What Happened To This Game?

[MaxTunnerX]

18 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Btw, in another thread you said you play on adventurer difficulty. But adventurer isn't the lowest setting, there is one even lower called scavenger. Now this only will make the zombies easier, but maybe you should use that difficulty setting first before complaining the game is too difficult for you.

That would be very illogical. You always have to compare the same kind of thing to the same kind of thing. I've always used the default difficulty (I believe it used to be nomad before and now it's adventurer), but I'm comparing default difficulty from previous alphas to default difficulty of this alpha and it was much easier for me to survive before. Also keep in mind that only the simple fact of zombies digging increased difficulty by a huge percentage for me and it's not even related to the actual difficulty setting.

 

And like I said, why not just have casual and survival modes? Both groups of players will be unhappy if it stays all in one and it's logical because it's impossible to go both ways at once and extremely difficult to find balance (not to mention the balance still won't attract as many players as 2 separate modes). I also think the game will be clearer in terms of servers and mods if we do it this way. More servers will be vanilla because some servers only use mods to do what the 2 game modes would do.

Edited July 13, 2021 by MaxTunnerX (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

9 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

And like I said, why not just have casual and survival modes? Both groups of players will be unhappy if it stays all in one and it's logical because it's impossible to go both ways at once and extremely difficult to find balance (not to mention the balance still won't attract as many players as 2 separate modes). I also think the game will be clearer in terms of servers and mods if we do it this way. More servers will be vanilla because some servers only use modes to do what the 2 game modes would do.

That is up to Madmole and the development team, but based on MM's past comments, I believe what we have today is their goal and if people want to play it differently, they are going to have to mod the game themselves or just play past Alphas.  They are working on simplifying some aspects of the game, but MM's intent with 7D2D is to have a game where choices matter.  They are working on giving us a solid baseline game, but it is up to us players to make the changes if we want it to be easier or harder.

 

At least that has been my takeaway based on comments made over several Alphas.  I don't claim to know the mind of MM and the development team.

[JCrook1028]

37 minutes ago, Roland said:

Proof that the game is still complex and challenging despite what you often hear from players on this forum with 1000's of hours under their belt who want it to continually evolve into even more complexity and a tougher challenge.

Nah, that's just proof that some people never learn anything even after playing a game for years and years.

[meganoth]

40 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

That would be very illogical. You always have to compare the same kind of thing to the same kind of thing. I've always used the default difficulty (I believe it used to be nomad before and now it's adventurer), but I'm comparing default difficulty from previous alphas to default difficulty of this alpha and it was much easier for me to survive before. Also keep in mind that only the simple fact of zombies digging increased difficulty by a huge percentage for me and it's not even related to the actual difficulty setting.

 

There is no rule or law that a game must not change between alphas. This goes for difficulty as well as overall feel. For example this game was once what some have called a pure sandbox game or what you called a simple zombie crafting game. But that was not because the game was supposed to be a sandbox game, it was because it was unfinished and major parts like the tower-defense game and the RPG game were not (fully) implemented yet.

 

Lots of people complained that they wanted a pure sandbox when later alphas changed the game, but TFP pointed at the kickstarter goals and said (in my words): "This is where we wanted to go, where we promised to go and where we are going".

 

So the game is changing and a difficulty setting that once was good for you might be too difficult or to easy for you the next alpha. A "cop out" you were using for many alphas might be in the game just because they didn't fix it yet and when it goes away you might just notice that you had played the game on a difficulty setting that arguably was too high for you. Digging zombies are not part of the difficulty setting because they are part of a long list of bugs or deficiencies they were fixing.

 

40 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

 

And like I said, why not just have casual and survival modes? Both groups of players will be unhappy if it stays all in one and it's logical because it's impossible to go both ways at once and extremely difficult to find balance (not to mention the balance still won't attract as many players as 2 separate modes).

 

Sure, maybe they can make a casual mode by introducing a difficulty setting below adventurer. Oh wait, it already is in the game but nobody is using it and instead saying the game is too difficult 😁.

 

Now what you seem to want is a game mode that turns off most of the game, like the survival elements, the whole RPG stuff, the horror (as you want half the world 100% secure from the danger), the tower defense. That would then leave a simple shooter with some building, i.e. a better looking minecraft. Quite a tall order. I would say that is easily the domain of a mod and not of a difficulty setting.

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[MaxTunnerX]

24 minutes ago, meganoth said:

That would then leave a simple shooter with some building, i.e. a better looking minecraft. Quite a tall order. I would say that is easily the domain of a mod and not of a difficulty setting.

