Scripted world vs Sandbox and other feedback

[Elwin00]

Hello,

 

I came back to playing 7DTD after around 5-6 years. Much has changed and the game is much more polished with many great mechanics than what I remember and also with many more settings to change the gameplay/difficulty to one's liking. Very well done!

 

One thing that had bothered me previously and that I've found out became even worse now is how scripted the game feels. I always hated blood moon hordes (esp. on higher difficulties) because of the grind; to prepare the defense and to repair everything afterwards has always felt just too much. Thankfully it can be turned off now.

 

After playing for a few days I don't like POI gameplay either; all zombies are passively waiting, often in such places so as to be overlooked that they can ambush the player. Many are set up on upper floors and they drop down on some trigger. This feels very scripted and designed for dramatic effect. They tend to be completely oblivious to certain events, like shooting bolts next to them or bashing through a locked door with a huge axe, but then waking up if you happen to sneak too close from behind.

(other mechanics that fall into the same category are the dog packs every 5 days or screamers spawning because of high activity in an area)

 

I have always expected an open-world game such as 7DTD to be more of a sandbox. Things should happen due to how the world mechanics interact with each other and not because they are scripted to occur. For example: zombies, who individually are slow, dumb creatures, should have a way to be dangerous but in a way that is plausible, not because from time-to-time the game comes to a point where the player should have a good fight.

 

Let me go deeper into the example with zombies (that btw is my main gripe with the game right now). Instead of spawning zombies all the time, zombies could be spawned into the world when a game starts. New zombies would be pouring into the world from outside: edges of the map and perhaps some special places inside of the world like some tunnels or bridges whose other end is outside of the world map. Rate of how many new zombies enter the world could be increasing with time.

 

Next, zombies would tend to keep moving (this is to make sure they would diffuse into the world map). They would tend to follow each other and herd together, which is how they would progressively become more dangerous. (they could get increasing speed bump and damage bonus when more and more of them are near each other) There would be these hordes that would keep growing and moving around; players would be incentivised to deal with the hordes before they grow too large or before they stumble upon players keeps etc. And there could be multitudes of ways how to deal with the hordes; shoot all zombies, split them up, have them chase you/something to change direction, lead them to a mine field etc. Not all zombies would always have to stick to other zombies; some of them could be "solitary" and tend to go away from other zombies (this would mean the world would be populated more evenly, with a lot of individual zombies aimlessly walking around, entering houses if door is left open; some of them could eventually become sleeping zombies).

 

What would this mean for immersion? It would feel more natural. Sometimes a daytime horde comes from a direction I just came from. There's no way they could have been there two minutes ago. I could clear an area, then build some obstacles and be quite confident that there are no enemies around. Sure, eventually some would trickle in but that would take time. I could clear up to some distance around my base before nightfall and then happily and loudly party all night, why not? I have actively prevented any trouble by doing the sweep but right now I will likely have to deal with a screamer visitor and their friends during night time and there is no way to prevent it unless I accept to quietly sit still all night.

 

I think at this point everyone gets the idea 🙂

 

A few assorted thoughts:

- at this point in development I don't expect the developers can (or want) to change the existing system, but perhaps it could be implemented alongside as a different game mode?

- it should be technically possible to simulate thousands of zombies in memory if they don't have to be rendered on screen

- if not, there are options: simulate hordes as one entity and tracking how many zombies joined, or merging many simple zombies into fewer higher tier zombies (same punch with less CPU)

- noise system would have to be revamped to draw those hordes from a larger distance with very loud noises like explosions and gunfire and give more options to create just-right noises by the player as distractions. Also to make the gameplay more challenging.

- there should be some way to scout large hordes from great distances (lower-LOD crowd of zombies, dust in the air, visible tracks on the ground etc), finding the biggest herds before they find you should be the core of the late game play

- something like "hive" mind for large hordes where they would be more persistent and more sort of intelligent the bigger they would be, if they would catch the scent of a player.

- I am fully aware of technical complexity of such system; to design it, to implement it and to tweak it to the point where it would work as expected. It is magnitudes more complex than to add some scripted spawning.

 

In closing, I am aware that the main premise of this game is to kill the player (hence 7 days to _die_). This is perhaps how the game was envisioned and designed; to be dramatic and horror-like. Doing it in a more sandbox way doesn't mean it would have to lose these properties, on the contrary it could amplify them. There is a difference between a cheap "scare" horror and a masterpiece that instills real fear 🙂 Same difference as between "oh that zombie around the corner scared the **** out of me" and "oh no, this horde is way too big for me to deal with right now and it's hanging out near my base".

