My A18 feedback

Kubikus · February 22, 2020

Yeah, well, some of those "supposed" Romero fans, often forget that he already introduced "semi-intelligent" zombies in the original movie.

Little girl dies, turns into a zombie, grabs a brick trowel and kills her dad.

Snarky. Actually, it is the point of the whole Romero story line that zombies evolve. From, well, Romero zombies (unfortunately you have no idea what that is, right? hue hue hue) to conscious creatures. I wouldn't so much bring up what zombies do in the first movie, I think it was not yet thoroughly thought out. I think Romero did not, at that point, realize the significance of his creation and probably had not set all the rules. Had he had the whole story line in mind, we would not have seen zombies using tools as they do in that movie - purposefully. In all other movies, if I'm not mistaken and with the exception of the end of Land of the Dead and Bub from Day of the Dead, you only see zombies "using" tools (or things in general) when they're repeating behavioural patterns that they learned in their life. Which movie is it where a mailman is chained to a mail box and continues to carry a letter back and forth? Survival I think. This is not intelligence, though, they don't intend to accomplish anything.

In Land of the Dead, if you wish to point out intelligent Romero zombies, the gas station zombie is basically leading a zombie army against the human settlement, is using a rifle and a jack-hammer, telling zombies where to go and what to do, all very consciously. It is clearly showing anger and even happiness. There is a scene with a zombie on fire that seems to feel pain (afaik the only Romero zombie ever feeling pain) and the gas station zombie shoots it obviously out of compassion.

It's the actual point of the movie, that many zombies in that army develop some sort of intelligent consciousness during the movie, particularly towards the end, when they pick up weapons. There is a scene that leaves no doubt of that, when a zombie with a tambourine in one hand and a tool in the other looks at both and decides that the tool is the better weapon. Other zombies also pick up tools as weapons.

It's the movie's narrative to portray the evolution from the "mindless walking corpse" to a creature with rudimentary intelligence and feelings. Which is the end of Romero's story line, after Land of the Dead, he went back and made another two movies about earlier stages of the apocalypse where zombies were - what Romero zombies are.

But hey ho. If anybody wants to insist that Romero zombies as intelligent creatures, knock yourselves out.

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For certain definitions of "enjoy", this is true. Your own definition, for example.

And you thought I was talking about you..? How did that happen?

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Perfectly fine to stick with A16. Nothing to be ashamed of.

Cheers

What actually would be /perfectly/ fine is for the devs to find some sort of common ground, right, something that those can enjoy, who like pre A17 and those who enjoy post A16. I'm sure it's possible to combine both concepts in a satisfying way. "Go play the outdated version then" really is just snarky.

Kubikus · February 22, 2020

Nope. Those guys were Romero zombie fans. "Romero zombies can't break blocks." "Romero zombies are decrepit flesh and bone that would be pounded to mush long before a single crack formed in a block of concrete." It always came back to Romero and/or The Walking Dead.

Did they now. Isn't it really just common sense that zombies can't break cubic meter blocks of stone and iron? These fools actually argued with "Romero zombie lore"? *tsk tsk tsk*

No real "remark" about Minecraft at all. Just purists who felt that what TFP was pushing wasn't the true definition of zombie. Pretty much the same reason for the objections to the current "smart zombies" now.

Yeah, pretty much, right. Then again, you see, it's not some sort of religious fanatism, the Romero zombie simply is a great monster. Unlike, for example, the vampire. Lotta people just like zombies, because of what they are, not because of some definition. If they could fly, for example, it wouldn't be as fun for people who like zombies. Same with the x-ray vision and omniscience, some ppl just don't like that, all true definitions aside.

This is the function of the "breadcrumb system" which was introduced in A18. There will be more work on the breadcrumb system but it's intent is to have the zombies function exactly as you described.

Now wouldn't that be wonderful.

I just want them challenging. I don't care what they do.

So you aren't even interested in zombies. You have no particular fondness for them. Unlike me, I came to the game because it is, well, unfortunately was, besides the original Dead Island, capturing the atmosphere of the zombie apocalypse so very well.

If I may investigate further: What is "challenging" in your opinion?

In A17 when I saw that ferals could path all the way from the ground up through the hospital and out onto the roof where I was standing I was thrilled. It was scary and fun that they could get to me everywhere.

So when they change the AI to exactly what I want, you'll be upset?

I am definitely not bothered by the whys and the hows or the rules of zombiehood.

You don't get it. *shrugs* Like I said, I just happen to like the creature "zombie". That behaves like a zombie, and not like a creature with x-ray vision. The definition-discussion is a different branch, coming from the questioned statement that a majority of ppl has a certain thing in mind when someone says "zombie". Then there is yet another discussion going on, cuz some ppl find it necessary to question the relevance of Romero zombies in pop culture.

I just think the enemies behave in ways now that are more fun than they did previously.

See, and I "just" don't, because everything is so forseeable now. That's what I "just" dislike. And I would assume, most ppl who share my viewpoint, also do it "just" and not because of the rules of zombiehood. For example if I would mod the game like you seem to have, and I would see a zombie outside the building coming for me, I would know that it will eventually find me. And since my gamesense is "pretty good", I'm pretty sure that I would see any zombie that sees me. Which means, at the same time, that I know where it is - on it's way to me. So I'm expecting it. Which makes it forseeable. Boring - in my very very humble opinion. Would a zombie see me and come towards my position, but then behave naturally, I would only know that there is one, somewhere. Could be anywhere. Much more interesting.

There are some changes I would like to see in regards to horde night but I worry that those changes will make POI exploration less fun. It already is a bit less fun in A18 than it was in A17 due to the fact that it is obvious some of the zombies have been made stupid and will pound on a wall rather than walk through an open doorway to where you are...

They could just use different versions of AI for every day spawns and blood moon hordes. The situations are clearly different anyways.

As I stated, I personally prefer them pyramiding up on top of each other rather than boring into a single weak point and at some point I'll look to see if that is something I can mod.

I can see how the current AI would be a deal breaker for someone who sees the Blood Moon event as the reason for playing the game and who will also utilize any method of exploiting the zombie AI whether that ruins the fun for them or not. For me, I see the Blood Moon as 1/7 of the things I do during a given week. Exploring and clearing POI's is much more where my gaming time is spent and the AI rings true for that part of the game for me.

Who knows how someone thinks. I don't even know who that is. For me, the AI is just one of many issues A17+ has. I layed them all out here:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?153226-Catering-to-New-Players-hurts-Replayability-for-Experienced-Players&p=1104480&viewfull=1#post1104480

**Roland** · February 22, 2020

So you aren't even interested in zombies. You have no particular fondness for them. Unlike me, I came to the game because it is, well, unfortunately was, besides the original Dead Island, capturing the atmosphere of the zombie apocalypse so very well.

I love zombies and the whole zombie apocalypse setting. I particularly like the type of zombies we have right now in the game. Glad you’d like to stop talking definitions. TFP zombies = good zombies in my opinion.

So when they change the AI to exactly what I want, you'll be upset?

Depends on how bandits are implemented. Also, like zombies, we seem to be operating from two very different ideas about what constitutes “upset”. I say upset more loosely to mean that someone doesn’t like the change whereas you always attach more emotion to the word when you quote me. Then again you seem to take everything I say and attach the most extreme meanings to them in ways I never meant. I wouldn’t want the zombies to return to how they were in A16. But I’m always interested in how it all is going to turn out.

Kubikus · February 24, 2020

Lets say previous states should be known as well to infer the intentions of the devs. Also my statement was about AI not the other changes you then brought up.

Making significant changes frequently creates the impression that their intentions are sorta: Vicissitudinous. What a nice word.

The mild corrections to AI since A17 seems to indicate that good pathfinding abilities of the zombies is not regarded as a mistake but part of making tower defense work. I may still be wrong on that and they might make ALL zombies A16-dump again after bandits are in, but I would have to ask them then why tower defense is in the game only at end game.

Everybody likes "good pathfinding abilities", noone prefers "bad pathfinding abilities", and tower defense was always in the game. Imho, tower defense is practically dumbed down since you know exactly where they will go. If you know exactly where they will go, that makes it much easier to set up a defense of your tower, does it not.

Many players critisize the intelligence of the zombies even though I would not call that intelligence. An intelligent human won't see that you have a hidden entrance on the backside of your tower. A dump dog though might sense that your smelly foot prints always go to the backside. So a dog is more likely to find that back entrance than a human.

I do agree that practically the zombies are less intelligent, because their behaviour is more forseeable. But since they know more things than before, i.e. which path is the easiest (while ignoring traps), players say they are "more intelligent".

