Mods to restore the old 'feel' of the game?

[-Holo-]

This is a bit of a fuzzy topic, but boiling down to check what could be done to revert the game back to being fun (for me and the people I play MP with)

(Have not yet taken any look at A19 so can't tell whats changed there, so this is from A18 perspective)

 

Background and thoughts:

I have actively played since A14 (together with 7-8 friends in coop), but with A17 and the direction the game is taking we have more or less completely stopped playing. Which is sad because we had great fun up to A16. We get more systems by each Alpha,  that is nice, but it's also been a downward spiral in the fun part of the game (for us). We have tried to return and play A15 and while it's great fun and challenging again, we just can't stop missing the new POI's and especially paint and electric systems.

It is weird to come back to A15 with no (few) running zombies but still they are a much greater threat somehow and manage to corner and box us in with sheer numbers, while outdoors! We can't really put the finger on why, if it's just that the zombies hit harder, or player gets debuffed more easy back then but I think it's just more zombies around and available to hear players. The game looks fancier and fancier each alpha at the expense of amount of zombies. (the distant terrain change in A18 totally tanked the performance for me, luckily there was a mod to fix it with https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/10628-sphereiis-dmt-mods/)

 

I'm not a good modder (just a noob) and I don't know the inns and outs of xpath and what can be done, but maybe it can be feasible to gather up modlets in this thread that could restore the game to (for us) it's fun days?

 

What we don't like:

*Increased Sci-fi theme with junkturrets (and now drones coming?)- Should probably be 'easy' to remove in lootlists and progression

*Removal of gun and motorparts, affects final product                    - Can this be modded back in? 

*1-600 Quality levels.                                                                         - Possible to mod back in? 

*Random Stats                                                                                    - Not a big fan of the implementation of this, would have no need for it with many qualitylevels

*Sleeper zombies removed the feel of a zombie infested world.      - Could they be removed or changed to woken state at a larger radius?

*Jumping zombies. looks ridicoulous                                                - Awful looking with jumping zombies.

*No corpselooting                                                                             - This is doable to some extent \o/ it brought back some more fun when looting

*Smell removed                                                                                 - Probably impossible to add back?

*Dungeonstyle POI's                                                                          - Should be doable with skilled prefab modders to remove these weird lootmazes.

*Traders OP                                                                                        - It feels like the traders are a bit OP with offering quests and selling great stuffs. We Much more preferred that old style of finding a note with a quest, and having to manually find the zombies in question in the world.
 

*Leveled things                                                                                  - This is tricky one to balance. I think the best thing would be to have harder POI's just have a higher chance of good loot, (to a reason) while also (natually) having tougher and more zombies and restore the scavenger skill to determine bonuses for loot instead of Gamestage. An Nuclear silo in the wasteland should be a nightmare to try to attack (and with nice chance for military gear).

 

*Overall shift of being hunted to being a hunter.                             - Tuning of many stats, probably much more complex that I could imagine to try. We realised we had became the hunters when we played A18 and just went out to town in the middle of the night to shoot things (quite earlygame still think day 12 or so), while earlier we'd just hunkered down and mined/crafted/defended base during the nights.  This is also something that's just not fun to have zombies have more HP or in th elikes of that. Bulletsponges are never fun.

 

*Awful RWG                                                                                       - Nitrogen. https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/12730-a19-nitrogen-a-random-world-generator-for-7dtd/

*No Hubcity.                                                                                      - This was always the endgame goal for us, to be well geared up and raid the hubcity for good gear. Not sure if it's possible with Nitrogen to bring this back, While also the massive reduction in playable mapsize surely hurt the game for us

 

 

*Learn by Doing.                                                                                - Some parts of this system is doable from what I have seen with Darkness Falls

*Magic learning skills                                                                         - This has been a pet peeve of ours a long time, I modded out all 'weird' items to learn from progression in A16, that forced us to actually find a skillbook to learn things like forge, (or use a working forge to gain skills enough that it unlocked) chemstation minibike etc. It took us, i think about 40 days before we had our own forge up, and this was great. Continued with this line of thinking in A17 and removed the car and motorcycle from the skilltree, forcing us to find parts in loot and also gave the bicycle a place where is was actually useful.

