What can be done for game balance?

[Solomon]

2 hours ago, Anoraki said:

Ummm, yeah? Adding filler content that doesn't really add to the gameplay doesn't make it more fun, and probably would just mess up the balancing even more. Add a bunch of guns that aren't balanced well and people will only use one of them.

Really? Then explain please just what content did the removal of learn by action, mass nerf of stealth and our loot rebalance added?

 

All they did was to show how empty the game is, how you dont have much to do. What i suggested would go a long way to make people feel like theres soo much to do kind of like how minecraft has tons of "decoration" mods what are getting downloaded en masse so people can make more and bigger creations.

 

They could have forgot all these "balance" patches and instead concentrated on adding actual content ingame and people maybe wouldnt grumble here about how an AK on day 5 means game over because they would actually need it.

7 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

Yep. TFP sets default. Mods can change that. It's easier to take away extra's TFP has given us than it is to add them. Working As Intended imo.

And the mods show what TFP should have done.

 

You know how embrassing is to use mods as an argument point is towards developers? A guy who has a regular 8 hour job for 5 days a week comes home and in his 3 hour free time he manages to overperform an entire development team by releasing bugfixes, stability patches and more content than what they ever could.

 

When a mod community churns out content faster than the devs it usually means that the devs are either finished with that game mostly or just not competent enough to fight against some couch programmer.

 

 

 

[meganoth]

42 minutes ago, beHypE said:

Just gotta love it when they are out of arguments and invoke the 'mod it' card. 😂

The core argument was from Boidster: "TFP has to leave the defaults pretty tame so that the "minimum" specs will still play". Are you able to counter that with real arguments?

 

 

[meganoth]

33 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Really? Then explain please just what content did the removal of learn by action, mass nerf of stealth and our loot rebalance added?

 

All they did was to show how empty the game is, how you dont have much to do. What i suggested would go a long way to make people feel like theres soo much to do kind of like how minecraft has tons of "decoration" mods what are getting downloaded en masse so people can make more and bigger creations.

 

They could have forgot all these "balance" patches and instead concentrated on adding actual content ingame and people maybe wouldnt grumble here about how an AK on day 5 means game over because they would actually need it.

And the mods show what TFP should have done.

 

You know how embrassing is to use mods as an argument point is towards developers? A guy who has a regular 8 hour job for 5 days a week comes home and in his 3 hour free time he manages to overperform an entire development team by releasing bugfixes, stability patches and more content than what they ever could.

 

When a mod community churns out content faster than the devs it usually means that the devs are either finished with that game mostly or just not competent enough to fight against some couch programmer.

 

 

 

You mean like some mods already had or have bandits in the game?

 

Those bandits were created by TFP and turned off because their AI wasn't good enough for TFPs quality standards. Modders turned them on again.

 

You mean like many mods added a lot more plants and foods?

 

All the plants internal code was done by TFP, they even added a simple XML interface to the code below so everyone could add their own plants and food recipes. This is as if some company builds a house and someone later paints it in a new color and say "Look, I built a new house in a tenth of the time of that company.

 

7D2D has 10 to 50 times as many modders as TFP has developers. If there were a race to churn out contents, modders would easily win.

 

 

[kebab39]

50 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Really? Then explain please just what content did the removal of learn by action, mass nerf of stealth and our loot rebalance added?

 

All they did was to show how empty the game is, how you dont have much to do. What i suggested would go a long way to make people feel like theres soo much to do kind of like how minecraft has tons of "decoration" mods what are getting downloaded en masse so people can make more and bigger creations.

 

They could have forgot all these "balance" patches and instead concentrated on adding actual content ingame and people maybe wouldnt grumble here about how an AK on day 5 means game over because they would actually need it.

And the mods show what TFP should have done.

 

You know how embrassing is to use mods as an argument point is towards developers? A guy who has a regular 8 hour job for 5 days a week comes home and in his 3 hour free time he manages to overperform an entire development team by releasing bugfixes, stability patches and more content than what they ever could.

 

When a mod community churns out content faster than the devs it usually means that the devs are either finished with that game mostly or just not competent enough to fight against some couch programmer.

 

 

 

Exactly that, and I have even seen recent attempt to fix recent block / terrain glitch by making screen black (serv checks if character eyes are in block and runs buff that blackens whole screen). So we can clearly say that modders are much more competent and solution seeking than devs, that can't do this even after 7 years of reports, videos and threads on their forum. Ask @giKoN

 

They also treat us like @%$*#! when we are seeking new things to implement, so wouldn't be surprised the moment new voxel game comes up, all modders run there (I sure would help to program/ 3d model if competent competition arised):

 

[Gazz]

Wow. Someone needs a hug!

