I want wellness to come back.

[Simplycasualgaming]

I started 7DTD in A10 and have recently come back to find the game to be hilariously easy. There is no punishment for screwing up and dying. The EXP penalty is a joke.

[ElDudorino]

Hi, I don't want wellness to come back. Thanks in advance!

[Ramethzer0]

Wellness has been replaced with a different system that offers a similar reward.  Go find it.

[Roland]

15 hours ago, Simplycasualgaming said:

I started 7DTD in A10 and have recently come back to find the game to be hilariously easy. There is no punishment for screwing up and dying. The EXP penalty is a joke.

If you haven’t played since Alpha 10 then you should also know that default difficulty was downgraded by one. As an experienced player you should play Nomad at a minimum. 
 

Death penalty is in ongoing discussion at TFP. The developers are very concerned about death spirals that can occur due to certain death penalties that can occur- especially for new players. The old wellness system contributed to death spirals and is part of the reason it was changed. 
 

Right now they are considering options for Ironman and also for persistent debuffs that will not disappear when you die. Just stuff they are discussing and not really on the list for A21. 
 

Personally, death penalty is tough to do in a way that will appeal to most players. They tried a near-death debuff that weakened the player and downgraded the perks for a period of time. They found that most players either modded or out or went AFK while sitting in their base to let the timer run out. 
 

Now, I remember getting in a death loop with wellness and then eventually working my way out of the HP hole and I thought it was a fun challenge but that is not the kind of design the devs want.
 

Honestly, intentionally allowing death loops is a pretty hardcore design and you would definitely need to change your name if that’s what you want…

Edited August 1, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[austyndooley]

On 8/2/2022 at 1:39 AM, Ramethzer0 said:

Wellness has been replaced with a different system that offers a similar reward.  Go find it. 

how to find it? can you show me?

 

[Melange]

Me thinks our Moderator means the hit on our XP, which we need to overcome (ie fulfill) before all is right in the world again. I so disliked the earlier death-you-are-weakened. Another death and more-weakend gameplay. At that stage I'd start over, or....RAGE QUIT and play something else.

As it stands now, I can advance out of an XP hit after dying. Not pleasant, but yeah we are still able to advance. I am not happy, but I can shake it off.

I agree that dying should incur a penalty. What we have now is a not happy situation (who want's to die?). And don't gimme that '7 days to die' rhetoric.

Any readers have an alternate mechanism to suggest? Let's hear it!

[theFlu]

I sorta like the XP penalty (although I mostly play dead-is-dead), it's a permanent drawback without weakening the character unreasonably.. But I do think it could use an accompanying functional penalty.. something like 30% movement speed and stamina penalties. Nothing too major, but a clear annoyance for a while. Death loops? If your bedroll is occupied, wake up somewhere random. And next time, don't let your bedroll get occupied...

 

And since we're in the bedroll realm of "thank god, it was just a nightmare", tie the effects to a nightmare .. two debuffs "Scared @%$#less" and "Didn't get any sleep".

- Scared of the dream becoming reality, makes you unable to do things quickly => movement speed reduction.

- Poor sleep, tired => low stamina regen - you can overcome the whole sta debuff with a coffee (or reduce the penalty a little / just enjoy the "natural" regen boost of coffee).

 

Both effects could also be proportional to the remaining XP penalty. Would it be better than what we have... what do I know, I never die

[Maharin]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

And next time, don't let your bedroll get occupied...

 

I swear she was a 10 while we were drinking the night before...

 

And when she attacked in the morning I knew she felt the same about me. 

[theFlu]

10 minutes ago, Maharin said:

I swear she was a 10 while we were

Humm, lets just say that; that snippet contains a pretty critical article 'a' that I missed at first... 

[Viktoriusiii]

On 8/1/2022 at 9:06 PM, Roland said:

They tried a near-death debuff that weakened the player and downgraded the perks for a period of time. They found that most players either modded or out or went AFK while sitting in their base to let the timer run out.

This is typical for TFPs though.
They do something without balance and then remove something completely, rather than balancing it.