 

 

 

 

 

[KhaineGB]

Mmmkay.

*Increased Sci-fi theme with junkturrets (and now drones coming?) - Easy to remove

*Removal of gun and motorparts, affects final product - Cannot be modded back in. Gun parts can be modded back in and then you use those to make an item, but not affect the quality level. The "assembly" window is the new mods window.

*1-600 Quality levels. - HIGHLY unlikely. Looking through the DLL, 255-ish seems to be the max.

*Random Stats - Easy to remove

*Sleeper zombies removed the feel of a zombie infested world. - Why? I'm not 100% sure they were in A15 but they definitely were in A16. You should be able to remove them though by just removing all sleeper references in all POI XML files.

*Jumping zombies. looks ridicoulous - Can't be fixed cos they jump whenever there's something in the way, like a small rock (and yes, it annoys the crap out of me)

*No corpselooting - Super easy to put back.

*Smell removed - Would need a DMT mod to turn back on. The code is there, it just needs hooking up.

*Dungeonstyle POI's - Grab the A16 prefabs and convert them. It takes a while, but it can be done. Then you can just edit RWG to only spawn those. Done.

*Traders OP - You can remove the quest option from the trader dialogue so they only sell/buy stuff.
*Leveled things - A pain but do-able.

*Overall shift of being hunted to being a hunter. - Not really sure how you'd fix that other than to just jack up the zombie spawns.

*No Hubcity. - I don't think nitrogen has a "generate central wasteland and city" option. Which is a shame. Cos I miss it too.

*Learn by Doing. - Can be MOSTLY done. Some skills don't work at all (like barter)

*Magic learning skills - If i'm understanding correctly, you don't want to be able to use skill points to learn stuff. This is MOSTLY do-able, but then skill points would be pointless. But in theory, you can just remove perks, or make them have a cost of 0 so you have to find the books.

[n2n1]

I don't play vanilla since A12....

 

Check out the video below to understand if you need it or not.

[-Holo-]

4 hours ago, KhaineGB said:

Mmmkay.

*Increased Sci-fi theme with junkturrets (and now drones coming?) - Easy to remove

*Removal of gun and motorparts, affects final product - Cannot be modded back in. Gun parts can be modded back in and then you use those to make an item, but not affect the quality level. The "assembly" window is the new mods window.

*1-600 Quality levels. - HIGHLY unlikely. Looking through the DLL, 255-ish seems to be the max.

*Random Stats - Easy to remove

*Sleeper zombies removed the feel of a zombie infested world. - Why? I'm not 100% sure they were in A15 but they definitely were in A16. You should be able to remove them though by just removing all sleeper references in all POI XML files.

*Jumping zombies. looks ridicoulous - Can't be fixed cos they jump whenever there's something in the way, like a small rock (and yes, it annoys the crap out of me)

*No corpselooting - Super easy to put back.

*Smell removed - Would need a DMT mod to turn back on. The code is there, it just needs hooking up.

*Dungeonstyle POI's - Grab the A16 prefabs and convert them. It takes a while, but it can be done. Then you can just edit RWG to only spawn those. Done.

*Traders OP - You can remove the quest option from the trader dialogue so they only sell/buy stuff.
*Leveled things - A pain but do-able.

*Overall shift of being hunted to being a hunter. - Not really sure how you'd fix that other than to just jack up the zombie spawns.

*No Hubcity. - I don't think nitrogen has a "generate central wasteland and city" option. Which is a shame. Cos I miss it too.