 

[Laz Man]

Good post, I agree some of the scripted events need some tweaking but feel they are an overall  net positive addition to the game world.  Regardless,  not everyone likes dungeon type POIs so I understand your point of view. 

 

As a side note there are a number of non questable POIs that are designed to be explorable from multiple different directions.

 

I disagree regarding bloodmoons as its the biggest driving force that gives the player a sense of urgency to use their time wisely in game...or die.  It also is a good way to blend in building and tower defense mechanics into the game.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Matt115]

Okay i will make small "what if Mat Pat was lore designer" : i can't agree about passive POI's zombie. Because 7dtd zombies are virus zombie not magical zombies. So being passive is the best option for 90% of time- they need to conserve energy for later so they wait for another victim. So they sit in building to avoid sun too. Why? because sun make body decay faster + viruses don't like hot temperatures. So i accept that. Well screamer? well that is interesting because she , spider and wright are mutant - so maybe this it type of bioweapon?  So maybe screamer can hunt people because she can. About dogs and birds- this sounds a little bit like ... cod4  because proably this works like- dogs pack just going around looking for flesh so they can find players .

2 hours ago, Elwin00 said:

 

 

Let me go deeper into the example with zombies (that btw is my main gripe with the game right now). Instead of spawning zombies all the time, zombies could be spawned into the world when a game starts. New zombies would be pouring into the world from outside: edges of the map and perhaps some special places inside of the world like some tunnels or bridges whose other end is outside of the world map. Rate of how many new zombies enter the world could be increasing with time

 

 

 

This sound fun but... we only have small chunk of world loaded- so more info about zombies etc. - game will works worst for most players- well most people on the world have weaker PC that PS5. 

2 hours ago, Elwin00 said:

 

 

What would this mean for immersion? It would feel more natural. Sometimes a daytime horde comes from a direction I just came from. There's no way they could have been there two minutes ago. I could clear an area, then build some obstacles and be quite confident that there are no enemies around. Sure, eventually some would trickle in but that would take time. I could clear up to some distance around my base before nightfall and then happily and loudly party all night, why not? I have actively prevented any trouble by doing the sweep but right now I will likely have to deal with a screamer visitor and their friends during night time and there is no way to prevent it unless I accept to quietly sit still all night.

 

 

This sound good but... can't work in 7dtd works : i will give you example why- in days gone zombies can attack bandits camps- they came kill them and go to sleep . nothing big right? but in days gone word is statistic- so zombies will not ruin everything ( this would be bad for performace and gameplay because bandits would be almost impossible to meet). Okay more problems - in days gone zombie hords have they own routs - in 7dtd it would be hell to make this because world is random generated+ they could just destroying pois because they would have problem to go around so perfrmance + gameplay problem because a lot of pois would just collapse destroing loot.

3 hours ago, Elwin00 said:

 

A few assorted thoughts:

- at this point in development I don't expect the developers can (or want) to change the existing system, but perhaps it could be implemented alongside as a different game mode?

- it should be technically possible to simulate thousands of zombies in memory if they don't have to be rendered on screen

- if not, there are options: simulate hordes as one entity and tracking how many zombies joined, or merging many simple zombies into fewer higher tier zombies (same punch with less CPU)

- noise system would have to be revamped to draw those hordes from a larger distance with very loud noises like explosions and gunfire and give more options to create just-right noises by the player as distractions. Also to make the gameplay more challenging.

- there should be some way to scout large hordes from great distances (lower-LOD crowd of zombies, dust in the air, visible tracks on the ground etc), finding the biggest herds before they find you should be the core of the late game play

- something like "hive" mind for large hordes where they would be more persistent and more sort of intelligent the bigger they would be, if they would catch the scent of a player.

- I am fully aware of technical complexity of such system; to design it, to implement it and to tweak it to the point where it would work as expected. It is magnitudes more complex than to add some scripted spawning.

 

 

 

1. well they want to finish this as fast as they can .

2. even this nope because still this is a lot of informations and maps are too big and "dynamic" for this.

3. Well there is a big problem with "power" of zombies-  we have gamestage so change them into bigger tier coudn't work- because lets say 5 normal zombie will mix into wright- well kill 10 zombies ir more easy that kill 2 wight because stunn, bleeding etc.

4. This would work  as - a lot of  shooting = zombie horde respawn nearby. 

5. well this sound good but hard for preformance- even in days gone it coudn't work good because performance. In nza you know that zombie attack will be soon because mist apear but zombie just respawning nearby and player is trap in small location

5. well this is more subjective but i hate " smart" zombies- well i think sometimes stupid zombie is the best zombie - like if you go somewhere high they will just stay nearby and look at you doing nothing.