And the word "intelligent" comes from the "I" in "AI", so.. *shrugs*

Is a Romero zombie able to go through a clearly visible opening 5 meters left of him instead of trying to attack the wall if his target is behind the wall? No idea, I'd have to watch Romero movies again to find out. But I can readily give them that kind of "intelligence" (on the level of a dog) in this game without having problems with identifying them as zombies.

Romero zombies' intelligence is on the level of simple reactions, with no reflection, no planning, no creative thinking. Kinda like plants or bacteria, even insects' behaviour is more complex. They will just follow sensory input. If you had a chain link fence and stood right in front of a zombie behind it, but one step away was an opening, the Romero-zombie would not go for the opening, but only straight for the sensory input right in front of it. Just like they would thoughtlessly walk right into spikes and such, on their bee line path to a potential victim. Was there a wall and the zombie would hear you through the wall and not the door 5 meters away - it would go for the wall. Would it hear you through the door, it would go for the door. Hyper simple.

If you make it so that on hordenight the zombies have some kind of GPS in place of sensory input, then yes, they would go in a straight line and bang against walls. Imho, it'd be fine if they would find an entrance that is reasonably noticable to them, for example cuz it's five blocks away bleeding light or sound. Should they go to the other side of a base, around several corners, cuz there is an opening? No. That's ok for other, more intelligent enemies. I am, however, perfectly fine with them having increased strength on horde night or - even better - at night in general, so they will break blocks much faster.

You are right, they could be renamed infected or even mutants if anyone inside TFP would put any importance into that. But in seemingly half the zombie movies nowadays there are infected with a tendency to rage. So even if 7D2D relabeled them as infected, I bet 99 of 100 people would still call this a game with zombies. So it would be work for TFP without really making something better. Oh, and the kickstarter promised zombies (not Romero zombies, zombies) so relabeling them to mutants might not be the best idea.

I never said they should rename the zombies. And the zombies in the game are obviously zombies. Noone has ever denied that, it's either a narrative or a misconception. Or it is my misconception that you imply someone has ever denied the creatures in the game are zombies.

*shrugs*

I bought lots of released games that I put down again after minutes of playing them. And that at a time when you couldn't give them back after opening the shrink wrap. I never complained because I willingly entered that bargain. I could have tried demos instead before buying if I wanted to prevent that. It was clearly my own fault and as an adult I have to accept the consequences of my actions.

When kickstarter became popular and later alpha development I occasionally warned people to consider the risk and not expect too much. I (silently) expected a lot of those people that put thousands of dollars into a kickstarter game to be hugely disappointed because game development even without a publisher doesn't guarantee an exceptional game. History shows and logic demands that there is no guaranteed recipe for a good game.

The disclaimer is there for a reason. It tells you not to expect more from the deal than what is part of the deal. The disclaimer looks at you as an adult who can view a contract and infer reasonable expectations from that.

If I put myself in your shoes and imagine I had bought a turn-based RPG in EA that turned to RtwP mid-development, I would surely tell them that I don't like that change. But then grudgingly try the new RPG and either play that or leave when I don't like it. I accept the developers rights to make the game he wants (in the limits he advertises on the store page). I know I gave up my customer rights to vote with my money when I bought in advance. Simple as that.

*shrugs* Like I said:

"If the alpha disclaimer trumps everything. I see problems with the changes, cuz I don't like them. You're only right, if such disappointment, that not only I experience, is no problem.

And since you don't share that disappointment, but welcome the changes, your stance seems a bit "uninclusive", don't you agree."

Your response inspires no addition to that statement.

In more detail: Generally a dungeon path in a game can have traps, blind alleys, puzzles and riddles that open doors, beautiful vistas, side quests.

You forgot enemies, one of the and often the most important ingredient(s) of video game dungeon paths. In 7dtd, the path itself is no challenge, has no riddles or puzzles, it's clear where you have to go, so it's a clear case of paths where enemies really are the most important ingredient. And I really hope they don't add puzzles and riddles, these would just be a waste of time, particularly considering that they seem to be dumbing down game mechanics so new players aren't overstrained. The traps in 7dtd are lame too, you must be blind to run into spikes or a mine, and the only danger occurs when the floor caves in and you fall into a zombie pit.

No matter what is in between the expectation is that there is a McGuffin or treasure at the end of the dungeon. Like the suspense climax at the end of most movies. This is a general rule with lots of exceptions, but things to fight are just one of a variety of things inbetween. Specifically 7D2D has only traps and far far too seldom blind alleys beside the fights, but the expectation of something worthwile at the end is still in common with other dungeons crawls.

I think it matters greatly what is in between, treasure awaits at the end of a challenge, not some "path" with a nice view. If I don't have to take a risk and expend resources, why should I receive a reward. Therefor, I must continue to insist that sleepers, dungeons and treasure rooms are a package. Which "probably" (obviously) is why they appeared together.

Going to the treasure room (especially in the sky scrapers) was a recipe to make A16 easier as well. It had the same flair of "cheating" to simply open the staircase and go up directly to the loot.

Sure, but besides that A16 wasn't anywhere near being flawless, the current problem is the sheer number of treasure rooms. They are all over the place. There is no doubt that you can find 10 treasure rooms within 10 minutes after spawning. Not plunder 10, but see 10 pois that have such a room. You can plunder roughly 4 if you bee line to the treasure room and avoid most of the sleepers (some call that exploitation), roughly 2 if you go through the building and kill all the zombies. I mean, hell, these days you often spawn right next to a city. You spawn and instantly see a bunch of treasure rooms. It's absurd, and obviously so.

There exist a few practicable solutions for 7D2D I would be ok with any or all of them: 1) Distributing the loot but still having as much loot in the last room as any other room in that POI. 2) Make 2 or 3 variants of every POI that has the final loot room somewhere else. 3) Add a key you need ot find on the way before you can open the final chest.

It's no problem to go through a poi on day 1, kill all the zombies and grab the loot, except when it's in a locked chest with 5000+ hp. Then, though, you could spend the night wacking it with your stone axe. The overabundance of loot needs to go, cuz you can't have a proper surivival game where you can be fully stacked with weapons, armor, tools, food and ammo within a very few days. Devs, as I hear, agree and are working on it. I wonder, though, because of the "package"-problem, how they will, uhm, "believe to have solved it".

Loot already levels along with the zombies.

Only the quality of items. Afaik. Particularly ammo needs to level along.

An even better solution is that you make it so that certain locations have clearly different difficulties. One poi might be good to clear on your first day, with early game loot, another one has much stronger zombies on day 1 already, with the high-end-loot treasure room guarded by zombies you certainly can't kill on day 1 with a club or a bow. Put down warning signs, so the player knows what's what: No sign = easy (trash mobs inside), "attention, zombies!" = medium (feral zombies inside) and a radiation-symbol = difficult. Differentiate even further through biomes, have biomes apply a multiplier to the poi-zeds. Forest * 1, desert + snow = * 2, burnt * 3, wasteland * 4.

What do you think is more likely: That the developers actively use their precious time to prevent modders from doing something even though they want modding as part of the game. Or that modding is very low on the immediate priority list when adding new features and removing legacy code.

A reccurent task in modern software development is refactoring and pruning old code so that the software is in a maintainable state. Another task is to replace one method of doing something with a totally different method.
If I were developing a game I would never add modding before release because refactoring and pruning and new features replacing old features would always get in the way of mods and modders. I'm not a TFP developer and can only guess but for example if the static spawner option in xml vanished it is probably because the internal code that acted on that xml simply was replaced with something entirely new and the xml consequently had no reason to exist anymore. It may even be that the xml could be made to work with the new feature as well but that would need another 2 days of development and the developer had some more important tasks in his queue.

*sigh* I mentioned modding only cuz you can't even mod it back in. It's gone. And I clearly indicated that I don't know why. But the removal indicates that they don't want it.

You proposed the following definition in a reply to Roland: "It should be plausible that creators call anything a zombie, that has at least one characteristic of the old Romero zombies".

That's not a definition, I meant that some creators probably just slap the label "zombie" on anything with one characteristic without thinking much about it. It's undead, boom, zombie. It's eating flesh, boom, zombie. It infects other creatures, boom, zombie. Cuz they're not creative enough to come up with a new label, for example, such as "Illithid". Which might answer my question "why call it a zombie". Then again, as I mentioned too, this would quite probably still be done for advertisement purporses, cuz many ppl like "zombies". + have expectations what zombies are.

