So was the point of A19 to get rid of "Realism"?

[DanLW]

A longer stone age would work if the map or RWG supported it.

 

Imagine a map like this: The initial spawn point is in a sparsely populated area.  (The Duke drove you to the middle of nowhere and left you for dead)  POIs are rare in this part of the map, so what you can make is what you got.  Stone age lasts a while.

 

To advance to iron/steel, you need to travel to the part of the map where civilization exists.  Hopefully you go in the right direction!  Also, getting to civilized areas with better loot should involve crossing dangerous areas that should be very difficult for a player in week 1 to cross.

 

This would be agreat concept for a custom map.  Getting to the good loot should involve travelling tens of km on foot, or by bike if you get lucky enough to find one.  This way a player can spend the stone age getting basic equipment, and must travel to get better equipment.

 

It will be interesting when the game goes gold and custom player made maps become a thing.  Creating a map designed to be an epic journey could be fun!

[Synvastian]

I think of the stone age tools as being placed in the box prior to the AREA being left by everyone (Before it became over-run by the hordes)

 

I think of this game with my own RP because that kind of world building is amusing and fun

 

Heavily inspired by TLoU and other works like "Rot and Ruin"

 

Timeline of my thinking

Apocalypse/outbreak day: People don't pay much mind, probably just another wave of the flu/especially high pollen count...its just allergies

1 week: Rumors of cannibalistic activity, WHO starts work on finding a cure, Gov't's work to keep news suppressed under urging from the Military

1 month: Multiple cities under quarantine, Military in full force, WHO stops work on cure, instead looks for biological weaknesses to reanimated

6 months: Large amounts of the dead are lured to less used city blocks and bombarded with nukes/missiles, most cities abandoned.

1 year: Most left over cities are walled compounds (Think "The last of us") and access is strict and military in origin, suspected infected are tossed outside the walls, Supplies are limited, and ration cards are issued weekly, access to tools are for tradesman and workers under strict supervision to ensure no theft

year 3-5: Food has become scarce, "Old world" tools are breaking, leading to a boom in self made/forged tools and artisan crafts (sewing), guide books written~

~~{New tools mass produced as often as possible, excess stored in crates to be delivered between settlements, some survivors steal shipments and hide boxes in houses for later retrieval, these new tools, while numerous are drop forged from random metals, and don't last long} ~~

year 5-10/Present: The Duke is pretty much "Robert House in New Vegas" with a large walled piece of the strip, catches a would be Cheater (player) trying to run a scam on a casino, and has his goons leave them somewhere in the wilds (via knockout and a 4X4) and we awake in the morning as the sun starts to heat up.

 

The reasoning for stone age tools in the boxes is (from my point of view) It's a gameplay hurdle, and in the "reality" of my 7DTD RP, Stone tools were designed to be used when a more valuable tool wasn't quite needed EX: Need a tree knocked down but its not urgent? Stone ax is cheap and plentiful, our Iron ax is looking a bit worn down...Steel tools (real steel) were horded mostly by craftsman who knew the worth, and used as rarely as possible, to ensure they lasted as long as possible.

[Boidster]

Needs one more option:

 

( ) I like passive-aggressive polls

 

[Noctoras]

23 hours ago, RestInPieces said:

They wanted to extend the game's stone age, which is a good thing in my opinion.

But of course, TFP being TFP, they once again chose a terrible way to do that (last one was perk level gates).  

True that. Good idea, bad implementation. No more joy and surprise from looting when the content is as predictable as the sunrise. 

 

Really missing the random elements here, those make the game enjoyable and thrilling. If I want a grindfest, I go to work instead of playing. At least I get paid for it there xD

[Noctoras]

13 hours ago, Roland said:

@watzlp Sorry you don't like the direction of this. This happens every update to different folks. Too bad your turn came around this time. 

 

The trader nerf is coming so pretty soon rewards and store inventory will be similar.

