Anyone else hate vultures?

[Kalen]

41 minutes ago, Roland said:

“Not difficult....just annoying”

 

That is the same exact thing people say about loot timers, craft timers, POI sleepers, bloodmoon hordes, screamer hordes, hunger and thirst, inventory management, broken legs, infection, primitive stage, stamina management, etc.  

 

If TFP listened to every annoyed player we would have a game with instant crafting and looting, empty buildings, no hordes, no status debuffs of any kind, infinite storage space, guns and ammo everywhere, and infinite stamina because none of that contributes to difficulty in the slightest. It all just makes the game annoying. 
 

Everyone has fun in a different way and what is “annoying”  is impossible to develop to because it is a moving target. 
 

If this truly isn’t a matter of difficulty and really is just a matter of annoyance then “mod it” really is the answer here.
 

So thanks for clarifying for us what type of an issue this is. Personally annoying? Mod it. 

Except just about everything else on your list of annoying can be avoided or mitigated to some extent.... I suppose you can avoid vultures dive bombing your vehicles by not using a vehicle.  

 

Sure, it can be modded, but isn't the point of an early access game to let developers know what people find good and bad with the game?    I don't think anyone reasonably expects TFP to craft the game exactly how the players want (as you said, that would be impossible) but, I believe, the point of this forum is to give feedback so that TFP can make the game as great as they can.   It is most definitely not a matter of difficulty...   vultures take 1 or 2 whacks with a club and I don't even see them on horde nights thanks to turrets on the roof.... nor have I ever been remotely close to having them destroy a vehicle.  So yeah, having to dismount 3 or 4 times driving through a desert is annoying.   If it was just me that found it personally annoying then sure, I'd mod it and move on.

[Dracula]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

See, this right here is what I believe is the core truth of the issue of vultures. It isn’t about how annoying they are or how difficult they are. It is about the threat they represent. Threat level is something that can be designed into the game in a measurable way.
 

Tom will be annoyed and Jerry will find it too difficult but that is there own personal experiences and the devs can’t mind read especially when Sue finds it fun and Debbie finds it too easy with the same implementation. 
 

But threat is measurable. If the devs want there to be a chance that a player’s vehicle will explode if they are dumb enough to take it out with less than 20% hp left then that is the threat and consequence designed into the game. 
 

No matter how you feel about vultures, they represent a threat as we travel around. They cannot just be ignored because of the threat they bring.  Without them in the game there would be no threat.
 

This would mean that a 4x4 at 100% and a 4x4 at 10% would be exactly the same. Perhaps that’s what you really want?

You have it 100% backwards; if they were difficult they wouldn't be a problem.  They're a problem because they are imbalanced.  They were an addition to gameplay in A18; now, they're a "feature" that's the equivalent of "and, at random, you'll get smacked in the nuts.  Don't like it?  Mod it out.  We want you to get kicked in the balls."

 

As for the 4x4, it was fine before.  A random mine could blow it up.  That was adequate; instead, if you're at 75% you can be driving around and chain-attacked by 4 vultures and blown up.

 

It would be less of an issue if they didn't stop the vehicle or couldn't catch up to it at speed, but you had to deal with them when you stopped.

[FileMachete]

Had another thought. What if the same sick @%$*#! who rigs up the demolishers is also putting landmines on the oversized chickens?

 

Dial down the normal pecking hit damage vultures do to vehicles but add a graphics bit and an x % chance that a demo-vulture spawns. Have some fun with it and have it act like a landmine; if you hit the mine strapped on the bird with a club, it goes boom. If you go to harvest one that you managed to headshot with a gun then your knife could set off the mine.

 

That would also solve the exploit Vedui showed with the roof bladetraps and sitting on a bicycle underneath to lure tons of vultures. The explosions would wrek the traps & roof.

 

19 minutes ago, Biscoitoso said:

Last time I tryed run from a vulture using my motorcycle I got my arm broken, bleed, infection, ebola, AIDS, coronavirus and one of my kidneys got stolen...