Now the problem is that zombies, ghouls, skeletons, all are undead, like a romero zombie.

Yeah, if you call anything undead a zombie, that's kinda lazy, uncreative and of questionable accuracy, cuz a zombie really isn't just anything, cept because anything is simply labeled "zombie", cuz noone owns that label and there is no law to only label something a "zombie" that has certain characteristics.

Jason X and some other supernatural serial killers never run.

Babies also don't. Boom, zombies.

Illithid eat brains.

And yet, you instantly need not be convinced that they are not zombies. But noone knows what an "Illithid" is, so other creators who invent a creature like that might just call it "zombie". Lazy, and/or misleading.

My comment was a bit of a side comment to that idea. I have no problem in calling the romero-zombie the archetype of zombies and in other words, yes, a romero zombie is without a doubt a typical zombie.

See. And ppl like this particular creature. That's why it is so popular. It's particularly creepy, being dead, still walking, coming for the living, turning them into zombies. Being slow is really creepy too, fast zombies are just more exciting and a more intersting enemy in video games, just like variations such as the wall climber, puker, exploder and so on.

But maybe classifications like undead or shambling have largely lost their meaning in a definition of zombiness.

There are many variations of the Romero zombie, that are obviously inspired by Romero zombies, and still called "zombies", which is perfectly fine. Still, when you say "zombie", most ppl think of the Romero zombie that has a concrete number of characteristics, of which "intelligence" is none, feeling pain is none, self healing is none. Ask 10 ppl to make a zombie impression. How many grab a frying pan and start sprinting at you? How many will raise their arms, put on a dumb face, and shamble towards you with some "hhggnnn grrrr" sound? I'd estimate the ration at roughly 0 : 10.

I might see you not being content with the current state, but judging by your words I also don't see how A16 would really make you happy, as horde nights in A16 were at least as trivial if you "exploited" the knowledge of zombie AI. So whatever horde night AI would make you really happy it can't be the return of the old AI.

But it has been explained a bazillion times what a bunch of ppl dislike about the new AI. It's very simple. I can explain it in 1 short sentence: It's too forseeable that you can design a certain path that the zombies will certainly follow.

Kubikus · February 24, 2020

I love zombies and the whole zombie apocalypse setting. I particularly like the type of zombies we have right now in the game.

Ok...

Glad you’d like to stop talking definitions.

What bothers you about it?

TFP zombies = good zombies in my opinion.

Good for you.

Depends on how bandits are implemented. Also, like zombies, we seem to be operating from two very different ideas about what constitutes “upset”. I say upset more loosely to mean that someone doesn’t like the change whereas you always attach more emotion to the word when you quote me.

Really? How so? I attach more emotions to other words you use, such as "angry", "enraged" or "horrified".

Then again you seem to take everything I say and attach the most extreme meanings to them in ways I never meant.

Nah, it's seem more that you forget what you even said. Like now you think you said "upset" and I'd attach emotions of anger, rage and horror to that word. While I attach it to other words you said.

I wouldn’t want the zombies to return to how they were in A16. But I’m always interested in how it all is going to turn out.

So you wouldn't want the zombies to be like they were minus the bugs? You actually think it's great that they have x-ray vision and omniscience? Sorry for talking definitions, but what about zombies do you like then? Cuz that's kinda unusual for the creature. It's usually very dumb, right?

**Roland** · February 24, 2020

...Cuz that's kinda unusual for the creature. It's usually very dumb, right?

The creature doesn’t exist. There is no actual creature—only a body of sci-fi/fantasy work that given time this game will be apart of for future fans of zombies to look at. Whatever you want to call it “X-ray vision” “intelligence”—I don’t care. I like these zombies. They are dead humans reanimated and coming to eat me and they look decayed and if there is a hive mind intelligence to them it doesn’t bother me. You asked for my own preferences and opinions and I’ve given them. 👍

**meganoth** · February 25, 2020

Sorry, I have to prune your post and comment only on those parts I have comments too. Too many topics at once.

Making significant changes frequently creates the impression that their intentions are sorta: Vicissitudinous. What a nice word.

Everybody likes "good pathfinding abilities", noone prefers "bad pathfinding abilities", and tower defense was always in the game. Imho, tower defense is practically dumbed down since you know exactly where they will go. If you know exactly where they will go, that makes it much easier to set up a defense of your tower, does it not.

I do agree that practically the zombies are less intelligent, because their behaviour is more forseeable. But since they know more things than before, i.e. which path is the easiest (while ignoring traps), players say they are "more intelligent".

And the word "intelligent" comes from the "I" in "AI", so.. *shrugs*

But their intelligence is in the pathfinding, I don't see how you can seperate that when discussing their Intelligence. Their "pathfinding intelligence" is relatively high but could be explained away as highly tuned senses or fore-knowledge (sleepers in POIs) as well.

Technically it costs a lot (in terms of FPS) to implement vision based sensing in a voxel world, so you get this compromise that zombies know to follow paths but they know too much (at least at the moment, I can imagine some heuristics to reduce that without simulating real vision).

I think we differ on the definition of "tower defense" and I got wikipedia on my side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense : "Tower defense is a subgenre of strategy video game where the goal is to defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers, usually achieved by placing defensive structures on or along their path of attack." and "What distinguishes tower defense base defending games from other base defending games (such as Space Invaders, or other games where bases are defended) is the player's ability to strategically place, construct or summon obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions in the path of attacking enemies."

A16 on the other hand was more like the game "Stronghold" where the emphasis was on building strong walls and attacking from behind them. The attacker can't be coerced to follow a path. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong...993_video_game) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong...001_video_game) , neither mentions Tower Defense at all. Stronghold is not a tower defense game even though it has towers and it is your job to defend them

On the topic of traps, zombies don't avoid the traps when they are level with the ground. But this is neither explained by the current game nor inferable from their shape. I agree with you that TFP needs to change either the trap handling, or their idiosyncracies must be explained to players. The current state is not fit for release.

...

I never said they should rename the zombies. And the zombies in the game are obviously zombies. Noone has ever denied that, it's either a narrative or a misconception. Or it is my misconception that you imply someone has ever denied the creatures in the game are zombies.

*shrugs*

You directly asked the question and I gave an answer to that question. Quoting you: "And, which is the original point that lead to my original question, if they wanted intelligent zombies - why call em zombies? Why not call em "infected" or "mutants"?". I'm not implying anything, I'm answering your question

...
*sigh* I mentioned modding only cuz you can't even mod it back in. It's gone. And I clearly indicated that I don't know why. But the removal indicates that they don't want it.

That conjecture is a logical fallacy. If you don't know why, it does not follow that "they don't want it". If you have to chooose between a gold ring and a fancy hat, choosing the fancy hat doesn't mean you don't like to have the gold ring, it just means you like the fancy hat **more** at that time. I gave you a (likely) explanation that they probably had to choose between clean, lean and maintainable code and keeping and adapting nearly untestable code only used by a few modders. I don't see an efficient way for their testers to test this unused code to keep it working.

Even Wube, the makers of Factorio and largely praised for their community support, prune code they themselves don't use, even when it makes modders unhappy (recent example was removing an axe and much code with it used by some prominent modders). Show me a game developer that doesn't do this, especially in EA.

...

There are many variations of the Romero zombie, that are obviously inspired by Romero zombies, and still called "zombies", which is perfectly fine. Still, when you say "zombie", most ppl think of the Romero zombie that has a concrete number of characteristics, of which "intelligence" is none, feeling pain is none, self healing is none. Ask 10 ppl to make a zombie impression. How many grab a frying pan and start sprinting at you? How many will raise their arms, put on a dumb face, and shamble towards you with some "hhggnnn grrrr" sound? I'd estimate the ration at roughly 0 : 10.

Good point with the impression.

There is the iZombie/girl with all the gifts/ type intelligence and there is the simple pathfinding intelligence of a dog. There is the question what the 10 people would do if I were inside a cage with an open door on the side, would all 10 still come at me directly or some use the path? Or if I pretended to be the zombie and went for the door or ran, would they protest?

I think you might be right that the romero zombie is still at the center of what a zombie is. But it is still safe to say that zombiness nowadays can't be pinned down to any stringent definition. Zombieness was modernised because romero zombies alone got old.

But it has been explained a bazillion times what a bunch of ppl dislike about the new AI. It's very simple. I can explain it in 1 short sentence: It's too forseeable that you can design a certain path that the zombies will certainly follow.