 

Yes, casual mode would be a better looking minecraft. That's also why I bought this game long ago and why I enjoyed it. And I think nobody will get offended when customers actually want less from the devs rather than more. Although I understand that if you develp a game in the style of "no backup jus tkeep rolling" it is actually difficult to revert things or remove them. I do hope TFP sitll have the earleir alphas on backup tho. As for the mod, I have never found it. If you personally know 1 mod that transforms the game the way I want it whilest keeping the game as vanilla as possible, give me the link, I will happily try it.

 

  

45 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

That is up to Madmole and the development team, but based on MM's past comments, I believe what we have today is their goal and if people want to play it differently, they are going to have to mod the game themselves or just play past Alphas.  They are working on simplifying some aspects of the game, but MM's intent with 7D2D is to have a game where choices matter.  They are working on giving us a solid baseline game, but it is up to us players to make the changes if we want it to be easier or harder.

 

At least that has been my takeaway based on comments made over several Alphas.  I don't claim to know the mind of MM and the development team.

I understand the logic. The only thing I want the dev team to do is not automatically overwrite everything they're doing and instead make a branch of the game whenever it feels neccessary. You know, most things I'm asking for had already been in the game before but devs decided to steamroll over them instead of letting people choose. I think the time has come for this game to branch out, unless they want to make it a niche game for 1 % of players or something. Also every alpha needs more and more modding (if you want to play casual) so I wouldn't really count on people to keep doing that. They will much rather "hibernate" (wait for update), downgrade or leave, which is a shame I think. Especially when we already had what these people wanted before.

Edited July 13, 2021 by MaxTunnerX (see edit history)

[Laim]

On 7/9/2021 at 2:31 PM, Fanatical_Meat said:

I completely agree. IMO this game gets boring fast if you do single player.

I don’t know if this is true, I just started playing again and I’m enjoying single player more than co-op.  But thats just my opinion. 

[meganoth]

32 minutes ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Yes, casual mode would be a better looking minecraft. That's also why I bought this game long ago and why I enjoyed it. And I think nobody will get offended when customers actually want less from the devs rather than more. Although I understand that if you develp a game in the style of "no backup jus tkeep rolling" it is actually difficult to revert things or remove them. I do hope TFP sitll have the earleir alphas on backup tho. As for the mod, I have never found it. If you personally know 1 mod that transforms the game the way I want it whilest keeping the game as vanilla as possible, give me the link, I will happily try it.

 

Mods that do not extend the game but narrow it down are seldom and I wouldn't know them. But just **one** mod that exactly does everything you want will never exist (except for the lucky persons able to write their mods themselves).

 

While this game is in alpha, mods will be short in supply and ephemeral anyway.

 

One possibility is to wait for the game to go final, let it simmer for a few more months and then check out mods available on steam workshop. Hopefully mods will grow in numbers and above all are easier to find once steam workshop is on.

 

You can go back to older alphas right down to 8.8 in steam, but it isn't trivial. You have to carefully wipe old settings, it may be that some of them don't run anymore... I was meaning to try out those older versions for a long time but never got around to actually doing it, so my information about them is very sketchy

 

You can use creative mode any which way to simplify the game, as you already do. You can even set up some rules, so you are  not overpowered immediately. Like giving yourself a budget for the stuff you get out of creative that slowly increases with level.

 

 

 

Edited July 13, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Roland]

CASUAL MODE

 

Overall Settings

 

Difficulty: Scavenger  (This is the easiest setting in the game and disables the zombies from going into rage mode. Zombies die much easier needing fewer hits)

XP: 300% (This will help you earn skillpoints the quickest so you can get all your perks sooner)

Zombie Block Damage: 25% (This makes base defense easier and also lets you shut doors behind you in POIs and stay safe for longer so you don't get overwhelmed)

Blood Moon: Frequency 14 days Range 0 (This reduces the urgency for building and prepping for the blood moon.)

Loot: 300% (This will bring in more food and water and ammo for an easier survival experience.

Zombie Speed: Walk day and night (This will make night time less stressful)

 

Special Setting for Days 1-3

 

Zombie Spawning: Off (This will give you time to do some exploring and building and getting established before the zombies start coming. After Day 3, the next time you log on to play, change the setting to on so that zombies start spawning.

 

I think this will yield a much easier and simpler game that is still mostly vanilla.

[Morloc]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

the game is

 

3 hours ago, Roland said:

for

 

3 hours ago, Roland said:

players

3 hours ago, Roland said:

with 1000's of hours under their belt who want it to continually evolve into even more complexity and a tougher challenge.