Merry stone axe festival 😅

 

[Onarr]

6 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

If you don't like nerdpoling to the top of POI's to snag the main loot, then don't do it. How does anyone else exploiting this mechanic affect you? Besides, if you really wanted to, you could turn on DM mode, turn on Fly Mode, and achieve the same thing. Sure, I'm comparing apples and oranges here, but at the end of the day, they are more similar than different.

 

Plus there are plenty of POI's where the main loot is at ground level or underground.

Well I do not use it and honestly I do not care if someone does it in SP game. MP is the problem imho. random dude that just started on a server will nerdpole at top of shotgun messiah and boom top tier loot.

[myrkana]

10 hours ago, Onarr said:

Imho the stone age should be completely removed. Iron age should be new stone age. Why do you need 4 tiers? Is 3 not enough? Its just silly, because most of the stone weapons is useless. CLub? no. Knuckle wraps? You mean those little love tapps - nah Ill pass. Bow and arrows? 4 headshots to kill a zombie....just no. Ill pick sledgehammer over everything, because its most effective. Tools - you have essentially only shovel and stone axe, which at the time you start getting iron tools you have on tier 6 which is on the same lvl as T1 iron tools. And of course, desire to loot at the beginning is really low before you increase your gamestage.

 

In regards to endgame PoIS having good loot and dangerous enemies from start....nerdpolling and other exploits are the issue. But I believe that can be rectified and worked around

The thing is, that iron tools and firearms have some value - you can scrap/smelt them, get parts from them or sell them. With stone age items you can do it only with scrap armor and blunderbuss. Loot has mostly no value compared to iron age.

I used a wood club with mods for the first 9 days of my current world. Stone age tools are not useless for what they are made for, early game.  Early bow and arrow are letting us kill chickens, and can be used on zombies. Arrows are very easy to make so using 4 isnt a problem. I'm looting a ton of stuff at day 11 and we only just started getting iron stuff and low level tier 1 guns in boxes.  Early game things don't need to die quickly and easily. 

 

 

Starting with iron makes no sense as you need a forge to make them, irc some require a workbench. 

[JaxTeller718]

You want true realism your tools and weapons should break after multiple repairs.

[Ralathar44]

1.  Honestly I like the extended early game.  Low tier gear matters now instead of something your naked survivor replaces in 2 days and never looks at again.  There is an actual consistent and steady progression now instead of huge jumps of progression as you find all your guns and tools within the first 2 weeks.

2.  Crafting is now really valuable again.  You can now get high quality items via crafting significantly faster than via looting now.

3.  Weapon skills and melee are way more valuable now.  Since you cannot just rely on the raw power of higher tier ranged weapons from early on now your weapon skills and melee pull alot more weight.  It's a good time for it as melee feels better than ever before.  Learn how to melee using knife and deep cuts or via using club.  Master melee by learning how to use sledgehammers.  Spears really shine right now due to their ranged aspect...without making them overly powerful.

4.  The Blunderbuss finally shines and has a good place now.  I hope they make a proper tier 1 for every ranged weapon.  We have the blunderbuss for shotguns and the primitive bow for archery.  Now we just need a flintlock or zipgun for pistols, an arquebus for snipers, and a Cei-Rigotti or Fedorov Avtoma lookalike for machine guns. I pulled those from a wikipedia article about early automatic rifles. 

5.  Stone tools of high rarities are actually extremely valuable for those of use who are not skilling into tool smithing skills.  Since my agility focused character can only craft @%$*#!ty stone tools finding high level stone tools is actually very useful.

6.  I hate realism arguments in a game where I can carry a building in my pocket, grow crops fully within days with literally no maintenance, heal a broken leg in hours, recover from near death in 10 seconds with a couple med kits, our character never sleeps, I never once washed my hands or bathed in game, we never get sick, I have yet to poop in 50 days, etc.  Realism is a poor argument when 95% of the unrealistic nonsense in the game is in our favor.   But people @%$*#! anytime something unrealistic is not in our favor.

