New content vs game mechanic overhauls

[ungkor]

Why do you think this game's development has been based around tweaking game mechanics vs just adding content and new goals?

 

Lack of resources?  No desire to create an more expansive game?  

[meganoth]

There are a few reasons IMHO:

 

1) Actually not enough time to create a more expansive game. But thats ok since this game is supposed to be 7 Days to Die Part 1. Expansion is for part 2 and for modders, that's why the game is designed to be easily moddable. They thought of a lot more features they would have wanted to include but the time and size of their company didn't allow for more if you also include the following points 2 to 6.

 

2) Since the game is EA they needed a fully playable game from day 1 of EA. Hence the game was filled with placeholder graphics and mechanisms that had to be replaced eventually

 

3) If you design a game that hasn't really been done before you need a lot of experimentation on mechanisms of the game. In "older times" this experimentation was hidden in closed development and many games were light on new mechanisms anyway so we players are not accustomed to see experimentation being done. Even now many EA games start to enter EA only after their main experimentation phase which means you don't see that a lot.

 

4) There are surely developers who don't experiment much and developers who like to experiment. I am quite confident to place TFP in the latter category 😉

 

5) There are surely developers who just look at established games and take mechanisms from there and developers who like to use something new. I am quite confident to place TFP in the latter category 😉 . And actually I think a part of the appeal of 7D2D is that it is chock full of new mechanisms. Now the problem is: If you use a lot of new mechanisms then some of them turn out to be not working as good as the designer had envisioned, i.e. some disadvantages only show up after extensive playtesting. So a lot of tweaking or even replacement of such mechanisms has to happen.

 

6) TFP seems also very keen on having a fluff-free game, in other words they don't want to have lots of identical stuff in the game. For example each vehicle you can drive is quite distinct from the others, there are no two variants of the jeep for example. So expansion of the game is always hard as new features don't come cheap. If we take the vehicle example: What could be a new vehicle with new features? I can think of one immediately, a boat or raft. But unlike adding just another vehicle that acts like a jeep (say 2 days development, testing, bug fixing and balancing all in all) a boat or raft would need surely weeks now to be added (including testing, balancing and bug fixing)

 

 

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

The problem is when you change mechanics in an EA game there will always be players who preferred the old mechanics because it worked for them.

 

And as for the placeholder issue, that seems to me to simply be a term for something that has been changed. At the end of the development you have a placeholder that has been replaced by a placeholder that is replaced by something that might be a placeholder again. You don't know what is a placeholder and what is not until the game is finished.

 

[theFlu]

For the "why just tweaking mechanisms", I think that's a little unfair. They've done plenty of overhauling of the game systems, SI, AI, map gen, none of these things are "tweaking mechanisms", and they've gone thru a couple iterations each. Dev just takes time. A Lot of time. They wouldn't blow up any game system if they saw it fit to deliver what they want from gold; and yet they have had to.

 

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

TFP seems also very keen on having a fluff-free game, in other words they don't want to have lots of identical stuff in the game.

This could also just be about the dev phase. Get the systems in, tune them to work great, then consider adding "skins" for later. The point about is being easy to mod makes it just as easy for TFP to add. But yeh, from the little I've read from the devs, I wouldn't be surprised if they actually won't add any fluff.

 

2 hours ago, RipClaw said:

And as for the placeholder issue, that seems to me to simply be a term for something that has been changed.

I think those are pretty interchangeable. "It" might not have been implemented as an intentional placeholder, but it was implemented in an exploratory phase of the dev. Trying to figure out what is possible in an actual game. Nothing should be permanent if it hinders moving towards whatever vision. And even the vision itself will have to shift when it comes face to face with reality of the minimum specs...

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, RipClaw said:

The problem is when you change mechanics in an EA game there will always be players who preferred the old mechanics because it worked for them.

 

And as for the placeholder issue, that seems to me to simply be a term for something that has been changed. At the end of the development you have a placeholder that has been replaced by a placeholder that is replaced by something that might be a placeholder again. You don't know what is a placeholder and what is not until the game is finished.

 

 

Nope, sorry. "Placeholder" is well defined as something that is never intented to survive into gold. What is surely true is that we have no sure way to know which of their features and mechanisms were meant as placeholders or were experiments that might have turned up in the final version. 