 

Well, gotta' hand it to Roland. He knows what he's talking about.

 

 

😉

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[Roland]

1 minute ago, Morloc said:

Roland

 

1 minute ago, Morloc said:

knows

 

1 minute ago, Morloc said:

about

 

1 minute ago, Morloc said:

Morloc

 

More than you know....

[MaxTunnerX]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Mods that do not extend the game but narrow it down are seldom and I wouldn't know them. But just **one** mod that exactly does everything you want will never exist (except for the lucky persons able to write their mods themselves).

 

You can go back to older alphas right down to 8.8 in steam, but it isn't trivial. You have to carefully wipe old settings, it may be that some of them don't run anymore... I was meaning to try out those older versions for a long time but never got around to actually doing it, so my information about them is very sketchy

I was only talking about 1 mod because you specifically said a mod would easily do what I wanted. I'm not the one here claiming it's like that.

 

As for older alphas, yes, that's a partial solution, but the reason why I want casual and survival mode is that downgrading to older alphas gives you the good old things back, but removes the good news things. In other words, you're basically choosing whether you like more living with a leg or an arm, can't have both. If the game had those 2 modes, people would have the base of their experience even in newer versions, that means with all the optimization and quality of life improvements. If, and only if the people want more depth to these branches would I redirect them to mods. Making people mod the game to basically make a whole branch of (especially alpha) game is asking too much of them I think, they should have a larger home base, that would suit most people and then have mods for the small groups of players that don't find themselves in it. And if there ever is another big group of players again, they can have another branch (battle royale or whatever), after all game copies make the money, so the more people play the more the game can be developed.

Edited July 13, 2021 by MaxTunnerX (see edit history)

[Kam R.]

I have a feeling that the common denominator you're asking for is a tad too low.

 

I've been exploring a bunch of the overhaul mods while waiting for a20 recently. Most of them add stuff. and difficulty. and crafting complexity.

Only one I've seen that seems to revert to simpler, older game mechanics seems to be "Classic Style Hardcore". But that one would still be too harsh by your standards because it has a heavy focus on struggle for food/weather survival. Also barely anything to loot. (It's different fun! :] )

 

The general tendency in this community seems to be towards less casual. The general tendency I even see with the many new players popping in our server is that they get bored faster every alpha and frequently start discussions about moving on from vanilla and get modding more stuff in or leaving the server fast never to return.

But they at least seem to have fun with the game while it lasts for them, so as a common denominator it's probably not in a bad spot as is.

 

Your only hope will be a mod that makes stuff easier and simpler, just like for (what I perceive to be) the majority of the game's fans the big overhaul mods are the only hope of continued enjoyment.

[pApA^LeGBa]

I disagree with 300% XP beeing easier for beginners. The first hordenight will overwhelm beginners due to the high gamestage from the 300% XP. @Roland

 

New players tend to do longer days. They might get demolishers on their first bloodmoon with 300%XP on day 14.

Edited July 13, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

I was only talking about 1 mod because you specifically said a mod would easily do what I wanted. I'm not the one here claiming it's like that.

 

"that is easily the domain of a mod" is a quite different message than "that is easy to do with a mod".

 

3 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

 

As for older alphas, yes, that's a partial solution, but the reason why I want casual and survival mode is that downgrading to older alphas gives you the good old things back, but removes the good news things. In other words, you're basically choosing whether you like more living with a leg or an arm, can't have both. If the game had those 2 modes, people would have the base of their experience even in newer versions, that means with all the optimization and quality of life improvements. If, and only if the people want more depth to these branches would I redirect them to mods. Making people mod the game to basically make a whole branch of (especially alpha) game is asking too much of them I think, they should have a larger home base, that would suit most people and then have mods for the small groups of players that don't find themselves in it. And if there ever is another big group of players again, they can have another branch (battle royale or whatever), after all game copies make the money, so the more people play the more the game can be developed.

 

A common sentiment among players who don't like the direction the game is taking. They want the old game, but with this and that feature added. Only that which features they want and which they don't want are often very different from player to player. Because TFP made a lot of experiments and let players try them out it feels like this game is a grab bag of features galore but the final game will only be a small selection out of it. But TFP can't make and support a game with hundreds of interchangable features and balance that all. The mix-and-match of all alphas is a nice dream but impossible to do. 

 

Try out what Roland suggested (except for the 300% XP). Maybe it is what you want, maybe it is so close that the rest can be done by just asking a modder for a minute of his time. 