6. well you have good idea but it is too late to add something big like that. It would be great in sequel if devs dedided for example - to limit destroyable things to wood blocks, junk, doors and player placed + make higer requirements. But don't give i think your idea is good but it need to wait for sequel 

[zztong]

On 11/1/2021 at 8:48 PM, Matt115 said:

This sound fun but... we only have small chunk of world loaded- so more info about zombies etc. - game will works worst for most players- well most people on the world have weaker PC that PS5. 

 

I think the gist of the idea was that the game's server could track the location of several "wandering horde" markers as they move about the game map and perhaps a count of the number of zombies it represents. That's basically 4 integers of storage and a little CPU to update the numbers every once in a while.

 

After some short period of time, the server moves the marker some reasonable distance and perhaps adds a few zombies. As it moves around and the number of Z's increase, perhaps the server decides to "split" a marker into two, up to some maximum number of markers, like 8.

 

When a PC and a marker get near each other, the server can then translate the marker into a wandering horde.

Anyways, that's what I envisioned his suggestion to be. Not necessarily more Z's than the game already instantiates, but some underlying reason and pattern to wandering hordes other than the game concluding it is time to place one near a PC.

 

That said, I wonder if the end results would be very similar, unless the markers provided the possibility of other kinds of events.  For instance, perhaps when the max number of markers is full of zombies, a horde night is triggered. Or, perhaps the markers are all attempting to converge on some location (or POI), which might trigger some event? At this point I'm just riffing on what I think the theme was from the original post.

[zztong]

On 11/1/2021 at 5:25 PM, Elwin00 said:

to prepare the defense and to repair everything afterwards has always felt just too much.

 

I can empathize. I sometimes get tired of maintaining a horde base and that's one reason I don't always build one. Have you tried taking on a horde in the open? It is quite doable, though the experience comes slower until you really have the gear and ammo to "rock and roll." The various mobility/reload skills become really handy.

 

On 11/1/2021 at 5:25 PM, Elwin00 said:

- it should be technically possible to simulate thousands of zombies in memory if they don't have to be rendered on screen

- if not, there are options: simulate hordes as one entity and tracking how many zombies joined, or merging many simple zombies into fewer higher tier zombies (same punch with less CPU)

 

An 8k map generated by KingGen typically places around 3,250 POIs. If the average POI has 15 Z's, you've got around 50,000 Zs to track. If you use the CompoPack, it would be 100,000 Zs or more. Yes, technically possible in terms of storage (location 3 integers, type of Z  is 1 integer) is like 7k to track them all. Making them mobile on a strategic map means looping through each one every so often. If you make that frequent then the game will suffer. If you want them all to move within each of their POIs, like from room to room, then you're doomed. The game can't keep every POI in memory. That's why only a region around players is relevant.

 

Taking a step back, easily 99% (and more) of that has no relation to player, so to what effect is it worth tracking that many Z's? I think the eventual and planned feature to have a few wandering Z's within an active POI might help out here.

 

Your second point I cited (and referred to in the post before this) does seem possible and perhaps compelling if it leads to more advanced events beyond not having a wandering horde show up behind you.

 

I dunno. Just my opinion. Regards.

[Matt115]

6 hours ago, zztong said:

 

I think the gist of the idea was that the game's server could track the location of several "wandering horde" markers as they move about the game map and perhaps a count of the number of zombies it represents. That's basically 4 integers of storage and a little CPU to update the numbers every once in a while.

 

After some short period of time, the server moves the marker some reasonable distance and perhaps adds a few zombies. As it moves around and the number of Z's increase, perhaps the server decides to "split" a marker into two, up to some maximum number of markers, like 8.

 

When a PC and a marker get near each other, the server can then translate the marker into a wandering horde.

Anyways, that's what I envisioned his suggestion to be. Not necessarily more Z's than the game already instantiates, but some underlying reason and pattern to wandering hordes other than the game concluding it is time to place one near a PC.

 

That said, I wonder if the end results would be very similar, unless the markers provided the possibility of other kinds of events.  For instance, perhaps when the max number of markers is full of zombies, a horde night is triggered. Or, perhaps the markers are all attempting to converge on some location (or POI), which might trigger some event? At this point I'm just riffing on what I think the theme was from the original post.

Well honestly this coudn't works good in let say cities- because you can see a lot from highter places so people would complain if "they can't see hordes" or gyrocopter would be pain because it will force game to sprawn and despawn  zombies while flying etc. you know  if you adding something to game it can influence on something. 

