What was the point of the water change?

[Survior]

On 6/19/2023 at 11:36 PM, Roland said:

Something else that needs to be understood is that the devs wanted empty jars gone. Regardless of whatever system of thirst survival they came up with, the removal of jars was a requirement and guaranteed to happen.  They don’t want them and they’ve had a goal to remove them for quite some time. 

 

So, what did this long-term goal you speak of accomplish?

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Survior said:

 

So, what did this long-term goal you speak of accomplish?

 

ummmm...the glass jars are now gone. Goal accomplished.

[Zerginfestor]

Personally think the change is for the worst, and not because of 'difficulty'. The game already threw murky water at you in most loot even before the change, still does now, but the difference here is that instead of focusing on base building, the early game is more of a looter exploration. This is fine, but people thinking this is going to push difficulty are being ridiculous. This only adds Tedium with the dew collectors, not difficulty to the game. Nearly every survival game out doesn't really try to complicate water systems because it's generally something anyone looks for in the very beginning of survival. It's a beginning-tier of sustaining yourself and it's generally kept simple because of obvious reasons. 

 

Right now, When I was playing for several days, I didn't bother with base building or with the dew collectors because atm I don't really see a point in it early game, because looting just gave me 17+ murky water I can just boil in a small shack and call it a day, until the game bugged out and the trader went through the floorboards. 

 

[Gideon]

On 6/14/2023 at 11:24 AM, madmole said:

There were several reasons to change it.
1.) Water was never a survival issue before. It was something you did once, go craft 500 jars, fill them up and your done for your entire play through.
2.) With unlimited duct tape people could craft OP quantities of things early game. Now its a choice, do use my water to craft duct tape, or do I drink it.

3.) Water jars is some leftover minecraft mechanic the engine had when we started and never a design we wanted. One less wasted slot in inventory.

WARNING: WALL OF TEXT INCOMING

 

Water is still not a survival issue in A21. Not even close. Just saying, you can easily get an effectively unlimited water supply fairly early on.

 

The issue was NEVER that jars let you collect too much water. When solving a problem of the game not reflecting real world issues as it should (as is the case with water being a necessity and being in short supply), it is best to look closer about the issue in real world terms and address it from that perspective.

 

Here is a list and how aspects of this list could be at least partially simulated in game:

 

1 - Water filters wear out. They need to be replaced, and can generally only be refurbished with some technical capacity. Dew/rain collectors do NOT provide purified water on their own, which is already simulated in their build cost requiring a water filter. You could simulate this in game by having the filter wear out and break. Perhaps it should be installed in a slot in the collector, and it's HP goes down over time until it breaks. Then the collector stops working until another is installed.

 

2 - You can't just boil water to make it safe. You need to filter it, and/or have it boil to a condensation surface and then collect the condensation. Ideally, the second method must be applied multiple times. You lose a bunch of water vapor to the air when doing this. This can be simulated by needing a special worksite of some sort or add on to the campfire for this purpose, or have it take a much longer to purify through boiling, or have it not be a 1 to 1 purification method. Some combination of one or more of these would be good.

 

3 - The dew collector we have is more of a rain catcher by design. This would really only work when it is raining, and would work in rapid volumes during a heavy rainstorm while not at all during no rain (feast vs famine). This complexity of interaction might be beyond the scope of 7D2D. Dew collection for water can be achieved through a pyramid-like structure of stones. This process is very slow unless you have a very large setup. Perhaps slowing water accumulation in areas other than the forest would be sufficient for the simulation. There is less ambient humidity in the desert and snow (living somewhere where it snows regularly in winter, this is actually quite dry air), and the wasteland could be considered whatever. Ground evaporation is also an option for collecting water in the real world, but I'm not sure that needs to be addressed in the scope of this game. (Before anyone asks, YES rain water and dew collected water still should be filtered and/or boiled in the real world. DON'T just drink it. It still contains any contaminants that are in the air and on the surfaces of the collection device.)

 

4 - Manufacturing glass jars, if it was ever added back in, is not something you just do. It requires some skill, and some special tools. If you lack either of these, jars become rather precious. Having them suffer a chance to breakage on use (low but not zero) due to accident, while making them more expensive and difficult to craft can certainly curtail their quantity.

 

5 - Dysentery and other water born diseases can be very bad. I know you don't want to overly punish the player, but tweaking its values so that it reduces hydration faster than it does (its actual danger is that you get dehydrated from the liquid poops) would serve a purpose of occasionally stressing your water supplies if making clean water takes time and effort.

 

Anyways, just my 5 cents.

 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Gideon (see edit history)

[vedrit]

4 hours ago, Gideon said:

*Long wall, did read*

 

Something to consider is fun vs realism.