 

[Roland]

6 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

I disagree with 300% XP beeing easier for beginners.

 

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

Try out what Roland suggested (except for the 300% XP).

 

@MaxTunnerX Don't listen to them. Try the 300% XP and see how it goes. If it turns out to be too tough THEN ignore it. But you specifically outlined how it took 3 points to get to the soup recipe you wanted to make and that took a lot of playtime to get there. 300% XP will get you your perks faster like you want it. It will make your gamestage go up faster but you are playing on Scavenger so those tougher zombies will still go down a lot easier to that fully perked weapon you have. That's why you play on Scavenger. These guys are thinking high gamestage on Nomad or Warrior but that's not you. Play 300% xp on scavenger and you'll thank me.

8 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

If the game had those 2 modes, people would have the base of their experience even in newer versions

 

The game does have those modes plus several intermediate ones. It's called playing with the settings to get the mode that works for you. I outlined some settings you could try to get a casual mode that reduces the challenge-- basically down to zero threat for the first three days...

[pApA^LeGBa]

I am actually thinking scavenger. I remember my very first horde. I was overwhelmed with 100%XP on scavenger or whatever it was called back then.

Edited July 14, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[MaxTunnerX]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

 

@MaxTunnerX Don't listen to them. Try the 300% XP and see how it goes. If it turns out to be too tough THEN ignore it. But you specifically outlined how it took 3 points to get to the soup recipe you wanted to make and that took a lot of playtime to get there. 300% XP will get you your perks faster like you want it. It will make your gamestage go up faster but you are playing on Scavenger so those tougher zombies will still go down a lot easier to that fully perked weapon you have. That's why you play on Scavenger. These guys are thinking high gamestage on Nomad or Warrior but that's not you. Play 300% xp on scavenger and you'll thank me.

 

The game does have those modes plus several intermediate ones. It's called playing with the settings to get the mode that works for you. I outlined some settings you could try to get a casual mode that reduces the challenge-- basically down to zero threat for the first three days...

I've been using the 300% XP for some time of course. There's just a ton of perks and it would take forever to get them so it's the natural thing to do when you don't want to spend your whole life in a game. Can't say 300% is fast enough and I don't understand why it's capped at 300%. The classic MMOs have the XP rates from 1x to like 9999x. But anyway, that is not really my issue. My issue is that zombies dig down, that some zombies still run even when you specifically say they must only walk and stuff like that. Now I mostly play the game without any enemies at all because all the specials started spawning in and they really annoy me. Difficulty does not enter into it. They can still dig or run no matter the difficulty, you know.

 

As for the skill system, I liked the game way more before it got in the game. I just got resources and/or recipes and could go crafting right away, not have to level up stupid stuff like agility, perception etc. first and then get the perk and then maybe get the recipe or spend another point in that to get it. I do like that some recipes can be found so you don't have to purchase the perks, but I don't know how many of them are actually like this.

 

As for what casual mode would be for me, it would be zombies not attacking blocks at all, only players. Possibly make them only attack players when they're close to them and/or in self defence, completely disabling their laser homing on players. Crafting/digging XP would be boosted a lot so you wouldn't need to kill zombies to level up normally. And the zombies themselves would of course respect the server setting and only walk if players chose to or there would only be normal zombies (no dogs, cops, vultures etc.). The rest of the game can stay including water/food because that's just normal stuff, maybe just make characters in casual hungry/thirsty slower that's all.

 

As for the survival mode, it would be basically copy paste of what the game is right now or maybe a bit harder. I'm pretty sure that after casuals leave survival, the rest of the players will very much like devs to increase difficulty because that's why they play this game and there will be no other side to cater to and compromise with.

Edited July 14, 2021 by MaxTunnerX (see edit history)

[Boidster]

7 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

As for what casual mode would be for me, it would be zombies not attacking blocks at all, only players. Possibly make them only attack players when they're close to them and/or in self defence, completely disabling their laser homing on players. Crafting/digging XP would be boosted a lot so you wouldn't need to kill zombies to level up normally.

 

I think a game mode like that is not and has never been the vision of TFP. But things you are asking for should not be too difficult to do in a mod. If you have no interest in learning how to do it, hopefully somebody shares your vision and makes a casual mode mod you can enjoy. I can suggest some direct XML changes if you want which will make the game start behaving like you want. No modding skill needed, just a text editor.