 

One heuristic you could employ is that anything that was in the first few alphas was mostly placeholder while anything after that was experiment.

 

Some stuff was labeled clearly as placeholder stuff **by developers** and is also very likely placeholder stuff, for example all the graphics bought in the unity-store.

 

Some people on the forum said that LBD was a placeholder. I have my doubts about that, I think that was an experiment.

Edited May 25, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

31 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Some people on the forum said that LBD was a placeholder. I have my doubts about that, I think that was an experiment.

I remember Roland calling it a placeholder. But that doesn't really matter. LBD was nice as long as we had it and except in mods we will never see it in the game again.

 

 

Edited May 25, 2023 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Riamus]

8 hours ago, ungkor said:

Why do you think this game's development has been based around tweaking game mechanics vs just adding content and new goals?

 

Lack of resources?  No desire to create an more expansive game?  

Any game that is hearing gold is going to be focused on fine tuning everything and not adding a bunch of new features.  That is true for every game.  You just don't see it in games that aren't early access because you only see the finished product.  There have been tons of new content over the course of the game.  Now that gold is getting close, new alphas are going to be focused on getting everything in good shape for gold.  Nothing wrong with that.  New alphas are *not* the same thing as DLC where you expect new stuff.

[pApA^LeGBa]

LBD in this game was horribly done. Crafting a ton of stone axes while running around the campfire the whole night was the meta. Or sitting in the forge menu watching arrowheads beeing made.

 

For the future updates i really hope they focus on getting the content that is missing done and don´t fiddle around with unecessary things that are fine as they are right now, like the UI. Leave the UI alone and do the content please.

[RipClaw]

18 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

LBD in this game was horribly done. Crafting a ton of stone axes while running around the campfire the whole night was the meta. Or sitting in the forge menu watching arrowheads beeing made.

What you are describing is Min-Maxing and you can do that with pretty much any progression system. But you didn't have to do it.

The advantage of LBD was that it automatically adapted to your play style. With the skill system, you had to figure out what combination of perks best fit your playstyle. Which perks are necessary and which are completely unnecessary.

 

[theFlu]

20 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Crafting a ton of stone axes while running around the campfire the whole night was the meta.

At times my co-op friend had a blast following my path.. a straight line of wooden clubs, me dropping them from toolbar while crafting into an intentionally full inventory. My last proper use for the "drop"-keybind...

[Riamus]

I think the first time I played a LBD system was in Morrowind back when it first came out.  The first couple of hours, I loved it.  And then I realized how much of a grind it was.  I would jump non-stop wherever I went just to improve that skill and it was the same with everything.  I quickly came to not enjoy it.  I love the concept of LBD.  Unfortunately, I have yet to see a game that implemented it in a way that wasn't grindy.  In the end, I prefer leveling up to gain skills or perks as an abstraction of having spent enough time doing something to get better at it.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, RipClaw said:

I remember Roland calling it a placeholder. But that doesn't really matter. LBD was nice as long as we had it and except in mods we will never see it in the game again.

 

 

 

I've never called LBD a placeholder as I never felt like it fit that label. The problem with LBD is that people just look at the trees instead of the forest. The forest is "player progression" and TFP has done a lot of development in that area starting in Alpha 11. There is an obvious general arc of development if you can step away and lift your gaze from LBD itself. When progression began it was a rudimentary system of crafting where your tools and weapons would advance through crafting them-- pure LBD but limited to crafting. Over the next several alphas LBD advanced into skills but there were books and skill points added as well. After A14 LBD slowly but surely declined in its presence in player progression first disappearing from crafting where it began. It finally disappeared altogether in A17.

 

There was a definite iterative process to the player progression aspect of the game. It was not a situation of an LBD placeholder being implemented and then replaced all at once by the true Central Pool XP mechanic. It was not TFP flip flopping back and forth. It was a legit development process and we were witness to it because of early access. This type of process is exactly what I like about early access but I realize others hate it and wish that TFP had finalized all its actual development before releasing on Steam and that all the updates were purely expansionary updates instead of development updates.

Edited May 25, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Vaeliorin]

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

LBD in this game was horribly done. Crafting a ton of stone axes while running around the campfire the whole night was the meta. Or sitting in the forge menu watching arrowheads beeing made.

 

For the future updates i really hope they focus on getting the content that is missing done and don´t fiddle around with unecessary things that are fine as they are right now, like the UI. Leave the UI alone and do the content please.