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, kebab39 said:

They also treat us like @%$*#! when we are seeking new things to implement, so wouldn't be surprised the moment new voxel game comes up, all modders run there (I sure would help to program/ 3d model if competent competition arised):

 

An even better idea: All modders should just program the next new voxel game themselves. After all they are the only competent staff around here, right? 😆

[kebab39]

31 minutes ago, meganoth said:

An even better idea: All modders should just program the next new voxel game themselves. After all they are the only competent staff around here, right? 😆

 Well, it seems, it is already happening, heh. At this point 7 days needs any kind of competition to stimulate it for change. As long there is no other voxel zombie game available, devs will pretty much do whatever and call it a day.

[Solomon]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

You mean like some mods already had or have bandits in the game?

 

Those bandits were created by TFP and turned off because their AI wasn't good enough for TFPs quality standards. Modders turned them on again.

 

You mean like many mods added a lot more plants and foods?

 

All the plants internal code was done by TFP, they even added a simple XML interface to the code below so everyone could add their own plants and food recipes. This is as if some company builds a house and someone later paints it in a new color and say "Look, I built a new house in a tenth of the time of that company.

 

7D2D has 10 to 50 times as many modders as TFP has developers. If there were a race to churn out contents, modders would easily win.

 

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

 

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

 

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

 

 

[kebab39]

11 minutes ago, Solomon said:

 

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

 

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

 

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

 

 

Exactly, also look at this bug marked as non bug

Feature that is clearly there in vanilla not firing on mp? Clearly a @%$*#!up (that used to work in older versions but somehow got broken for no reason). (or someone got touched in wrong place by evil learn by doing),

[RipClaw]

52 minutes ago, Solomon said:

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

Turning the screen black because the player glitches through the world is not a fix but a workaround for a problem that is only present in PvP. In PvE this problem has no major impact and turning the screen black would be pointless.

 

It has been stated a hundred times that the developers are currently not interested in adapting the game for PvP. It is primarily a PvE game.

52 minutes ago, Solomon said:

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

Most Full Conversion Mods have huge frame drops because almost nothing is optimized. The modders have no access to the source code and therefore they cannot fix bugs like memory leaks.

52 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

The reason why they don't give every block to a player is because some models are very detailed and therefore need some computing power. Normally this is not a problem if you are reasonable.

But there are players who enjoy ruining the game for others. They would simply place 1000 coffee machines in front of a player's base on a multiplayer server and when the player logs in he has problems because his computer can't handle the amount of polygons.

 

I heard some time ago that on some servers the use of dynamite and TNT is forbidden because players crash the whole server when they blow up a building.

[meganoth]

54 minutes ago, Solomon said:

 

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

 

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

 

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

 

 

Ignorance is bliss. If you don't see the 300 other bugs in the game which might be more important to TFP than this one then yes, it cast a bad light on the devs. The developers have different priorities than any one player has.

 

And TFP has more constraints than a modder. As RipClaw said, turning on features that have the potential to wreck FPS is okay for a modder, it can not be ok for TFP.  Decor blocks are not an oversight, it was specifically explained by madmole that they did not add deco blocks for various reasons and that they think it is enough that you can get them via creative menue. Ergo it isn't a bug or oversight that needs fixing, it is a deliberate decision that you just don't agree with.

 

I have played mods where zombies were re-enabled. It was evident that the zombies had problems, for example the behemoths that were so big that they couldn't path well and either got stuck or even phased into closed spaces like your melee cache. But I didn't care and appreciate the effort of the modders. But I could clearly see that the behemoth was not fit for vanilla.

 

[kebab39]

28 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

Turning the screen black because the player glitches through the world is not a fix but a workaround for a problem that is only present in PvP. In PvE this problem has no major impact and turning the screen black would be pointless.

Hahaha, riiight.

 

[RipClaw]

2 minutes ago, kebab39 said:

Hahaha, riiight.

 

And how exactly does it affect your gameplay when someone else uses such a base? 

[kebab39]

1 minute ago, RipClaw said:

And how exactly does it affect your gameplay when someone else uses such a base? 

When you are scavenger and suddenly builder in your team starts placing those cubes instead of normal structures for example. Kinda breaks immersion, doesn't it?

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, kebab39 said:

 Well, it seems, it is already happening, heh. At this point 7 days needs any kind of competition to stimulate it for change. As long there is no other voxel zombie game available, devs will pretty much do whatever and call it a day.

Great. More choice is always good.

 

Like any other new game the first steps are the easiest. With all the assets available from asset stores of a graphics engine you can make a 0.1 relatively fast. But the more the game grows the development time for new features grows and grows.

