How to make the game still exciting after you became a "god"?

[hunluki]

Hi guys,

 

I have 300+ hours in the game, joined at A16 and I really enjoy this game with my friends. But there's a big problem with every single release, that after a few weeks ingame, we basically became a godlike entity with a strong fort, big farms and tons of food, ammunition and other defenses. This is the part where we like to ramp up the difficulty but you may experience the same, if you put your defences well together basically no one can get in and there is no reason to go out. Maybe you see house flipper and other series on YT, for the last few weeks we started to renovate whole towns but this is not the goal of the game in my eyes, just a fun side project.

 

To make the game long term challenging I wrote a list how it can be done to make players like us happy:

 

1. Food/Drink:

Make food and drink spoil. We have 5000+ meat stews and load of ingredients in wood boxes, so there is no chance to deal with food again until the next patch. Edible things should be spoil, faster if you put it into boxes, bit slower if you put it into fridges, much slower in a freezer. Also you could use a microwave or stove to heat them up to add bonuses to them. Little plus thing, gets rid of endless raids when we group up, all of us in their 4x4 to loot a whole town basically and don’t look back for days.

Storing food in ingredient form (flour, water, dried stuff, etc.) can hold much longer but it should also spoil over time. Water can be murky again, flour can be attacked by weevils, dried stuff can be rot. Also we should make canned food as well as they don’t need to be cooled.

Another idea is that your character can became bored if it eats the same food every time. The bonus effects could go down, or even be negative and get a “being sick of ...randomfood..” debuff.

 

2. Electricity:

Also these things can be run on electricity, we need a working electric stove, fridges/freezers, maybe coffee makers (an electric furnace would be an awesome upgrade to get "all green") so making electric systems in the house much more usable and managing them also a mini-game. Also if houses are well sealed, ACs, electric heaters and ceiling fans can be used to make otherwise hard to habitable biomes to new homes. To achieve this, electricity needs a huge update. Adding multiple inputs for devices to make them redundant, alternate switch, timed alternate switch, and adding up performance in systems. Currently if you have a solar bank that outputs 50W, and you add a battery bank in the system that can provide 150W but there is daytime, a 60W load on the system makes something crash, but it should use 50W from the solar and 10W from the battery. Also battery banks (and every other electric stuff) needs more input to charge them from multiple sources. Also why battery banks limited to 5W of load? It should be 5W/Battery inside at least with parallel charging. Better quality batteries should charge up faster, currently if you want to use your solar panel as a charger you need to separate your batteries to more banks to make an efficient charging, or your solar panel will sit on 5W load and… that’s it.

 

3. Gun/Tool degradation:

It’s nice that you can repair your stuff, but if you have the best available weapon, it’s became boring. Repair is good, but repairing back your stuff (gun, shovel, whatever) it shouldn’t be the same as a brand new, so you became motivated to build a new one. Also there should be some “legendary” weapons/tools in the game where you have to scavenge the whole map to find the parts for it. Maybe an achievement for it can be a big motivation.

 

4. More achievements:

As mentioned in the beginning, after a few days/weeks the game became simply boring as you leveled up to a semi-god. You should add achievements to clean up whole towns, even districts of it, renovate some building, take it back to business. Yeah, I know, it’s really far from here, but in the future there should be an option to call some settlers to live in your town after you built something for them. They should also run businesses, act as a military defense post, food supply, or you can supply them food/electricity and they defend us for it. In the long term, you be able to clean up whole Navezgane and get rid all of the zombies and cure the infection (it can be a “platina” like achievement).

 

5. Some little ideas:

- Elevators (they use electricity ofc)

- Working TVs with cameras

- Craftable solar panels/batteries (low quality but still better than nothing)

- Much more type of food and drink with different bonuses and different rot rate

- Why the concrete mixer doesn’t need electricity and why the turrets yes if there are batteries on their texture?