Yes, the "dew collectors" are rain catchers that don't catch rain yet still give an endless supply of clean water. Realistic? Not in the slightest. Is it more fun than having to create yet another work station to properly process collected water through tedious and sometimes difficult processes? Debatable, but I'd say yes. With this in mind, #2 and #3 are effectively completely out.

#1 is a good suggestion, as it maintains the pressure for sustained water supply in the long-run. However, it comes with the drawback of giving the player more chores on top of "check collectors for water", which is already a hassle when playing with - and having to supply - a group. Loses at "fun vs realistic"

#5 could probably be done regardless of other water changes. I don't think I've ever gotten dysentery in 7DTD, so in my opinion it's currently a complete non-issue. Giving it some more weight beyond whatever it currently does would probably be fine.

Edited June 22, 2023 by vedrit (see edit history)

[Ailin]

Honestly both camps could be happy if you just did what Ravenhearst did. Sure you can use your jar on water, but the water causes 100% infection, you WILL die if you drink it, and purifying is not something you can set up and get rolling quickly so the first week or so drinks are actually a bit of a panic scrounge. Considering this A21 water change only really seems to make the first week or two at best a problem, this would achieve what was done this update and make the immersion people happy?

[Gideon]

2 hours ago, vedrit said:

- Thought out but long response that I read. -

Yeah, several of the suggestions are probably not feasible for this dev team, or something they would ever consider. Also, I would definitely not want all of those ideas implemented. It was more of a list of things that could have been considered, and a useful exercise. I strongly doubt they will take any suggestions from anyone in this matter.

 

Still, thank you for the read and response.

[Zerginfestor]

3 hours ago, vedrit said:

Something to consider is fun vs realism.

Yes, the "dew collectors" are rain catchers that don't catch rain yet still give an endless supply of clean water. Realistic? Not in the slightest. Is it more fun than having to create yet another work station to properly process collected water through tedious and sometimes difficult processes? Debatable, but I'd say yes.

 

I don't think it really hits "fun", this is just more of a tedious part that may as well be an added part of a Farm rooftop or nearby part of land, and due to the progression system, this won't be the focus for anyone until at least...mid game? On something that most people consider the least fun part in the game? Otherwise, it's ignorable. Yeah, it's debatable, I guess, some people may find that 'entertaining' of walking to each dew collector after 45 minutes to get their batch of water, but I personally find it unnecessary and the people they legit enjoy the dew collectors mechanics few and far inbetween. IF they really wanted to 'complicate' the beginning tier of a survival game, they should've done something else than what we have in A21, since this literally does nothing unless you base build in the beginning of the game or do random maps and got spawn in a desert. 

 

Gonna be honest, I never looked at 7DtD as a "ooo, challenging survival game", it just felt more like a loose combination of things put together to make a fun game where you can post builds to other players and see what they built/strategized with blood moon hordes. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Zerginfestor
clarified on the debatable opinion matter. (see edit history)

[Survior]

On 6/15/2023 at 4:34 AM, madmole said:

Vocal minority like usual. Some people hate changes, but will come back later and say it was a good change and they were knee jerking. Water is supposed to be a rare commodity in an apocalypse, not all you can drink buffet on day 1.

That's exactly the situation you have created by making water filters a thing on day1 via the helmet mod. Every single water source from ditch, pond, river and backyard pool is one day1, or possibly day2 an endless source of water.  This change makes so little actually difference on game play, except to annoy a so called minority -- though judging by the comments on this forum, discord, YouTube, Reddit, etc, that minority isn't as small as some might imagine. 

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Survior (see edit history)

[Riamus]

Regardless of my opinion on water (I like that jars are gone but feel the water change really doesn't make much difference for hydration or cooking), at least in this forum, I've seen about a 50/50 split on what people think about the change.  It seems to be more people complaining but most of the posts are the same people replying about it and most people supporting it aren't making multiple posts, so it seems more are against it.  But just looking at the people posting, I'd estimate roughly 50/50.  Of course, I have not counted and have no intention of doing so, so maybe I'm off in that estimation but that is what it looks like to me being basically unbiased about it... other than being glad jars are gone, I could take it or leave it.  Not sure about the other places but I do know that people who don't like something are always far more vocal than those who like something, so it is absolutely normal to see more people complain than compliment.  Especially on YouTube and Reddit, where people are always complaining about something.  Reddit's so bad that even when someone just asks a question someone tends to jump in and complain about something.

 

In the end, they see how people play and have far more data than we'll ever have just listening to a very small percentage of players commenting online.

[CoolJ]

In my opinion, this is better. Build 4 dew collectors. Forget water forever.

[meganoth]

14 hours ago, Zerginfestor said:

 

I don't think it really hits "fun", this is just more of a tedious part that may as well be an added part of a Farm rooftop or nearby part of land, and due to the progression system, this won't be the focus for anyone until at least...mid game? On something that most people consider the least fun part in the game?

