Open Letter to TFP's...

[Roland]

5 hours ago, RipClaw said:

If you look at the Dungeon Style POIs you will notice that the path is often not directly visible to humans.

For example, climb up a trellis onto the roof and through a hole in the roof into the house. Most players work with frames in this case because they do not recognize the trellis as climbable.

In Alpha 16 this was still quite simple. You had a staircase and as soon as you removed the stairs here the zombies couldn't go up anymore.

That's why I prefer horde bases that were built from scratch. There I know every weak spot and know exactly which way the zombies will go.

This, to me, is exactly the appeal of fortified POI bases. Learning from the breaches of day 7 and 14 so that you are good to go on Day 21. 
 

@Solomon obviously did not figure out the weaknesses and solve them. They left the weaknesses in place and just tried to fortify more against the zombies reaching the weaknesses. 

Now they would rather go straight to exploits rather than solve the weaknesses of the POI. Now maybe for them doing that isn’t fun and I respect that. But to state it is impossible and they are forced to exploit because the devs have stopped them is a load of hooey. 

[Laz Man]

3 minutes ago, Roland said:

This, to me, is exactly the appeal of fortified POI bases. Learning from the breaches of day 7 and 14 so that you are good to go on Day 21. 
 

The OP obviously did not figure out the weaknesses and solve them. They left the weaknesses in place and just tried to fortify more against the zombies reaching the weaknesses. 

Now they would rather go straight to exploits rather than solve the weaknesses of the POI. Now maybe for them doing that isn’t fun and I respect that. But to state it is impossible and they are forced to exploit because the devs have stopped them is a load of hooey. 

Fortifying a POI for horde bases is a fun challenge.  For me, one of the most enjoyable things in the game is figuring out how to prep a POI for horde nights WHILE keeping as much of the existing structure the same.

[FileMachete]

30 minutes ago, Roland said:

Really? Usually the busty pretty girl in mine....

err, got a watch list to share? asking for @SnowDog1942 ...

 

Edit: definately agree with the 'change' arc you described for a17 @Ralathar44 I really didn't like the change to early resources. But as you say @Laz Man, I've learned to appreciate fortifying a POI.

[Roland]

14 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Fortifying a POI for horde bases is a fun challenge.  For me, one of the most enjoyable things in the game is figuring out how to prep a POI for horde nights WHILE keeping as much of the existing structure the same.

Could make for a nice new quest type: Defend A given POI against x waves of zombies. 

[FileMachete]

7 minutes ago, Roland said:

Could make for a nice new quest type: Defend A given POI against x waves of zombies. 

ya know.. if the POIs were only ones -without- stairs, that might be a subtle way of addressing how to teach new players to get the h6ll up off ground level.

 

Edit: maybe add in a 'trap' stair block, like the current fall-through-the-floor ones. So player goes to that building, hopefully has the curiousity to see whats above, climbs the stairs, fall through them has a chance to go, 'wth?'

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Raestloz said:

Well, I don't like to presume that everyone who failed simply refused to fight and just embrace death as the zombies break in. It seems from multiple mentions of "defending", they didn't just stand there and actually do some fighting. Their story seems to imply that they did some fighting and the roof was their fallback position. I could be wrong, of course.

It's just that, not a single time have I ever seen anyone actually not fight. Like, at all.

 

I did not presume they refused to fight. My point was that if I imagine reality I would come to different conclusions than you did. And additionally that both my and your real life hypothesis won't be fun in this game of high-speed building

 

This sentence does not leave much room for interpretation, the roof was not a fallback: "First try simply wood/stone up the walls and put spikes around the place, defend on the roof."

4 hours ago, Raestloz said:

 

Also, agreed on the zombies. They're adjusted to deal with reinforced concretes and cheesy tactics, he really should've used the same

Reinforced concrete yes, but I don't think they are adapted for cheesy tactics. What is a cheesy tactic for you? A kill corridor? But that would

1) ignore that historic castles had kill corridors as well

2) the tower defense genre is in short "kill corridor" pressed into a game and this is partly a tower defense game

3) devs never did anything to make kill corridors less effective, IMO they fully endorse kill corridors as a solution

 

And a good kill corridor is able to defeat demos without damage. 