I was talking about you there, not "people". You don't put much importance on building for horde night. If I remember correctly you had the most fun combating zombies in the street. So (at least for horde night) I would not have thought you put much importance whether you need to make paths or some quadratic cubicle. You might protest on zombies not being your definition of zombies but the implications for horde night should be almost negligible to you.

Kubikus · February 27, 2020

Sorry, I have to prune your post and comment only on those parts I have comments too. Too many topics at once.

Can get confusing.

But their intelligence is in the pathfinding, I don't see how you can seperate that when discussing their Intelligence.

I don't see how I'm doing that when I point out that it's the same thing. Enlighten me plz. If it's the fact that everybody likes good pathfinding - good pathfinding does not mean x-ray vision and omniscience. It means not getting stuck, not spinning in one spot. Good pathfinding is realistic pathfinding. So actually, we currently have - in my opinion - bad pathfinding. There is also another issue.. Lemme actually fire up that graphic software:

Zombies move on this grid. So instead of taking the direct path to their target - green - they first move on their grid and only eventually go direct - red. Not only does this feel very odd, it also makes them harder to hit, because they are not coming at you in a straight line. You have to - blue - move over to their path if you want to line them up perfectly for a clear shot.

Their "pathfinding intelligence" is relatively high but could be explained away as highly tuned senses or fore-knowledge (sleepers in POIs) as well.

Sure. Stitching on lore is no problem. Here is a serious question, though:

Do you a) recognize as valid and maybe even b) understand, that some don't like the increased intelligence..? That it's not about definitions or things being logically impossible? Though we can also discuss that, as a seperate branch. But that some simply don't like this particular game mechanic? Like, say, some might not like flying enemies, or enemies with ranged attacks or fast moving enemies? I keep seeing ppl complaining about vultures - personally I have zero problems with em, but I understand whomever dislikes em.

Technically it costs a lot (in terms of FPS) to implement vision based sensing in a voxel world, so you get this compromise that zombies know to follow paths but they know too much (at least at the moment, I can imagine some heuristics to reduce that without simulating real vision).

How can it cost more to have a zombie only remember where it last saw a player instead of knowing where the player is at all times? There is already vision in the game, a zombie - if I'm not mistaken - has to actually see the player first, to, then, keep track of them. Outside hordenight, that is.

I think we differ on the definition of "tower defense" and I got wikipedia on my side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense : "Tower defense is a subgenre of strategy video game where the goal is to defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers, usually achieved by placing defensive structures on or along their path of attack." and "What distinguishes tower defense base defending games from other base defending games (such as Space Invaders, or other games where bases are defended) is the player's ability to strategically place, construct or summon obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions in the path of attacking enemies."

A16 on the other hand was more like the game "Stronghold" where the emphasis was on building strong walls and attacking from behind them. The attacker can't be coerced to follow a path. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong...993_video_game) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong...001_video_game) , neither mentions Tower Defense at all. Stronghold is not a tower defense game even though it has towers and it is your job to defend them

You argue against the statement "7dtd is a tower defense game", but what I am saying is "tower defense was always in the game." It's an aspect of several. Before you counter argue, I suggest you read the game's self description. Spoiler alert: It's on my side.

On the topic of traps, zombies don't avoid the traps when they are level with the ground. But this is neither explained by the current game nor inferable from their shape. I agree with you that TFP needs to change either the trap handling, or their idiosyncracies must be explained to players. The current state is not fit for release.

I meant that they ignore it when along the path you have traps that kill em all. An intelligent person would not follow a path where 20 of their comrades were just shot dead. They are intelligent enough to understand where your base is weakest, but then they run straight into turret fire. It's just weird.

You directly asked the question and I gave an answer to that question. Quoting you: "And, which is the original point that lead to my original question, if they wanted intelligent zombies - why call em zombies? Why not call em "infected" or "mutants"?". I'm not implying anything, I'm answering your question

Admittedly, it's a bit of a "difficult" question, so I'm not blaming you for wrongfully believing you would've answered it with

"You are right, they could be renamed infected or even mutants if anyone inside TFP would put any importance into that. But in seemingly half the zombie movies nowadays there are infected with a tendency to rage. So even if 7D2D relabeled them as infected, I bet 99 of 100 people would still call this a game with zombies. So it would be work for TFP without really making something better. Oh, and the kickstarter promised zombies (not Romero zombies, zombies) so relabeling them to mutants might not be the best idea."

That is a response to something like "I think they should rename them!" - which I never said and what I don't suggest. The question "if they wanted intelligent zombies - why call em zombies?" refers to the definition of what a zombie is. Cuz a zombie, unlike Roland actually said, exists, and has characteristics. If you want to create an enemy, that obviously goes against several of the core characteristics of the creature - then why would you decide to call it a zombie and make it look like a zombie?

The real response to this overall (and underlying) thought is that the intelligence is or might be more a kinda "currently accepted" byproduct of the AI's redesign, which was done to solve a bunch of problems that the old one used to have, and while there does not seem to be an actually official stance about it, things might seem like the devs intend to tone the x-ray vision and omniscience down anyway. At least that's what Roland, who has insider knowledge, seems to suggest frequently. But as always, I am discussing what I see and care little about rumours, that often have been proven to be false.

That conjecture is a logical fallacy. If you don't know why, it does not follow that "they don't want it". If you have to chooose between a gold ring and a fancy hat, choosing the fancy hat doesn't mean you don't like to have the gold ring, it just means you like the fancy hat **more** at that time. I gave you a (likely) explanation that they probably had to choose between clean, lean and maintainable code and keeping and adapting nearly untestable code only used by a few modders. I don't see an efficient way for their testers to test this unused code to keep it working.

Even Wube, the makers of Factorio and largely praised for their community support, prune code they themselves don't use, even when it makes modders unhappy (recent example was removing an axe and much code with it used by some prominent modders). Show me a game developer that doesn't do this, especially in EA.

Logic is nice, but once again, yours does not apply, cuz I said "the removal indicates that they don't want it". The word "indicates" indicates that I'm not sure. And yes, there are indications that they actually want it - cuz it once was in the game and makes a helluva lotta sense and indeed might they leave it out for now because the game is not optimized yet or beause they haven't come around coding it. Who knows. But at this point it's gone. "Looks like" they don't want it. They could also put sleepers outside of POIs (and yes, in rare cases they do) to make it harder to get in. But "it seems" they're really focused on making these POIs dungeons the main thing, cuz if you, on top of the sleepers, added a significant number of outside zombies, it might become too many, while having too few defeats the purpose.

Good point with the impression.

There is the iZombie/girl with all the gifts/ type intelligence and there is the simple pathfinding intelligence of a dog. There is the question what the 10 people would do if I were inside a cage with an open door on the side, would all 10 still come at me directly or some use the path? Or if I pretended to be the zombie and went for the door or ran, would they protest?

The number of people who portray a zombie exactly like a Romero-type would certainly decrease, while it would, then again, increase if you told them to take a moment and really think about how a zombie behaves, particularly when you present that setup with the cage and the door. If ppl think about wether a zombie is intelligent enough to go through the door instead straight for the sensory input's source - I'd say the majority will say it's not. Cuz zombies are "really really dumb", right?

I think you might be right that the romero zombie is still at the center of what a zombie is. But it is still safe to say that zombiness nowadays can't be pinned down to any stringent definition. Zombieness was modernised because romero zombies alone got old.

Sure. It's really a lot about differentiating the things I say. Yes, there are many different types of zombies. Yes, it's ok to to create variations. No, you do not just call the Romero-zombie a zombie, but yes, it is the core concept of the - modern, post-voodoo - zombie. And no, it's not reasonable to deny that zombies have certain characteristics, even, though, yes, you will find an example for every characteristic missing. One zombie might not be dead. One might not eat flesh. One might not attack the non-zombies. One might not infect the non-zombies and turn them into zombies. One might not be a slow walker. One might not be dumb. One might have multiple characteristics missing.

I was talking about you there, not "people".

C'mon, I'm people too. :,(

You don't put much importance on building for horde night. If I remember correctly you had the most fun combating zombies in the street. So (at least for horde night) I would not have thought you put much importance whether you need to make paths or some quadratic cubicle. You might protest on zombies not being your definition of zombies but the implications for horde night should be almost negligible to you.

I don't put much importance and it is almost negligible to me. It was bit more prominent in my A18 game, cuz I didn't spend skillpoints, so I stayed in my "base". I do, then again, always built a defendable base in long-term games. The plan this time, though, was to jump down and start the ole nose-to-nose style, but it never was necessary. A simple kill corridor was enough. Without any traps, btw. That's the great new AI some professional has been working on for well over a year now? Hm.