- Some collectable stuff for achievements or little bonuses

- Some collectable parts to build unique staff for achievements or bonuses

- Fixing water issues

- Water pipes and water filter machines to get in-house tap water

- Furnitures that are not only cosmetical but useful (if you sit on a chair it fills your stamina faster (maybe put a little buff on it for 10 mins), or if you diseased you could nap/sleep to cure it faster, coffee machine can be an extra kick of coffee, usable fridges, ACs and heaters as mentioned before

- Electric vehicles (minibike and 4x4 as well) that you can charge up with solar so you don’t need to dig for oil in the long term

 

That’s currently it from my perspective, but I hope that a lot of players will agree with me that these changes could make the game a whole new dimension. To be honest, I love the engineering part in games, love to build complex systems. These options would extend my gameplay to almost endless, also grouping up with 4-6 or even more friends to get navezgane back to life can be a real deal for months or even years. Give us more achievements and please get rid of the “okay, now I’m a god, what’s next” feeling in the game.

 

Thanks!

[SickPuppy]

I think a lot of ppl agree with you here, but a lot of it is balancing for end game stuff like bandits. Maybe we won't feel godlike when they're introduced. Maybe bandits come raid your base and steal/destroy all your stuff, just guessing.

 

Personally I just set myself different challenges per play through and see how long I can survive till permadeath:

 

+ Hunting knife only, or any other specific weapon, I tried a bone shiv play through in a16 it actually did ok with skills leveled up

+ Nomad only no trader

+ No weapons, traps only, I'm not a builder so this was crazy challenging for me

+ Rebuild a small town, paint it red, High Plains Drifter

+ Some streamers did a 'stay in dishong only challenge' u cant leave the building, to win you need to fly off the roof in gyro, i think you can leave for 1 day to the trader to get engine/battery, day 50 or something;

 

Yer anything to give yourself a challenge.

[Kalarro]

That's all ways to punish you to make lategame feel like early game. Id prefer getting endgame content.

[Viktoriusiii]

[...]

 

Spoilage is not gonna happen. MM said that multiple times.

 

More electricity... would be awesome, but since MM didn't even bother with electricity (which got introduced in A15) up until now, don't expect much in A19 or maybe even 20. The more electricity can improve our ingame life, the more electricity you need, the more gas you need the more you need to farm the more you will want to have solar banks, the more...

Awesome way to make lategame fun again. (Think tekkit or feedthebeast for Minecraft)

 

The other stuff is nice too. But I highly doubt much of that is going to be implemented.

Stuff you can look forward to:

-water is getting a rework (probably, most likely, no garantuee)

-Bandits will give a new endgame challenge

-more NPCs will give quest and there is even supposed to be a storyline someday.

 

But yeah everyone wants more lategame stuff... but they are more focused on patching then adding stuff that would fill the gaps... priorities... I guess.

[12pack]

I think a lot of ppl agree with you here, but a lot of it is balancing for end game stuff like bandits. Maybe we won't feel godlike when they're introduced. Maybe bandits come raid your base and steal/destroy all your stuff, just guessing.

 

Personally I just set myself different challenges per play through and see how long I can survive till permadeath:

 

+ Some streamers did a 'stay in dishong only challenge' u cant leave the building, to win you need to fly off the roof in gyro, i think you can leave for 1 day to the trader to get engine/battery, day 50 or something;

 

Yer anything to give yourself a challenge.

 

i did the Dishong tower one, it was pretty fun.. but once i was in, i was in, and could only go outside either on the building, or within the buildings footprint (i.e. the block it is on)..

I was able to collect whatever i could on the way to the initial trader, who i assumed "gave" me the quest, sold everything collected to this point to him, bought a battery, and hoped i could wrench a motor from one of the cars outside the tower..

 

It was a pretty dang cool play-through.. end game goal and everything,

and i am going to do it again soon, in 18

[Ghostlight]

OP what difficulty are on and is it MP? We thought we were god in our latest run yet had our usually adequate base torn to pieces on horde night on Warrior difficulty. Never had that happen, or even come close to happening till this alpha.