 

[FileMachete]

Just reading your post @meganoth it occurred to me that, looked at one way, horde bases in 7dtd are kind of backwards in progression, mentally so to speak.

 

Early on it can be best/easier to go the old 5x5 solid blocks with bars around and shoot/throw from above. Basically have enough HPs below you to keep the zeds from getting to you while raining down from above.

 

Later on, with help from traps, there can be advantages to just have the zeds come straight at you. Various kill corridors, no drop pits required, direct access, so to speak, to the player; not using block HPs to protect you really, it's the traps and player damage keeping the zeds off.

 

Just an observation. Can sort of imagine that seeming counter-intuitive to the counter-intuitive (possibly) at the start, heh.

[RipClaw]

27 minutes ago, Roland said:

This, to me, is exactly the appeal of fortified POI bases. Learning from the breaches of day 7 and 14 so that you are good to go on Day 21. 
 

@Solomon obviously did not figure out the weaknesses and solve them. They left the weaknesses in place and just tried to fortify more against the zombies reaching the weaknesses. 

He did what any new player would do. He probably also let himself be fooled by the appearance of blocks. I know POIs where the walls seem to be bricks but it is just painted wood.

 

It is not obvious for beginners how the spikes work and how they are seen by the zombies. The model of the spikes suggests that the zombies run towards them frontally and are impaled by the spikes. That the spikes are most effective if you sink them into a trench is something new players don't know. Even experienced players have trouble seeing that.

 

55 minutes ago, Roland said:

Now they would rather go straight to exploits rather than solve the weaknesses of the POI. Now maybe for them doing that isn’t fun and I respect that. But to state it is impossible and they are forced to exploit because the devs have stopped them is a load of hooey. 

He just doesn't see what he could do differently. I know it can be done differently but I also have the experience and I have spent a lot of time testing different designs to see what works and what doesn't work.

 

And as for his opinion on the intentions of the developers, we don't have the same access to the developers and their plans as you do. We don't know how they envision the finished game, which defenses they consider valid and which not.
 

[meganoth]

13 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

Just reading your post @meganoth it occurred to me that, looked at one way, horde bases in 7dtd are kind of backwards in progression, mentally so to speak.

 

Early on it can be best/easier to go the old 5x5 solid blocks with bars around and shoot/throw from above. Basically have enough HPs below you to keep the zeds from getting to you while raining down from above.

 

Later on, with help from traps, there can be advantages to just have the zeds come straight at you. Various kill corridors, no drop pits required, direct access, so to speak, to the player; not using block HPs to protect you really, it's the traps and player damage keeping the zeds off.

 

Just an observation. Can sort of imagine that seeming counter-intuitive to the counter-intuitive (possibly) at the start, heh.

 

Have you ever tried to just mass-build concrete? I.e. Do lots of mining, convert everything to concrete and just build 5x5 solid blocks (either to form an even bigger block or  a sea of blocks with small spaces between them)?

 

I would guess you would outbuild the damage the zombies do on each night even if you did not fight them in any way. But not sure, would have to be tested.

 

So for me later game just provides more possibilities, more variety. You have more and sturdier materials, more traps and more time to build complicated stuff.

 

[meganoth]

8 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

He did what any new player would do. He probably also let himself be fooled by the appearance of blocks. I know POIs where the walls seem to be bricks but it is just painted wood.

 

It is not obvious for beginners how the spikes work and how they are seen by the zombies. The model of the spikes suggests that the zombies run towards them frontally and are impaled by the spikes. That the spikes are most effective if you sink them into a trench is something new players don't know. Even experienced players have trouble seeing that.

 

He just doesn't see what he could do differently. I know it can be done differently but I also have the experience and I have spent a lot of time testing different designs to see what works and what doesn't work.

 

And as for his opinion on the intentions of the developers, we don't have the same access to the developers and their plans as you do. We don't know how they envision the finished game, which defenses they consider valid and which not.
 

I agree with the spikes, I even suggested once they change the appearance to make that clearer.

 

I also think Solomon's group did quite well and 3 attempts before succumbing to the youtube sirens is more than most would do. Having a blind eye for the (to us) obvious solution can happen to everyone.

 

But I disagree a bit on the devs intentions being oracles. Solomon might not know because he isn't on this forum for long, but you and I surely have read enough of Madmoles opinions about the game and seen enough changes to the game (usually with the main reasons explained by the devs) to have a fairly good idea.