Kubikus · February 27, 2020

The creature doesn’t exist.

Neither does

, I hear.

There is no actual creature—only a body of sci-fi/fantasy work that given time this game will be apart of for future fans of zombies to look at. Whatever you want to call it “X-ray vision” “intelligence”—I don’t care. I like these zombies. They are dead humans reanimated and coming to eat me and they look decayed and if there is a hive mind intelligence to them it doesn’t bother me. You asked for my own preferences and opinions and I’ve given them. ?

Thanks. Always very interesting to converse with you, Roland.

**meganoth** · February 27, 2020

Can get confusing.

I don't see how I'm doing that when I point out that it's the same thing. Enlighten me plz. If it's the fact that everybody likes good pathfinding - good pathfinding does not mean x-ray vision and omniscience. It means not getting stuck, not spinning in one spot. Good pathfinding is realistic pathfinding. So actually, we currently have - in my opinion - bad pathfinding. There is also another issue.. Lemme actually fire up that graphic software:

Zombies move on this grid. So instead of taking the direct path to their target - green - they first move on their grid and only eventually go direct - red. Not only does this feel very odd, it also makes them harder to hit, because they are not coming at you in a straight line. You have to - blue - move over to their path if you want to line them up perfectly for a clear shot.

Sure. Stitching on lore is no problem. Here is a serious question, though:

Do you a) recognize as valid and maybe even b) understand, that some don't like the increased intelligence..? That it's not about definitions or things being logically impossible? Though we can also discuss that, as a seperate branch. But that some simply don't like this particular game mechanic? Like, say, some might not like flying enemies, or enemies with ranged attacks or fast moving enemies? I keep seeing ppl complaining about vultures - personally I have zero problems with em, but I understand whomever dislikes em.

Understanding that some don't like it, definitely. Recognize as valid depends on "valid". In the sense that every critisism aka "I don't like it" is a valid testimony, sure. But valid as in "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_(logic)" ? I don't see the argument for that type of validity.

The pathfinding is in the game because of several reasons and might be changed because of other reasons, and being liked or not liked by a percentage of the users is just one of those reasons. I haven't argued for you to like the new AI, I merely showed reasons why the AI is there and why I consider them zombies and why I like the AI.

How can it cost more to have a zombie only remember where it last saw a player instead of knowing where the player is at all times? There is already vision in the game, a zombie - if I'm not mistaken - has to actually see the player first, to, then, keep track of them. Outside hordenight, that is.

There is no vision sensing in the game AFAIK. If windows are part of the "sense" calculation at all (and I doubt they are), it doesn't matter if you are standing so the zombie can see you through that window, the window just needs to exist at all. You can easily be sensed by a zombie in a different room just because you are near each other on different sides of a wall. For some things there surely exist some simple heuristic. My guess is that you are considered to be inside simply when there is no free horizontal line between you and the sky anymore, for example.

You argue against the statement "7dtd is a tower defense game", but what I am saying is "tower defense was always in the game." It's an aspect of several. Before you counter argue, I suggest you read the game's self description. Spoiler alert: It's on my side.

The games description about being an RPG was wrong until RPG aspects were added in a specific alpha (was it A13?). The description was wrong about being really a tower defense game until A17. I don't see the problem.

The horde night is the tower defense part of the game and till A17 it had an important ingredient missing.

I meant that they ignore it when along the path you have traps that kill em all. An intelligent person would not follow a path where 20 of their comrades were just shot dead. They are intelligent enough to understand where your base is weakest, but then they run straight into turret fire. It's just weird.

Admittedly, it's a bit of a "difficult" question, so I'm not blaming you for wrongfully believing you would've answered it with

That is a response to something like "I think they should rename them!" - which I never said and what I don't suggest. The question "if they wanted intelligent zombies - why call em zombies?" refers to the definition of what a zombie is. Cuz a zombie, unlike Roland actually said, exists, and has characteristics. If you want to create an enemy, that obviously goes against several of the core characteristics of the creature - then why would you decide to call it a zombie and make it look like a zombie?

The real response to this overall (and underlying) thought is that the intelligence is or might be more a kinda "currently accepted" byproduct of the AI's redesign, which was done to solve a bunch of problems that the old one used to have, and while there does not seem to be an actually official stance about it, things might seem like the devs intend to tone the x-ray vision and omniscience down anyway. At least that's what Roland, who has insider knowledge, seems to suggest frequently. But as always, I am discussing what I see and care little about rumours, that often have been proven to be false.

Ah, right, you are speaking about the original motivation ~7 years ago to call them zombies. "If a game developer wants to do an innovative game his design documents probably specifiy only high-level goals and maybe ideas of actual implementations to try". That was a sentence I said just in the paragraph leading to your question. Naturally this is only a guess: They wanted zombies, but probably didn't exactly define the exact properties of their zombies at that time. Even if they did they probably were fine with a much more lenient definition of a zombie even 7 years ago because early features of the game already strayed away from pure Romero: The horde night itself had occult untertones, the cop zombie definitely isn't romeroistic. None of these features seem to be in the game because of technical necessity or limitation for example, they willfully went against Romero because of gameplay/artistic reasons.

Logic is nice, but once again, yours does not apply, cuz I said "the removal indicates that they don't want it". The word "indicates" indicates that I'm not sure. And yes, there are indications that they actually want it - cuz it once was in the game and makes a helluva lotta sense and indeed might they leave it out for now because the game is not optimized yet or beause they haven't come around coding it. Who knows. But at this point it's gone. "Looks like" they don't want it. They could also put sleepers outside of POIs (and yes, in rare cases they do) to make it harder to get in. But "it seems" they're really focused on making these POIs dungeons the main thing, cuz if you, on top of the sleepers, added a significant number of outside zombies, it might become too many, while having too few defeats the purpose.

This indicates you are trying to get out of a failed argument. But since I just said your paragraph above only indicates that, I haven't really claimed anything, right?

Seriously, the statement "But the removal indicates that they don't want it" is wrong, whether it comes from a person without any knowledge about the circumstances or one with knowledge.

<snip>

**Roland** · February 28, 2020

I don't see how I'm doing that when I point out that it's the same thing. Enlighten me plz. If it's the fact that everybody likes good pathfinding - good pathfinding does not mean x-ray vision and omniscience. It means not getting stuck, not spinning in one spot. Good pathfinding is realistic pathfinding. So actually, we currently have - in my opinion - bad pathfinding. There is also another issue.. Lemme actually fire up that graphic software:

Zombies move on this grid. So instead of taking the direct path to their target - green - they first move on their grid and only eventually go direct - red. Not only does this feel very odd, it also makes them harder to hit, because they are not coming at you in a straight line. You have to - blue - move over to their path if you want to line them up perfectly for a clear shot.

Are you saying that you only noticed zombies following a grid type movement with A17 and never witnessed them zigging and zagging their way through the voxel world previous to A17? I've been doing your blue line thing since I first started playing in A5. It has always been move to a spot so that you are lined up with them along one of their cardinal directions because if not they are going be doing a lot of turning as they move towards you.

The green path has been an elusive goal since the beginning and probably will always be with us no matter what pathing they use. Definitely a limitation of the whole voxel world choice and neither AI (pre-A17 and post A-17) has been able to make zombies move purely green.

Kubikus · February 28, 2020

Are you saying that you only noticed zombies following a grid type movement with A17 and never witnessed them zigging and zagging their way through the voxel world previous to A17? I've been doing your blue line thing since I first started playing in A5. It has always been move to a spot so that you are lined up with them along one of their cardinal directions because if not they are going be doing a lot of turning as they move towards you.

The green path has been an elusive goal since the beginning and probably will always be with us no matter what pathing they use. Definitely a limitation of the whole voxel world choice and neither AI (pre-A17 and post A-17) has been able to make zombies move purely green.

Of course I've seen weird behaviour every once in a while. But they did not move on a grid before, they did move along the green lines just fine. For funsies, I even played some A14 just now and nope, no zig-zagging whatsoever, they are coming for me on a perfectly green path.

The biggest problem I saw with the pathfinding was the occasional spinning-on-a-point (rare), and then of course the issue that they wouldn't try harder to get to a player above them on horde night. Now they do try harder, but still nowhere near hard enough. Oh and it was really annoying that when you shot them down, but they weren't dead yet, they would do a little slide and sometimes spin while laying on the ground. That was very annoying.