I am pro deathpenalty. Dying to get stronger is stupid.
But THAT particular deathpenalty did the one thing you shouldnt ever do:
limit the players movement (by making them slower, less stamina and less inventory).
Basicially if you were full, you couldn't get everything or crawl at snailspace, meaning you die again.

Stackable death debuffs that need rare items to fix it would be great.
How about instead of "on hit" they make infection (or something similar) "on death"?
And it increases every death by 2-10% (based on difficulty)
Now you need to find an antidote, which is rare and only in high tier towers.

This debuff is minimal, but will get pretty strong.
Instead of debuffing the player, there will be less zombies around (it lowers the gamestage by a %) you and at 30% the trader stops giving you quests and at 70% he doesnt trade with you anymore, at 100% your own turrets see you as a zombie. The higher the % the higher the chance for an antidote though. And the trader usually has one on hand every restocking.
Meaning it will either cost gold or you need to find it.
This means you will probably never get into a deathspiral (because everyone has money and Z's are weaker, but so is the loot) it encourages to go out there to get looting/questing and the player is not any weaker than before, but the debuffs make it still better to avoid it.


This is something whipped up in 10 minutes of thought and is already better than anything they tried so far. And it could be so much more...
Currently they have the levelgating of deathpenalties (XP punishment? really?) uncreative, unrewarding, uninteresting and without any impact.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Viktoriusiii said:

This is typical for TFPs though.
They do something without balance and then remove something completely, rather than balancing it.

 

They didn't simply remove it without going through some iterative changes. In fact, I can't think of any feature removed from the game that they didn't explore first and experiment with balancing and making changes to it first. Rewriting history to suit your narrative is pretty typical of you, though....

 

1 hour ago, Viktoriusiii said:

Stackable death debuffs that need rare items to fix it would be great.
How about instead of "on hit" they make infection (or something similar) "on death"?
And it increases every death by 2-10% (based on difficulty)
Now you need to find an antidote, which is rare and only in high tier towers.

 

I like this idea-- though not instead of on hit debuffs. They really just need to have the debuffs remain after respawn so they aren't solved by death. But I would also be for some unique maladies that hit a player upon respawn that need special medicine to fix in addition to those things. Also a proper death option in the top menu so people can choose ironman, debuffs persist, etc.

 

1 hour ago, Viktoriusiii said:

This is something whipped up in 10 minutes of thought

 

Dang! Maybe in 20 minutes we can download your full game...

 

 

[bdubyah]

They could have just made it so the wellness debuff didn't kick in until level 5 or 10 or something like that. I get how a death spiral is irritating as I get people fussing about it in my mod and it isn't near as bad as the wellness was back then. But to me it isn't a death spiral so much as a learning curve. Either way, I definitely hope they plan on adding more consequences to dying than what exists currently.

[Maharin]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

Dang! Maybe in 20 minutes we can download your full game...

 

But you must do it using a 300 baud modem. 

[Viktoriusiii]

7 hours ago, Roland said:

Dang! Maybe in 20 minutes we can download your full game...

sorry... I might have had a few drinks too much when I wrote it and became kinda cocky.

But my point still stands. It is as with most features in this game:
They'd rather remove it than actually try and balance it.
And yes I believe you that they think about the balance of those features. But it doesnt FEEL like it.

Every time... they remove a feature instead of balancing it, even when a solution seems SUPER obvious and easy...
It feels more like a child that is done playing with the new toy.

 

[Uncle Al]

Turn on 'delete all on death'.  Trust me, you will now notice a penalty when you die.

 

I'm finding it a really good setting. A little more forgiving than permadeath, but still makes death a really significant event. It's also a penalty you can mitigate by good preparation, i.e. making sure you have backup equipment.

 

It's too severe for a default setting though, so I'm not surprised it is not the default option.

Edited August 12, 2022 by Uncle Al (see edit history)

[pApA^LeGBa]

On 8/1/2022 at 9:06 PM, Roland said:

 

Death penalty is in ongoing discussion at TFP. The developers are very concerned about death spirals that can occur due to certain death penalties that can occur- especially for new players. The old wellness system contributed to death spirals and is part of the reason it was changed.