 

[FileMachete]

2 minutes ago, meganoth said:

So for me later game just provides more possibilities, more variety. You have more and sturdier materials, more traps and more time to build complicated stuff.

Yes, exactly. Sry I didn't really follow the first bits you wrote, but I think my post wasn't terribly clear.

 

Was thinking about the earlier posts and what a brand new player would likely do to defend a horde, and how that's not really a great choice.

I.e. staying at ground level, thinking wooden walls are enough, etc.

 

Once a new player realizes that getting above the zeds, and making sure there are no stairs/access to get up to them, then that could become a mindset of how to build a horde base.

 

But later on, with traps, it can be easier/cheaper to build a horde base where the zeds have a much more direct path to you.

 

Meaning the early 'mindset', which could already have been a bit difficult to embrace, is potentially challenged again later on.

 

Hopefully that makes more sense. And like I said, just an observation. Not thinking that it's something bad or wrong. I too enjoy the increased options available later on. Maybe a bit too much as I keep making overpowered bases leaving me with little I actually have to do on horde nights. But that's my own fault as my pc can't handle high max alive settings.

[Roland]

39 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

He did what any new player would do. He probably also let himself be fooled by the appearance of blocks. I know POIs where the walls seem to be bricks but it is just painted wood.

 

It is not obvious for beginners how the spikes work and how they are seen by the zombies. The model of the spikes suggests that the zombies run towards them frontally and are impaled by the spikes. That the spikes are most effective if you sink them into a trench is something new players don't know. Even experienced players have trouble seeing that.

 

He just doesn't see what he could do differently. I know it can be done differently but I also have the experience and I have spent a lot of time testing different designs to see what works and what doesn't work.

 

And as for his opinion on the intentions of the developers, we don't have the same access to the developers and their plans as you do. We don't know how they envision the finished game, which defenses they consider valid and which not.
 

I agree with you that these things are not readily apparent to new players. They have to be sussed out through experimentation and trial and error (or copying a youtube video). I do think that whether someone has direct access to the developers or not they probably know that floating bases are not considered valid. In fact, he knew it wasn't valid and was complaining that doing that might be his only option. I would also submit that a new player would have even less intuitive knowledge about how to make a floating base or even that such things existed. Obviously he knows, so he isn't as new and fresh and innocent about the nature of blocks as you are painting him. 

 

If it is okay to go onto YouTube and learn how to make a floating base it is also fine to experiment with blocks and try knocking out stairs and sinking spikes into a trench. Those are much more moderate steps to take than going to the extreme and declaring anything less than that is impossible.

[AtomicUs5000]

4 minutes ago, Roland said:

I agree with you that these things are not readily apparent to new players. They have to be sussed out through experimentation and trial and error (or copying a youtube video). I do think that whether someone has direct access to the developers or not they probably know that floating bases are not considered valid. In fact, he knew it wasn't valid and was complaining that doing that might be his only option. I would also submit that a new player would have even less intuitive knowledge about how to make a floating base or even that such things existed. Obviously he knows, so he isn't as new and fresh and innocent about the nature of blocks as you are painting him. 

Would a person playing 7D2D for the very first time, without any instruction from a friend, without having seen a video ever, and without any externally gained information about the game, even know what was happening on day 7? Are there any indicators anywhere that the player should be preparing for something the 6 days prior?

[katarynna]

i still remember my very first horde. The only outside info i had came from my first day playing. A friend and i bought the game together,  came upon a zombie for the first time, and immediately both of us died at almost the exact same time. We watched one video on what to do on day one in 7dtd.

 

Comes day 7. we were living in a wooden house in navezgane south of diersville. Had absolutely no idea what was coming. They killed us over and over while destroying wall after wall until they finally brought the house down, destroying absolutely everything.

 

We were laughing and yelling and having a great time. Once it was all over, we looked up day 7 and discovered what the bloodmoon was. Then we talked about the various points of fail and what we could do better. Then we restarted with a plan.

 

Our first and subsequent hordes were successful for the most part, as we never had another total loss and experimented with different builds. After that first disastrous horde we learned a) wooden walls are no good for hordes;  b)keep your important stuff out of the fighting area; c) do not leave easy access to your fall back position; d) have an escape route. We learned from our mistakes and improved our horde base designs.