Kubikus · February 28, 2020

Understanding that some don't like it, definitely. Recognize as valid depends on "valid". In the sense that every critisism aka "I don't like it" is a valid testimony, sure. But valid as in "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity_(logic)" ? I don't see the argument for that type of validity.
The pathfinding is in the game because of several reasons and might be changed because of other reasons, and being liked or not liked by a percentage of the users is just one of those reasons. I haven't argued for you to like the new AI, I merely showed reasons why the AI is there and why I consider them zombies and why I like the AI.

There is no vision sensing in the game AFAIK. If windows are part of the "sense" calculation at all (and I doubt they are), it doesn't matter if you are standing so the zombie can see you through that window, the window just needs to exist at all. You can easily be sensed by a zombie in a different room just because you are near each other on different sides of a wall. For some things there surely exist some simple heuristic. My guess is that you are considered to be inside simply when there is no free horizontal line between you and the sky anymore, for example.

The games description about being an RPG was wrong until RPG aspects were added in a specific alpha (was it A13?). The description was wrong about being really a tower defense game until A17. I don't see the problem.
The horde night is the tower defense part of the game and till A17 it had an important ingredient missing.

Ah, right, you are speaking about the original motivation ~7 years ago to call them zombies. "If a game developer wants to do an innovative game his design documents probably specifiy only high-level goals and maybe ideas of actual implementations to try". That was a sentence I said just in the paragraph leading to your question. Naturally this is only a guess: They wanted zombies, but probably didn't exactly define the exact properties of their zombies at that time. Even if they did they probably were fine with a much more lenient definition of a zombie even 7 years ago because early features of the game already strayed away from pure Romero: The horde night itself had occult untertones, the cop zombie definitely isn't romeroistic. None of these features seem to be in the game because of technical necessity or limitation for example, they willfully went against Romero because of gameplay/artistic reasons.

This indicates you are trying to get out of a failed argument. But since I just said your paragraph above only indicates that, I haven't really claimed anything, right?

Seriously, the statement "But the removal indicates that they don't want it" is wrong, whether it comes from a person without any knowledge about the circumstances or one with knowledge.

Your weak reasoning and snippy attitude no longer deserves a reply.

Prisma501 · February 28, 2020

Congrats Meganoth!

Cheers

Kubikus · February 28, 2020

Congrats Meganoth!

Cheers

See, this guy also knows what's going on. "I must win!11!1!"

Boring!

**meganoth** · February 28, 2020

See, this guy also knows what's going on. "I must win!11!1!"

Boring!

If you read through my posts in this forum, you would see that I freely admit when I am wrong. Does that sound like someone who wants to "win" an argument at all costs?

Kubikus · February 29, 2020

If you read through my posts in this forum, you would see that I freely admit when I am wrong. Does that sound like someone who wants to "win" an argument at all costs?

When I read through your replies to me, then yes, it totally does sound like someone who wants to "win" at all costs. Let's also give an example, we're discussing the zombies' increased intelligence:

https://forums.7daystodie.com/forum/...62#post1645062
The mild corrections to AI since A17 seems to indicate that good pathfinding abilities of the zombies is not regarded as a mistake but part of making tower defense work.

New AI is needed to make tower defense work. Logically (and we both love logic, right) you say, that without the AI, td would not work. There might other things neccessary to make it work, but the new AI is part of that.

I respond:

tower defense was always in the game

and you make this elaborate counter argument, with citations from Wikipedia:

I think we differ on the definition of "tower defense" and I got wikipedia on my side. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_defense : "Tower defense is a subgenre of strategy video game where the goal is to defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers, usually achieved by placing defensive structures on or along their path of attack." and "What distinguishes tower defense base defending games from other base defending games (such as Space Invaders, or other games where bases are defended) is the player's ability to strategically place, construct or summon obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions in the path of attacking enemies."

A16 on the other hand was more like the game "Stronghold" where the emphasis was on building strong walls and attacking from behind them. The attacker can't be coerced to follow a path. If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong...993_video_game) or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong...001_video_game) , neither mentions Tower Defense at all. Stronghold is not a tower defense game even though it has towers and it is your job to defend them

This already is a terribly weak argument, that already - to me - proves that you just want to win. Because already you can see that this is about actual tower defense games, a "subgenre of strategy video games". While, however, your quotes very obviously describe an aspect of 7dtd:

defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers, usually achieved by placing defensive structures on or along their path of attack

Has that not been 7dtd ever since? It has. There is no question and no doubt that it has. This is one of those cases where we are not talking about opinions, it is a fact, that this mechanic always was in 7dtd. Same counts for this:

strategically place, construct or summon obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions in the path of attacking enemies

That as well is in 7dtd without any doubt. But in this piece of definition, it says

"What distinguishes tower defense base defending games from other base defending games (such as Space Invaders, or other games where bases are defended)"

Here, you decide that 7dtd must be a "base defending game". Not tower defense. And I think that you make that decision because you are very determined to win this argument. However, that decision is an obvious mistake, because the definition is talking about games, where you cannot

"strategically place, construct or summon obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions in the path of attacking enemies"

Like in "Space Invaders", where the "obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions" are already there. The whole Stronghold argument, again, extremely weak, some game is not called a tower defense game. 7dtd is not a tower defense game either, so what does it matter. Nothing.

Then, I really just shrug this weak reasoning off - I'm already annoyed in my previous lengthy post - like so:

You argue against the statement "7dtd is a tower defense game", but what I am saying is "tower defense was always in the game." It's an aspect of several. Before you counter argue, I suggest you read the game's self description. Spoiler alert: It's on my side.

This has two arguments:

1. Tower defense is (only) an aspect of 7dtd.

2. The game's self description points that out too.

Snippity-snap: The main argument, the actual argument, is gone. *pooof* I even point out that 1 is what you have to counter argue, while 2 is merely a fun fact. But 1 is being snipped. And then you counter argue like so:

The games description about being an RPG was wrong until RPG aspects were added in a specific alpha (was it A13?). The description was wrong about being really a tower defense game until A17. I don't see the problem.
The horde night is the tower defense part of the game and till A17 it had an important ingredient missing.

The game's self description was wrong - in other words, you accuse the company of false advertisement. There was no td in the game, so this:

"Tower defense is a subgenre of strategy video game where the goal is to defend a player's territories or possessions by obstructing the enemy attackers, usually achieved by placing defensive structures on or along their path of attack." and "What distinguishes tower defense base defending games from other base defending games (such as Space Invaders, or other games where bases are defended) is the player's ability to strategically place, construct or summon obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions in the path of attacking enemies."

was not in the game until the zombies started following exactly 1 fully forseeable path, and rpg is, I guess, only the perk and skill system, but not playing the role of a survivor in a zombie apocalypse, who is exploring the world, looting, unlocking recipes, crafting better equipment and whatnot. Which is an absurd claim, isn't it.

But then you also say

The horde night is the tower defense part of the game and till A17 it had an important ingredient missing.

Horde night is the tower defense part of the game. Yes. Obviously. And it always was in the game. The 1-path-ai is not the key characteristic of td games. And wasn't there someone saying the devs want to make zombies more random on horde night? So... they're deleting the td-aspect again? Back to false advertisement..?

Understand it right, of course, if you want to, you could continue arguing and explaining and making more sense of what you said here - this is an example of how weak your argumets are, and also how you just "snip" away whatever you don't feel like responding to. Why I agree with Prisma that this discussion was about winning. Not, like it was for me, about discussing things to get to the bottom of them, to learn about other people's opinions and standpoints, and - of course - to stand and advocate for my own. You just wanted to prove me wrong. Win.

Boring.

Edit: And btw, you could never "win" against me. Just like I could never "win" against anybody who is determined enough. You can always continue to go back and forth. It becomes just tedium at some point, particularly when you are not the one who is making the weak arguments.

**meganoth** · February 29, 2020

When I read through your replies to me, then yes, it totally does sound like someone who wants to "win" at all costs. Let's also give an example, we're discussing the zombies' increased intelligence:

New AI is needed to make tower defense work. Logically (and we both love logic, right) you say, that without the AI, td would not work. There might other things neccessary to make it work, but the new AI is part of that.