Funny! Had me lol'ing picturing a vulture flying off with your kidney in it's beak.

[Roland]

45 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

 

Just reading this thread I can see a disconnect between what vultures can apparently do to a 3000 pound hunk of metal and what they do to a 110-200 pound squishy flesh person.

Very true but that is no different than the disconnect between what zombies can do to concrete and what they do to your flesh.  If that disconnect is the real problem none of these guys would still be playing the game because it has been a part of the design since the very beginning. 

[Roland]

50 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Except just about everything else on your list of annoying can be avoided or mitigated to some extent.... I suppose you can avoid vultures dive bombing your vehicles by not using a vehicle.  

You can also avoid it by jumping out and killing the birds—which some people find fun and others find annoying just like every single feature of the game. 
 

But I agree that it would be nice for some additional options like allowing a passenger to shoot them or an auto turret vehicle  mod that can help keep them at bay. 
 

For that matter, once critical malfunctions are in they may rebalance things a bit so that the consequences of getting hit might not be auto slow down but a specific critical failure that will need to be repaired.  The current system might be placeholder until the new system is implemented. Will that be fun or annoying? YMMV....

[Kalen]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

But I agree that it would be nice for some additional options like allowing a passenger to shoot them or an auto turret vehicle  mod that can help keep them at bay. 
 

That would be flippin' awesome.

[Roland]

58 minutes ago, Kalen said:

I believe, the point of this forum is to give feedback so that TFP can make the game as great as they can.

And your feedback still stands. I simply added a different viewpoint. I didn’t delete your feedback and then ban you from posting. 
 

Another point of a forum is to field a range of opinions and not just one. Some around here seem like they would like to have the thread locked right after they express themselves so their opinion stands completely unchallenged. Write it in your journal if that’s what you want....

[Kalen]

1 minute ago, Roland said:

And your feedback still stands. I simply added a different viewpoint. I didn’t delete your feedback and then ban you from posting. 
 

Another point of a forum is to field a range of opinions and not just one. Some around here seem like they would like to have the thread locked right after they express themselves so their opinion stands completely unchallenged. Write it in your journal if that’s what you want....

Totally agree.... wasn't trying to argue that point.  But you came across as very dismissive of my point, so I felt the need to rebut.  

 

"That is the same exact thing people say about loot timers, craft timers, POI sleepers, bloodmoon hordes, screamer hordes, hunger and thirst, inventory management, broken legs, infection, primitive stage, stamina management, etc.  "

 

Implying that I can't find one thing annoying without finding all of those things annoying which is not true.

[FileMachete]

37 minutes ago, Roland said:

Very true but that is no different than the disconnect between what zombies can do to concrete and what they do to your flesh.  If that disconnect is the real problem none of these guys would still be playing the game because it has been a part of the design since the very beginning. 

Fair point.

 

Still gonna hope that 7dtd attracts some crazy modder who'll make a mod for demolisher/landmine-wearing-vultures though.

[Dracula]

15 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

Fair point.

 

Still gonna hope that 7dtd attracts some crazy modder who'll make a mod for demolisher/landmine-wearing-vultures though.

If you find someone else who wants that, you better marry them.  There can't be two people that crazy on Earth.

[Roland]

44 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Totally agree.... wasn't trying to argue that point.  But you came across as very dismissive of my point, so I felt the need to rebut.  

 

"That is the same exact thing people say about loot timers, craft timers, POI sleepers, bloodmoon hordes, screamer hordes, hunger and thirst, inventory management, broken legs, infection, primitive stage, stamina management, etc.  "

 

Implying that I can't find one thing annoying without finding all of those things annoying which is not true.

I wasn’t trying to imply that about YOU. I was implying that SOMEBODY is going to find anything annoying so “annoying” is less useful as feedback. 
 

I’m certain you don’t find everything in that list annoying but I’ve heard the “not challenging just annoying” argument from somebody for each of those over the years. 
 