 

Lets see where this project is in 2 years. And whether you still agree with the features the developers of that game decide to implement. Wana make a bet that this won't be a real competitor in 2 years? Maybe in 4 years there is a small chance if it still exists.

 

By the way, is that a voxel game as well, with voxel ground?

 

[Vedui]

I might be the odd man out, but I actually like the slower progression. I do think it needs some further updates to make it feel smoother.

 

1) More weapon parts. I end up day 7, and the only weapon I have I bought from trader. I can make a Q2 shotgun, Q2 stun baton, but I have no parts for either.

2) More steel. Right now a lot of crafted weapons/armor require steel, which is locked behind very rare finds (and rare wrenching specific items). Crucible is way further down the line. So by the time I find weapon/armor parts, I got the perks, but I don't have steel.

 

Doing 1+2 would help allow for a smoother progression, so while you might not find weapons or better armour around, you can start crafting it so YOU're the one behind the progression, as opposed to as what I do now, just run trader quests, get money, and buy the damned weapons from trader joel

[RipClaw]

1 minute ago, kebab39 said:

When you are scavenger and suddenly builder in your team starts placing those cubes instead of normal structures for example. Kinda breaks immersion, doesn't it?

That players can make blocks and vehicles appear from thin air does not break your immersion ? Good thing I don't care about immersion. I'd have to ignore a lot to believe a world like this exists.

You can also just talk to people when something bothers you. And if you are not tolerant enough to accept that other players use cheese bases then maybe you should play single player instead.
 

[meganoth]

48 minutes ago, Vedui said:

I might be the odd man out, but I actually like the slower progression. I do think it needs some further updates to make it feel smoother.

 

1) More weapon parts. I end up day 7, and the only weapon I have I bought from trader. I can make a Q2 shotgun, Q2 stun baton, but I have no parts for either.

2) More steel. Right now a lot of crafted weapons/armor require steel, which is locked behind very rare finds (and rare wrenching specific items). Crucible is way further down the line. So by the time I find weapon/armor parts, I got the perks, but I don't have steel.

 

Doing 1+2 would help allow for a smoother progression, so while you might not find weapons or better armour around, you can start crafting it so YOU're the one behind the progression, as opposed to as what I do now, just run trader quests, get money, and buy the damned weapons from trader joel

One of the materials I see very frequently at the trader is steel. You probably can't get enough to craft everything you want but anything you prioritize

 

[Vedui]

9 minutes ago, meganoth said:

One of the materials I see very frequently at the trader is steel. You probably can't get enough to craft everything you want but anything you prioritize

 

That is true. But if you're going to buy steel to craft, that's very close to simply just buying the weapon from the trader to begin with. So I think due to the need of steel, an increase in that being found would be helpful and not unbalancing. Just a bit more here and there would do it.

[Ezed]

I didn't really play A18  but after several A19 playthroughs (ranging from Days 30-50) it is my opinion there is far too much loot and/or opportunities to loot these days.  For me, crafting isn't really required as I can find almost everything I need/want in loot or as quest rewards or simply purchasing with proceeds from selling all the unwanted loot.  

 

Weapons parts being so scarce plays a factor in this lack of crafting I think.  So many weapon types, when I do find some parts they're seldom the ones I'm looking for.  Good profit in them though at least.

 

Another thing I find myself doing is skipping the 'Iron Age' since Purple (T6) weapons. tools and armour (WTA) are so plentiful, and for me at least, mod slots rule all.  I'm not going to giving up 2 mod slots on my wooden club as it's working well enough.

 

I could stop questing and looting POI's to reduce my loot intake...but there's not much else to do.  I'd like to see more wandering hordes during the week, increasing in frequency as the days progress.  I know I could build a base but then I'd likely have to mine some resources, which I don't want to do until I get steel tools and max my mother load for best efficiency.  I find mining a bit brain numbing and would rather kill zombies for XP.

 

In summary...

-less loot/loot containers

-more weapon parts

-maybe limit Stone Age WTA to Tier 1 or 3 so it encourages Iron Age crafting of T4-5 stuff

-more zombies in the world (spawn me some hordes for fun and to break the repetitiveness of POI farming)

 

[Solomon]

3 hours ago, RipClaw said:

Turning the screen black because the player glitches through the world is not a fix but a workaround for a problem that is only present in PvP. In PvE this problem has no major impact and turning the screen black would be pointless.

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

Ignorance is bliss. If you don't see the 300 other bugs in the game which might be more important to TFP than this one then yes, it cast a bad light on the devs. The developers have different priorities than any one player has.

I dont know that specific bug or many bugs, i just talked from a general point of view. We can always say that devs have different priorities and such but every time some modder fixes an issue people are going to think that the devs dont understand their own game or just doesnt prioritize as how they should.

