First impressions of A19...

[meganoth]

39 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Yeah well, we all know how good age restriction for games work. We live in 2020, surely it would be possible to connect your steam id so the forum knows you own the game and stops censoring things that are in the game but still censors for everyone else. Anyways, that´s minor details that are just a bit annoying.

 

The menu in RW is so bad, it actually was the reason i stopped playing. Was hoping for an advancment during development tbh. I just don´t get why anyone would like it so much to navigate trough an unnecessary complicated UI that he implents it in his own game.

 

 

What's the steam id of someone not logged into the forum?

Anyway, context is very important with swear words and a swear filter is just a steamroller tactic to reduce the work load of lazy moderators.

I suggested to Roland to simply replace ALL words with "thing" to solve all forum rule compliance problems at once, it is a mystery to me why he never followed that advice 😁

 

 

51 minutes ago, Kalen said:

Thing thing thing thing thing 

👍

[Roland]

Thing thing, Mega...

[Fox]

4 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

The duration of theearly access phase doesn´t mean you can change the way things work. There is no getting old with this argument because when there is still content missing, you would just waste time fully optimizing the game during every alpha. And time is money for a business. You can´t just ask to change how things work because you have no patience tbh.

If this game stays in Alpha for another 10 years and the player base drops down to hundreds... will that argument still apply? At what point does the word Alpha start feeling like it's being abused? Also, I still think the game was basically finished back in Alpha 10.4, but the devs are never satisfied and keep wanting more, which I'm fine with as long as it doesn't make the game perform worse. For the longest time, I couldn't enjoy the game at all from A11 to I think A15? due to all the stutter issues the majority of us were getting, so I moved onto other games during that time.

3 hours ago, Kalen said:

I liked the crafting grid 

I sort of miss it too. 

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

So the devs of Rising World adhere to your advice and stick with the first implmented version instead of changing around the UI until it works well. I'm just glad TFP does more experimenting, Does anyone here want a crafting grid? 😉

 

I've never spoken to the devs of RW, don't know where you got that advice stuff from. Also, all of the UIs this game has ever had has always worked well for this game minus the first one which conflicted with 4:3 monitors back in the day when those were still a thing. Crafting grid is a separate thing in my opinion. Some loved it, some hated it... overall, just a matter of preference. I didn't mind either one.

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

The menu in RW is so bad, it actually was the reason i stopped playing. Was hoping for an advancment during development tbh. I just don´t get why anyone would like it so much to navigate trough an unnecessary complicated UI that he implents it in his own game.

I was able to tolerate the menu junk, but got bored after making all the weapons and armor and had nothing to try them on as the game felt empty with no real dangers of any kind. The devs are just way too slow with the AI stuff. They've since made "some" improvements on that front, but still not enough IMO.

 

And to be fair, 7d2d is starting to get just as bad with the crafting menus being cluttered with too many items, forcing me to constantly use the search option to quickly find what I want to craft all the time. It may never get as bad as RW mainly because RW kept it simple and loaded it up with 10x more craftable items instead of doing what 7d2d did by merging frame shapes into 1 craftable item, but still.

[Jugginator]

8 hours ago, Solomon said:

One thing i noticed in the stable is that im getting these strange lagspikes randomly.

 

Like im sitting on the top of a house, absolutely no crafting or anything going on the fps is stable around 40 then suddenly it drops to 2 for less than a second and it goes back to 40. Nothing changes, nothing moves, it just drops for no apparent reason?

 

Im kind of sure that the system requiements have once again risen a bit but at the same time it doesnt look too stable.

I can almost safely bet that by lowering the particles slider % will help with that, try that out.

[meganoth]

3 minutes ago, Fox said:

If this game stays in Alpha for another 10 years and the player base drops down to hundreds... will that argument still apply? At what point does the word Alpha start feeling like it's being abused? Also, I still think the game was basically finished back in Alpha 10.4, but the devs are never satisfied and keep wanting more, which I'm fine with as long as it doesn't make the game perform worse. For the longest time, I couldn't enjoy the game at all from A11 to I think A15? due to all the stutter issues the majority of us were getting, so I moved onto other games during that time.

Most churches were built in a few years. Wooden churches in weeks or months I would guess, but even those big stone giants found in european countries taking from 3 to probably 30 years. The Sagrada Familia will be finished after a whooping 126 years. And if you ask me, is worth every penny and minute sunk into it.