 

 

This is solved easily. You need a value of minimum wellness that you can´t go under. Like 70 for default and maybe varies with the difficulty. Then you add a perk that raises the minimum wellness. Problem solved.

 

In addition we could have a similar mechanic like we have right now with the XP loss. Like you can´t loose wellness more than 3 times in a certain amount of time.

 

If they want wellness they could add it back without having an infinite deathloop easily. And the mechanic beeing to complex and causing confusion can´t be a reason either. Darkness Falls is by far the most popular mod and it has wellness.

Edited August 12, 2022 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Viktoriusiii]

5 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

Turn on 'delete all on death'.  Trust me, you will now notice a penalty when you die.

 

I'm finding it a really good setting. A little more forgiving than permadeath, but still makes death a really significant event. It's also a penalty you can mitigate by good preparation, i.e. making sure you have backup equipment.

 

It's too severe for a default setting though, so I'm not surprised it is not the default option.

that is a deathtrap-loop they are worried about though. I constantly keep my best gear on me. So destroying everything would set me back a lot... but not my gamestage, therefor making it far more likely for me to die again and again.

[Roland]

7 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

Turn on 'delete all on death'.  Trust me, you will now notice a penalty when you die.

 

I'm finding it a really good setting. A little more forgiving than permadeath, but still makes death a really significant event. It's also a penalty you can mitigate by good preparation, i.e. making sure you have backup equipment.

 

It's too severe for a default setting though, so I'm not surprised it is not the default option.

 

I use it by default now as well. It does double service as a kind of gear degradation. Once all your best is deleted,  you have to make do with inferior stuff until you can regain the best again. It makes the game feel a bit more rogue-like since you lose all your gear but retain your skills. It definitely shouldn't be vanilla but it is the best death penalty that exists at the moment.

 

 

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

This is solved easily. You need a value of minimum wellness that you can´t go under. Like 70 for default and maybe varies with the difficulty. Then you add a perk that raises the minimum wellness. Problem solved.

 

In addition we could have a similar mechanic like we have right now with the XP loss. Like you can´t loose wellness more than 3 times in a certain amount of time.

 

If they want wellness they could add it back without having an infinite deathloop easily. And the mechanic beeing to complex and causing confusion can´t be a reason either. Darkness Falls is by far the most popular mod and it has wellness.

 

Well, I said it was part of the reason. The biggest reason: They don't want wellness. And, hey, that gives DF another way to differentiate itself from vanilla.

Edited August 12, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[AtomicUs5000]

Maybe there is a big problem coming up with a really good death penalty because there really aren't any stay-alive bonuses to lose out on.

[ElDudorino]

I played a good bit of Darkness Falls a few months back and it referenced Wellness in a couple of texts but it didn't appear to be in the game when I died. I think it was removed.

[Uncle Al]

2 hours ago, Viktoriusiii said:

that is a deathtrap-loop they are worried about though. I constantly keep my best gear on me. So destroying everything would set me back a lot... but not my gamestage, therefor making it far more likely for me to die again and again.

Less so than you would think.

 

Early game your skills are more important than materials.  You're mostly working with stone, wood, plant fibres etc. to make your gear, so you can just gather more to recreate your basic tools/weapons/armour.

 

Once you're into midgame you are most likely moving into harder biomes and/or higher tier POIs.  So when you die and lose a bunch of gear, you drop back a biome for a while, or dial back the tier of POIs you're exploring.  Or you say 'but I really want to replace my good stuff with good stuff' and go YOLO the wasteland and let the chips fall where they may.  Meaningful player choices are one of my favourite things.  On death I'm frequently faced with 'is my backup gear good enough to try and stay in my current biome, and rapidly gear up, or should I be slow and cautious, drop down a biome and gradually build my gear back up?'.  That's a really meaningful choice.

[Rotor]

I play dead is dead.

 

I dont need wellness or death penalty :).

[ElCabong]

Death is its own reward

[pApA^LeGBa]

1 hour ago, ElDudorino said:

I played a good bit of Darkness Falls a few months back and it referenced Wellness in a couple of texts but it didn't appear to be in the game when I died. I think it was removed.

 

It´s still there. We played DF during A20 also and wellness is still a thing.

Edited August 12, 2022 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)