Well  i honestly was thinking about hordes in the past but i thought few problems : 

1. number of zombie depends on power of your pc - idk how it was make but it works. So this would make problems

2. well  blood moon horde is  great idea from technical point of view. because you can create ilusion of "big " horde but in reality zombie is small number but respawning so fast so you can't see this but in day i would be better seen.

 

But it can be done but it is too late for that. So my suggestion : remember about it and write this when sequel will be annouced

[zztong]

2 hours ago, Matt115 said:

But it can be done but it is too late for that. So my suggestion : remember about it and write this when sequel will be annouced

 

It's Elwin00's suggestion. I don't have anything invested in it. I'm not even sure it would yield a significantly different, or improved, experience. And, what you suggest is the default. This is a forum. We discuss to discuss, I guess.

 

It just seemed clear to me that with the right interpretation, his suggestion could be largely implemented using existing game mechanics. That is, the game continues to place wandering hordes as it currently does, but the decision of when to do that changes from being time-based to being based on some hidden movement mechanic.

 

As for the issues you raise, do people complain today about being unable to see newly placed wandering hordes from upon high? I've no idea. I've not seen it, but I only play on one community server. If you say so, I believe you.

 

Does flying a gyrocopter force the game to spawn or despawn zombies? Certainly, depending on your relative altitude and distance to POIs you can even trigger Zombie Volumes to populate. Does proximity to the ground matter for a Gyroscope and spawning a wandering horde? I've never tried to study it. I'd guess the circumstances should be the same with, or without, Elwin00's suggestion.

[Matt115]

1 hour ago, zztong said:

 

It's Elwin00's suggestion. I don't have anything invested in it. I'm not even sure it would yield a significantly different, or improved, experience. And, what you suggest is the default. This is a forum. We discuss to discuss, I guess.

 

It just seemed clear to me that with the right interpretation, his suggestion could be largely implemented using existing game mechanics. That is, the game continues to place wandering hordes as it currently does, but the decision of when to do that changes from being time-based to being based on some hidden movement mechanic.

 

As for the issues you raise, do people complain today about being unable to see newly placed wandering hordes from upon high? I've no idea. I've not seen it, but I only play on one community server. If you say so, I believe you.

 

Does flying a gyrocopter force the game to spawn or despawn zombies? Certainly, depending on your relative altitude and distance to POIs you can even trigger Zombie Volumes to populate. Does proximity to the ground matter for a Gyroscope and spawning a wandering horde? I've never tried to study it. I'd guess the circumstances should be the same with, or without, Elwin00's suggestion.

1. Well i misstake you with him sorry 😅Yeah i just talk in this way to inform new memebers of forum that TFP want to fininh 7dtd as fast as they can . So the best option is too suggest small changes like : redesign some traders bases for example.

2. Well this looks similiar but it will be diffrent to make- car and bus are vehicles but have diffrent engines etc so i think this would be problem.

3. Small but funny story- in one alpha i were somewhere and my friend in diffrent location. he was riding on bike when he saw "dark zone" and fall under map XD. So - more players with diffrent PC= more strange problems.

4. Yep , some zombies which are too afar from you can be despawn- so you can run away from zombie horde  using 4x4 =  they will respawn somewhere closer but still this could be problem.  i think now it can't because if i good remember game check XYZ so nope. But if you want to make in his way- zombie will respawn somewhere  ( it depends on ties of map not on your position) it will be mess

[Elwin00]

On 11/1/2021 at 11:31 PM, Laz Man said:

Good post, I agree some of the scripted events need some tweaking but feel they are an overall  net positive addition to the game world.

 

Scripted events are quite predictable, especially if one plays for longer time. Otherwise, it might still be fun. In the meantime I encountered also houses that were completely empty. So there is quite a lot of variation, which is good!

 

On 11/1/2021 at 11:31 PM, Laz Man said:

I disagree regarding bloodmoons as its the biggest driving force that gives the player a sense of urgency to use their time wisely in game...or die.  It also is a good way to blend in building and tower defense mechanics into the game.

@Laz Man  Regarding hordes, I don't like the grind, as I explained. Could be that it's more fun to confront the horde "head on", as @zztong suggested. I just never got that far in the game that I would be sufficiently armed for that. Something to try later, I guess.

 

@Matt115
I didn't want to go into implementation details, I just presented a broad idea. Sure there's a lot that would have to be solved from the design perspective.

 

Good point with the bandits! That would be shame if the zombies would destroy the bandits before the player. But bandits are also not helpless, right? They could fight the zombies unless there were too many of them. Actually, that sounds like another good mechanic that would naturally follow from the world itself: players could send a horde into the bandit camp to help them defeat them. I like it!

