Catering to New Players hurts Replayability for Experienced Players

[Kalarro]

H

 

Fallout skyrim borderlands all have replayability over and over cause its not easy it doesnt hand the easy route to players.

 

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

Love those 3 games, but they are like the most easy games out there.

[stallionsden]

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

 

Love those 3 games, but they are like the most easy games out there.

 

uhuh

[stallionsden]

replayability of those 3 is more what I am focusing on and as well no matter how many hours you have played of those games you can play it over and over again

[Kalarro]

replayability of those 3 is more what I am focusing on and as well no matter how many hours you have played of those games you can play it over and over again

 

I agree. But so is 7d2d. It's still in alpha and "some players" even have over 1k hours on it. Oh wait.

[stallionsden]

I agree. But so is 7d2d. It's still in alpha and "some players" even have over 1k hours on it. Oh wait.

 

see you talking bout stuff you dont know. most my hours have been pre a17 been here since a5. Modding and prefabbing count for the rest. I havent played for ages a actual game...

 

lol funny as hell :-)

[Kalarro]

see you talking bout stuff you dont know. most my hours have been pre a17 been here since a5. Modding and prefabbing count for the rest. I havent played for ages a actual game...

 

keep baiting and being childish lol funny as hell :-)

 

So, saying I agree about 1 thing you say, but disagreeing about the other, which is saying a game doesnt have replayability, when theres tons of players with hundreds of hours on it in alpha stage, is beeing childish? Sure, if it makes you feel better about defending the undefendible.

 

Sorry, but 7d2d is 101 of replayability. Does that mean you cant get bored of it? No, as in any game. But getting bored of a game doesnt mean it doesnt have huge replayability.

[Kage848]

So, saying I agree about 1 thing you say, but disagreeing about the other, which is saying a game doesnt have replayability, when theres tons of players with hundreds of hours on it in alpha stage, is beeing childish? Sure, if it makes you feel better about defending the undefendible.

 

Sorry, but 7d2d is 101 of replayability. Does that mean you cant get bored of it? No, as in any game. But getting bored of a game doesnt mean it doesnt have huge replayability.

 

Wait. 7 days to die doesn't have replayability?

 

News to me. Coming up on 4k hours. And does not include all the time I played before alpha 5. And after that 4k+ hours I still cant wait to get home today and work in my Bloodbath and Beyond v3.0 base. Shrug

[stallionsden]

So, saying I agree about 1 thing you say, but disagreeing about the other, which is saying a game doesnt have replayability, when theres tons of players with hundreds of hours on it in alpha stage, is beeing childish? Sure, if it makes you feel better about defending the undefendible.

 

Sorry, but 7d2d is 101 of replayability. Does that mean you cant get bored of it? No, as in any game. But getting bored of a game doesnt mean it doesnt have huge replayability.

 

then you did not read thru the thread at all and see all the posts. Pre a17 the game was challenging. To the new ones that joined a17/a18 yes to them they will think this is challenging etc but it is no where near the path it was heading prior since a5 (since thats when i joined)

 

i have 2k on skyim alot of those are unmodded maybe 1k. fallout 4 alot as well the witcher i have played sa well again and again and i could play it again and still find it challenging and all.

 

IDK when you joined but all that mainly has been said is there has to be a medium for all. yet now it is just for new players. Vanilla should not have to rely on mods to survive. Skyrim/fallout/the witcher all survive with out mods (altho you can mod if you wish) and enjoy no matter how many hours ones played.

 

a18 I have played maybe 3 4 games max lasted before turning it off 20 min.

 

I have prefabbed in the prefab editor for hours and created mods and mod fixes/updates etc but no real game persay without needing mods. (I play both vanilla and modded games. as well you cant post a bug with a modded game so I like to play both.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Wait. 7 days to die doesn't have replayability?

 

News to me. Coming up on 4k hours. And does not include all the time I played before alpha 5. And after that 4k+ hours I still cant wait to get home today and work in my Bloodbath and Beyond v3.0 base. Shrug

 

with mods tho i bet

[Kalarro]

 

with mods tho i bet

 

you dont have to bet, you can watch his hundreds of youtube videos. Some playthroughs are with mods, but most are unmodded.

[stallionsden]

you dont have to bet, you can watch his hundreds of youtube videos. Some playthroughs are with mods, but most are unmodded.

 

why the hell would i bring this up lol and involve mods considering discussing mods in dev diary has been a no (so to speak) its purely for the vanilla game purely and simply. no mods.

