Mostly Dead: A Manifesto

[khzmusik]

This is a manifesto for a play style that I have been calling "dead is mostly dead" (or just "mostly dead" for short). Upon a casual glance, it might seem like "permadeath" or "dead is dead." But the goals of this play style are significantly different.

Why is this game style not "dead is dead," permadeath, or roguelike?

Simply put, those game styles discourage player investment in their characters and game worlds.

 

This seems counter-intuitive on its face. If the player character's (and even the game world's) death is permanent, you would think players would be more invested in making sure it doesn't occur. But from what I've seen, exactly the opposite happens.

 

When players know that permanent death is coming, they react by desensitizing themselves to their characters (and, often, to the entire game world). They start the game knowing that the game world is short-lived and behave accordingly. They take more risks, adopt min/max strategies, emphasize combat over long-term survival, etc.

 

That includes me. This is how I end up playing on permadeath games - whatever my intent before the game loads.

 

It does not help that these game styles are usually considered "hardcore" game modes, played by those who primarily want the extra challenge.

 

"Dead is mostly dead," in contrast, does not intend to make the game more difficult in any way. Its intent is to encourage the players to play differently, due to increased player investment in their characters and the world they live in. It may even benefit by making the game easier, since the longer players go without dying, the more likely they are to be invested in their game characters.

 

There is, of course, nothing wrong with "permadeath" game styles. And, apparently, many players do get more involved with their characters in these game styles. (I just haven't encountered those players.)

 

In the end, those game styles are simply not to my taste. If I don't have this kind of investment, I personally feel like playing the game is just wasting time - of no more importance than playing a round of solitaire, or spending a quarter on Galaga. (This is coming from someone who spent many weekly allowances on Galaga.)

First Principles

To satisfy a "mostly dead" play style, the game must have:

• World permanence.
• Player character permadeath.
• Survival as a primary mechanic.

 

Let's examine the application of these principles to game mechanics.

World permanence

When the player character dies, the world moves on without them. But the effects of that character remain.

 

Obviously, randomly generated worlds will not be regenerated (so, it's not a roguelike). But also, the character's death won't cause the world itself to change in any meaningful way. Loot does not respawn; enemies do not respawn; the game stage does not reset. The relationships between NPCs do not change.

 

Additionally, any former belongings of the now-dead character remain in the game world. Structures built or modified by the character remain as they are. Vehicles that were owned by the character do not despawn. And so forth.

Player character permadeath

When the player character dies, the player cannot enter the same game world as that same character. But, because we have world permanence, that player can re-enter the same game world as a different character.

 

Ideally, a player can enter that same game world as many times as they like, so long as they assume a different character. (Possibly even multiple characters simultaneously.)

 

There are fundamentally two things that make characters different:

1. The attributes of the character itself. For example, the player character's skill tree, individual perks earned, or allegiance to a faction.
2. The relationship of that character to the game world. For example, the character's ownership of game objects, or hired NPCs.

 

Ideally, neither of these things should persist after death.

 

However, because the world's game stage does not change, new characters should be given things on game entry that make them spawn at roughly the same progression level as the former character. Otherwise new characters would die almost immediately.

Survival as a primary mechanic

By "survival mechanics," I mean that threats to the character (and the solutions to them) should come from things that do not involve combat with enemies. Those things could be environmental (like weather) or come from the character's body (like food and water). Enemy characters can still be threats, but overcoming those threats is accomplished by something other than combat (stealth, traps, etc).

 

This does not mean that survival mechanics can be the only game mechanics. It does mean that survival mechanics should be at least as important as combat mechanics, and at least as rewarding to the player. Similarly, other mechanics (crafting, looting, building) would give the player things that improve non-combat abilities, at least as much as combat abilities.

 

If combat is involved, it would be better if it gives a solution to some other threat. For example, if you are dying of the cold, you could fight a bear to skin it and make a coat.

 

But in any case, avoiding fights should be at least as encouraged as fighting.

 

The emergent gameplay should be that players feel like they are overcoming helplessness, and not engaging in power fantasies (like we do in the first-person shooters we all know and love).

 

This will be difficult to get right, because once the player actually overcomes their own helplessness, further gameplay can seem pointless. This means the game should introduce different varieties of threats in later game stages.