[Demandred1957]

On 7/19/2020 at 9:40 PM, katarynna said:

You are aware that this game is marketed as having tower defense elements? The horde night IS the tower defense elements. So yeah, you are SUPPOSED to do a variation of tower defense for the tower defense part of the game. Or else turn off hordes or mod it.

"the zombie horde survival crafting game"

Nope, don't see tower defense game anywhere in there.

18 hours ago, RipClaw said:

He's not the only one.

Sounds like parents who give their child a Lego set with the intention of encouraging creativity, and then get angry if what the child builds is not what is on the package.
Finding exploits and integrating them into a base design is also creative.

 

yep, glad there are people that are more eloquent than I am, to say what I am feeling in a coherent way.

14 hours ago, NBornkilla said:

May I recommend you lower down  game difficulty put all zombies to walk at all time  and might as well play in god mode  just so you can be safe.

May I suggest you take a long walk off a short plank? When I first started a few months back thats what I did, but recently I fended off a 64 per wave horde on day 126, WITHOUT a cheese base. git gud scrub..

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, Demandred1957 said:

"the zombie horde survival crafting game"

Nope, don't see tower defense game anywhere in there.

 

Tower defense is mentioned in the first few seconds of this video from 6 years ago.  😎

 

Also in the games description on its steam store page...

 

"7 Days to Die is an open-world game that is a unique combination of first person shooter, survival horror, tower defense, and role-playing games. Play the definitive zombie survival sandbox RPG that came first. Navezgane awaits!"

[RipClaw]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

But I disagree a bit on the devs intentions being oracles. Solomon might not know because he isn't on this forum for long, but you and I surely have read enough of Madmoles opinions about the game and seen enough changes to the game (usually with the main reasons explained by the devs) to have a fairly good idea.

Honestly, I have no idea. Madmole has decided in a blink of an eye that the demolisher will have an explosion block damage of 5000 when two demolishers exploded in his base and the chemistry station was not destroyed. Someone like that is unpredictable for me.

 

I also see that his defense is always the same. It consists of shooting from a tower down on zombies and throwing grenades. If that's his vision for how players should defend their base, then I see a dark future for players who prefer funnel bases with electrical traps.

 

One time he tried something with electrical traps and you could clearly see that he had no experience with them. In general the Fun Pimps do not seem to be particularly interested in electrical traps. Since Alpha 16 no new traps have been added but several new guns and other weapons.

 

[Raestloz]

10 hours ago, meganoth said:

Reinforced concrete yes, but I don't think they are adapted for cheesy tactics. What is a cheesy tactic for you? A kill corridor? But that would

The zombies are adapted for cheesy tactics, that's what the AI fixes do these past few updates. I'm saying that playing normally simply cannot cut it anymore. The basic AI is designed to be as effective at day 7 as it is day 70, therefore you're going to need a base design that works against day 70 damage levels, but with day 7 materials. The difference is you don't see demolishers, which can be killed without exploding anyway

 

Based on the limitations, you need to cheese, i.e make up for lack of materials by way of exploiting zombie pathing: Herd them all to one place, make them faff around as you shoot them, stuff like that. For his specific example that'd entail cutting off the path upstairs so the zombies will faff around trying to go upstairs, failing 100% of the time, and he has to do that because his other defenses (the outer walls, moats and whatnot) clearly were insufficient. I'm not an AI pathfinder expert so I don't know what the AI is supposed to do at that point, but he said that if all else fails he will resort to floating base so I guess the AI hasn't got around to deal with that yet.  Since he couldn't sustain a kill corridor, it seems that either their team didn't spec into weapons (stupid) or they didn't progress enough.

 

Another thing I'd like to add is it is possible that his focus on killing them with traps is ironically the problem, at least at that point in time. Laying out traps around the base is inefficient because not only do traps not grant xp, the zombies are virtually unlimited, so the traps will break sooner rather than later, costing resources for quite literally no gain at all. They had to spend time digging the ditches, laying out traps, gathering the resources required to build them. Meanwhile, cheesing the AI pathing is much cheaper and since there can only be so many zombies at any time anyway, the danger level is always constant: the only enemies are the ones you see.