[BFT2020]

8 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

As for the skill system, I liked the game way more before it got in the game. I just got resources and/or recipes and could go crafting right away, not have to level up stupid stuff like agility, perception etc. first and then get the perk and then maybe get the recipe or spend another point in that to get it. I do like that some recipes can be found so you don't have to purchase the perks, but I don't know how many of them are actually like this.

 

As for what casual mode would be for me, it would be zombies not attacking blocks at all, only players. Possibly make them only attack players when they're close to them and/or in self defence, completely disabling their laser homing on players. Crafting/digging XP would be boosted a lot so you wouldn't need to kill zombies to level up normally. And the zombies themselves would of course respect the server setting and only walk if players chose to or there would only be normal zombies (no dogs, cops, vultures etc.). The rest of the game can stay including water/food because that's just normal stuff, maybe just make characters in casual hungry/thirsty slower that's all.

You can still find recipes and books to craft those items, without ever going into perks.  The perk option is only quicker in some cases (if you can't find it randomly yet in loot or at the traders) and gives you additional bonuses that the recipes besides themselves cannot give you.  In fact, some items are only able to be crafted via finding the recipes for it.  The other downside is that without any perk points, you can only craft a level 1 version of that item.  But that falls under the concept of decisions and consequences of our decisions.

 

Your version of casual mode seems just to be an adult version of Minecraft.  Which is fine as I am a big supporter of people playing the game they want to, not being forced to do it.  But that is something that I don't think TFP want to spend developer time and resources to do when they have so much more to do to get the game they want out there in its finished state.  This is one of those things that fall under the concept of having modders out there do these types of modes / changes.

[Morloc]

8 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

The classic MMOs have the XP rates from 1x to like 9999x.

 

I'm doing a research paper for my yoga class. Could you please give me an example of one of those classics?

 

Thank you,

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

[MaxTunnerX]

5 minutes ago, Morloc said:

Could you please give me an example of one of those classics?

How about 2 then? Lineage 2 and WoW.

 

1 hour ago, Boidster said:

 

I think a game mode like that is not and has never been the vision of TFP. But things you are asking for should not be too difficult to do in a mod. If you have no interest in learning how to do it, hopefully somebody shares your vision and makes a casual mode mod you can enjoy. I can suggest some direct XML changes if you want which will make the game start behaving like you want. No modding skill needed, just a text editor.

 

Problem with mods is that this game is still alpha and every alpha these mods basically stop wroking. Some of the mods like "remove special zombies" only spams console errors now, so no, mods are not the answer.

Edited July 14, 2021 by MaxTunnerX (see edit history)

[Roland]

 

9 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Can't say 300% is fast enough and I don't understand why it's capped at 300%.

 

Just bypass the cap.  While in game

1) Press F1

2) Type: giveselfxp 500000

3) Press F1 again

 

Open the user interface and shop for perks.

 

Need to clear the area of zombies?

 

1) Press F1

2) Type: killall

3) Press F1

 

Peace.

[Kam R.]

1 hour ago, MaxTunnerX said:

How about 2 then? Lineage 2 and WoW.

 

 

Problem with mods is that this game is still alpha and every alpha these mods basically stop wroking. Some of the mods like "remove special zombies" only spams console errors now, so no, mods are not the answer.

So.. wait til mods can be stable and don't have to adapt to a changing base game anymore (which a lot of them do - incredible dedication some of these modders have!).

Or mod yourself, I already see the helpful people of the modding community spring to help you learn.

 

And/or play something else.

From everything you write here it seems like it's just not your game anymore and that's maybe sad, but not the end of the world or anything.

[Boidster]

1 hour ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Problem with mods is that this game is still alpha and every alpha these mods basically stop wroking. Some of the mods like "remove special zombies" only spams console errors now, so no, mods are not the answer.

 

I think you may be overstating the case somewhat, since I still use mods I wrote for A17 just fine in A19. But set that aside - several people have attempted to help you in this thread, but it's becoming clear to me that you don't actually want help. You want TFP to do what you want them to do. I think that is a losing proposition, but best of luck.

[BFT2020]

4 hours ago, MaxTunnerX said:

Problem with mods is that this game is still alpha and every alpha these mods basically stop wroking. Some of the mods like "remove special zombies" only spams console errors now, so no, mods are not the answer.

 

A simple solution is just to reduce the spawn chance in the xml files to 0% for special zombies, or even modify the spawn groups so those zombies don't spawn at all.  While mods can be broken during the Alpha development of this game (which is not a surprise), there is a robust modding community on this forum that will help you with making those changes yourself and help you track down errors if your first attempt doesn't work out smoothly.