 

Now the Sagradas long dev time was mostly because of financial troubles, granted. I would assume that EA projects work differently because the money they need for continued development is directly tied to their success in EA. And the only failed EA projects I know of all have in common that they had a rather short life. Such cases seem to either get released in an unfinished state or just abandoned because the money ran out.

 

But if you have success and have the money it can work out very well. Factorio just took 8 years because of perfectionist devs. I don't think it hurt Factorio in any way and the game will be relevant as long as new generations can play it on their PCs.

 

There is no sign the development of 7D2D is in any trouble or slowing down. At the moment I have no serious doubt it will be released eventually. There isn't even an indication that player numbers drop. I am surprised a PvE game can hold the attention of many players for years, but 7D2D proves it is possible.

So: No warning signs, continued development, and a game that could actually be released at any time after a bit of polish if some serious s*** hits the fan. And every year of development adds more to the game (which is subjective, you may disagree). I at least don't feel abused.

 

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Fox For me, early access is considered a failure if the devs stop working on the game or never actually delivered a half decent playable version at all.

But even if it is never finished, i would not consider this game a failure. I would be dissapointed tough and never touch a TFP title again.

 

A10.4?  Seriously? Nope. I am really glad the game wasn´t finished back then. It was awful compared to now tbh. Sure i had already a lot of fun back then but knew this is just a step on the way to the finish. I am glad they didn´t stop there because it is even more fun now.

 

I had my best time in A18 and 19 so far. I hated LBD and how you would fall back behind others in MP if you didn´t abuse it, sucked so much to sit in the forge and watch anvils beeing crafted. Also i want never again to be forced to make a janitors work in the game and clean up every corpse from a zombie i killed. That was utterly annoying. (No offense to janitors, i just don´t wanna feel like one when i am gaming)

 

I get a 0.0035 cent/per hour ratio for this game (4.5k hours, paid 16€ iirc). Can´t fail anymore for me tbh. Even if they turn 180° degree and make this game a battle royal PvP only, with minecraft graphic and pay to win, i wouldn´t consider this as a complete fail for me.

 

Why are people so obssesed with finishing the game? You all never played any bethesda game?  If you play survival you propably had your fair share of early access fails already. Like @meganoth said already, not a single sign that this game won´t make it to release so far. Starforge, Osiris:New Dawn, 10 Years after, those are actual fails. Osiris even beeing "finished", giving a good example why you don´t want devs to rush a game.

 

They always said they won´t rush anything or pin themselves to a timeline, but will consider it finished when they are happy with it. And after nearly a whole life with gaming as a hobby beeing 47 years old now, i have to say i am glad they do it this way, happens not often enough in the industry.

 

Everyone wants everything "RIGHT NOW" these days, just to whine about bugs, huge day one patches that cause more bugs and not enough content right after they got it.

[Linkhead2]

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

Most churches were built in a few years. Wooden churches in weeks or months I would guess, but even those big stone giants found in european countries taking from 3 to probably 30 years. The Sagrada Familia will be finished after a whooping 126 years. And if you ask me, is worth every penny and minute sunk into it.

 

Now the Sagradas long dev time was mostly because of financial troubles, granted. I would assume that EA projects work differently because the money they need for continued development is directly tied to their success in EA. And the only failed EA projects I know of all have in common that they had a rather short life. Such cases seem to either get released in an unfinished state or just abandoned because the money ran out.

 

But if you have success and have the money it can work out very well. Factorio just took 8 years because of perfectionist devs. I don't think it hurt Factorio in any way and the game will be relevant as long as new generations can play it on their PCs.

 

There is no sign the development of 7D2D is in any trouble or slowing down. At the moment I have no serious doubt it will be released eventually. There isn't even an indication that player numbers drop. I am surprised a PvE game can hold the attention of many players for years, but 7D2D proves it is possible.

So: No warning signs, continued development, and a game that could actually be released at any time after a bit of polish if some serious s*** hits the fan. And every year of development adds more to the game (which is subjective, you may disagree). I at least don't feel abused.

 

 

(Disclaimer: From a consumers standpoint...)