Some find the new progression amazingly fun because they enjoy the early game and others find it annoying because they hate the early game. If an early game enthusiast says “I like the challenge of the early game” it is very likely that an early game hater is going to retort, “The early game isn’t challenging it’s just annoying!”

[meganoth]

About the myth of Vultures destroying 20% of a vehicle: I just now made a test because that value seemed highly unlikely. Especially since in the video from Vedui he got attacked by a swarm of vultures and his vehicle never was destroyed.

 

I made a level 28 character, gave him military armor and a shotgun and drove with a motorbike into the wasteland. After driving around for more than a minute I could get a vulture interested in me. I let it hit me about 10 times, then, when I started bleeding, stopped and shot it.

 

Result:

Damage to the vehicle (that has 6000 durability) 23 !

Damage to the player: Lots of criticals (abrasion, infection) that brought the HPs down to 35. It seemed most of the damage was not direct damage but brought on by multiple criticals.

 

Ok. So I thought that the motorbike may just be heavily armored. Therefore I spawned in a minibike, but that had the same armor/defense-value but only 3000 durability. Same test. When I got a vulture interested I drove with max speed on a street just to see how often it would hit me and the surprising thing was: Never. I actually was faster than that vulture, on a minibike.

 

So I really had to stop and wait for a vulture to find me again and hit me. Again I waited until the bleeding started before I went off the bike, shot the bird and applied a med kit.

 

Result:

Damage to the vehicle (3000 durability): ~40 !

Damage to the player: Even more criticals, I had 5 HP when I stopped the bleeding.

 

Finally I made sure that the update to 173 didn't change vultures, and no, neither their speed nor their damage was changed compared to 169.

 

----------------------------

 

Conclusion: The normal vulture you find in the wasteland is neither fast enough to stop or hit you on a street nor does it have a chance to destroy your vehicle. But the amount of criticals you get from one lonely vulture may be a bit too much. I say "may" because I have to first test what harm a normal zombie hitting you 10 times would do. If that is comparable, it probably isn't too much.

 

 

[katarynna]

48 minutes ago, meganoth said:

About the myth of Vultures destroying 20% of a vehicle: I just now made a test because that value seemed highly unlikely. Especially since in the video from Vedui he got attacked by a swarm of vultures and his vehicle never was destroyed.

 

I made a level 28 character, gave him military armor and a shotgun and drove with a motorbike into the wasteland. After driving around for more than a minute I could get a vulture interested in me. I let it hit me about 10 times, then, when I started bleeding, stopped and shot it.

 

Result:

Damage to the vehicle (that has 6000 durability) 23 !

Damage to the player: Lots of criticals (abrasion, infection) that brought the HPs down to 35. It seemed most of the damage was not direct damage but brought on by multiple criticals.

 

Ok. So I thought that the motorbike may just be heavily armored. Therefore I spawned in a minibike, but that had the same armor/defense-value but only 3000 durability. Same test. When I got a vulture interested I drove with max speed on a street just to see how often it would hit me and the surprising thing was: Never. I actually was faster than that vulture, on a minibike.

 

So I really had to stop and wait for a vulture to find me again and hit me. Again I waited until the bleeding started before I went off the bike, shot the bird and applied a med kit.

 

Result:

Damage to the vehicle (3000 durability): ~40 !

Damage to the player: Even more criticals, I had 5 HP when I stopped the bleeding.

 

Finally I made sure that the update to 173 didn't change vultures, and no, neither their speed nor their damage was changed compared to 169.

 

----------------------------

 

Conclusion: The normal vulture you find in the wasteland is neither fast enough to stop or hit you on a street nor does it have a chance to destroy your vehicle. But the amount of criticals you get from one lonely vulture may be a bit too much. I say "may" because I have to first test what harm a normal zombie hitting you 10 times would do. If that is comparable, it probably isn't too much.

 

 

Great job!

 

The real question left to be answered is how many criticals you would get if you were actually paying attention to your surroundings and got off the vehicle when you either first spotted the vulture or upon it's first attack.