 

Do you find anything entertaining about eating? Probably all survival games make you eat or you will have massive disadvantages or simply die. How much fun do you feel opening the inventory and clicking "use" on your stack of bacon&eggs twice a day? If fun were the only reason why food and eating were implemented in a survival game then there would simply be no food and water in survival games.

 

As it is, the solution fullfills everything it set out to do: Lots of players have a water shortage for the first few days (just like with food) and later on the water problem is solved (just like food). In fact in our game food and water seem almost indentical in their progression.

 

Though I agree with you that the daily harvest you need to do to get the most out of the collectors is a drawback to the current solution. I probably will just get myself more dew collectors so I can ignore them for days and immediately collect a bigger stack of water when I need water again. If TFP doesn't do it himself I'm sure there will be a mod to increase the size of the dew collector storage.

 

14 hours ago, Zerginfestor said:

Otherwise, it's ignorable. Yeah, it's debatable, I guess, some people may find that 'entertaining' of walking to each dew collector after 45 minutes to get their batch of water, but I personally find it unnecessary and the people they legit enjoy the dew collectors mechanics few and far inbetween. IF they really wanted to 'complicate' the beginning tier of a survival game, they should've done something else than what we have in A21, since this literally does nothing unless you base build in the beginning of the game or do random maps and got spawn in a desert. 

 

Gonna be honest, I never looked at 7DtD as a "ooo, challenging survival game", it just felt more like a loose combination of things put together to make a fun game where you can post builds to other players and see what they built/strategized with blood moon hordes. 

 

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Fuffel -Andre]

Moin.

I've been playing 7 Days long enough (~1800 hours) to know that the previous method of obtaining drinking water was far too simple and in dire need of an update.

But why do you solve this on the way of removing the empty jars and inserting the dew collector?

The new procedure looks absolutely stupid to me. You drink the glass with it and the dew collector recreates the glass from scratch. Even toilets can do this magic trick. If you take out the water, it is miraculously packed into a glass jar. Just stupid. Quite apart from the fact that the empty glasses are also missing elsewhere. Example Molotov cocktails: Made without a glass, just from a plastic gas can and a plastic bottle of oil, the finished product is a glass beer bottle in your hand. Also stupid.

 

My suggestion to tighten the drinking water supply would be: water purification tablets.
Water purification tablets can be rare. They can be expensive if you buy them from trader - who only have a few of them at a time. They can be expensive to craft, require a chemistry station, and they can be rare in loot and as quest rewards. You can still require a Cooking Pot in the Campfire to use them.

 

In return, empty glasses can remain in the game. They can be a little rarer. But you get them back when you drink them, and you can certainly find and buy them. You don't even have to be able to craft them. You can use them to fetch dirty water from surface water, but only a Campfire with cooking pot and a water purification tablet will make it clean drinking water.

The dew collectors may need to be filled with empty jars to generate clean water. Because at the moment the dew collectors are simply OP. Tearing down a lot of quests from day 1 to 6 and selling a lot of the loot that was found, I had enough Dukes together with the quest rewards till day 6 to buy 5 water filters and put 5 dew collectors on the base roof. That's 15 glasses of drinking water a day that come out of there. And now on day 13 I have many times more clean drinking water than I could process or drink.

 

At this point I would even welcome it if the dew collectors would only spit out dirty water or if it were at least random whether a glass of clean or dirty water came out and after a day you may only get one glass of clean water and two glasses of dirty water out or just dirty water for a day - provided, of course, you have empty glasses in them and the thing doesn't have to conjure them up out of nowhere.

 

With water purification tablets and empty glasses then back in play, Molotovs would make sense again too. And it would be even more valuable, because when you throw it, you destroy the empty glass. Then you wouldn't have dozens of Molotovs ready for the horde and other ways of setting them on fire, such as fire arrows, would be more important.

 

So, why not but the empty glasses back in the game and just nerf the drinking water supply with something like water purification tablets?

 

[Roland]

One of their primary design goals was to remove glass jars as an item from the game and have them only exist as an inventory item just like all the other containers of consumables in the game. That was their starting point when they developed the water change. So it is unlikely that they will reinstate glass jars as a physical item even if they make alterations to water survival in the future.

 

The dew collector is not producing glass jars any more than stumps are producing glass jars. Instead, it is assumed that the player has a supply of glass jars and when you find honey in a stump you scoop it into one of your jars and when you collect water from the dew collector you scoop it into your glass jar. You aren'r finding a glass jar full of murky water in a toilet tank. Instead you are scooping out the water with one of your empty glass jars you always have on hand. It is what is called an abstraction. It is the same mechanic that is used for the clay bowls you eat your stew from.

