Input regarding A20

[Kasad]

Hello and happy new year,

 

I'll start with the good parts of A20. It has significantly improved terrain graphics like moving grass while a lot of realistic POIs have been added. This version also added one of the features I have suggested very long ago regarding the ability to build any block with any material. Furthermore I love the buffs that bows took and the build time of cobblestone has finally been reduced. Finally concrete requires less resources to build as it should be (although I don't like that they removed the drying part, that was a nice touch of realism guys).

 

But here's where from my point of view the good updates end. Because the balance of the game feels too "off".

 

I can no longer craft bricks and metal blocks. There is a brick block in the creative menu but the metal blocks have been removed. I always build my base near an iron ore to build metal blocks as they used to give more experience and endurance than cobblestones, despite costing significantly more time and resources to build. Now the only metal thing I can build is some iron sheets and iron bars. 

 

At some point motherload has been stealth nerfed. I don't know when exactly it happened , but I watched a video and confirmed it by looking at the config files that motherload does indeed gives less experience from mining resources. This supposedly reduces the extra experience gained from mining... extra resources. Why would the devs do this? It makes no sense to nerf an already mediocre perk. Previously I'd level both miner 69er and motherload equally to maximize experience gain but now I don't level motherload until I max out miner69er. And this is not ok. Wrench perk improves both damage and resources. Why can't miner69er do the same?

 

A change which personally hurt me the most was farming "rebalance". I loved farming since A16 but I have seen it become progressively worse and more obsolete as the versions went by. I was very dissapointed to find out that in A20 it is literally impossible to keep a constant flow of crops without having level 3 living off the land because there's always a small chance that you'll get less seeds than the crops you've planted. This happened twice during my run where I had about 4~6 crops with level 1 LotL and I only got 1 seed out of them forcing me to reduce the amount of seeds in my garden.

 

I'd also like to point out that spike traps are not as good as they used to be. There are now too many strong zombies that pierce through wooden and iron spikes as if it's butter. The zombie AI always tries to avoid them unless I am at a higher level and there's no other way to get to me. But that's just bad AI scripting overall and I'd like to see zombies walking through traps again, or at the very least stay in a destroyed state where they can be repaired from 0 to full health.

 

Furthermore there's the issue of unstable wooden traps where if players or zombies walk over them they are destroyed. I've found out that these traps cost more than a fully wooden block (20 vs 10 wood iirc) and they also require nails. The 3x3 unstable trap can also not be repaired and requires to be destroyed before being placed again. Those traps are really useful if you want to hunt small game like pigs and chicken. I think unstable traps should cost way less wood than their full block counterparts and that they should too have a destroyed state.

Hatches with springs could also be another great idea for a trap that loses durability every time some zombie or player passes through them and drops them to other deadlier traps.

 

Edit: Also forgot to mention spears are still kinda underpowered despite being one of the best hunting/ defensive weapons in the game. The players can still not attack through gaps in blocks and bars which is sad.

 

Finally, I'd like to say this. It feels like every new update of 7d2d focuses more on grinding quests and less on enjoying building/tower defending in the game. I get it that the devs want players who must go outside and secure new loot to survive, I just think that it should progress faster e.g. 3 instead of 5 quests to level up, farming should be easier to get but provide few nutrients without recipes etc.

 

Peace out

Edited January 7, 2022 by Kasad (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

16 minutes ago, Kasad said:

At some point motherload has been stealth nerfed. I don't know when exactly it happened , but I watched a video and confirmed it by looking at the config files that motherload does indeed gives less experience from mining resources. This supposedly reduces the extra experience gained from mining... extra resources. Why would the devs do this? It makes no sense to nerf an already mediocre perk. Previously I'd level both miner 69er and motherload equally to maximize experience gain but now I don't level motherload until I max out miner69er. And this is not ok. Wrench perk improves both damage and resources. Why can't miner69er do the same?

 

The point of Motherload is to increase the amount of resources you get with each harvest, not to increase one's exp rate gain.  The only difference really is that Miner 69er and Motherload is broken up into two perks while Salvage Operations does both in one perk.  I never had an issue with that since the Strength attribute is very strong overall compared to Perception.

 

I checked both Alpha 19 and Alpha 20 progression files and both the Salvage Operation and Motherload perk have the same changes to PlayerEXP based on Perk Rank:

 

            <passive_effect name="PlayerExpGain" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="-.1,-.4" tags="Harvesting">

 

You might be seeing more experience gained from Salvage operations if you compare it 1 action to 1 action,  but how does the overall gain of experience from, say, 4 hours of salvaging compared to 4 hours of mining ore?

 

You are also getting a better improvement in block damage with Miner69er compared to Salvage operations

 

Miner:

            <passive_effect name="BlockDamage" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value=".3,1.5" tags="perkMiner69r"/>

 

Salvage:

            <passive_effect name="BlockDamage" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value=".2,1" tags="perkSalvageOperations"/>

 

Quote

Finally, I'd like to say this. It feels like every new update of 7d2d focuses more on grinding quests and less on enjoying building/tower defending in the game.

 

I have never felt like I have to grind quests rather than focus on building in this game, even with Alpha 20.  I will typically just take one quest a day, and then decide if that day I want to run that quest or do other activities.  Sometimes when I am building, I have to stop that to gather resources, but never felt like I had to grind quests - maybe go to a POI with a lot of construction materials or visit a POI where I could get new tools from if I cleared it out.

[ricp]

Most of the points you raise have been discussed in separate threads already, and I think most people broadly agree with the issues you have.