[Onarr]

13 hours ago, myrkana said:

I used a wood club with mods for the first 9 days of my current world. Stone age tools are not useless for what they are made for, early game.  Early bow and arrow are letting us kill chickens, and can be used on zombies. Arrows are very easy to make so using 4 isnt a problem. I'm looting a ton of stuff at day 11 and we only just started getting iron stuff and low level tier 1 guns in boxes.  Early game things don't need to die quickly and easily. 

 

 

Starting with iron makes no sense as you need a forge to make them, irc some require a workbench. 

Thats what I meant. Start with iron tools in loot instead of stone. Only Knife I think needs workbench.  Btw you can have iron tools on day 1 or 2 anyway, you just pick 1 int perk to get a forge and can craft them immediately. Same applies for weapons - you pick a perk and you can craft iron sledgehammer, baseball bat, iron spear etc. on day one. Even less sense in puting stone items into loot tables.

[Esperante]

i say yes and no maybe said tools were from a previous survivor that died and thats what was left in his storage also said survivor could have sealed the crates and early on Q2 stone tools are everything XD

[RestInPieces]

4 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

1.  Honestly I like the extended early game.  Low tier gear matters now instead of something your naked survivor replaces in 2 days and never looks at again.  There is an actual consistent and steady progression now instead of huge jumps of progression as you find all your guns and tools within the first 2 weeks.

4 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Realism is a poor argument when 95% of the unrealistic nonsense in the game is in our favor.   

 

Do not be quick to brush off "realism", because, besides necessary gameplay compromises here and there, the game is utterly realistic at its core (world setting, physics, crafting etc). "Realistic" in games never means that "we just copy real life at its entirety" after all.

-It doesn't have to trample gameplay -- it can complement it (e.g. player needs, injuries, inventory system, crafting). 

-It is the game being consistent with its own setting.

 

Don't get me wrong, I always yelled about how it's a waste, that a game with so much content wasn't exploiting it properly, and I really wanted progression to become more structured because so much of that content wasn't used, either because there was no reason for it to be used, or because the progression was arbitrary.  There were many extra reasons progression was inconsistent though -- e.g. terribly balanced lootlists, which is still a problem imo. 

 

But with the world being so reliant on some meta information like the player's GS instead of actual in-game information (zones, POIs), suspension of belief takes a hit and progression becomes predictable and linear. Not to mention that it will push players to control their GS even further. Put in an extreme way (that obviously doesn't do the game justice, but gets the point across), the world feels like an empty canvas with scattered loot chests having standard contents/location, and what surrounds these loot chests or where they are, hardly matters. Allegedly, they will see to making POIs/zones matter more, but for that to happen, spawns/enemy scaling and much more have to be revamped as well.

 

[Bashtiks]

17 hours ago, Onarr said:

Well I do not use it and honestly I do not care if someone does it in SP game. MP is the problem imho. random dude that just started on a server will nerdpole at top of shotgun messiah and boom top tier loot.

I dont see it much of a problem, I play on MP servers and sometimes its common thing to find lootcrates emty at the end of the poi, doesnt bother me because I enjoy fact that there are freedom how to approach things not that you are forced to go only 1way ..

[Onarr]

15 minutes ago, Bashtiks said:

I dont see it much of a problem, I play on MP servers and sometimes its common thing to find lootcrates emty at the end of the poi, doesnt bother me because I enjoy fact that there are freedom how to approach things not that you are forced to go only 1way ..

I admire your composure. Many a person would be angry or at least annoyed, when somebody stole your well earned loot in a cheesy way after you worked hard for it by going through a PoI.  Just one question. Do you yourself use nerdpolling or similar tactics to get to loot quickly in order to skip killing zombies?

[Bashtiks]

This stone age mehanic is complete garbage .. its all about the grind grind grind grind & grind all over again ..

 

Only way to obtain something better early game is to grind ur way thro trader quests, sell some stuff (stone stuff sells poorly ... ) collect some dukes and buy some gun or thing that u need off the trader ..

 

Lvl 20 + and u slowly are starting to get something different .. lvl30 + is where some actual loot diversity is starting to show up, but till then grind grind grind ..