 

obviously you didnt read the posts and exactly what this thread was about. I know stupid heading misleading as well and again stupid heading

[pApA^LeGBa]

If a game cant be catered for the mass inc those that have stuck by tfp since the begining and make a game that caters for everyone. They are in the wrong business.

 

MM stated many times this game has to cater for everyone not just the seasoned. But now it only caters for beginners leaving out the seasoned. But we all know why they catered for the new players.

 

And while they try hard to cater for the masses they give out a big eff u to all the people who want to have nice looking things for basebuilding. Like the limited amount of textures to paint with and every furniture item beeing dirty or somewhat destroyed (blinds for example) Or that you have blocks in the game that the player can´t craft and use.

[stallionsden]

And while they try hard to cater for the masses they give out a big eff u to all the people who want to have nice looking things for basebuilding. Like the limited amount of textures to paint with and every furniture item beeing dirty or somewhat destroyed (blinds for example) Or that you have blocks in the game that the player can´t craft and use.

 

I understand the textures and needing more for sure.

 

Altho I know MM hated the textures that were removed cause they looked to prestine/nice/new etc I will also say he has stated they will look into adding more. But 100% miss those textures and cant wait for more or at least I know a few modders whom are hungry to get their hands on being able to add textures themselves...

 

the furniture well i just said vanilla shouldnt need mods but there is many furniture packs in the mods section (guppycur has some) already and one on nexus with over 660 cool items.. But in regards to vanilla the new stuff they are adding in terms of blocks and items, I dont think there be much more they will add since they want to go gold and will prolly leave that to the modders. So yes unfort if you want extra stuff you will have to have a modded game.

 

but they may still have a few blocks and items left to add. but atm they are just doing this pbr and linear stuff.

 

The one thing i am truly looking forward to see what tfp do tho is this random event thing (if they go ahead with it) modders will have a field day with that.

 

But with base building they are getting there. Still believe there are alot of shapes that arent in the game that def needed to finish that section up. Filling the poi be good to have maybe some more baths. A actual shower like a whole shower as a block. Def need more variety of doors. Variety of Double doors also def needed. Diff shaped windows. Spiral stair case maybe. Actual Dining tables. Probably stuff i left out.

 

Yeh MM already stated they wont be doing recipes for some things and they be in the cm menu. Which unfort doesnt help the base builder whom dont like to grab stuff from the cm cause they like to either make their pois look nice or they are role playing etc.

[Kage848]

you dont have to bet, you can watch his hundreds of youtube videos. Some playthroughs are with mods, but most are unmodded.

 

Yea. I have modded b4 but very rarely.

I haven't been playing for 4k hours because of mods.

[stallionsden]

Yea. I have modded b4 but very rarely.

I haven't been playing for 4k hours because of mods.

 

And most my hours were prior to a17. Any after were making mods and prefabbing.

[Roland]

It's not necessary to agree. You're allowed to like everything about the current design of the game. But if you attack someone over their criticism, it should be fair to at least deal with what they're actually trying to say. As it otherwise looks like it's your job to hold criticism down by ad homineming critics.

 

Show me where I attacked stallions over his actual criticism. I got snarky with him over his tone and insults and spamming multiple threads with his viewpoint before all of this was moved from the dev diary to here. But if you can find where I posted an ad hominem against him for saying that the game is too easy now because of everything being dumbed down for new players I would be interested to see it and apologize for it.

 

..but my old buddy Roland's, who does not really seem to enjoy (parts of) his job (anymore).

 

You care about my welfare? I misjudged you. Here I assumed your ploy was to diminish my opinion by making me out as a company man on the payroll forced to spout the talking points of the day.

 

Set your heart at ease. I love the forums and enjoy interacting with everyone. You wanted to lump my entire 17k posts into the one category of disagreeing with malcontents but it just isn’t the case.

[Andy Red]

Hence why the game is boring and many only can play for a bit or play for 5 min then go nope need mods.

 

Fallout skyrim borderlands all have replayability over and over cause its not easy it doesnt hand the easy route to players.

 

You're under the influence that everybody else has the same opinion as you.

 

"Hence why the game is boring" - says you, not a fact.

 

"many only can play for a bit or play for 5 min then go nope need mods" - says you, not a fact.

 

"Fallout skyrim borderlands all have replayability over and over" - says you, not a fact.

 

"cause its not easy it doesnt hand the easy route" - says you, not a fact.