Weve gotton to a point now where we cant talk about 7 Days, without talking about the poor inconsistency of the devs. It doesnt matter if Borderlands 3 gets its updates becuase people have played the game and werent happy, It doesnt matter if Anthem gets it's updates becuase people played it and arent willing to give it a chance. Factorio was in development for 8 years, but was also given patches. 7 days does NOT get patched, only on rare occasions. When i think of Factorio, i consider those Devs to be interested in delivering a quality product, even if the game wasnt finished, they knew how to patch their games and please their Audience. I feel like FTP have never understood that as an idea. 

 

I think Alpha 17 was where this had reached boiling point. it threw the community into civil war, with most dedicated players packing their bags and leaving, Theyd given up hope in the game ever reaching its next stage of development. The youtube comment section on "7 days Alpha day 1" had left a minefield of negative complaints. Since then not a single Dev video to date has reached 100k and before then, reaching 100k wasnt hard... 

[Laz Man]

8 hours ago, Fox said:

If this game stays in Alpha for another 10 years and the player base drops down to hundreds... will that argument still apply? At what point does the word Alpha start feeling like it's being abused? Also, I still think the game was basically finished back in Alpha 10.4, but the devs are never satisfied and keep wanting more, which I'm fine with as long as it doesn't make the game perform worse. For the longest time, I couldn't enjoy the game at all from A11 to I think A15? due to all the stutter issues the majority of us were getting, so I moved onto other games during that time.

I sort of miss it too. 

I've never spoken to the devs of RW, don't know where you got that advice stuff from. Also, all of the UIs this game has ever had has always worked well for this game minus the first one which conflicted with 4:3 monitors back in the day when those were still a thing. Crafting grid is a separate thing in my opinion. Some loved it, some hated it... overall, just a matter of preference. I didn't mind either one.

I was able to tolerate the menu junk, but got bored after making all the weapons and armor and had nothing to try them on as the game felt empty with no real dangers of any kind. The devs are just way too slow with the AI stuff. They've since made "some" improvements on that front, but still not enough IMO.

 

And to be fair, 7d2d is starting to get just as bad with the crafting menus being cluttered with too many items, forcing me to constantly use the search option to quickly find what I want to craft all the time. It may never get as bad as RW mainly because RW kept it simple and loaded it up with 10x more craftable items instead of doing what 7d2d did by merging frame shapes into 1 craftable item, but still.

The crafting grid was nice at first but the game quickly outgrew it.  You can only create so many different item grid combos before it becomes no longer intuitive...  Not a really good scalable design.

 

 

24 minutes ago, Linkhead2 said:

(Disclaimer: From a consumers standpoint...)

Weve gotton to a point now where we cant talk about 7 Days, without talking about the poor inconsistency of the devs. It doesnt matter if Borderlands 3 gets its updates becuase people have played the game and werent happy, It doesnt matter if Anthem gets it's updates becuase people played it and arent willing to give it a chance. Factorio was in development for 8 years, but was also given patches. 7 days does NOT get patched, only on rare occasions. When i think of Factorio, i consider those Devs to be interested in delivering a quality product, even if the game wasnt finished, they knew how to patch their games and please their Audience. I feel like FTP have never understood that as an idea. 

 

I think Alpha 17 was where this had reached boiling point. it threw the community into civil war, with most dedicated players packing their bags and leaving, Theyd given up hope in the game ever reaching its next stage of development. The youtube comment section on "7 days Alpha day 1" had left a minefield of negative complaints. Since then not a single Dev video to date has reached 100k and before then, reaching 100k wasnt hard... 

Can you be more specific?  Also, who is we?  Just speak for yourself as it just waters down any point you are trying to make.

 

Regarding Alpha 17, are you referring to the vocal minority that fell in love with LBD who got upset it was removed?  Objectively speaking, (# of concurrent players) the game is doing better than it ever has.

 

Edit: From a performance standpoint, game runs well enough for me and looks better then ever.  That doesn't mean there are a few outstanding issues and more optimization to be had.  They did just implement a ton of new graphical changes in Alpha 19 so I would be surprised if they had none.

 

 

 

[JCrook1028]

57 minutes ago, Linkhead2 said:

Since then not a single Dev video to date has reached 100k and before then, reaching 100k wasnt hard

What "Dev" videos are you referring to and what is the 100k referring to?