How would this affect 7 Days To Die?

These are some suggestions about how 7D2D could be modified to adopt this play style.

 

Of course, they are only suggestions. I am including some that may be impractical, if not impossible, to implement. Some might argue that TFP have already implemented many of these suggestions, and I won't argue.

 

World permanence is not difficult, since the game world in 7D2D is permanent by default. However, since the character's relationship with the world changes, these changes could be made to the entities controlled by the game world:

• Dropped backpacks do not show on the map (but are still in the game world)
• Player-owned vehicles become "un-owned" and do not show on the map
• Player-owned storage becomes "un-owned," and also locked
• If playing with hired NPCs, those NPCs are "un-hired"

For player character permadeath, these changes could be made to character spawning:

• Skill points are reset (but not removed, to preserve progression)
• Buffs from books are removed
• The player map shows all areas as unvisited
• Player characters cannot spawn on bedrolls (or beds, etc.)
• All player belongings are deleted (if backpacks can't be hidden on the map)
• Characters spawn with different starting items, as appropriate to the game stage
• If playing with classes, characters lose their class (and the player can choose a new one)
• If playing with factions, characters spawn in a random faction
• If playing with friendly NPCs, one of those NPCs becomes the new character (a la State of Decay)

Changes to the game mechanics could include:

• Blood moons are wildly randomized, or possibly turned off entirely, to de-emphasize "tower defense" style gameplay
• Players gain XP from enemies killed by traps, equal to the XP they would gain from combat
• Alternatively, skill points are granted per day and not through experience points (a la Roland's 0XP mod)
• More stealth options for zombies, like craftable "whisperer suits"
• Enemies that target crops, storage containers, etc.
• Seasonal weather (that destroys crops)
• Food spoilage
• If playing with NPCs, add community building (hiring NPCs, specialized NPC roles, etc.)
• Add different kinds of enemy NPCs in different game stages (zombies early game, add bandits and whisperers mid game, add enemy soldiers late game, etc.)

Other ideas are more than welcome - so long as they align with the First Principles.

[Laz Man]

Excellent write up.  I have had similar thoughts/ideas and agree with alot of the basics you have outlined.

 

One way to achieve character permadeath is to delete your character profile within your particular game save folder.  This will achieve world permanence since the next time you log into your save you will be a fresh spawn while the world remains as you left it.

 

Would be great if there was setting that would do this for you but it works for now.

 

As a side note, there is no longer such a thing called world game stage.  All loot and blood moons are based on individual player/party gamestage and not game day.  With that said, a new character spawn is not at a disadvantage difficulty wise unless they party up with higher gamestage player.

 

I also agree that disabling the bloodmoon can allow such a gamemode/challenge to shine more.  However, as you mentioned, there will need to be other survival challenges to keep the player engaged otherwise once the feeling of helplessness is overcome....roll the credits.

 

...I'm working on a few of those replacement challenges already as a mod.

[khzmusik]

14 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Excellent write up.  I have had similar thoughts/ideas and agree with alot of the basics you have outlined.

 

One way to achieve character permadeath is to delete your character profile within your particular game save folder.  This will achieve world permanence since the next time you log into your save you will be a fresh spawn while the world remains as you left it.

 

Would be great if there was setting that would do this for you but it works for now.

 

As a side note, there is no longer such a thing called world game stage.  All loot and blood moons are based on individual player/party gamestage and not game day.  With that said, a new character spawn is not at a disadvantage difficulty wise unless they party up with higher gamestage player.

Thanks - I basically just got sick of people thinking I wanted to implement "hard mode" or something.

 

The idea of deleting the player profile is an interesting one. I didn't think that was possible, I thought it was bound to the player's Steam username. But that might have something to do with the "persistent player profile" setting, which doesn't seem like it does anything in SP, and I'm purely a SP type of guy. If that could be done without resetting the player's game stage, that is worth looking into.

 

Also, I was using "game stage" in an abstract sense, not limited to 7D2D or any particular game. In fact I wanted to make the 7D2D related stuff be a separate post but the forum wouldn't let me.

 

EDIT: Other than 7D2D, the game I'm playing nowadays is Borderlands. Adding a "mostly dead" mode to Borderlands would be... interesting.