I respond:

and you make this elaborate counter argument, with citations from Wikipedia:

This already is a terribly weak argument, that already - to me - proves that you just want to win. Because already you can see that this is about actual tower defense games, a "subgenre of strategy video games". While, however, your quotes very obviously describe an aspect of 7dtd:

Has that not been 7dtd ever since? It has. There is no question and no doubt that it has. This is one of those cases where we are not talking about opinions, it is a fact, that this mechanic always was in 7dtd. Same counts for this:

I don't know if you ever have played a typical tower defense game. Do it if not. I can recommend "Defenders Quest: Valley of the forgotten". You will see that the enemy is constricted to specific paths and a major game play element is to use that path strategically to gain an advantage. Most of the time those paths are prebuilt by the game, 7d2d might be one of a few (or even the only one?) where you are able to build the paths yourself. When wikipedia says "on or along their path of attack" it might have been neccessary for wikipedia to define "path" further to really explain their definition. If you just assume that "path of attack" can mean "from anywhere" then I'd have to ask why point out "path" at all so prominently if it has no significance?

That is why I brought up Stronghold. By comparing it with a tower defense game the meaning behind the definition can be recognized. See below for more details

Game genre definitions are by their nature vague and imprecise. You will find the occasional game that fits all points of a description but then you will find hundreds of genre mixes where it is a matter of judgement whether a game is still having significant attributes of that genre to be called being one or being it partly.

That as well is in 7dtd without any doubt. But in this piece of definition, it says

Here, you decide that 7dtd must be a "base defending game". Not tower defense. And I think that you make that decision because you are very determined to win this argument. However, that decision is an obvious mistake, because the definition is talking about games, where you cannot

Let me explain further. In Stronghold you can place traps like in 7d2d (moats, killing pits, pitch ditches), can place turret-like defenses (archers on turrets, ballistas). So what is exactly different or missing from the game that the game designers of stronghold and whoever puts tags on games in steam don't see this as a tower defense game?

I only see one thing missing and that is the ability to strategically use the specific path of attack to create an advantage for yourself. The attackers come from all sides, if you take the wikipedia definition literally and think that path could also just mean "from all sides" then stronghold should be a tower defense game as well.

Like in "Space Invaders", where the "obstructive constructions and constructive obstructions" are already there. The whole Stronghold argument, again, extremely weak, some game is not called a tower defense game. 7dtd is not a tower defense game either, so what does it matter. Nothing.

Then, I really just shrug this weak reasoning off - I'm already annoyed in my previous lengthy post - like so:

This has two arguments:

1. Tower defense is (only) an aspect of 7dtd.
2. The game's self description points that out too.

Snippity-snap: The main argument, the actual argument, is gone. *pooof* I even point out that 1 is what you have to counter argue, while 2 is merely a fun fact. But 1 is being snipped. And then you counter argue like so:

Is <snip> refering to removing your argument? Probably not, it is still there in my reply https://forums.7daystodie.com/forum/...71#post1717171 . Just to make sure you meant "snip" to mean "not answered to your satisfaction" and not really removed.

Yes, TD is only an aspect of 7d2d. Still, if they want to call TD an aspect of the game, that part of the game should at least look and feel like TD. If important parts are missing it depends on how strict you are with the definition whether you consider it "false advertisement". There's a huge gray area here. I remember lots of people on this forum discussing whether this is still a sandbox or a survival game. Some even discuss if there still are real zombie in the game. I don't expect anyone to take that so serious that he would make a law suits out of it, far from it. But we discuss it and different people have different expectations. I just don't infer that anyone is only trying to win an argument just because he has a more stringent or lenient definition of a genre, I still might think he is wrong.

The game's self description was wrong - in other words, you accuse the company of false advertisement. There was no td in the game, so this:

I accuse the company of not having a finished game in EA ? Maybe we should change "accuse" to something more fitting. I don't expect the game to be complete until the game is actually declared as complete (usually at release). I accept features to be missing in development.

was not in the game until the zombies started following exactly 1 fully forseeable path, and rpg is, I guess, only the perk and skill system, but not playing the role of a survivor in a zombie apocalypse, who is exploring the world, looting, unlocking recipes, crafting better equipment and whatnot. Which is an absurd claim, isn't it.

But then you also say

"playing the role of a survivor" is called a survival game. I don't think survival games are automatically RPGs. I also don't think shooters are already a shooter/RPG genre mix just because you can loot and get better at shooting. 7D2D has a lot of RPG ingredients missing (a real story with decisions), it obviously is far from a real full RPG. Without either LBD or perks I would not even call RPG being an aspect of the game. With LBD or perks, ok, good enough.

Horde night is the tower defense part of the game. Yes. Obviously. And it always was in the game. The 1-path-ai is not the key characteristic of td games. And wasn't there someone saying the devs want to make zombies more random on horde night? So... they're deleting the td-aspect again? Back to false advertisement..?

First of all 1-path-ai is the wrong description for the game AI at the moment and not demanded by me, just mentioning it. In A17/A18 zombies still come from different directions and you often have to prepare multiple avenues of attack and as I already said I'm fine with A18 AI.

That the AI allows you to strategically use their path of attack is something that is important though. I had already explained once in this thread that I'm fine with TFP eventually dialing down pathfinding int of the lower zombies as long as some higher zombies still recognize paths so there is still a noticable TD strategic element in the game.

Understand it right, of course, if you want to, you could continue arguing and explaining and making more sense of what you said here - this is an example of how weak your argumets are, and also how you just "snip" away whatever you don't feel like responding to. Why I agree with Prisma that this discussion was about winning. Not, like it was for me, about discussing things to get to the bottom of them, to learn about other people's opinions and standpoints, and - of course - to stand and advocate for my own. You just wanted to prove me wrong. Win.

Boring.

Edit: And btw, you could never "win" against me. Just like I could never "win" against anybody who is determined enough. You can always continue to go back and forth. It becomes just tedium at some point, particularly when you are not the one who is making the weak arguments.

I snipped away the last part of your argument because

1) I use too much time already arguing with you on too many sub-subjects. English is not my native language and I need a lot more time to formulate than in my native language.

2) there is a 10000 character limit to posts and

3) I'd like to drop parts I simply have no more comment on. Partly I concurr with some of what you said there and partly I don't want to continue dissecting stuff further or said everything I wanted to say.

From a previous reply where I had to snip away stuff I had the impression you were ok with that. Anyone else following the thread has read that part, you and I obviously have read this part, why is it important that it is cited in the reply? Quote: Me: "Sorry, I have to prune your post and comment only on those parts I have comments too. Too many topics at once." You: "Can get confusing.". That you are now accusing me because of this is a bit strange to say the least.

**Roland** · February 29, 2020

"playing the role of a survivor" is called a survival game. I don't think survival games are automatically RPGs. I also don't think shooters are already a shooter/RPG genre mix just because you can loot and get better at shooting. 7D2D has a lot of RPG ingredients missing (a real story with decisions), it obviously is far from a real full RPG. Without either LBD or perks I would not even call RPG being an aspect of the game. With LBD or perks, ok, good enough.

Apologies for not quoting all the rest but I just wanted to focus on this part. I think it should be said that Joel Huenink likes to replay games and role play as different types of characters. He played Doom role playing as a certain type of character by self imposing limitations on himself. He played Skyrim many times as different types of characters often imposing limitations in order to act in a particular role beyond what the game provided for.

Now obviously from a genre definition standpoint Doom is not an RPG and Skyrim is. But Joel has always been interested in creating a game that lends itself well to the player being able to pick a role and then fulfill that role through official game content but also by being able to impose self limitations and to be able to make choices that support the role you want to play.

I think this is important to understand for two reasons

1) The creator of the game is going to label this game as an RPG from a much looser definition than many people who are thinking about traditional definitions.

2) There will always be aspects of this game that people will have to consciously choose to ignore if they don’t like it because that is what the creator of the game does and it influences how he designs and why there are often things in the game that you have to ignore if you don’t want to experience it.

The problem that comes up again and again is that some people always want to choose the most efficient path if it is available and are not interested (or simply can’t) in ignoring something for the sake of role playing if they know it is available to exploit or even legitimately use.

Now if this was just the perspective of me or you then it wouldn’t matter much as Joel playing Doom as a particular role never influenced at all whether that game was advertised as a role playing game. But as the creator of this game his view matters as he does have control over how the game is advertised and in his mind he is making a world in which the player can easily replay the game many many times and playing a different role each time through both design supported and self imposed rules supported gameplay. It is exactly why he chose perks over LBD. While many look for the optimal combination and order to choose perks Joel will choose perks to support a particular role he wants to play and ignore perks even if they are obvious picks for efficiency because he wants self imposed limitations.

RestInPieces · February 29, 2020

Don't exactly disagree with what you are saying but--

The problem that comes up again and again is that some people always want to choose the most efficient path if it is available and are not interested (or simply can’t) in ignoring something for the sake of role playing if they know it is available to exploit or even legitimately use.

