted that particular POI).

 

Yes, I feel like players start too gimped early on and it takes a couple of perks in many areas to feel like you did starting out before. That will change during balance of A18, we want the players to feel adequate early on and awesome later game, not gimped early game and only adequate mid to late game.

[madmole]

Could the perception of moving slower be due to field of view?

 

Maybe we are slower. Sometimes unintended changes creep in. I had the bicycle all tuned in speed wise and stamina use, then some change came in and it was too slow and used too much stamina. Nobody knew what caused it so I rebalanced it, then someone found a bug, fixed it, and boom it was too fast and didn't use any stamina after the adjustments so I had to go back to the original values.

[Odetta]

Could the perception of moving slower be due to field of view?

 

Yes, Turn your FOV to 110 and it will look like you're flying. First person vehicles would also make you look like sonic the hedgehog. That's why flying the gyro seems so slow; the further away from a point of reference you are the slower it looks. Try looking at a distant mountain in real life while driving, it will look like your not moving at all. Then look at the side of the road, it will look like you're hauling ass.

[AtomicUs5000]

Yes, Turn your FOV to 110 and it will look like you're flying. First person vehicles would also make you look like sonic the hedgehog. That's why flying the gyro seems so slow; the further away from a point of reference you are the slower it looks. Try looking at a distant mountain in real life while driving, it will look like your not moving at all. Then look at the side of the road, it will look like you're hauling ass.

 

Yes, absolutely. I should have been more clear. What I really meant to ask was if maybe OzHawkeye's FOV is contributing to this perception... especially since it could have been set to something else in previous alphas.

[SylenThunder]

I really do hope the FOV slider comes back in the next patch. It's been really annoying having to set it every time I play.

[AtomicUs5000]

I really do hope the FOV slider comes back in the next patch. It's been really annoying having to set it every time I play.

 

Yes. I was secretly trying to draw attention to that. I was being sneaky, subtle. Pointing out a missing feature in a way that won't result in a response suggesting that it's not important right now.