[Boidster]

14 hours ago, khzmusik said:

(This is coming from someone who spent many weekly allowances on Galaga.)

 

13 hours ago, khzmusik said:

The idea of deleting the player profile is an interesting one. I didn't think that was possible, I thought it was bound to the player's Steam username. But that might have something to do with the "persistent player profile" setting, which doesn't seem like it does anything in SP, and I'm purely a SP type of guy. If that could be done without resetting the player's game stage, that is worth looking into.

Yes it can be done, but no it can't be done without resetting gamestage, but yes you can put gamestage back approximately where it was if you want along with some starting gear.

 

When you die:

1) Delete your player files from (for Windows) <your user folder>\AppData\roaming\7DaysToDie\saves\<mapname>\<savename>\Player (or just rename the folder if you want to preserve your old save)

2) Load up the saved game anew; you will respawn in your original spawn location, but with 0 XP and the usual starting quests

3) Use the console command 'giveselfxp' to give yourself sufficient XP to get back to your former level; you'll get all your skill points to re-spend

4) If you want roughly level-appropriate equipment, you can use 'giveself' to load up with that

 

Doing that would sort of get at what you're talking about, but I would think that #3 and #4 ought to incorporate a (fairly significant) penalty for dying. That is, maybe you only get 75% of your original levels back, and you only get a basic set of equipment appropriate to your level. Maybe nothing better than iron, nothing higher than tier 3, and no motorized tools, vehicles, or guns. I dunno what the right balance is, but I could see if this "different character" was basically at the same level and equipment as the old character you'll only have done window-dressing on the usual respawn mechanics.

 

Neat ideas and obviously well thought-out. I hope some of these can be incorporated into the game (natively or via mods).

[pApA^LeGBa]

Nice ideas there.  You just need to keep the old way also. Too many people wouldn´t like this if it is mandatory. Definitly a mod i would install for SP.

[Boidster]

6 hours ago, Boidster said:

1) Delete your player files from (for Windows) <your user folder>\AppData\roaming\7DaysToDie\saves\<mapname>\<savename>\Player (or just rename the folder if you want to preserve your old save)

I wanted to add, for what it is worth, you can rename/backup the \Player folder and later put it back if you need to revert to the original save. Game is pretty flexible in that regard.

 

You could play asynchronous "co-op" with yourself, running two different characters on the same map. Play a brawler and a crafter, switching between them as you need. Roleplay it as, "Who the hell keeps coming into my base and dropping upgraded tools into the chests?!? And how did this chem station get here?"

[khzmusik]

5 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Nice ideas there.  You just need to keep the old way also. Too many people wouldn´t like this if it is mandatory. Definitly a mod i would install for SP.

Oh yeah, I definitely do not think it's for everyone, especially everyone who plays 7D2D. I was thinking it would be a mod. (I don't know about only SP though, it could work on MP too, depending upon how it's implemented.)

 

Quote

Yes it can be done, but no it can't be done without resetting gamestage, but yes you can put gamestage back approximately where it was if you want along with some starting gear.

 

When you die:

1) Delete your player files from (for Windows) <your user folder>\AppData\roaming\7DaysToDie\saves\<mapname>\<savename>\Player (or just rename the folder if you want to preserve your old save)

2) Load up the saved game anew; you will respawn in your original spawn location, but with 0 XP and the usual starting quests

3) Use the console command 'giveselfxp' to give yourself sufficient XP to get back to your former level; you'll get all your skill points to re-spend

4) If you want roughly level-appropriate equipment, you can use 'giveself' to load up with that

 

Doing that would sort of get at what you're talking about, but I would think that #3 and #4 ought to incorporate a (fairly significant) penalty for dying. That is, maybe you only get 75% of your original levels back, and you only get a basic set of equipment appropriate to your level. Maybe nothing better than iron, nothing higher than tier 3, and no motorized tools, vehicles, or guns. I dunno what the right balance is, but I could see if this "different character" was basically at the same level and equipment as the old character you'll only have done window-dressing on the usual respawn mechanics.

 

Neat ideas and obviously well thought-out. I hope some of these can be incorporated into the game (natively or via mods).

I was hoping all of this could be done by the (modified) game itself. Doing this manually is a whole lot of work for the player, and it would be too easy to "cheat." No idea if that's possible/practical with the current code.