Of course, the whole "craft a million axes" thing was gone in 16.4 (possibly earlier, but I started with 16.4).  I really don't know why everyone brings it up when talking about LBD.

[Roland]

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

LBD in this game was horribly done. Crafting a ton of stone axes while running around the campfire the whole night was the meta. Or sitting in the forge menu watching arrowheads beeing made.

 

For the future updates i really hope they focus on getting the content that is missing done and don´t fiddle around with unecessary things that are fine as they are right now, like the UI. Leave the UI alone and do the content please.

 

Oh, they're going to overhaul the UI. Just get used to that idea. It is definitely happening. They are polishing the game for gold. It is going to be a boring process for veterans of the game. They've stated that they plan to add expansionary updates post gold but for now they are just trying to get the basics in and polished.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Roland Why though? It´s good as it is. It´s minimalistic, it´s well organized and we have everything we need with one look. This is something that will only confuse and maybe even outrage their playerbase. Let´s be real, there won´t be a ton of sales anymore after going gold.

 

I mean the size of the dangermeter or even it´s pure existence was enough to make some people mad. I still don´t know why this is needed though. Game went nearly 10 years without it and i never saw anyone complaining that they didn´t know what to expect in a POI.

Edited May 26, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Scyris]

If anything the game needs a tier of zombie above radiated, and also needs something above steel to deal with said zombie. The game has needed this since like alpha 16 or even earlier. I'd like to see some actual new content/mechanics and not just the same mechanics being overhauled over and over. New Poi's are nice of course, but I mean new poi but same junk you can find in them is kinda meh.

 

6 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@Roland Why though? It´s good as it is. It´s minimalistic, it´s well organized and we have everything we need with one look. This is something that will only confuse and maybe even outrage their playerbase. Let´s be real, there won´t be a ton of sales anymore after going gold.

 

I mean the size of the dangermeter or even it´s pure existence was enough to make some people mad. I still don´t know why this is needed though. Game went nearly 10 years without it and i never saw anyone complaining that they didn´t know what to expect in a POI.

 

Danger meter doesn't bother me really, I quickly noticed that bigger poi=more dangerious fairly quickly (I been around since alpha 9/10). You then learn to be able to tell the tiers apart just by the poi size. I suppose it'll help new players not dive into a tier 5 on day 1? other than for helping new players I don't see a point to it. Hopefully there is a option to shut it off entirely in the game options.

21 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

LBD in this game was horribly done. Crafting a ton of stone axes while running around the campfire the whole night was the meta. Or sitting in the forge menu watching arrowheads beeing made.

 

For the future updates i really hope they focus on getting the content that is missing done and don´t fiddle around with unecessary things that are fine as they are right now, like the UI. Leave the UI alone and do the content please.

 

Yes it needed some tweaks, no one really doesn't say it doesn't but all it needed was a few things like craft quality unlinked from action skill level. Maybe have the action skill/learn by doing skill control what level of the perk you can get that ups damage, lowers stam use etc. Or, have the action skill dictate what tier u can craft for an item based on the perk attached to it, kinda like A20's stat system, just with learn by doing skills being the gate then base stats.

[RyanX]

On 5/25/2023 at 4:06 AM, ungkor said:

Why do you think this game's development has been based around tweaking game mechanics vs just adding content and new goals?

 

Lack of resources?  No desire to create an more expansive game?  

 

For real though.  How long have the same 4 workstations been in game?  I mean seriously how about something else?  Idc if you change how the forge looks as much as we need more interesting things to do.

[Roland]

Updates at this point are developmental instead of expansionary. That's just the way it is. If you are bored with the existing base game then put it aside and wait until after release when they start expanding it beyond the base game.

 

 

[Syphon583]

10 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Why though? It´s good as it is. It´s minimalistic, it´s well organized and we have everything we need with one look. This is something that will only confuse and maybe even outrage their playerbase. Let´s be real, there won´t be a ton of sales anymore after going gold.

I think you're blowing this a little out of proportion. There's a huge difference between UI overhaul (the look and feel) and UX overhaul (how it functions). There's been no details given as to the extent of the changes they're making. While it's entirely possible they're using UI as a general term, it could very well be that the changes they are making are purely visual.