 

For me, I find I don't mine or farm in A20, simply due to the changes in available resources and the nerf to the farming. That's not a change that I'm keen on, but if that's the way TFP wish to go then that's the direction it's going.

 

I do think A20 needs balanced. I like the Feral Sense, but it should be nerfed for the first day or so. I like the updates to the traders and quests, but they seem very OP and would like to see them nerfed too.

 

That said, and I wrote this in another thread, I have sympathy for TFP, they need to balance both the game and the progression for new players as well as the experienced player base, with the subtleties of the changes made from A19>A20 not really being obvious until it's been played by a ton of players.

Edited January 7, 2022 by ricp (see edit history)

[Kasad]

33 minutes ago, ricp said:

Most of the points you raise have been discussed in separate threads already, and I think most people broadly agree with the issues you have.

 

For me, I find I don't mine or farm in A20, simply due to the changes in available resources and the nerf to the farming. That's not a change that I'm keen on, but if that's the way TFP wish to go then that's the direction it's going.

 

I do think A20 needs balanced. I like the Feral Sense, but it should be nerfed for the first day or so. I like the updates to the traders and quests, but they seem very OP and would like to see them nerfed too.

 

That said, and I wrote this in another thread, I have sympathy for TFP, they need to balance both the game and the progression for new players as well as the experienced player base, with the subtleties of the changes made from A19>A20 not really being obvious until it's been played by a ton of players.

I agree with all your points but one. I don't think this game is hard nor should it be easier for newer players. I've been playing survival games from minecraft to don't starve. I'll take zomboid as an example since I consider it the #1 hardest survival game I've recently played. It's strikingly similar to 7 days to die. However, there is no cure once you're bitten and farming is an essential part of the game where if you don't farm you can't trap animals and food cans are not always abundant.

When I wanted to learn how to play the game I simply started with an easier game mode (builder) and then went up to survivor. Then I added a few mods to make the game more realistic (albeit easier) and I've been constantly reading and learning from the wiki mechanics that completely change my playstyle, but it's still my playstyle and it doesn't change dramatically as it does in every version of 7d2d. Once you learn how to use weapons, shove zombies on the ground and bash their skulls you're set.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Kasad (see edit history)

[ricp]

8 minutes ago, Kasad said:

I agree with all your points but one. I don't think this game is hard nor should it be easier for newer players.

 

To be fair, as an experienced player it's really difficult for me to be objective about this, as I find the game very easy. Even upping the difficulty and turning on Feral Sense. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. That said, I also play PZ and enjoy it too. I find that game very easy too.

 

Some of this probably comes from being both a programmer and a game dev (albeit, a while ago), so I sort of come to games from a coding perspective rather than a pure gameplay one.

[Kasad]

8 minutes ago, ricp said:

 

To be fair, as an experienced player it's really difficult for me to be objective about this, as I find the game very easy. Even upping the difficulty and turning on Feral Sense. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. That said, I also play PZ and enjoy it too. I find that game very easy too.

 

Some of this probably comes from being both a programmer and a game dev (albeit, a while ago), so I sort of come to games from a coding perspective rather than a pure gameplay one.

Difficulty in PZ is scalable. There is a sandbox mode, there is an apocalypse mode, sprinter no curing bite zombies while you wake up in a 6 months later mode. You can't compare PZ's sandbox capabilities with 7d2d's. I can't control the quality of loot in 7d2d (without heavy modding). I can't use sleep in 7d2d. I can't have more than a few dozen zombies simultaneously in 7d2d without the fps dropping. How do you even compare the maps? Is firing a shotgun in wastelands the same as firing a shotgun in Louisville? Getting a constant stream of a few zombies vs a city with a population of about 1000 hungry residents? No way this is comparable.

[ricp]

5 minutes ago, Kasad said:

You can't compare PZ...

 

Yeah, completely different games. Tell you what though, I'd love to have the content and depth of PZ mixed in with the 3D voxel world and combat of 7DtD.

 

 

[Kasad]

12 minutes ago, ricp said:

 

Yeah, completely different games. Tell you what though, I'd love to have the content and depth of PZ mixed in with the 3D voxel world and combat of 7DtD.

 

 

 

The devs can literally do this. They know it. They mentioned that the default Unity AI actor is the one they use and if they needed a new one they'd have to buy it. I say why not? Why not have an AI agent that is optimized? An optimization would make the AI use orders of magnitude less cpu than it does now. That's the change the devs should strive for: Imagine having a realistic scenario where shooting or making a lot of noise in a city would make tall buildings pour out hundreds of zombies out of the windows running in the streets with a bloodied frenzy.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Kasad (see edit history)

[ricp]

2 minutes ago, Kasad said:

Imagine having a realistic scenario where shooting or making a lot of noise in a city would make tall buildings pour out hundreds of zombies out of the windows running in the streets with a bloodied frenzy.

 

Have you watched the latest Matrix movie? No spoilers, of course, but there is a scene similar to that.

 

From what I have read, and I could be wildly wrong here, I feel if the game was to go "in the direction of another title" it would be Fallout more than Zomboid.

[Kasad]

8 minutes ago, ricp said:

 

Have you watched the latest Matrix movie? No spoilers, of course, but there is a scene similar to that.

 

From what I have read, and I could be wildly wrong here, I feel if the game was to go "in the direction of another title" it would be Fallout more than Zomboid.

 

Yes that's how it's been since A17. Learn by doing was replaced with experience points. The game was doing absolutely fantastic even in A16 and then it tried to copy PZ (broken glass and learn by reading books). That's when it took a wild turn by copying fallout 4 leveling system. We even got turrets that run without batteries. That's more sci fi genre than zombie survival genre to me.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Kasad (see edit history)