 

EDIT: Also, I'm not sure I'm in agreement with the "penalty" aspect. If losing the character isn't enough of a penalty, then it was probably implemented wrong. Having a penalty seems like the intent is to make the game more difficult, and that's not really the point.

[n2n1]

@OP

I confirm - it was tested in my mod and this game mechanics really works.

...exactly as expected .✌️

[khzmusik]

48 minutes ago, n2n1 said:

@OP

I confirm - it was tested in my mod and this game mechanics really works.

...exactly as expected .✌️

Is this your mod? Because I also was doing a DMT modlet that cleared the player's map... and that was my exact comment in Discord

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, n2n1 said:

@OP

I confirm - it was tested in my mod and this game mechanics really works.

...exactly as expected .✌️

Link please 😀

[Boidster]

2 hours ago, khzmusik said:

EDIT: Also, I'm not sure I'm in agreement with the "penalty" aspect. If losing the character isn't enough of a penalty, then it was probably implemented wrong. Having a penalty seems like the intent is to make the game more difficult, and that's not really the point.

That was not my intent, but it's your idea so I won't press the point. I suppose in any case the below penalties are non-trivial after all, especially after 21-28 days of typical lootin' and learnin'.

 

On 5/27/2020 at 7:03 PM, khzmusik said:

• Buffs from books are removed
• The player map shows all areas as unvisited
• All player belongings are deleted (if backpacks can't be hidden on the map)

 

[n2n1]

 

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Link please 😀

 

2 hours ago, khzmusik said:

Is this your mod? Because I also was doing a DMT modlet that cleared the player's map... and that was my exact comment in Discord

I don't use deleting the map....maybe for now... because they take too long to generate

 

At the moment there is no final version of the mod for A18, plus - there is no English yet, so i do not publish it.

Now tests are being conducted, and, just that would not be unfounded - here is a video of the gameplay:  CSH tests for a18 (There is no point in watching this - this is a working video without comments).

It was in A18 that i implemented and tested the idea with "irrevocable death" and it will now be an integral feature of this mod.

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, n2n1 said:

 

 

I don't use deleting the map....maybe for now... because they take too long to generate

 

At the moment there is no final version of the mod for A18, plus - there is no English yet, so i do not publish it.

Now tests are being conducted, and, just that would not be unfounded - here is a video of the gameplay:  CSH tests for a18 (There is no point in watching this - this is a working video without comments).

It was in A18 that i implemented and tested the idea with "irrevocable death" and it will now be an integral feature of this mod.

Thanks for sharing the video.  It was like going back in time to an older alpha lol...the bag and tool belt especially hehe.

 

Edit: have you figured out a way to delete/reset the character on death?  (Aside from deleting player folder) There is a mod out there that resets skill points but doesnt delete them (e.g. forgettin elixir effect)

[n2n1]

8 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Thanks for sharing the video.  It was like going back in time to an older alpha lol...the bag and tool belt especially hehe.

 

Edit: have you figured out a way to delete/reset the character on death?  (Aside from deleting player folder) There is a mod out there that resets skill points but doesnt delete them (e.g. forgettin elixir effect)

Yes, the task of this mod is to make the grass greener, the sky bluer and the sun brighter - as it was before .

 

It doesn't make sense to delete character - just artificially reduces the level of health and that's it. After that, how restore the profile (in simple ways) - i don't know.

In any case, deleting (profile or world) is also an unreliable method if you have made a backup, so there is no point in complicating everything so much.

[Liesel Weppen]

14 hours ago, khzmusik said:

EDIT: Also, I'm not sure I'm in agreement with the "penalty" aspect. If losing the character isn't enough of a penalty, then it was probably implemented wrong. Having a penalty seems like the intent is to make the game more difficult, and that's not really the point.

But you also apply a penalty... losing the character. Basically you lose everything you had in your inventory and the most hard hit would be the loss of all read books.

For losing the inventory, iirc there is a setting what your character drops on death. Everything, Toolbelt only, nothing. With "nothing" your whole equipment will be lost. With "toolbelt" only items from your toolbelt drop, the rest is then again lost. So maybe no need to hide droped backpacks, just choose to drop nothing.