 

As a UX designer myself, all I can say is that this game could definitely use a bit of UX love. What you say is intuitive is possibly quite the opposite for a lot of new players. UI is more subjective, but I've heard more complaints about it than praise.

Edited May 26, 2023 by Syphon583 (see edit history)

[Roland]

Not to mention that they will hire someone specifically for this purpose and it will not add any development time. The team, when they were smaller, did a lot of these things themselves and while it is true that they are "good enough" or "functional as is" they made a decision to hire specialized talent to polish the game and make it look more professional. Getting a programmer/artist that specializes in the look and design will bring the game to a new level. The TFP team at the time of A13 were good but they didn't have specialized talent/skills in these different areas. Now they have people dedicated to level design, environment art, character art, AI, sound, etc. that they've hired to up the quality of the game.

[RyanX]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

Updates at this point are developmental instead of expansionary. That's just the way it is. If you are bored with the existing base game then put it aside and wait until after release when they start expanding it beyond the base game.

 

 

What do you mean "at this point?"  I think you mean to say "starting a few years ago".  And I don't think there is anything else developmental or expansionary that's going to happen with this game.  They are clearly done putting any serious thought into it and are keeping it running for the sales.  I imagine whatever that game they said they are working on is their real priority.  And good for them, I hope the next game is great.

Edited May 26, 2023 by RyanX (see edit history)

[Roland]

2 hours ago, RyanX said:

What do you mean "at this point?"

 

I mean at this time and during this phase.

 

2 hours ago, RyanX said:

I think you mean to say "starting a few years ago".

 

I mean to say starting 10 years ago until today all updates are developmental in nature. Yes, some updates had exciting new content and features because they were building the game from the ground up but those were to implement basic features that hadn't been introduced. No update in this game has been of the type that acts as an expansion to the basic game. All updates have been for developing the basic game-- the list of goals on their original kickstarter.  That's why certain people with expectations of updates being expansionary complain that TFP isn't extending the end game or adding more end game content. That is the essence of expansionary updates-- creating new experiences for veterans of the game who have already played all the basics.

 

Your desire for them to add new workstations instead of polishing up the existing ones is exactly an example of this. You want expansions to the game but TFP isn't going to do that until they have fully developed their base game and released it as their gold version.

 

2 hours ago, RyanX said:

And I don't think there is anything else developmental or expansionary that's going to happen with this game.

 

And you would be wrong. Resoundingly. The good news is that you being wrong even benefits you.

 

2 hours ago, RyanX said:

They are clearly done putting any serious thought into it and are keeping it running for the sales.

 

Based on what evidence? They are pouring bucketloads of money into this game because it is so successful and they see that it has a long future on PC, Xbox, and Playstation. What do you even mean by "keeping it running for the sales". If what they were doing wasn't successful there would be no sales. On the one hand you say they have ruined the game and it is going to die but then you say that it is this huge money cow they are using.

 

2 hours ago, RyanX said:

I imagine whatever that game they said they are working on is their real priority.  And good for them, I hope the next game is great.

 

They have a completely different team on that from those working on 7 Days to Die. You've never spoken to or seen anyone working on that next project and whatever they are doing has nothing to do at all with the people working to finish 7 Days to Die. It is inaccurate in the extreme to think that the staff working on 7 Days to Die puts a few hours in on this game but then spends most of their time on the next project. It isn't even the same people. The people on 7 Days to Die are completely dedicated and working constantly to bring it to completion. It is their only priority.

 

Edited May 26, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Maharin]

TFP only has one developer that can work on one thing at a time.  In order to get them to change what they're working on they have to change what they feed them.  Their primary food source is Twinkies and Mt. Dew which allows them to do bug fixes.  In order to work on new content they need to slowly transition them to truffles and red wine.  For architecture changes they feed them apples, dried whole corn, and water flavored with lime and chili seasoning.

[Riamus]

3 hours ago, Maharin said:

TFP only has one developer that can work on one thing at a time.  In order to get them to change what they're working on they have to change what they feed them.  Their primary food source is Twinkies and Mt. Dew which allows them to do bug fixes.  In order to work on new content they need to slowly transition them to truffles and red wine.  For architecture changes they feed them apples, dried whole corn, and water flavored with lime and chili seasoning.

Just don't feed them after midnight. 

[meganoth]

... and then there is the big guy at the drum providing the work rhythm.