 

 

[FileMachete]

Really good info @meganoth , thanks for doing and sharing that.

 

Just putting on my devil's/new-player Advocate hat for a second here.

 

If vultures are basically doing no damage to vehicles during normal days/nights, but then not only come in unending swarms and can also five-shot a 4x4 on horde night (which in swarms might be in just a few seconds), quite possibly not only killing the player but also creating a situation where not only will the player possibly lose their backpack/belt, but also pretty much certain to lose anything they had in the vehicle..

 

That seems like serious overkill penalty wise, and as it doesn't appear there would be anyway for a non YT watching new player to have a clue (normal gameplay would lead them to think they could outrun vultures, & no worries about vehicle damage), and factoring in the whole encounter might happen so quickly they might not even know wth happened, well, that honestly doesn't seem like it was tested/thought-out-fully.

 

If vulture vs. vehicle damage started out quiet a bit lower (should take at least 60 seconds to destroy a Minibike imo), but then ramped up with gamestage, that I could envision a new player learning from experiance. This just seems like spawning a Demolisher in front of them that's going to grab on, trigger and then blow everything up.

[katarynna]

20 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

Really good info @meganoth , thanks for doing and sharing that.

 

Just putting on my devil's/new-player Advocate hat for a second here.

 

If vultures are basically doing no damage to vehicles during normal days/nights, but then not only come in unending swarms and can also five-shot a 4x4 on horde night (which in swarms might be in just a few seconds), quite possibly not only killing the player but also creating a situation where not only will the player possibly lose their backpack/belt, but also pretty much certain to lose anything they had in the vehicle..

 

That seems like serious overkill penalty wise, and as it doesn't appear there would be anyway for a non YT watching new player to have a clue (normal gameplay would lead them to think they could outrun vultures, & no worries about vehicle damage), and factoring in the whole encounter might happen so quickly they might not even know wth happened, well, that honestly doesn't seem like it was tested/thought-out-fully.

 

If vulture vs. vehicle damage started out quiet a bit lower (should take at least 60 seconds to destroy a Minibike imo), but then ramped up with gamestage, that I could envision a new player learning from experiance. This just seems like spawning a Demolisher in front of them that's going to grab on, trigger and then blow everything up.

Dracula is the one who said vultures do 20% damage to vehicles per hit, and he also said he doesn't use vehicles on horde night. So that five-shot theory was based on Dracula's claim that a single vulture hit during daytime while driving to a quest did 20% damage to his vehicle. 

 

Meganoth's test results indicate that they actually do about 1% per hit.

[Raestloz]

12 hours ago, Roland said:

Everyone has fun in a different way and what is “annoying”  is impossible to develop to because it is a moving target. 

This is a very dismissive view of the matter. For the specific example of vultures, there's actually a perfect analogy: Cliff Racers. Pretty much everyone agreed that something so easy to kill but incessantly harass you is annoying. So much so that Bethesda never tried anything like that again since 2008

 

Arguments like "mod it out" are so hollow, I can't believe people actually use it. The game is in Alpha, features still change. THIS is the time to ask for changes in gameplay mechanics. Once the game goes gold, then mechanics are pretty much set in stone. THAT is the time to ask people how to mod it out for personal pleasure

 

If people don't complain, then we'd still have many bears and wolves trotting about in broad daylight

[Solomon]

I hate these damm birds, their hitbox is just BS.

 

I was on a shotgun messiah factory exploring the roofs, the basic zeds are numerous but can be dealt with but then i see 2 of these flying cancers spawned. One is already flying towards me so i hipfire my ak at it 4 times, all shots miss...i can headshot berserkers further away and i cant hit this thing the size of a cat!

 

No problem i aim down the sights and shot once more directly into it, the crosshair is on the its head no way to miss and yet i fire and it misses. I picked up my shotgun fired and it died, the other flew pretty close so i fire my shotgun at it and.....hell it misses again.