 

Anyway imho there has to be a penalty. I even argued with some friends, because they did "strategic dying": "We don't have food anymore"... "ah not that important, just die and respawn with full food and water" back then when there was no real penalty. Even if death would not drop anything, they unload there whole stuff into a chest and then go dying, respawn, fetch their stuff back from the chest.

 

I usually have a (or even many) base somewhere on the map where i store equipment. With your playstyle i'd store backup equipment there. After death i'd just go back there and reequip. I know having reset the map would make it more difficult, maybe you should also hide all form of coordinates shown. I don't need a discovered map just to walk to some coordinates. In later gamestages i might even find the base without map and coordinates, because i know landmarks, biomes, mountains, cities, ...

Maybe deleting 80% of the stuff stored in player owned chests on death might work against that. So if you find your old base, it's more like looting a POI, but with more valuable loot as that is a POI where a real player lived.

It would be a huge advantage to go back to an old base, even if the items where removed, because it's already a reinforced base and mostly also already equipped with forges, workbenches, chemstations, etc.

 

Giving back the skillpoints might be missused to respec, so in this point death could even be an advantage.

 

I read it's not your intention to make the game harder, but maybe even easier. Allright with that, but there needs to be balance anyway. Otherwise you could tell a player just to play like this voluntarily. You can do quite everything from your idea manually and volunatrily. Drop nothing on death, delete the character but not the world, cheat XP back after death and so on. But imho that never works on a voluntary basis. If you don't somehow "force" a player by implementing mechanics implementing this behaviour, players will not adapt that playstyle.

It's like permadeath. Why does anybody need such a mode? If you like that and die, just don't continue playing... But it does not work. It's not really permadeath then if the game doesn't delete the files itself, because, if you want to, you could continue anyway.

 

Anyway, i like your idea, but i think it will not really work out on with a fixed mapsize. It would be really interesting if the map would be infinite and you just spawn somewhere. Like in Minecraft. That would in most cases make a return to an old base almost impossible and i guess loosing everything you built would be the biggest penalty.

[khzmusik]

There's a lot to take in here (which is great!) but I think maybe there is a cognitive disconnect going on... Let's dive in.

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But you also apply a penalty... losing the character. Basically you lose everything you had in your inventory and the most hard hit would be the loss of all read books.

If losing the books read is a hardship, maybe don't do it. The main issue is that books read is not a choice, like voluntarily putting a point into a skill tree would be. Maybe an equivalent is to take the same amount of books read, and randomize them, so that you read an equal amount of books, just not the same ones. I don't think that's currently possible though.

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For losing the inventory, iirc there is a setting what your character drops on death. Everything, Toolbelt only, nothing. With "nothing" your whole equipment will be lost. With "toolbelt" only items from your toolbelt drop, the rest is then again lost. So maybe no need to hide droped backpacks, just choose to drop nothing.

That's what I actually do, and it's probably about what is possible in 7D2D. It is different with other games, which is why I was wishy-washy with the implementation.

Quote

Anyway imho there has to be a penalty. I even argued with some friends, because they did "strategic dying": "We don't have food anymore"... "ah not that important, just die and respawn with full food and water" back then when there was no real penalty. Even if death would not drop anything, they unload there whole stuff into a chest and then go dying, respawn, fetch their stuff back from the chest.

If players *want* to do "strategic dying" then the mechanic isn't implemented properly. The entire point is that players would be attached to their characters, so that they wouldn't choose strategic dying even if it benefited them (in a min/max kind of way).

 

So IMHO a penalty is a *failure* of this play style. Successfully implementing this play style wouldn't require a penalty.

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I usually have a (or even many) base somewhere on the map where i store equipment. With your playstyle i'd store backup equipment there. After death i'd just go back there and reequip. I know having reset the map would make it more difficult, maybe you should also hide all form of coordinates shown. I don't need a discovered map just to walk to some coordinates. In later gamestages i might even find the base without map and coordinates, because i know landmarks, biomes, mountains, cities, ...

That's an implementation issue but it is a serious one. I can alrady "reset" the player's map on death. I can already make players' world-belongings (vehicles, storage chests, etc) become un-attached to the player. But that doesn't prevent the player from finding them and claiming them later. (Or at least being able to use them, "claiming" is much more complicated in 7D2D.)