 

Doing traders quests early game now feels like one of the booring things ever, always same old pois with same crap in the chests .. only trader reward itself is ok, with some ammo or other stuff ..

 

When playing on server we were like 3ppl in party lvl 20-30 and 1person joined with lvl 1 or 3 ... it felt that loot slightly decreassed thowards to stone age .. dunno maybe Ima wrong, but if it rly is affecting loot ''gating'' then its a sad way how to implement things ..

 

Damn go back to the a16 times then, when you could find all the things and weapons in day one but make quality & durability rly low ...

 

TFP if you rly want to make gameply fun learn a thing or two from Ravenhearst 4.3 (a16) ... (heck might event make a video why it was so great and still is .. )

[leaderdog]

20 hours ago, DanLW said:

A longer stone age would work if the map or RWG supported it.

 

Imagine a map like this: The initial spawn point is in a sparsely populated area.  (The Duke drove you to the middle of nowhere and left you for dead)  POIs are rare in this part of the map, so what you can make is what you got.  Stone age lasts a while.

 

To advance to iron/steel, you need to travel to the part of the map where civilization exists.  Hopefully you go in the right direction!  Also, getting to civilized areas with better loot should involve crossing dangerous areas that should be very difficult for a player in week 1 to cross.

 

This would be agreat concept for a custom map.  Getting to the good loot should involve travelling tens of km on foot, or by bike if you get lucky enough to find one.  This way a player can spend the stone age getting basic equipment, and must travel to get better equipment.

 

It will be interesting when the game goes gold and custom player made maps become a thing.  Creating a map designed to be an epic journey could be fun!

It used to be like that.

 

There used to be zombies in the wild too.  unlike the sparsely populated world now.

 

I tried to modify the loot.xml because finding stone axes in a sealed loot crate seemed preposterous to me.  No luck it didn't seem to fix it... plus I'm not much of a modder.  So I upped the zombies in the world to 60 during the day and 30 during the night and gifted myself a level 4 bat.  I've been having  a BLAST!  Although I'm starting to wonder what's up with the respawns as any area I clear if I leave it seems it's full of zombies again.  Regardless though increasing the zombies has made the game so much more enjoyable than it's been in a very very long time.  Who would have thought having lots of zombies in a zombie game might be enjoyable.

 

but as to the OPs question.  No there shouldn't be stone tools in sealed crates.  Just have anything else usable.  frames, rebar frames, and what is better than getting a stone axe.  Simply omitting the stone tools would have made it more logical.  Although I think hammers and iron shovels should still be in the low level crates as that makes sense.

[iejen]

On 7/11/2020 at 11:48 PM, RestInPieces said:

They wanted to extend the game's stone age, which is a good thing in my opinion.

 

[gwhit]

On 7/12/2020 at 10:48 AM, MechanicalLens said:

If you don't like nerdpoling to the top of POI's to snag the main loot, then don't do it. How does anyone else exploiting this mechanic affect you? Besides, if you really wanted to, you could turn on DM mode, turn on Fly Mode, and achieve the same thing. Sure, I'm comparing apples and oranges here, but at the end of the day, they are more similar than different.

 

Plus there are plenty of POI's where the main loot is at ground level or underground.

Some people are wanabe Facists at heart and want to dictate how other live and play games.

[Sawth77]

I don't have a problem with the stone age as a starting point, though if you're making a "realism" argument, anyone who has tools at their house has modern implements purchased from the local home/construction store.  Realistically, the mass majority of people have zero idea how to actually construct a forge, or shape metal into tools, etc.  Trying to cobble together stones and sticks to make basic implements seems, at least to me, as a natural progression in crafting before you can begin cranking out better things.

However, making iron tools the default starting point wouldn't be the worst thing, but as presented just comes across as wanting something more efficient at the beginning rather than having to earn it.  Maybe i'm interpreting that wrong.  I'd be fine with a balance of having iron tools as a default, but early on having a  better than average chance to find a rusted one that's complete crap and breaks easier.  
 