 

The time they spent building all those overengineered and completely worthless defense systems could've been spent leveling up to raise the gamestage and looting houses to gain ammo and whatnot that would've secured more kills faster during blood moon

[Solomon]

12 hours ago, Roland said:

@Solomon obviously did not figure out the weaknesses and solve them. They left the weaknesses in place and just tried to fortify more against the zombies reaching the weaknesses. 

Its not that easy to identify the weaknesses when it boils down to a calculation in the AI saying "This exact point here has the least amount of total hp so storm here".

 

The Ai works in a pretty easy way if you play long enough, its basically searching for the least resistance to reach me so the best way to play is to cheese this behaviour but if you try to play in a legit manner like as if you dont know the AI behaviour you are going to have a bad time. They gonna smash throught your 3 lines of wall and swarm you.

[Solomon]

17 hours ago, FileMachete said:

Imo his group didn't do anything "wrong", they simply had no idea what the game was going to throw at them.

We effectively tried to play with the excpectation that the horde night will spawn us a bunch of raging zeds who will try to run straight to the house and try to get in and not with the idea that they will all funnel to the one point what was not as reinforced as the others and from that on run straight up to the roof and eat us.

 

12 hours ago, meganoth said:

I also think Solomon's group did quite well and 3 attempts before succumbing to the youtube sirens is more than most would do. 

 

 

To be honest i still havent watched any youtube base building videos, i only know of the exploits from talks about them. The idea for the ramp base came from observing how the zombies always path towards the least resistance.

 

 

The current base essentially looks like this (please excuse the paint quality.

 

 

 

Edit: Someone please show me how do you ping people here so i dont need to quote everything.

[katarynna]

1 hour ago, Solomon said:

Its not that easy to identify the weaknesses when it boils down to a calculation in the AI saying "This exact point here has the least amount of total hp so storm here".

 

The Ai works in a pretty easy way if you play long enough, its basically searching for the least resistance to reach me so the best way to play is to cheese this behaviour but if you try to play in a legit manner like as if you dont know the AI behaviour you are going to have a bad time. They gonna smash throught your 3 lines of wall and swarm you.

The weaknesses you should have identified from your first try were 

 

7 hours ago, katarynna said:

a) wooden walls are no good for hordes;  b)keep your important stuff out of the fighting area; c) do not leave easy access to your fall back position; d) have an escape route

which are the same weakness my friend and i identified from our very first horde with no outside info regarding hordes. We had a similar setup to yours, and honestly had no idea what the bloodmoon horde was or that it was coming for us at 2200 on day 7.

 

This was back in a15. We restarted, and by day 7 had metal walls with gaps to shoot through (not ideal as i know now. iron bars or hatches would have been better. screw arrow slits). Our goodies were in the basement and we had metal walls and 4 iron doors to break through to get into that area. We started shooting through the gaps we left, but had 2 fall back positions on the first floor so that if the walls were breached we could go through an iron door, close it, and make another stand from there. This led to a stairway to the upper floor, set up like the first but mostly just wood since we were out of materials. From the upper floor, we had a ladder going down outside a window in our final fall back, where we could make a run for the mining tunnels and hope for the best. We didn't have to use it though.

 

You identify the weaknesses in your failed bases, make a plan to overcome those weaknesses, and continue to refine and experiment. Or you watch videos on indestructible bases. (not fun for me, but you do you). Or if you find the bloodmoon to be no fun, leave your feedback for the developers and turn them off.

[RipClaw]

21 minutes ago, katarynna said:

This was back in a15

The AI in A15 was a completely different one. This AI had no idea which block had how much HP. So a single block did not make a big difference. And also the pathfinding was much more primitive.

 

For example, take a look at the comparison between the AI of Alpha 16 and Alpha 18 in this video from @Vedui:
 

 

You can see the different behaviour regarding which block has how many HP starting at 10:20.

 

Furthermore the painting system was not implemented yet. You had to know exactly from each block what material it was made of. Now you have blocks that look like concrete or steel but are just wood.
 

[katarynna]

You are absolutely right, @RipClaw.

 

The point was, however, identifying weaknesses in your failed bases and overcoming them. That is still valid.

 

If your first horde is in a building with single-layer wood and stone walls, some spikes outside, and a clear path for zombies to reach the roof you are fighting from if they break through and it fails, identify the problems and don't repeat them on your next horde night.