 

If you think all of this, then fine, that's your opinion. But stop making out like that's what every other player thinks.

[Andy Red]

The treasure rooms are sooo terrible. ...the loot should be distributed along the way.

 

Then you have to clear out the whole building, and only if you did, it will unlock the otherwise unbreakable box in the treasure room.

 

You do realise that your 'idea' goes against your first statement right?

 

Make it so that in order to trigger a POI full of zombies, you have to activate a quest with the big yellow mark outside. That will reset the POI, create the sleepers

 

Right, because that's not immersion breaking having giant yellow quest signs outside the majority of POI's which you have to go up to and click to then watch the POI magically repair and reset itself and spawn sleepers in? So everyone could just not click the quest sign and loot the POI as normal (minus your one unbreakable box at the end) without any threat of sleepers? Sounds great...

[Roland]

In my opinion having the loot distributed around the POI is the best solution since Madmole said having a randomized location isn’t an option at this point. I wouldn’t like an unbreakable chest. It’s bad enough we have an unbreakable POI (trader). Let’s not have other unbreakables in this game that is all about breaking anything.

[Roland]

Let’s all of us (myself included) from this point on keep sarcasm out of our replies. It is stealing attention away from the points we’re trying to make on both sides.

[Roland]

I don’t think anyone is denying Stallion’s claim that TFP is simplifying aspects of the game to make it more accessible for mass market appeal. Madmole has said as much himself and any company has the right to make its product more appealing to a wider audience.

 

The difference in opinion is whether what they’ve done has ruined the replayability of the game and that is going to be subjective for each person. Stallions and others like him can’t play vanilla for longer than 5 minutes without deciding they need to mod it. Others are still playing vanilla after 100’s of hours and happy with the experience.

[Kubikus]

Show me where I attacked stallions over his actual criticism. I got snarky with him over his tone and insults and spamming multiple threads with his viewpoint before all of this was moved from the dev diary to here. But if you can find where I posted an ad hominem against him for saying that the game is too easy now because of everything being dumbed down for new players I would be interested to see it and apologize for it.

 

I didn't see any insults, but here you go:

 

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?153226-I-have-over-1000-hours-and-the-game-is-boring-now!&p=1100831&viewfull=1#post1100831

 

I'm not the one who is insisting that old timers like me were real gamers who liked things complex and stuck with this game because we weren't stupid and the game was close to impossible to grok but now all the new gamers are simplistic idiots who buy the game because it is cheap and easy now and that is the only type of game they like because it is so dumbed down.

 

I think it is obvious that you are the one blinded by your own experience with the game and can no longer see the complexities because they have become routine for you. I think you are completely out of touch with how new players experience this game and how challenging and interesting even vanilla is for many experienced gamers who want to be challenged.

 

Take for example dungeon POIS. You say they get boring and non-interesting after a few playthroughs because the player will learn where the false floor is, where the zombies will pop out of their hidden closet, rafter, or blind corner, etc. But what you fail to remember is that the POIS of yore had none of these features in the first place. They were so simplistic and basic that you could stand in a doorway and see and clear everything. In many cases all the zombies would exit the POI as you approached leaving a barren and derelict shell to loot without a single trap or worry for the player. Oohh how complex and challenging we had it back then....

 

I mean yeah, he says you gave a "blinded answer". If very sensitive, that might be offensive..? I guess he means that you're blinded by the player numbers.

 

On the other hand, ppl who insult and spam should, I guess, simply be moderated? By the book..? Like when I wrote what you categorize as an insult, you deleted it, gave me an infraction - ok. I get it.

 

You care about my welfare? I misjudged you.

 

That's really not unusual, I'm a complicated man.

 

Here I assumed your ploy was to diminish my opinion by making me out as a company man on the payroll forced to spout the talking points of the day.

 

While it is not a "ploy", I actually do think that. Why else would you repeat yourself over and over again, without displaying any sign that you enjoy yourself? You could just delete and punish what's against the rules, instead of writing lengthy snarky posts "repeatedly", particularly when you still just express your opinion. And since you behave like you dislike provocation and insults, I assume you don't do it for fun.

 

Set your heart at ease. I love the forums and enjoy interacting with everyone. You wanted to lump my entire 17k posts into the one category of disagreeing with malcontents but it just isn’t the case.