[ApocNizmith]

I just restart a new game TBH. Once you have the best everything, a all but undefeatable horde base, more mats than you will use in 300 days, not much left to do so I just start over.

[hunluki]

Hi,

 

We tried on harder difficulty as well, but all that changed is the time, so it only makes the first few days harder, after a while everything becomes tha same, expect we build bigger and harder walls and more turrets/traps. My problem is basically not the difficulty but the lack of endgame content that motivates me to go further in the game.

[Nauman Marwat]

That's why I prefer mods,and the changes you asked for are mostly already there, especially when a17 came out there were simply too many guns out there but mods especially Darkness Falls still have that a16 gun parts system,so you don't get guns everywhere.I myself play it at insane difficulty and loot at 25% Darkness falls and there are so many things for end game.You won't get bored.Also don't abuse zombie ai with tricky bases.I wish if this game had a16+a17 zombie pathfinding system that will be much more challenging bcz now it's so easy to guess their path.

[Lorca]

I think a lot of ppl agree with you here, but a lot of it is balancing for end game stuff like bandits. Maybe we won't feel godlike when they're introduced. Maybe bandits come raid your base and steal/destroy all your stuff, just guessing.

 

Maybe. Would rather have MOAR zombies, and no bandits myself.

[Scyris]

That's why I prefer mods,and the changes you asked for are mostly already there, especially when a17 came out there were simply too many guns out there but mods especially Darkness Falls still have that a16 gun parts system,so you don't get guns everywhere.I myself play it at insane difficulty and loot at 25% Darkness falls and there are so many things for end game.You won't get bored.Also don't abuse zombie ai with tricky bases.I wish if this game had a16+a17 zombie pathfinding system that will be much more challenging bcz now it's so easy to guess their path.

 

Thats the main issue with 7dtd, once your established there just.. isin't anything to do in the game anymore really. In a17 i'd be established usually before day 7, so by then I just didn't see any reason to keep playing. In a16 I used to last till day 40 or so as it took a while longer to get setup. A18 I play dead is dead, longest game has been to day 17. Not as hard as you though I play on warrior difficulty, as I don't like the idea of super tanky zombies due to the player damage reduction on difficultys above nomad. Darkness falls actually removes that aspect of higher difficultys but leaves their damage bonus vs players intact. While they will die as easly as they would on nomad, they hit like a truck if you let them hit you. Just feels better that way than the zombies becoming super tanky on survivalist/insane.

 

Also if your allowing yourself to respawn difficulty doesn't really matter at all, as you can die and come back as much as you want. Thats why I see no point to difficulty above warrior. Its only really a challenge if you play dead is dead, you die, you delete the save, otherwise you can just respawn as much as you want. Then you got the ones that play dead is dead on insane with zombies always sprinting. Try that in single player. One life, you die save gone, it changes things when you play that way.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Maybe. Would rather have MOAR zombies, and no bandits myself.

 

Yeah i'm not a fan of bandits myself, if they use guns anyway. I've seen them in mods as far back as a16, they aren't fun, they are basically aimbots with infinite ammo. Once bandits with guns are a thing in the game, the zombies won't really be a threat anymore as your always going to worry about the guys with the guns. Also if I kill some bandit using a gun he better always drop some ammo or something like fallout games do.

[CypherTodd]

I would like to see huge end game missions. The rebuild a town one sounds great, repair a damn before it fails, and hopefully bandits will add a lot. I would love to see a way to improve the trader. So you bring a stupid amount of resource like clay, plant fiber, and 20 of each kind of seed, and the farm plot inside the trader is now "maned" by a green thumb that will sell you a variety of plants and food stuffs. Same for the forge area, the cement mixer, and the work bench. You could start to build up the trader to a very powerful aspect of the game. But again it would take A LOT of stuff. Would be cool if you brought 50 parts of each weapon type and got a master weapon smith, then if you brought another 50 of something they would craft you a pink whatever. AND REMOVE THE ABILITY FOR US TO CRAFT PINK!!!