*Learn by Doing. - Can be MOSTLY done. Some skills don't work at all (like barter)

*Magic learning skills - If i'm understanding correctly, you don't want to be able to use skill points to learn stuff. This is MOSTLY do-able, but then skill points would be pointless. But in theory, you can just remove perks, or make them have a cost of 0 so you have to find the books.

Always gives me glimmer of home when a skilled modder gives feedback,  seems like a good portion could be restored .

 

Sleepers came with A16, and it removed a whole lot of the normal wandering zombies around POI's making cities and towns quite safe to be in even at gamestart

The sleepers were also quite deaf so there could be a firefight in the streets and no zombies noticed, unlike in A15 where zombies generally broke out of nearby houses when there was fights in the streets, making it quite dangerous. I played recently an A15 (with valmod admittedly) together with a friend of mine, and we had a hard time to just enter a town and setup camp due to the sheer amount of zombies that came after us. on multiple occasions while we were in the streets and made noise fighting, there could be 40+ zombies bunching up on us.  We died a lot

 

And about the learning skills and whatnot, when I did my simple mod's to progression, I kept things like pummel pete and the weaponskillups to buy, but at a larger cost and less skillpoints per level It slowed down the early game (which is the most fun part we feel) and made us have to choose well what we invested the rare skillpoints in.

Obviosly not fun for singleplay though   I had generally the mindset of 'if I kill 100 zombies with a gun, would I learn to craft a car? or would I be able to learn how to use that weapon better?'

 

I had an thought about the gun assembly and mod window, but don't have the faintest if it's doable,

What if the reciever for a gun was the 'mainpart' and with mods like barrel, frame,stock etc could be made into a firing gun. (with separate mods for it)

But I

probably super stupid idea that won't work 😕

 

 

 

 

 

14 minutes ago, n2n1 said:

I don't play vanilla since A12....

I'm gonna have to take a look at that first time I get!

 

[n2n1]

6 minutes ago, -Holo- said:

 

 

I'm gonna have to take a look at that first time I get!

The full version - is A16 (there is a full English language).

I can provide you with the version for A18, if you like it - i will make the missing translation.

For the A19 version, this is not the time yet.

 

[-Holo-]

13 minutes ago, n2n1 said:

The full version - is A16 (there is a full English language).

I can provide you with the version for A18, if you like it - i will make the missing translation.

For the A19 version, this is not the time yet.

 

I'd be very interested in taking a look at the A18 version!

 

[kebab39]

16 hours ago, n2n1 said:

The full version - is A16 (there is a full English language).

I can provide you with the version for A18, if you like it - i will make the missing translation.

For the A19 version, this is not the time yet.

 

Glorious project. I am doing roughly the same thing, but with scenario "what if devs stopped at a14-a15 and just added more stuff in instead of breaking stuff".

[GameplayJenny]

I'm really interested in this thread. I had also started compiling a list of things I would like to change and all this is really helpful. I loved A12 and have never really found it the same since.

[-Holo-]

Restoring the looting of zombies took the game back in joy a whole lot,

Currently working on some way to bring back the danger of earlier games, Something happened from A15 zombies/player and A16/17

It's not the weapon abundance, I rarely use anything but my club.

It seems like we're not getting stunned (at all?) any more and very rarely gets bleeding or infected.

(playing 3 players with 50% loot and -loooots- of more zombies active then recommended, yet still have a huge stockpile of antibiotics/painkillers and bandaids actually, never had to craft anything then a bunch of first aid bandages)

The passive health increase per level I think is a big disservice, I often just tank zombie hits and not worrying about it, while that would not even occur in A15. (Think I might have a fix for that, will need to restart our world and test) (jacked up all their entitydamage to twice normal meanwhile)

 

 

Learn by doing and actionskills is something I miss pretty much every time I play and ofcourse 600 ilvls

it gave the game an extra layer of planning when repairing an good item too many times reduced it's quality, and it gave a bit more granular loot

 

One large problem right now thats concerning me is how safe cities are.

