When will 7Days2Die Leave Alpha/Early Access?

[Cynderous]

When is the game leaving Alpha/Early Access? I ask because of the comments about a certain youtube video struck a nerve with me:

 

https://youtu.be/2sFrG02xpAw?t=968

 

I agree with the majority of the videos comments, but man it sucked to see 7d2d highlighted as an example of a buggy mess of an early access game. 

 

I purchased this game in February of 2014 with at the time only one other individual. We both saw promising game in development and were very excited even with the bugs. 

 

 

That person and I returned later both bought the game for another player and the 4 of us played a ton, I do not recall which patch, but we had motorbikes(only), they were built with parts, and all items were up to level 500-600 (or I believe?) with each tier color changing at specific intervals). Crafting mutilples improved the skill. There was an awesome POI hotel in the desert that was a blast to loot, fortify, modify, and completely change, into our base of operations. Vendors were lackluster. And we had spikes that could be placed down used to destroy legs of zombies falling into a pit. And at the time, the super zombie we all called Mr. @%$*#!(since his body always seemed to die similar to the guys in doom - @%$*#! out).

 

We played for about 2 months all four of us enjoyed it, and said man I cannot wait for them to release/finish this game.

 

I returned again recently(6-7 months ago), this time with 2 new players, my wife and son. The game had changed in a lot of noticeable ways but honestly, the graphics(rather their performance) didn't improve while my computer had massively since. I may not agree with a ton of the changes, but I found the majority of them were oh so amazing. I want to acknowledge a few of those. The feedback loop, you guys did a top notch job on the quests, refreshing POIs, and giving me something to do X to get Y where Y was loot that improved my ability to accomplish X. The quest system feedback loop was an amazing thing! I do have a few "gripes" about it: Stale quests options(but while the options were stale, the adventures I was sent on was always a unique and enjoyable experience, the best loot only came from quests(at least for me I only received purple quality items from quests, even with lucky looter and googles it was extremely rare), optimal play required me to ignore your "POI flow"(Which is a god damn shame! Ill explain below)

 

And I discovered something else, I found something while exploring some familiar POIs, they were changed slightly. They and all other new POIs I found, told me a story. I don't know what you guys call it internally, but I called it the "POI flow". There was a path of least resistance that brought you to the "loot room". I generally would have you pass by every zombie on the way, bring you through minor restock/aid areas, and have loot scattered about. It was awesome discovering and exploring trying to follow your "flow". Looking around for an indicator of some sort, a lamp, or a hole or something to try to hint the way I could go without breaking walls down. Fantastic!!! The developers did something here that was unexpected and too good for this game honestly. You sold me the environment, dark souls style. You didn't hold my hand but you didn't abandon me. And you left me the option to do it my own way too. Bravo!

 

The only issues I had with this patch(aside from almost no performance improvements), was the inability to craft the best tier of items, instead forced to refresh via quests POIs where I would after learning the POI, never follow that amazing flow you had for me. I could go straight to that "loot room" on a refreshed POI, get the good stuff, then look for the satchel by blowing up every wall in my way. To rinse and repeat. It's probably asking a @%$*#! ton of the developers, but if you could make these be dynamic or have different possible (2 for small, 3+ for the medium/large POIS) layouts for each POI, you would be doing your game and it's players a great service. 

 

The final tier quests that asked me to clear the POI, like the hospital or the shamfactory, were a joke. You asked for way too much ammo to complete these. While I felt like I received tiered weapons more often from these, it was way more beneficial to complete the satchel recovery missions and loot the "loot room" from the POI.

 

As someone who believed in this game early, followed it through different development iterations, and overall has had a pleasant time with the game so far, will we receive a timeline on when the game is "finished"? 

 

[JCrook1028]

Simple answer? No, you will not receive a date. It will be released when it is finished. As for the guy in the video? Anyone who judges a game after playing it for 5 minutes is an idiot. Treat his opinion as such.

[Cynderous]

I believe the general point is games that never actually come out. Its been over 6 years, at what point is it okay to expect a final product delivery date?

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I wouldn't mind if it stays in Alpha forever, provided that it still gets updates.
Every alpha I get my money's worth... again and again and again.

[Nfg]

Before halflife 3.

[rivle]

2 hours ago, Cynderous said:

I believe the general point is games that never actually come out. Its been over 6 years, at what point is it okay to expect a final product delivery date?

 

If this game never came out how do we have hundreds and thousands of hours in this game? The Devs could just say 2 years ago “this is the last alpha and we are gold now” and we player would never have all the new stuff we have right now after 2 years of work.

 

I really don’t understand people like you. Do games turn into a better game when Devs just say this is now a finished game and we will now work on another game to grab more money?

[katarynna]

The game will go gold when it is finished. The developers are working on the game continuously, getting it closer to their final vision. 

 

If it had been abandoned, you would have a valid complaint. This game is the furthest from abandoned as it can possibly be. 

[SylenThunder]

6 hours ago, Cynderous said:

I believe the general point is games that never actually come out. Its been over 6 years, at what point is it okay to expect a final product delivery date?

 

If you actually pay attention to industry standards, TFP is doing an excellent job.

 

AAA companies with massive budgets and developer staff of several hundred spend an average of 7-9 years making a game completely from scratch. That's customizing the base engine code, brand new assets, the whole works. And you need to also remember that we're talking about games that are much less complex at their core.

 

The difference is that you never even hear about those games until the dev team is well into Beta testing, and are close to setting a solid release date. However with this title you have had access since practically day 1.

 

And really, compare apples to apples. The current closest match you could get on core mechanics and complexity is Empyrion. They've been at it for almost 5 years now. Alpha 12 is barely a month old. They just announced that on August 5th, Alpha 13 won't be alpha anymore. It's full game release version 1.0. Never mind that there hasn't been any Beta testing stage, or that the current iteration of the game is a buggy mess with numerous major changes in core mechanics. Can you imagine the reviews after that goes live?

 

TFP is currently on track to have the game completed in the next year or so. That's including actual beta testing and optimization after the core features are finished. (Mind you, not all the core features currently exist.)

 

So what do you really want? A finished product done right, or some half-@%$*#! work that barely passes muster.

[Black Hat]

Well, @faatal wants to keep the game till A99 😂😂😂

[Guest]

5 hours ago, SylenThunder said:

TFP is currently on track to have the game completed in the next year or so.

That's a good one.

[pApA^LeGBa]

12 hours ago, Cynderous said:

I believe the general point is games that never actually come out. Its been over 6 years, at what point is it okay to expect a final product delivery date?

 

When it´s done and as bugfree and balanced as possible. Have you seen some of the premature game releases of the last few years? Be happy they take their time and refuse to release a bugfest.

[Liesel Weppen]

10 hours ago, rivle said:

I really don’t understand people like you. Do games turn into a better game when Devs just say this is now a finished game and we will now work on another game to grab more money?

Imho 7d2d could have been released as gold for many alphas. There were enough content and game mechanics to play for 1000s of hours. Many AAA games don't give you so much.

 

But the point with wishing it becoming gold is the development cycle. TFP introduces new features and experiments with the gameplay which makes every alpha release "new".  But since this is still alpha state, they don't really polish and optimize. That is was an alpha is, but some people wish for polishing and optimization and that's why they ask for when it becomes gold.