 

I mean sure yeah its the devs doing most of the work but when you are loading in mods to finally get the gameplay you want you start to question why the devs have not yet done X and you cannot avoid this issue because what they see and what the devs see are 2 different things.

 

 

Currently im in favor for drastically increasing the sandbox capatibilities of a player and adding in content to the days between horde nights, if that means we gonna lose 20% of the playerbase due to sudden ram/vram usage increase and others then perhaps its time to optimize the game.

[JCrook1028]

8 hours ago, beHypE said:

Just gotta love it when they are out of arguments and invoke the 'mod it' card. 😂

Yep, gotta love the truth. The off the main track gameplay styles are always going to be for mods to implement. The example above of turning graphics way way down in order to have a ton more zombies is a perfect illustration.

[Boidster]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

The core argument was from Boidster: "TFP has to leave the defaults pretty tame so that the "minimum" specs will still play". Are you able to counter that with real arguments?

My only point anyhow was that the minimum # of zombies can easily be adjusted to suit your PC's strength. There is literally no way TFP could set a "default" value that would satisfy all people and all machine configurations. Did not mean to start an argument about how modders > developers or whatever FFS. It's like three lines in an XML file. Hardly a week-long after-you-get-home-from-your-9-to-5-job programming odyssey.

 

2 hours ago, Vedui said:

That is true. But if you're going to buy steel to craft, that's very close to simply just buying the weapon from the trader to begin with. So I think due to the need of steel, an increase in that being found would be helpful and not unbalancing. Just a bit more here and there would do it.

As soon as I find a wrench I put "street lamps" at or near the top of my target list. 1-2 steel from each one and there are dozens of them in a mid-size town. Enough to get at least a few early-game things built. But hey I modded radiators into refrigerators and the Ice Cold Beer coolers so I could get some more brass. I'd be fine with steel coming from one or two additional blocks.

[meganoth]

26 minutes ago, Solomon said:

I dont know that specific bug or many bugs, i just talked from a general point of view. We can always say that devs have different priorities and such but every time some modder fixes an issue people are going to think that the devs dont understand their own game or just doesnt prioritize as how they should.

 

I mean sure yeah its the devs doing most of the work but when you are loading in mods to finally get the gameplay you want you start to question why the devs have not yet done X and you cannot avoid this issue because what they see and what the devs see are 2 different things.

 

 

Currently im in favor for drastically increasing the sandbox capatibilities of a player and adding in content to the days between horde nights, if that means we gonna lose 20% of the playerbase due to sudden ram/vram usage increase and others then perhaps its time to optimize the game.

 

As you said "to get the gameplay YOU want". There is the answer to why they haven't done X if you accept that they want different things than you. That is obviously true with the decor items and your idea of drastically increasing the sandbox capabilities. TFP themselves seem to think they are about right where they are and all the factions (pvp-players, shooter-players, builders, sandbox-players, survivalists) here in the forum try to tug them in their direction. Maybe you should be glad they don't listen to such requests because maybe the shooter fraction is bigger than the sandbox fraction, who knows?

 

Don't get me wrong, it is definitely possible that some modder finds a better solution for a particular problem or bug than TFP. This is nothing earth-shattering, developers and modders come from the same pool of people that are interested and sometimes competent in games development. Some of them were even hired by TFP. Gazz for example was initially a 7D2D modder I think, also madmole himself started as modder for bethesda games. But so what, TFP can't go around and sift the mods for solutions to their problems, because they have different problems and ideas and different constraints.

 

It is the exception that a mod provides a solution, mods are usually changing a thing TFP wants to a thing TFP does not want. Bigger backpack mods anyone? 😉

 

 

 

[Slingblade2040]

the thing with the AI is that no one really cares for zombies that are smart enough to take the easy path to you. just let them be brain dead like they see you they come at you somethinf basic and for horde nights random spawns to come at you from any direction. this whole we don't want folks to cheese horde night or avoid it has become an issue that is taking away from bettering this game. like I respect all the work put into bettering the AI and how great the zombie pathing has become but any more improvements towards that should wait till bandits are implemented or worked on during test builds. 

 

 I can understand wanting the Bandits or whatever human type entities are added later to have some kind of intelligence but for zombies or even animals they don't need to be that smart. 

 

also TFP need to focus their balance towards single player. I know this game has multiplayer  and people play multiplayer but balance for multiplayer need's to be on the admins who run those servers.  This game will never be balanced for both single player and multiplayer. much less adding in perks or items with multiplayer in mind.  Focus on single player balance and let server admins worry about the multiplayer side of things.