They don't have their own biome anymore so I can't just ramp up their spawn and respawn time :(

 

I miss the old zombies that were active outside POI's making the world more 'lively' and slightly more dangerous, Need to try to find time to learn how to alter POI's and see if it's possible to place wake(woke?) zombies around POI's again.

 

Also working on tuning and tweaking loottables to bring back some sense of resources needed some work to aquire, aswell as letting early game items have a more natural place without being replaced the next day.

Does anyone use bricks these days? Can't remember last time I used resources in the forge to craft brickblocks. Probably A15 xD

 

 

 

[Liesel Weppen]

On 8/14/2020 at 11:53 AM, -Holo- said:

 unlike in A15 where zombies generally broke out of nearby houses when there was fights in the streets, making it quite dangerous. I played recently an A15 (with valmod admittedly) together with a friend of mine, and we had a hard time to just enter a town and setup camp due to the sheer amount of zombies that came after us. on multiple occasions while we were in the streets and made noise fighting, there could be 40+ zombies bunching up on us.  We died a lot

Yep, i remember my early games when i started with A15. Of course i was also not experienced in the game back then, but i remember we hardly avoided to use firearms.... not because we were short on ammunition or similar, but because the first shoot waked up/drew attention of the next 20 zombies. Especially in cities. So after 2 to 3 weeks, when we got improved equipment we started trying going into a city first.

That turned around completely, now after you found you first gun you basically don't use anything else anymore. And you go directly into any city basically on day 1. There is absolutely no difference anymore.

Smell was also a nice mechanic. But with the empty outside nowadays it would be pointless anyway, because there is nothing it could attract.

 

I like a lot of the improvements and also changes up to A19. But what i really miss is that the outside world now basically is empty and towns are nothing special anymore.

 

 

[GameplayJenny]

I have also got looting zombies on again and really enjoying it for some reason. 

 

I agree on the 'lively and dangerous' thing - areas don't feel alive. That's my main issue. I used to enjoy looking outside and seeing a building collapse or a zombie/bear fight or something.

 

I did increase spawn rates which helped a bit but felt artificial because it just gave me more things to club.

[-Holo-]

Yeah, the city has turned really safe.

Fired up and played a bit on my old A15 saves for a bit yesterday (my A14 save is lost in time )

All those games we always chose a spot close to a what was then called a city and either took over a POI or if we had time, built  a wooden shack from scratch.

From A16 with everything sleeping indoors, we always chose a city POI to make our base in since they were generally even safer then the wilderness.

This is even more so now when there is no (as far as I understand) city biome to specifically tweak spawning for

 

The first zombie that landed a hit on me in that A15 save stunned me for seconds and infected me immidiatly , And she wasn't even running or anything, just snuck up on me in broad daylight when I was fighting another Z. (I kinda miss the old Z textures too 😕 )

 

It was glorious to see my toolbelt filled with lvl 567 hammer, 578 huntingrifle and whatnot. and still only having a '@%$#ty' lvl 404 Ak47.

I was lvl 127 I think and had not yet found better things Even though I had made a few incursions into Hubcity with 'safe' chests marked out on the map

No nailgun either.

Minibike waiting outside the steelwalls, pretty good parts but @%$#ty engine so slow and used lots of fuel.

(I don't miss the awful 'stuttering' when driving a minibike though. neither the bike falling trough the world)

 

Zooming in with Huntingrifle and Ak47 I noticed we only had Ironsights and no crosshair helping, When did they change that?

(and dayum how nice the Huntingrifle was with its sound and feeling)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Liesel Weppen]

26 minutes ago, -Holo- said:

This is even more so now when there is no (as far as I understand) city biome to specifically tweak spawning for

Yep, cities are no more their own biome, so no extra spawnsettings for cities anymore. They have the same spawnrates as their sourrounding biome.

 

There is also no specific difficulty for POIs, nor modified loot per POI, it's only per chest-type, no matter where the chest is. What i got from the dev-thread, TFP is working at least on "costumized" diffculty for POIs, but i don't know details if it just general higher gamestage for specific POI, also affecting loot, or if it is possible then to even force special loot in there.