[AtomicUs5000]

On 8/23/2020 at 6:23 PM, Fox said:

I suggest you take a look at the game Rising World and then rethink what the world could look like in a voxel fully destructible world compared to what we have right now. And keep in mind that Rising World is many years behind 7d2d in development and with a much smaller dev team.

I watched several videos and I'm not seeing what you are saying. The textures are horrible, the terrain smoothing is nasty, tree models are as simple as they get, the trees are even more sparse than in 7D2D. Vehicles would never be able to ride on those bumpy roads. Your screenshot looks 10 times better than that game. What am I missing with this?
I do see that it is likely to get where 7D2D is someday. I wouldn't doubt that 7D2D has paved the way and is the inspiration for other developers in the genre, including the devs of Rising World.... but I still don't get it.

[Laz Man]

28 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

I watched several videos and I'm not seeing what you are saying. The textures are horrible, the terrain smoothing is nasty, tree models are as simple as they get, the trees are even more sparse than in 7D2D. Vehicles would never be able to ride on those bumpy roads. Your screenshot looks 10 times better than that game. What am I missing with this?
I do see that it is likely to get where 7D2D is someday. I wouldn't doubt that 7D2D has paved the way and is the inspiration for other developers in the genre, including the devs of Rising World.... but I still don't get it.

I did take a look at rising world as well after Fox mentioned it and although alot of the videos on steam don't look that impressive, I did run across the following preview video.  It does look graphically impressive but would like to see how it plays.  I have learned along time ago graphical videos can be misleading.  Everything comes at a cost though so it will be interesting what they can cram into their game on top of all that beauty.

 

 

 

[AtomicUs5000]

14 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

I did take a look at rising world as well after Fox mentioned it and although alot of the videos on steam don't look that impressive, I did run across the following preview video.  It does look graphically impressive but would like to see how it plays.  I have learned along time ago graphical videos can be misleading.  Everything comes at a cost though so it will be interesting what they can cram into their game on top of all that beauty.

That does look better, but to me it's the same grass and trees made to look better with cinematic lighting and camera work.
This is what I've been seeing, with this video posted 12 hours ago:

Which is weird. I guess they flatten things out for the city areas?
Here's the typical, bumpy, samey landscape:

 

[Fox]

8 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

That does look better, but to me it's the same grass and trees made to look better with cinematic lighting and camera work.
This is what I've been seeing, with this video posted 12 hours ago:

Which is weird. I guess they flatten things out for the city areas?
Here's the typical, bumpy, samey landscape:

lol, those videos do make the game look laughably horrible, I agree. But the game does in fact look beautiful when not ruined by ppl trying to change the game into something it isn't. You can't find structures like that in the game... those are player made and probably heavily modded too.

 

Maybe I'll post screenshots later when I have more time (need to re-install the game again). Also, Laz Man's video is pretty much what the game looks like right now minus the obvious cinematic lighting and whatnot which in my opinion make it look worse.

[pApA^LeGBa]

How does this look better? There is more grass. That´s about it. Look at the hand and the axe. And no it looks nothing like that. That cinematic lightning is what makes it look better in the video....

 

 

 

[Fox]

32 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

How does this look better? There is more grass. That´s about it. Look at the hand and the axe. And no it looks nothing like that. That cinematic lightning is what makes it look better in the video....

Well, first off, the grass was the only thing I compared this game to and thought was massively better. And I doubt you or anyone else could argue that either. 2nd, I never once said the lighting or other stuff looked better than 7d2d. You have to keep in mind that RW is being made by a tiny team of devs compared to 7d2d and 7d2d had a huge head start and with a very successful kickstarter. RW just needs to rework the UI, AI logic and threat quantity and touch up on the graphics in some places of course, then they're all done. I don't think they're aiming for super realistic or dark themed graphics, as it isn't some apocalyptic or depressing themed game. Content wise, they're pretty much done though, I think. Forging, tanning, weaving, building mechanics, etc... all that stuff is perfect.

 

Also, I imagine, like 7d2d did, RW is using temporary cheap low res assets as placeholders until they can find the time to do it correctly.

[pApA^LeGBa]

I suggest you go and play it then instead? I mean you obviously don´t wanna be happy with 7 days, using a screenshot that does look weird and isn´t normal, to argue about it. (At least i never saw anything looking like that in my game)

 

To top it off you say 10.4 was perfect for you and you would have taken it as finished game and been happy with it, while it looked waaay worse than A19 does and was far away from beeing a complete game.