[Bashtiks]

4 minutes ago, Onarr said:

I admire your composure. Many a person would be angry or at least annoyed, when somebody stole your well earned loot in a cheesy way after you worked hard for it by going through a PoI.  Just one question. Do you yourself use nerdpolling or similar tactics to get to loot quickly in order to skip killing zombies?

yes I do use nerdpolling/digging/going thro shortcuts etc. 

Thing is .. ima a veteran player, I have tried all the ways of gameplay: slow, fast, powerleveling, ''realistic'', sneaky, melee, ranged, cheesing, standart etc. ..

 

For example situation: Your play on mp server. Go into the random poi - u see the loot is untouched in the start of the poi - all good - u clear out all the poi - still all containers untouched - u get to the final room and see that that final boxes are looted - turns out 1 person was clearing poi before you without touching other containers but going only for the final loot room ... 

 

Thing is .. looting now itself is as easy as it gets ... with trader quests and pois that respawns looting is a childs play ... Its not like u are clearing Hiagashi tower the hard way in a16 and in the end getting looted secret stash boxes ...

 

So yea, as long as there are a multiple ways how to obtain same thing, and freedom of gameplay I have no problems

[Aldranon]

Stone tools in sealed chests could be explained.

The Apocalypse in 7D2D would have been a "Double-tap".

 

First Tap: A new flu virus that spread throughout the world, no vaccine was ever found so it stayed around, destabilizing the world.  Wars and rumors of wars abound.

 

A pause...  Allowing some vain attempts at rebuilding, shipping easy to make stone tools, weapons and lots of manuals.

 

Second Tap:  Within a year the flu virus mutated many times and eventually became the zombie virus.  Nuclear strikes were used in a vain attempt to stop it.  

[Onarr]

29 minutes ago, gwhit said:

Some people are wanabe Facists at heart and want to dictate how other live and play games.

Person A: I feel like nerdpolling could be an issue if we put best loot at the end of a hard PoI. You could easily get it by skipping the challenge and get unfair advantage over other players.
Person B: He is a fascist that wants us to dictate how we should play the game

Person C : Well that escalated quickly

20 minutes ago, Bashtiks said:

yes I do use nerdpolling/digging/going thro shortcuts etc. 

Thing is .. ima a veteran player, I have tried all the ways of gameplay: slow, fast, powerleveling, ''realistic'', sneaky, melee, ranged, cheesing, standart etc. ..

 

For example situation: Your play on mp server. Go into the random poi - u see the loot is untouched in the start of the poi - all good - u clear out all the poi - still all containers untouched - u get to the final room and see that that final boxes are looted - turns out 1 person was clearing poi before you without touching other containers but going only for the final loot room ... 

 

Thing is .. looting now itself is as easy as it gets ... with trader quests and pois that respawns looting is a childs play ... Its not like u are clearing Hiagashi tower the hard way in a16 and in the end getting looted secret stash boxes ...

 

So yea, as long as there are a multiple ways how to obtain same thing, and freedom of gameplay I have no problems

Thanks for your honesty. But imagine you are new player, you clear a PoI and see that the loot is gonne. You are angry, Later you find out that some other players just use nerpolling to get to loot. Why would you bother running through PoI if there is a chance loot is not even there? Few more times and he will use nerpolling too, even through he would rather clear the PoI. I have no problem with exploits that do not affect other people. But I think nerpolling is one of those that does affect others. If you think its otherwise then lets just agree to disagree and leave it at that.

[Boidster]

45 minutes ago, Onarr said:

But imagine you are new player, you clear a PoI and see that the loot is gonne. You are angry, Later you find out that some other players just use nerpolling to get to loot. Why would you bother running through PoI if there is a chance loot is not even there?