[hunluki]

Yeah, endgame part. That's the key. Something what you can do when you reach the max tech level, have big farms so you can use your stuff to something big. Rebuild a town, re-open shops, cleanup sections where zombies no longer can reach, pimp up the trader maybe, whatever. Something that motivates you to move on and don't just wait for bigger and harder hordes.

[SickPuppy]

First time I heard the dishong challenge I thought it was a joke. Then I watched Kumquat streaming it, it's pretty insane challenge. I don't think I've the patience I'd be banging my head against the wall by day 3. Credit to ya for completing though.

 

I haven't seen the bandits in action, but the ones you describe sound very early models. Would be surprised devs come all this way and just throw half arsed bandits as end game. Heck I hope they don't stop till there's flying monsters in the game.

 

Yes longer drawn out quests would be cool. Maybe fighting different factions of bandits and survivors. So many possibilities to this game, maybe I'll learn to mod one day and merge My Summer Car into this game lol, can you imagine finding the parts, nuts and bolts putting a whole vehicle together in 7dtd, yes please.

[Kattla]

But yeah everyone wants more lategame stuff... but they are more focused on patching then adding stuff that would fill the gaps... priorities... I guess.

 

Aye, like 20 more guns.

[Doctor3D]

Some good ideas, OP. A lot of us have been saying the same things for a long time now. A continual motivation and need that can somehow recycle with repeated pressure is what the end-game needs. I just burn out too quickly on this game due to how immediate end-game becomes. I'm just holding on to the hope bandits will make end-game better. Until then, keep on em'!

[HungryZombie]

Turn up the bloodmoons to every day. That should give plenty to do once you are established.

[hunluki]

As i mentioned before, my problem is not the difficulty. Waiting for harder hordes is boring, i want to do something that needs a lot of effort and have some global effect on the world itself. Like reclaiming a town, pimping up the trader, find something that is really rare or hard to craft.

I mean it's fun to kill hordes every night but really that's all that this game can give? It have a really great potential and about 5% of it is in the current gameplay.

[HungryZombie]

As i mentioned before, my problem is not the difficulty. Waiting for harder hordes is boring, i want to do something that needs a lot of effort and have some global effect on the world itself. Like reclaiming a town, pimping up the trader, find something that is really rare or hard to craft.

I mean it's fun to kill hordes every night but really that's all that this game can give? It have a really great potential and about 5% of it was the current gameplay.

 

Fair enough and a good point.

[AtomicUs5000]

It sounds to me like you should be exploring mods and/or creating them.

I haven’t made any mods yet, but when I have burned out in the past, I started building my own POIs using the in-game editor and polishing them up in the tool that’s available in the mods section (it’s really good btw). When that gets old, I work on custom maps. Someday I hope complete a mod that goes well with those POIs and maps.

[Viktoriusiii]

Aye, like 20 more guns.

 

to be fair... more guns was like one of the most desired features on the list for quite a while... between A12 and 15 everyone was talking abut it... and I do like the nades... gives it a more military feel

 

but yea... get your point...

Players:

"We want endgame content, more quests, npcs and a better progression system!"

TFPs:

"Look at this cute mountain lion. It has a brand new leap ability!"

Players:

"But spider zombies already..."

TFPs:

"A BRAND NEW LEAP ABILITY!!!"

 

:'D

[hunluki]

Good point, but I don't have time to make mods

But who knows, maybe some day I jump into it when I bacame tired of TFPs:

"A BRAND NEW LEAP ABILITY!!!" mentality

[Shillen]

I'd honestly rather better replayability than end-game stuff. Give me more reasons to start over whether it's map diversity, build diversity, increasing challenge, etc. Games that focus on end-game content are boring/grindy and it usually trivializes the rest of the game so that end-game is all that matters.

[Morloc]

Give me more reasons to start over whether it's map diversity, build diversity, increasing challenge, etc. Games that focus on end-game content are boring/grindy and it usually trivializes the rest of the game so that end-game is all that matters.

 

A dynamic colony and NPCs that you actually need to defend. That's the ticket.

 

 

-Morloc