 

I took a hit, reloaded and shot it down this time but this is just pure nonsense. Single player game on my own map, no lag, no issues with anything and yet these things act like they are ghost type enemies.

[CrainBramp]

Am currently doing a 100% wasteland city map in A19 on my stream, and had 3 vultures, including an irradiated attack my base on the 1st night. I hadn't got a ceiling hatch up yet, and the radiated dive bomb flew through the 1 block gap in the roof IN my 5x4 base with me.

 

Couldn't do enough damage to outpace the healing w/a stone spear, but managed to get a lucky headshot in with my blunderbuss.

 

One minute, I'm boiling water at the campfire; then all hell broke loose in the base.

 

Fun times!

[12pack]

i know i'm here late, but, hey.. check my name..

vultures are the devil, and the devil is gonna getcha

unless you get the devil out of your way...

 

i don't care what tfp does with them @%$*#! birds, every time, i will find my way into the files,

now, some may say that that will go away, where did i heard that? beats me, don't care.. was saying

something...

meh.. what is this, a @%$*#!ing walk-through?

hellen keller them flappy @%$*#!ers...

C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config

 

<EntityClasses>

 

<!-- Stealth -->
    <property name="SightRange" value="70"/>

 

find it, adjust it, enjoy...

then gfys.

[AlexanderPwn]

I find them to be pretty aggravating. I also don't know if the hit boxes are just weird or what but it always takes like three swings of my baseball bat at the most damage it can possibly do and that's just ridiculous. It would seem I'm connecting. Might just be lag, I feel like it should only one swipe.h

[wizard puke]

17 hours ago, Roland said:

But I agree that it would be nice for some additional options like allowing a passenger to shoot them or an auto turret vehicle  mod that can help keep them at bay. 

Just cruisin around the wasteland on my bicycle  with no hands whistling and spamming the horn button leaving a trail of bird carcasses behind my newly attached Radio Flyer wagon with a junk sledge in it.

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Solomon said:

I hate these damm birds, their hitbox is just BS.

 

I was on a shotgun messiah factory exploring the roofs, the basic zeds are numerous but can be dealt with but then i see 2 of these flying cancers spawned. One is already flying towards me so i hipfire my ak at it 4 times, all shots miss...i can headshot berserkers further away and i cant hit this thing the size of a cat!

 

No problem i aim down the sights and shot once more directly into it, the crosshair is on the its head no way to miss and yet i fire and it misses. I picked up my shotgun fired and it died, the other flew pretty close so i fire my shotgun at it and.....hell it misses again.

 

I took a hit, reloaded and shot it down this time but this is just pure nonsense. Single player game on my own map, no lag, no issues with anything and yet these things act like they are ghost type enemies.

I agree, their hitbox seems out of whack and needs adjustment. You have to take into account though that the HP of all animals was buffed in A19. You can see that with the dogs, they have the same hitpoints as any basic male zombie (150). Vultures have much less (30), but still might need more than one hit by a melee weapon.

 

The radiated vulture is a decisive step up, 4 times the HPs, nearly double damage with melee (14) and 4 times the block damage (32). But iradiated zombies have a similar incline in HPs and damage (AFAIK)

[Solomon]

41 minutes ago, meganoth said:

I agree, their hitbox seems out of whack and needs adjustment. You have to take into account though that the HP of all animals was buffed in A19. You can see that with the dogs, they have the same hitpoints as any basic male zombie (150). Vultures have much less (30), but still might need more than one hit by a melee weapon.

 

The radiated vulture is a decisive step up, 4 times the HPs, nearly double damage with melee (14) and 4 times the block damage (32). But iradiated zombies have a similar incline in HPs and damage (AFAIK)

I wouldnt mind them as much if i could hit them reliably but it feels like as if im not actually trying to shoot/whack something the size of a cat/smaller dog but something the size of a fly.