 

No I don't want to lump every single post into one category, that obviously be incorrect. I didn't even say that, but if I had (which I had not), you still had no reason to take that statement literally. You do it a lot, though. You spend a lot of time dealing with criticism, and already by the word "malcontents" one can tell that you don't like "these people". Why not? Cuz you see them as a "workload"? You're sick and tired dealing with them? When ppl honestly criticise the game, they're not interested in annoying anybody. Like stallion, I don't think he wants to upset or insult anybody. When ppl misbehave, you know, heat of the moment style - which certainly should be moderated moderately - they just vent their personal frustration. Even when they lash out at the devs because they disagree, I wouldn't think much of that or take it personally. As a mod you should really float above such emotions like the Buddha himself. Not to mention that leading by example really is one of the highest virtues, something that we don't see much around here, do we? *cough* Joel *cough*

[Kubikus]

You do realise that your 'idea' goes against your first statement right?

 

Not really, though indeed, sloppy as I am, I did not flesh my entire thought process out so that the unassuming bystander must fully understand it.

 

The treasure rooms are terrible for an array of reason:

 

- there are too many. The player can go from POI to POI and loot several treasure rooms per day.

- they are too easy to loot. You do not even have to go through the building, you can just go straight to the treasure, kill two or three zombies, and spend more time breaking the boxes than getting to them.

- the loot is not leveled to the difficulty of the sleepers, which is tied to the player's gamestage. So it might happen that you go through a building full of radiated zeds and only pick up lousy loot, thereby expending more resources to get to the treasure than you get back. You still get the xp of course, but that is a quite unsatisfying reward in my opinion (too abstract), and I think there is a perk (lucky looter or something), but it's not good enough in my opinion. Loot needs to be more leveled, which is why zombie-drops would be ideal.

 

Right, because that's not immersion breaking having giant yellow quest signs outside the majority of POI's which you have to go up to and click to then watch the POI magically repair and reset itself and spawn sleepers in? So everyone could just not click the quest sign and loot the POI as normal (minus your one unbreakable box at the end) without any threat of sleepers? Sounds great...

The locked box already makes sure that you have to actually kill all the zombies inside a building. That already is much better than what we currently have, and the immersion breaking quest sign could only appear if you're so-and-so close. Or - much better - be changed to something less unimmersive.

 

But - and I did not point that out - I don't want every POI to be questy like so. It should either be only the quests that you pick up from the traders, or random. It should be atmospheric, when you pass a POI, you might trigger a quest. You will hear a faint "haaaalp..." and when you circle the POI, you find the quest-trigger. Should you move on, after a certain distance, you should hear a horrible death-scream of the survivor.

 

The point of these POIs is the treasure room (sometimes the resource, like stone, cement, cobblestone, gas). It's alright to still have sleepers, but then again, do you really care about any POI loot outside the treasure room? Everything you need is there, tools, food, meds, guns, ammo, armor. I don't even loot anything else anymore, it's treasure rooms, trader purchases and then some mining. Why would I waste my time with going through trashbags. You do? It's certainly not necessary.

[Kubikus]

I don’t think anyone is denying Stallion’s claim that TFP is simplifying aspects of the game to make it more accessible for mass market appeal. Madmole has said as much himself and any company has the right to make its product more appealing to a wider audience.

 

The difference in opinion is whether what they’ve done has ruined the replayability of the game and that is going to be subjective for each person. Stallions and others like him can’t play vanilla for longer than 5 minutes without deciding they need to mod it. Others are still playing vanilla after 100’s of hours and happy with the experience.

There is no absolute answer to the extent of the replayability, but it is definitely true that for a significant number of players, the replay value has decreased immensely. I wonder what exactly keeps those, for whom the game still has a high replay value, entertained. Is it building? I'd certainly understand that, with all the new traps and electricity, there is much to do. For me, building is not a very prominent part of the game, and I don't like traps at all, I like to do the killing myself.

 

for example.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

In my opinion having the loot distributed around the POI is the best solution since Madmole said having a randomized location isn’t an option at this point. I wouldn’t like an unbreakable chest. It’s bad enough we have an unbreakable POI (trader). Let’s not have other unbreakables in this game that is all about breaking anything.

But the unbreakable chest would only be unbreakable during the quest. You could even break the block under it and remove it that way (no drops of course). But after you leave, everything is breakable. The quest could also have a timer. A design with helping a survivor would be best, after a while they just get killed. Or instead of a chest, you could use an actual NPC, the game needs more of these anyways. Once you cleared the POI, the survivor gives you the reward through a menu, then runs off.