Quote

 

Maybe deleting 80% of the stuff stored in player owned chests on death might work against that. So if you find your old base, it's more like looting a POI, but with more valuable loot as that is a POI where a real player lived.

It would be a huge advantage to go back to an old base, even if the items where removed, because it's already a reinforced base and mostly also already equipped with forges, workbenches, chemstations, etc.

 

That is an issue, but again it's an implementation issue.

 

For example - if you gather a bunch of resources, and you spawn into a game world that is at the same level - then any time you come across some other player's base where they were at that level, that player would probably have also been in this world long enough to gather those resources.

 

So is it really an issue? It wouldn't be if the game was dedicated to "mostly dead" from the beginning, which 7D2D was not. But given what we can work with, I think that's OK frankly. Just make those resources "look like" another character's and you're OK (like automatically locking chests or whatever).

 

In the case of 7D2D though, that's probably the least of our implementation worries.

 

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Giving back the skillpoints might be missused to respec, so in this point death could even be an advantage.

Again, if players view this as an advantage, then it's a failure of the play style.

 

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I read it's not your intention to make the game harder, but maybe even easier. Allright with that, but there needs to be balance anyway. Otherwise you could tell a player just to play like this voluntarily. You can do quite everything from your idea manually and volunatrily. Drop nothing on death, delete the character but not the world, cheat XP back after death and so on. But imho that never works on a voluntary basis. If you don't somehow "force" a player by implementing mechanics implementing this behaviour, players will not adapt that playstyle.

100% agree with this, because I've actually tried doing this voluntarily, and asking players (like me) to do things voluntarily never works out.

Quote

 

It's like permadeath. Why does anybody need such a mode? If you like that and die, just don't continue playing... But it does not work. It's not really permadeath then if the game doesn't delete the files itself, because, if you want to, you could continue anyway.

 

That's why I don't want this to be considered the same as permadeath. Different objectives entirely. "Continuing anyway" is kind of the point.

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Anyway, i like your idea, but i think it will not really work out on with a fixed mapsize. It would be really interesting if the map would be infinite and you just spawn somewhere. Like in Minecraft. That would in most cases make a return to an old base almost impossible and i guess loosing everything you built would be the biggest penalty.

 

I'm not sure what map size has to do with anything, in fact this could happen on a tiny map (ideally, if implemented properly). Even at the minimal map size, this could work, since you ideally lose the entire map. If you have a good enough brain to remember all the landmarks - well good for you.

 

And, thank you for the input. I am very curious what people might get out of this, since I obviously know what I want.

[KhaineGB]

So I was working on something similar to this today.

Things I've managed to do.

1 - Use the forgettin' elixir (admin version) code to reset the player's skills AND books on death.
2 - After the above, nuke all skill points (player spawns with 0)
3 - Reset player to level 1.
4 - Undo all HP/Stamina bonuses 
5 - Remove spawn points set by bedrolls (which also removes the bedroll from the map).

6 - Completely clear the players journal (done quests, current quests, shared quests and active quest)

7 - Grant the player a new quest on respawn (currently just the default 'go to trader' quest to save re-doing the tutorial)

8 - Remove players land claims. (got this done after posting thanks to help from HAL. Land claim deactivates, doesn't show on compass/map and has only 1HP if the player finds it)
9) Remove ownership of vehicles. (Now done. Vehicle is killed and removed from the world on player death)

Things I haven't managed to do.

1) Remove ownership of storage. (HIGHLY unlikely to be do-able. Looping through all TileEntities with the players ID attached might set people's CPU's on fire)

Looking into land claims now, then i'll have a look at the rest.  (Land claims done) Not sure if that's in-line with what you want, but it allows the player to respawn in the world with... almost nothing.

Also, you don't need to worry about gamestage. From what I understand, there's a limit on how high it can go vs amount of days to make sure lower level players don't get screwed on servers with lots of days.

[khzmusik]

Just FYI to everyone else - @KhaineGB created a "hardcore" modlet that implements player permadeath. I contributed the code to clear the player's map.

 

It's here: 

 

 

Obviously it will have to be modified for "mostly dead" play styles. But it's a good start, and I think lots of people here will enjoy it.