 

Double layer walls at the one point that they breached on horde one is not an answer if you still have single layer walls made of wood/flagstone on the ground floor. The problem wasn't that one wall space. It was weak walls that you couldn't adequately defend from where they were on the roof. So you make much stronger walls for your next try, all the way around on the ground floor, and make sure you have good sight lines from the roof where you are fighting from so that you can defend your walls.

 

If they break through anyways, you learned on your first try that leaving them direct access to the roof where you are fighting from means you get slaughtered. So don't leave them direct access. You can remove the stairs, you can completely wall off the stairway, filling it in with blocks to simulate barricading yourself from the zombies, you can put your strongest walls at the top of the stairs with places for you to shoot through to make a final stand, or anything else you can come up with.

 

They died on the roof in their first try. They should have learned that they needed an escape route, even if that meant they took the horde on in the street with melee for the rest of the night. Some people do that by choice. It is certainly a better option than just dying in the corner you backed yourself into.

 

I was just explaining our thought process regarding identifying weak points and fixing them after our first newbie horde back in a15. While the weak points and fixes may be different, the thought process is the same.

 

 

 

 

[Solomon]

10 minutes ago, katarynna said:

If they break through anyways, you learned on your first try that leaving them direct access to the roof where you are fighting from means you get slaughtered. So don't leave them direct access. You can remove the stairs, you can completely wall off the stairway, filling it in with blocks to simulate barricading yourself from the zombies, you can put your strongest walls at the top of the stairs with places for you to shoot through to make a final stand, or anything else you can come up with.

To be honest we learned quickly that if the foundations are out structures simply collaspse, removal of the stairs would mean that the zombies have absolutely no way to get up to us on the roof other than beating down all the walls so it collapses.

 

The inside area of that particular spot where they breached throught was a big living room so we gone and replaced all walls with cobblestone ones and put spikes next to all wall lines there. The upstairst point all had reinforced doors too to make reaching us a bit harder.

 

They entered the kill corridor (i admit it was not the best made, we had level 2 junk turrets, some mines and bullets to kill things piling up there), from there they circled around the house to the lowest hp spot (they breaked several cobblestone walls just so they can directly enter the upstair areas), broke down the walls/doors and reached us on this garage roof, day 14 had these jumping guys, some vultures, the big dead. 

[katarynna]

3 minutes ago, Solomon said:

To be honest we learned quickly that if the foundations are out structures simply collaspse, removal of the stairs would mean that the zombies have absolutely no way to get up to us on the roof other than beating down all the walls so it collapses.

 

The inside area of that particular spot where they breached throught was a big living room so we gone and replaced all walls with cobblestone ones and put spikes next to all wall lines there. The upstairst point all had reinforced doors too to make reaching us a bit harder.

 

They entered the kill corridor (i admit it was not the best made, we had level 2 junk turrets, some mines and bullets to kill things piling up there), from there they circled around the house to the lowest hp spot (they breaked several cobblestone walls just so they can directly enter the upstair areas), broke down the walls/doors and reached us on this garage roof, day 14 had these jumping guys, some vultures, the big dead. 

Honestly if your first base completely fails, you are better off restarting completely. While you are still trying to figure out how to deal with the horde, they are getting stronger and stronger if you continue that save.

 

You may want to try fighting from the ground floor initially and saving the roof as your last stand. create fall back positions on the ground floor so that if they breach the outer area, you retreat inward to your next fall back and continue fighting. Make the roof your last stand, and when you retreat there, break out or barricade the way up to you. If they have breached all other layers, you have nothing left to lose. And if you have an escape route from the roof, just make a run for it and fight in the streets. That way they will stop destroying your base and chase you.

 

While i find spikes to be of minimal use, you may want to investigate barbed wire. It slows them a lot so you can kill them much easier. And if you perk into electric fences or buy the stuff needed to get them up and running, they are amazing.

 

If you want to fight from a height advantage, you can make a solid cobblestone block base. Start 5 x 5 and make it as big as you can afford to and upgrade to concrete on the outer layers and any inner layers you have to repair asap. That should hold until demolishers.

 

Try things out, experiment, and have fun. Having a base fail is an opportunity to figure out why and how to prevent it in the future.