[Boidster]

Let’s all of us (myself included) from this point on keep sarcasm out of our replies. It is stealing attention away from the points we’re trying to make on both sides.

 

SURE WHATEVER, company man. OK, that was the last one - for this thread - I promise.

 

I have over 1,000 hours across console and A17/A18 and I don't yet have any feelings of boredom with the game. This is not to deny stallionsden's or Kubikus' or any others' experience or opinions; just stating a fact to set context for the rest of what I'm going to type.

 

I wonder if the different reactions to changes in the game have significant correlation to how people approach the game? Is the player a min/maxer, for example, does the player enjoy mining and building more or fighting more, does the player mostly play SP or MP, and so on. Also maybe related: what does the player see as the "end" of the game, beyond which there really is no reason to play?

 

I think, in theory, for a game to not have replayability for a given person, these things need to be true for that person, more or less:

 

1. The "end" of the game is relatively static in the mind of the player (this does not have to be a game-driven "end"; it can be a player-imagined goal)
   
2. The path to the "end" is either linear, or it has only a few options, or one option is so compelling to the player that none of the other options are enjoyable
   
3. There is little else to do that is compelling to the player besides get to the "end"
   
4. The player has either mastered the highest difficulty setting, or does not find "same, but just harder" as a compelling replay choice
   

 

I dunno, maybe there's more. But I think each of us will have slightly different opinions on those four things, and to the extent we are nodding our heads in agreement with them, we probably think the game has less replayability.

 

For my own part only,

 

1) I have no idea what the "end" of this game would even be - utter invulnerability to a horde composed entirely of demolishers maybe? It's so far in the future that I can't even

 

2) Not having a personal concept of what the "end" is, I obviously also do not see any paths to it. Me and my co-op partner just choose a sort of short-term goal and off we go. Probably the least efficient duo to ever have played the game.

 

3) For my part, there are probably 20-30 POIs that I've never fully explored, and I do find opening up new POIs compelling even if it has nothing to do with advancing towards the "end" of the game. And I just got compopack dialed in for our next game so...neverending exploration. I personally find that compelling. I also like mining, actually. Penty of ore to dig up. I also like base building and there are plenty of designs to try out.

 

4) Definitely not. We're on warrior I think? We can handle it, but neither of us are min/maxers and I occasionally Leroy Jenkins into a POI causing a death or two. I will say that if we ran out of compelling things to do otherwise, I would not likely find "same, but harder" to be compelling in itself. If I complete a scrolling puzzler, like Braid or Chariot, I don't go back and play again at harder difficulty. Not compelling to me.

 

YMMV, as this thread demonstrates.

[Boidster]

- the loot is not leveled to the difficulty of the sleepers, which is tied to the player's gamestage.

 

Wat. Check out lines 34-908 of vanilla 18.3 loot.xml. It's all about scaling loot probability to game stage. RNG is RNG of course so yeah you might get some duds still. Here's a snippet where quality 6 items start to become a possibility (note that 'level' = game stage).

 

<qualitytemplate level="70,79" default_quality="1">
<loot quality="1" prob="0.356"/>
<loot quality="2" prob="0.396"/>
<loot quality="3" prob="0.47"/>
<loot quality="4" prob="0.431"/>
<loot quality="5" prob="1"/>
</qualitytemplate>
<qualitytemplate level="80,89" default_quality="1">
<loot quality="1" prob="0.342"/>
<loot quality="2" prob="0.376"/>
<loot quality="3" prob="0.444"/>
<loot quality="4" prob="0.422"/>
<loot quality="5" prob="0.61"/>
<loot quality="6" prob="1"/>
</qualitytemplate>

- they are too easy to loot. You do not even have to go through the building, you can just go straight to the treasure, kill two or three zombies, and spend more time breaking the boxes than getting to them.

 

Yes, you can. But if this makes the game too easy in your opinion and hampers replayability, why would you? Why choose to take advantage of things that make the game less fun for you? Is it that you don't want others to have that same option?

 

Edit: forgot to say

there are too many. The player can go from POI to POI and loot several treasure rooms per day.

I hold the same opinion that loot is, in general, pretty freaking abundant. Guns especially. The remedy is the loot abundance setting, I guess, which has its own quirks. Someone - Roland perhaps? - did say a gun nerf is coming. I hope 'nerf' in this case merely means they will be harder to find. On day 19, having a dozen surplus AKs to sell or scrap seems...excessive.