I also don't know if this will apply for specific regions in a biome, like e.g. towns.

[-Holo-]

I wonder if it would be possible to create a custom biome that cities have to spawn in and then could have it's own spawnsettings. Hm.

 

I really wish they'd step away from the gamelevel mentality and let the game be sandboxy again. Harder Poi's shouldn't just have a bigfat lootcrate on top of it with a pathway to reaching it. Thinking of the Shotgun Messiah factory as example with the large pile of loot on top. Who would hide their stuffs like that out under the skies if it's supposed to be a ex-survivors lootstash.

Would much rather see hard POI's (regardless on what ilvl players are) having tougher Zombies (who drops better things) and generally more containers and stuff on logical places in the POI.

I feel the entire lootsystem/gamestagesystem is a bloody mess after they redid everything for A17

 

[Liesel Weppen]

59 minutes ago, -Holo- said:

I wonder if it would be possible to create a custom biome that cities have to spawn in and then could have it's own spawnsettings. Hm.

There was a question here on the forums recently asking for modding custom biomes and the answer was: Bioms are hardcoded, with modding you can modifiy existing ones, but not create new ones.
At least it is very hard, because Darkness Falls afaik added one new biome, and afaik the answer was from the maker of darkness falls.

[-Holo-]

25 minutes ago, Liesel Weppen said:

There was a question here on the forums recently asking for modding custom biomes and the answer was: Bioms are hardcoded, with modding you can modifiy existing ones, but not create new ones.
At least it is very hard, because Darkness Falls afaik added one new biome, and afaik the answer was from the maker of darkness falls.

Ack! Then it's lightyears over my skills to try to do

 

[n2n1]

Guys, i hope i won't offend you by saying that A13-A16 is the same bull@%$# if you compare them with A9-A12

[-Holo-]

Was it A12 that had that craftinggrid thing?

 

[n2n1]

18 minutes ago, -Holo- said:

Was it A12 that had that craftinggrid thing?

 

Yes it was the last version with crafting grid. And then they begin to think about the consoles.

[Liesel Weppen]

1 hour ago, n2n1 said:

Guys, i hope i won't offend you by saying that A13-A16 is the same bull@%$# if you compare them with A9-A12

That's why I don't compare A16 to A19 in general, but just in specific points.

 

I tried A15 again while A18 was the current version, and i stopped soon, because it in "general" was more like "pita" if you knew A18. Yes, the world was more alive (or undead?), but the crafting was horrible, LBD was spammed, electricty was missing, only vehicle was a minibike, no quests from traders....

[n2n1]

That's right, but we must always remember that we do not need each feature separately, but the gameplay completely.

[-Holo-]

4 hours ago, n2n1 said:

Yes it was the last version with crafting grid. And then they begin to think about the consoles.

Ah. Must be the one Alpha I first bought and played. Crafting grid craftinggrid was/is a huuuge dealbreaker for me so I gave up on the game until I got convinced to play in A14

 

3 hours ago, Liesel Weppen said:

That's why I don't compare A16 to A19 in general, but just in specific points.

 

I tried A15 again while A18 was the current version, and i stopped soon, because it in "general" was more like "pita" if you knew A18. Yes, the world was more alive (or undead?), but the crafting was horrible, LBD was spammed, electricty was missing, only vehicle was a minibike, no quests from traders....

Yeah. While I think I had more fun in the game before A17's changes (I love Learn by Doing and 600 ilvls) It's very very hard to enjoy A15 now with all the missing

improvements for the good.  We have tried to return and play it occasionally, but while it is fun to be hunted again and not be a superman, It's always that gnawing about new zombies, paining, electricity, new Poi's (non dungeonstyle that is)

I just wish they hadn't tossed out the old systems. That way we could have had the cake and eaten it at the same time.