[Roland]

9 hours ago, Raestloz said:

This is a very dismissive view of the matter. For the specific example of vultures, there's actually a perfect analogy: Cliff Racers. Pretty much everyone agreed that something so easy to kill but incessantly harass you is annoying. So much so that Bethesda never tried anything like that again since 2008

 

Arguments like "mod it out" are so hollow, I can't believe people actually use it. The game is in Alpha, features still change. THIS is the time to ask for changes in gameplay mechanics. Once the game goes gold, then mechanics are pretty much set in stone. THAT is the time to ask people how to mod it out for personal pleasure

 

If people don't complain, then we'd still have many bears and wolves trotting about in broad daylight

You do realize that “modding it” and “complaining about it” are not mutually exclusive?  You can do both. 
 

I’m sorry that you feel that my pointing out that people are not all the same as you feels dismissive but it is the truth and I’m not going to take it back just because it hurts your feelings. I’ll state once again that your opinion has not actually been dismissed. Nobody deleted it or edited it to make it unreadable. Potentially thousands of readers can eventually find their way here to read your opinion and either agree or disagree. So stop it with the martyr complex and instead write a compelling counter argument to my argument that TFP should focus on threat assessment rather than “annoyance factor”. 
 

The vultures also do NOT incessantly attack you like the cliff racers did. They leave you completely alone when you are on foot and within ten points of full health in any biome. You can pretty much drive a vehicle unharassed in forest and snow biomes. It is only in the burnt forest, desert, and wasteland biomes that you will be attacked often and even then we just had some actual testing done and reported in this thread by Mega and it appears that even the damage they do was greatly exaggerated by people on your anti-vulture side. 

[FileMachete]

3 minutes ago, katarynna said:

Dracula is the one who said vultures do 20% damage to vehicles per hit, and he also said he doesn't use vehicles on horde night. So that five-shot theory was based on Dracula's claim that a single vulture hit during daytime while driving to a quest did 20% damage to his vehicle. 

 

Meganoth's test results indicate that they actually do about 1% per hit.

I found another @Vedui video where he tested what happens with all vehicles & vultures on horde night (at no point did a vehicle go boom);

https://youtu.be/ShILqoo6Tj4

It's a couple weeks old so may not reflect current values, no idea.

 

Watching the Health percentage for the vehicles during vulture attacks I never saw it decrease by more than maybe 2 points at one time. Indicting, to me at least, that a single hit was never doing more than 1% damage at most (appeared to be 5-8 vultures attacking at once).

 

No question the 4x4 took by far the most damage of any vehicle, but even with Vedui driving while getting attacked for more than 1 minute & ~15 seconds, and later half getting beaten on by ~7 vultures, 3 non-rad and 1 radiated two legged zeds and 1 dog. 4x4 was down to 58% health when player died.

 

Vid was quite a bit different that what I expected from reading other posts in this thread. Not calling anyone out, but if anyone is seeing vulture hits taking more than say ~2% at a time, I'm guessing that would be bug-report worthy.

 

That said, it looks a bit overdone based on the video. Could be that since Vedui was driving the vehicles when horde night began that the initial onslaught was magnified. That if you were fighting the horde in a base, then had to bail out and did so by vehicle that there would be a transition/grace period before you had 5+ vultures on you. No idea, though I would hope that the design includes the ability for players to use a vehicle to fall back a couple few hundred meters to another location. Not saying they should be able to do that without danger/damage, but if you bailed out with low health it doesn't look like you'd make it very far at all.

 

To be clear, I'm not particularly fussed that this idea is now in game, it's been MM's windmill to tilt against for a long time so we knew it was coming at some point. Any concern I have is about 'fair play'. Roland earlier pointed out that my comment about vulture damage vs. 3000 pound 4x4 or vs. fleshy person was consistent within 7dtd; zeds breaking through reinforced concrete. Which was a fair point. Veduis vid showed that vulture damage doesn't suddenly jump a thousand percent just on horde nights, so that's fair imo. The only bit I see that might be somewhat unfair is if using a vehicle to fall back say 150-300? meters turns out to be mostly undoable. And if that turns out ot be TFPs designed intent, then so be it.