 

And don't worry about performance, what I have described is nothing too fancy to simulate on a contemporary gaming PC or any PC for that matter. As @zztong explained, there are ways to simulate hundreds of thousands of zombies quite efficiently.

 

On 11/4/2021 at 2:26 PM, zztong said:

Have you tried taking on a horde in the open? It is quite doable, though the experience comes slower until you really have the gear and ammo to "rock and roll."

I never got that far, but worth a try. Thanks for the tip!

 

On 11/4/2021 at 2:26 PM, zztong said:

Taking a step back, easily 99% (and more) of that has no relation to player, so to what effect is it worth tracking that many Z's? I think the eventual and planned feature to have a few wandering Z's within an active POI might help out here.

You are, of course, right. It would probably not be necessary to simulate every step of every zombie. What I presented was an idea how the game could work on high level. How that idea would be implemented in the game is entirely different question.

 

It would probably be enough if the game "moved" the individual zombies and/or groups of zombies every so often (only those too far from the player, obviously). For that it wouldn't have to keep detailed representations of every POI in memory, I had something much simpler in mind, e.g. if a zombie would be passing by a POI, there would be some chance it would enter the POI and stay inside; its exact location within the POI would be determined only if a player would actually approach that POI.

 

On 11/4/2021 at 1:50 PM, zztong said:

After some short period of time, the server moves the marker some reasonable distance and perhaps adds a few zombies. As it moves around and the number of Z's increase, perhaps the server decides to "split" a marker into two, up to some maximum number of markers, like 8.

You explained it very well and it could work as you described. What I had in mind was something slightly different. The hordes would not just grow, they would only grow if there were other zombies (individual or smaller groups) close to its path. They would _tend_ to join, but most would not join or perhaps eventually split away, otherwise it would be a few big hordes sucking all other zombies in a few game days. It would have to be probably balanced somehow.

 

20 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Yeah i just talk in this way to inform new memebers of forum that TFP want to fininh 7dtd as fast as they can

I completely understand this. That's why I suggested that this could be done as a separate game mode, even after the release.

I also think the developers might have a different vision and for them current state makes most sense. If that's the case, we have to accept it and go with it... or find a different game 😉

Edited November 5, 2021 by Elwin00 (see edit history)

[Matt115]

5 hours ago, Elwin00 said:

 

 

@Matt115
I didn't want to go into implementation details, I just presented a broad idea. Sure there's a lot that would have to be solved from the design perspective.

 

Good point with the bandits! That would be shame if the zombies would destroy the bandits before the player. But bandits are also not helpless, right? They could fight the zombies unless there were too many of them. Actually, that sounds like another good mechanic that would naturally follow from the world itself: players could send a horde into the bandit camp to help them defeat them. I like it!

 

 

 

I completely understand this. That's why I suggested that this could be done as a separate game mode, even after the release.

I also think the developers might have a different vision and for them current state makes most sense. If that's the case, we have to accept it and go with it... or find a different game 😉

About bandits i will tell few things- AI do stupid thing when "human" npc fight with "zombie " npc -  like in return to the castel wolfenstein and old blood, instict ( idk if this name is good but it was russian game) ,  dead rising etc.  so i think devs will try to limits "meeting" of this both groups.  That's why in we don't have human ally in zombie mod only robots. 

 

About 7dtd future- we don't know if they want to create more content or not- they are working on new game ( or games)- we get info about that but nothing about 7dtd future after "1.0"

[zztong]

15 hours ago, Elwin00 said:

Could be that it's more fun to confront the horde "head on", as @zztong suggested. I just never got that far in the game that I would be sufficiently armed for that. Something to try later, I guess.

 

I've done this at pretty much at all game stages, even with just a primitive bow and a club. At the early game stages, one rank in the skill that lets you move faster as you reload (Run and Gun?) and one rank in the skill that lessens the stamina drain from running (Cardio?) are all that is needed to kite the horde, but even they aren't entirely necessary. You'll just get to do more shooting and less running with them.

 

Basically, you back away from them in one of these directions: NE, SE, SW or NW and the horde will fall in line behind you. Keep firing as you back up. When they get close, turn and run -- you can outrun them in light or no armor. A little coffee helps. At higher levels, and with better weapons, you just get to do a whole lot more rock and roll. Being mobile with the M60 and 4k ammo is pretty fun.

 

Eventually, once you get this approach down, you can end up with a hybrid approach, where you use POIs as impromptu places to make a stand in some bottleneck until it becomes unviable, then you go mobile again.

 

The downside to this approach, while fun, is that it generates a lot less experience than those folks in elaborate horde bases can get. The upside is it can be more entertaining.