 

 

[Solomon]

20 hours ago, Raestloz said:

That's the game flushing out unnecessary objects from memory.

But shouldnt that increase the fps and not decrease it?

[Linkhead2]

7 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

What "Dev" videos are you referring to and what is the 100k referring to?

Developer videos on youtube, the 100k being the average viewership. Since A17, the viewership went from 200k+ average viewers to just below 100k, that is a sign of a community decreasing in viewership to me. 

[Solomon]

14 hours ago, Jugginator said:

I can almost safely bet that by lowering the particles slider % will help with that, try that out.

Im not sure i have seen that slider, where it is exactly?

[JCrook1028]

3 minutes ago, Linkhead2 said:

Developer videos on youtube, the 100k being the average viewership. Since A17, the viewership went from 200k+ average viewers to just below 100k, that is a sign of a community decreasing in viewership to me. 

That's why I am asking. Specifically what developer's videos. Cause as far as I know, No dev is even posting videos. The only one that did was MadMole himself and he hasn't done so in a long time. Some of the Q&A team stream on Twitch but that is not a YT vid. So, I ask you to actually answer the question this time. What Dev videos are you referring to?

5 minutes ago, Solomon said:

Im not sure i have seen that slider, where it is exactly?

Quality tab of video options.

[Linkhead2]

1 hour ago, JCrook1028 said:

That's why I am asking. Specifically what developer's videos. Cause as far as I know, No dev is even posting videos. The only one that did was MadMole himself and he hasn't done so in a long time. Some of the Q&A team stream on Twitch but that is not a YT vid. So, I ask you to actually answer the question this time. What Dev videos are you referring to?

Quality tab of video options.

I was referring to the drop in viewership in Joel's videos. What can explain the drop in active viewers, In your opinion? 

[JCrook1028]

6 hours ago, Linkhead2 said:

I was referring to the drop in viewership in Joel's videos. What can explain the drop in active viewers, In your opinion? 

Joel only had over 200k views on GAMEPLAY videos and even there that was not a consistent number. He hasn't made one of those in roughly 2 years. Since the very first days of A17. Now he only makes videos talking about the game. See the difference? Now go watch any other YouTuber who actually makes 7dtd videos and tell me their viewers have been cut in half lol. Facts don't align with your "theory". In fact, total numbers of people playing the game are at record highs.

[Laz Man]

9 hours ago, Fox said:

Well, first off, the grass was the only thing I compared this game to and thought was massively better. And I doubt you or anyone else could argue that either. 2nd, I never once said the lighting or other stuff looked better than 7d2d. You have to keep in mind that RW is being made by a tiny team of devs compared to 7d2d and 7d2d had a huge head start and with a very successful kickstarter. RW just needs to rework the UI, AI logic and threat quantity and touch up on the graphics in some places of course, then they're all done. I don't think they're aiming for super realistic or dark themed graphics, as it isn't some apocalyptic or depressing themed game. Content wise, they're pretty much done though, I think. Forging, tanning, weaving, building mechanics, etc... all that stuff is perfect.

 

Also, I imagine, like 7d2d did, RW is using temporary cheap low res assets as placeholders until they can find the time to do it correctly.

Graphically speaking, I wouldn't play Rising World just for their nicer grass and relatively better FPS if the gameplay is not fun.  I know the title of this thread is A19 first impressions, so I get why you decided to focus on the grass as its one of the first things you see when you spawn in LOL....  However, if you can look past the grass, the PBR lighting and zombie HD textures are graphically impressive.  It is very much a step forward graphically in my opinion.

 

Also,  What is their best looking prefab/POI?  The only prefab/building videos I could find had very plain looking buildings which would turn me off if that was all there was to it.

 

As far temporary placeholders until better stuff is added later, can't really compare what ifs and potentials.  Better to compare what is available now in both games.

 

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I suppose the grass does look nice in that game, but it's like ridiculously lush and green. Switzerland is only greener out of envy. Survival in paradise.

[Kalen]

23 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

I suppose the grass does look nice in that game, but it's like ridiculously lush and green. Switzerland is only greener out of envy. Survival in paradise.

Well, the grass is always greener in the other game