Imagine you find yourself in a zombie apocalypse and you know there is a store-room of weapons at the top of the gun store. Would you open the front door and fight your way through the former employees, or throw your extension ladder up the wall and try to grab the guns unseen? You have chosen to play in a world where several other people have the same incentives and goals as you do. Why are you angry that they are accomplishing those goals in their own way? Seems to me that "crap, someone has already looted this place" is a pretty damn realistic portrayal of a true multiple-survivor every-person-for-him/herself apocalypse. Even PvE is PvP in this game.

 

I'm keen to read how, in a sandbox, fully-destructible/buildable voxel world, you could ever solve the issue you are concerned about.

[Onarr]

18 minutes ago, Boidster said:

Imagine you find yourself in a zombie apocalypse and you know there is a store-room of weapons at the top of the gun store. Would you open the front door and fight your way through the former employees, or throw your extension ladder up the wall and try to grab the guns unseen? You have chosen to play in a world where several other people have the same incentives and goals as you do. Why are you angry that they are accomplishing those goals in their own way? Seems to me that "crap, someone has already looted this place" is a pretty damn realistic portrayal of a true multiple-survivor every-person-for-him/herself apocalypse. Even PvE is PvP in this game.

 

I'm keen to read how, in a sandbox, fully-destructible/buildable voxel world, you could ever solve the issue you are concerned about.

Well the weapons would be behind lock and a key in secure room, so you can not just get to it. And that is also the solution to the problem. Loot room is encased in steel blocks and strong door and key spawns in random loot container or drops from random enemy inside PoI.  The hardiness of the blocks would of course be varied based on Tier. This way you could still nerdpoll, but you would have hard time breaking in. Seems like good balance to me. Early game its better to find the key, later when you have good tools and explosives you just blow your way in.

Second way to counter it is to spread the loot through out the POI instead having it in one single room. 

 

Third way is to implement randomly generated PoI, where you do not know where loot room is. I fully intend to do this as a mod once the game hits gold.

[Ralathar44]

6 hours ago, RestInPieces said:

 

Do not be quick to brush off "realism", because, besides necessary gameplay compromises here and there, the game is utterly realistic at its core (world setting, physics, crafting etc). "Realistic" in games never means that "we just copy real life at its entirety" after all.

-It doesn't have to trample gameplay -- it can complement it (e.g. player needs, injuries, inventory system, crafting). 

-It is the game being consistent with its own setting.

 

Don't get me wrong, I always yelled about how it's a waste, that a game with so much content wasn't exploiting it properly, and I really wanted progression to become more structured because so much of that content wasn't used, either because there was no reason for it to be used, or because the progression was arbitrary.  There were many extra reasons progression was inconsistent though -- e.g. terribly balanced lootlists, which is still a problem imo. 

 

But with the world being so reliant on some meta information like the player's GS instead of actual in-game information (zones, POIs), suspension of belief takes a hit and progression becomes predictable and linear. Not to mention that it will push players to control their GS even further. Put in an extreme way (that obviously doesn't do the game justice, but gets the point across), the world feels like an empty canvas with scattered loot chests having standard contents/location, and what surrounds these loot chests or where they are, hardly matters. Allegedly, they will see to making POIs/zones matter more, but for that to happen, spawns/enemy scaling and much more have to be revamped as well.

 

The problem is when you frame the argument as a series of double standards it loses all it's merit.  It becomes a strictly subjective idea of "what I prefer" and ceases to be about actual realism.  Just be honest and say that you'd prefer the game to do x/y rather than couch your arguments as if they are about realism.  All you're doing is making a subjective list of double standards.

Suspension of disbelief does not apply here.  The game isn't a realism simulator.  The game world was never believable from day 1 and it was never sold as realistic or believable in any way even during the days of the kickstarter.  Stop trying to force your own headcannon vision on the game, that's not what it is and that's not what has made it so successful.  It's been so successful because it fills a niche no other survival game does and because it's a game @%$*#! game where gameplay comes first and realism bits are only added for flavor.  Continue telling them what you'd prefer them to change, that's good...feedback is good, just stop pretending it's about realism.  All it does is devalue your feedback since it's quite obvious how little the arguments/game actually have to do with realism.