Self limitations are usually a band-aid for poor balance -- they are never something that should be used as a tool by the designer. Thankfully this was more or less appreciated and the latest alphas were focused on balance.

It is exactly why he chose perks over LBD. While many look for the optimal combination and order to choose perks Joel will choose perks to support a particular role he wants to play and ignore perks even if they are obvious picks for efficiency because he wants self imposed limitations.

It's not like they could only achieve this with perks. They could have achieved it with LBD as well, while doing what your mod does, which is completely survival-driven gameplay.

**Roland** · February 29, 2020

Don't exactly disagree with what you are saying but--

Self limitations are usually a band-aid for poor balance -- they are never something that should be used as a tool by the designer. Thankfully this was more or less appreciated and the latest alphas were focused on balance.

I agree. I'm just trying to explain why Joel says the things he does like he recently did in the Dev diary when someone asked when the ramp exploit would get fixed and his answer was that he doesn't use that exploit so he couldn't care less if or when it gets fixed. I know faatal feels differently about it mainly because the AI is his baby and he is going to want it to be well respected by being well balanced.

It's not like they could only achieve this with perks. They could have achieved it with LBD as well, while doing what your mod does, which is completely survival-driven gameplay.

Possibly, but the difference is with LBD you get stronger through action whereas with perks you get stronger by choosing how to spend points. So if I want to play as someone whose weakness is a poor ability at mining then with LBD I can't ever mine because if I do then I'll get stronger at it and ruin the role I want to play. But with the perk system I can still mine all I want or need and just not choose to put points into it so that it is remains my weakness and I can maintain the role I was wanting to play.

Joel has mentioned several times that he likes to have weaknesses in some areas and strengths in others. Not everyone is like that though and there are quite a few people who just want to be strong in everything and playing a character with weaknesses is pure annoyance.

Kubikus · March 2, 2020

I don't know if you ever have played a typical tower defense game. Do it if not. I can recommend "Defenders Quest: Valley of the forgotten". You will see that the enemy is constricted to specific paths and a major game play element is to use that path strategically to gain an advantage. Most of the time those paths are prebuilt by the game, 7d2d might be one of a few (or even the only one?) where you are able to build the paths yourself. When wikipedia says "on or along their path of attack" it might have been neccessary for wikipedia to define "path" further to really explain their definition. If you just assume that "path of attack" can mean "from anywhere" then I'd have to ask why point out "path" at all so prominently if it has no significance?

That is why I brought up Stronghold. By comparing it with a tower defense game the meaning behind the definition can be recognized. See below for more details

Game genre definitions are by their nature vague and imprecise. You will find the occasional game that fits all points of a description but then you will find hundreds of genre mixes where it is a matter of judgement whether a game is still having significant attributes of that genre to be called being one or being it partly.

Let me explain further. In Stronghold you can place traps like in 7d2d (moats, killing pits, pitch ditches), can place turret-like defenses (archers on turrets, ballistas). So what is exactly different or missing from the game that the game designers of stronghold and whoever puts tags on games in steam don't see this as a tower defense game?

I only see one thing missing and that is the ability to strategically use the specific path of attack to create an advantage for yourself. The attackers come from all sides, if you take the wikipedia definition literally and think that path could also just mean "from all sides" then stronghold should be a tower defense game as well.

Is <snip> refering to removing your argument? Probably not, it is still there in my reply https://forums.7daystodie.com/forum/...71#post1717171 . Just to make sure you meant "snip" to mean "not answered to your satisfaction" and not really removed.

Yes, TD is only an aspect of 7d2d. Still, if they want to call TD an aspect of the game, that part of the game should at least look and feel like TD. If important parts are missing it depends on how strict you are with the definition whether you consider it "false advertisement". There's a huge gray area here. I remember lots of people on this forum discussing whether this is still a sandbox or a survival game. Some even discuss if there still are real zombie in the game. I don't expect anyone to take that so serious that he would make a law suits out of it, far from it. But we discuss it and different people have different expectations. I just don't infer that anyone is only trying to win an argument just because he has a more stringent or lenient definition of a genre, I still might think he is wrong.

I accuse the company of not having a finished game in EA ? Maybe we should change "accuse" to something more fitting. I don't expect the game to be complete until the game is actually declared as complete (usually at release). I accept features to be missing in development.

"playing the role of a survivor" is called a survival game. I don't think survival games are automatically RPGs. I also don't think shooters are already a shooter/RPG genre mix just because you can loot and get better at shooting. 7D2D has a lot of RPG ingredients missing (a real story with decisions), it obviously is far from a real full RPG. Without either LBD or perks I would not even call RPG being an aspect of the game. With LBD or perks, ok, good enough.

First of all 1-path-ai is the wrong description for the game AI at the moment and not demanded by me, just mentioning it. In A17/A18 zombies still come from different directions and you often have to prepare multiple avenues of attack and as I already said I'm fine with A18 AI.
That the AI allows you to strategically use their path of attack is something that is important though. I had already explained once in this thread that I'm fine with TFP eventually dialing down pathfinding int of the lower zombies as long as some higher zombies still recognize paths so there is still a noticable TD strategic element in the game.

I snipped away the last part of your argument because
1) I use too much time already arguing with you on too many sub-subjects. English is not my native language and I need a lot more time to formulate than in my native language.

2) there is a 10000 character limit to posts and

3) I'd like to drop parts I simply have no more comment on. Partly I concurr with some of what you said there and partly I don't want to continue dissecting stuff further or said everything I wanted to say.

From a previous reply where I had to snip away stuff I had the impression you were ok with that. Anyone else following the thread has read that part, you and I obviously have read this part, why is it important that it is cited in the reply? Quote: Me: "Sorry, I have to prune your post and comment only on those parts I have comments too. Too many topics at once." You: "Can get confusing.". That you are now accusing me because of this is a bit strange to say the least.

Mega, it's obviously fine to respond to my example, but like I said, it's only an example I provided for what I consider a weak argument; I'm not going back into it. It's my impression, that it's your overall attitude in the discussion, not to find out what my standpoint is, but to find angles to deny it's validity. And this makes you - in my opinion - present these weak arguments. Your contemplation about what is and isn't "valid (logic)" is another example. Your "logical fallacy" episode another one. And there are more. It's even fine, I don't mind the angle, but the arguments are too weak.

Another weak argument, btw, is the character limit. Why is it weak? Bro, just split your response over two posts. I've done it a million times. And yeah, it's ok to snip. But I personally dislike ppl who snip half an argument or cherry pick what they respond to. After an uncertain number of back-and-forths I also think that a strain of discussion needs a resolution. Conclusion. Something more than "*poof*". It's not a universal law, just personal preference.

Overall, I don't think you enjoy this discussion. And when you don't, I tend not to either.

BTW: I just asked a guy why he prefers the perk-system over lbd:

https://forums.7daystodie.com/forum/-7-days-to-die-pc/general-discussion/1717721-thoughts-on-skills-xp-and-perks?p=1717831#post1717831

And you know what? I am honestly interested, and I have no intention to deny him his opinion, try to argue it away, try to find weaknesses in his reasons. I'm just honestly interested in his opinion. And that - in my opinion - is what some of the individuals who get into discussions - and not just with me, in general - are missing. Often, it's merely about proving a different opinion wrong.

Sad!

Kubikus · March 2, 2020

Apologies for not quoting all the rest but I just wanted to focus on this part.

Sarcasm, eh? Can't you help it or was your recent resolution not to use it anymore sarcastic itself? Anyways, it doesn't really make sense to mock someone because they decide to no longer respond by pointing out that there is no obligation to continue to respond. It's ok for mega, but I'm a fool? Another gem in reasoning.

That's why I'm so terribly bored, Roland, it's really just tedium to respond to this stuff.

**OzHawkeye** · March 2, 2020

Sarcasm, eh? Can't you help it or was your recent resolution not to use it anymore sarcastic itself? Anyways, it doesn't really make sense to mock someone because they decide to no longer respond by pointing out that there is no obligation to continue to respond. It's ok for mega, but I'm a fool? Another gem in reasoning.

That's why I'm so terribly bored, Roland, it's really just tedium to respond to this stuff.

You read what Roland wrote there as sarcasm????

Kubikus · March 2, 2020

You read what Roland wrote there as sarcasm????

But of course. And you think he actually aplogoized to mega for not quoting his whole post?

That is the beauty of sarcasm. You can always say "what, me? Nooooo!" Attack, without breaking the rules. Clever.

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