 

It just takes a little time to get used to the mechanic and once your brain makes the adjustment it becomes the new normal. I've played without glass jars for months now and never think about it any longer while I play. I just know the glass jars exist in the background.

[Javabean867]

And it doesn't even have to be a glass jar you are 'scooping' it up in.  

 

Just consider it a unit of water.  And you have something that holds that unit of water.

 

It's also obvious you have a larger container for your murky water you need to clean, and smaller containers for your clean water.

[Vaeliorin]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Though I agree with you that the daily harvest you need to do to get the most out of the collectors is a drawback to the current solution. I probably will just get myself more dew collectors so I can ignore them for days and immediately collect a bigger stack of water when I need water again. If TFP doesn't do it himself I'm sure there will be a mod to increase the size of the dew collector storage.

There's already a mod that lets you combine dew collectors into 3X and 9X versions, that can hold 3 stacks of 3/9 jars respectively.  Saves on the tedium and the ugliness.

 

Truth be told, I'd love for there to be some long, complicated, automatable process for purifying water.  I'd like a long, complicated automatable process for dealing with ore and other things as well (I enjoy setting up complicated factories like Mekanism Ore Processing.)  That doesn't seem to be in the cards for 7 Days (even with mods) but I'd love it if the devs added it for water (which would then presumably allow for mods to be made for ore processing and other things.)

 

In the end, I'm kind of indifferent on the water changes.  If filters were much more expensive or rare, I'd definitely dislike them, but as it stands I neither love nor hate them, just think they were kind of pointless.

[OccamsShavingCream]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

One of their primary design goals was to remove glass jars as an item from the game and have them only exist as an inventory item just like all the other containers of consumables in the game. That was their starting point when they developed the water change. So it is unlikely that they will reinstate glass jars as a physical item even if they make alterations to water survival in the future.

 

The dew collector is not producing glass jars any more than stumps are producing glass jars. Instead, it is assumed that the player has a supply of glass jars and when you find honey in a stump you scoop it into one of your jars and when you collect water from the dew collector you scoop it into your glass jar. You aren'r finding a glass jar full of murky water in a toilet tank. Instead you are scooping out the water with one of your empty glass jars you always have on hand. It is what is called an abstraction. It is the same mechanic that is used for the clay bowls you eat your stew from.

 

It just takes a little time to get used to the mechanic and once your brain makes the adjustment it becomes the new normal. I've played without glass jars for months now and never think about it any longer while I play. I just know the glass jars exist in the background.

 

If this is the case, why aren't those jars we always have on hand available when we're next to a lake or pond?

 

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but this is inconsistent, and one of the biggest strengths of this game has been that over each iteration the simulation of the world has gotten deeper and more and more internally consistent. This however feels like a step backwards.

[warmer]

I love the fact that I dont have to deal with jars or empty cans anymore. that was just a pain in the butt to inventory manage. 

[Riamus]

Yeah, I'm perfectly willing to sacrifice a little immersion for no more empty jars.  I don't even notice that they are gone anymore.  Just like I don't notice the missing candlesticks and trophies and fishing weights and cans.  All gone and I like that.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[Roland]

3 hours ago, OccamsShavingCream said:

If this is the case, why aren't those jars we always have on hand available when we're next to a lake or pond?

Because that would obviously break the water survival gameplay of the early game so infinite collection of water from bodies of water is limited to just drinking. If you want a bottle of murky water to go into your inventory every time you press E while standing in water then you may as well just open the creative menu and give yourself all the water you want. It would amount to the same thing. 
 

3 hours ago, OccamsShavingCream said:

I'm not trying to be argumentative here, but this is inconsistent, and one of the biggest strengths of this game has been that over each iteration the simulation of the world has gotten deeper and more and more internally consistent. This however feels like a step backwards.

The jars are now more consistent with how every single other consumable container is treated. If consistency is what you want then you’ve got it. As for depth of simulation, I’d say it’s a mixed bag at best. Some aspects of the world have been deepened to simulation level but others are definitely at the arcade end of the spectrum. It all depends on what the devs see as important. Whatever they feel is important gets the royal treatment whereas those things they view as peripheral get abstracted, streamlined, and cut altogether. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[AtomicUs5000]

Cue adding something to the game that makes glass very valuable.

[Zerginfestor]

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Do you find anything entertaining about eating? Probably all survival games make you eat or you will have massive disadvantages or simply die. How much fun do you feel opening the inventory and clicking "use" on your stack of bacon&eggs twice a day? If fun were the only reason why food and eating were implemented in a survival game then there would simply be no food and water in survival games.

 

As it is, the solution fullfills everything it set out to do: Lots of players have a water shortage for the first few days (just like with food) and later on the water problem is solved (just like food). In fact in our game food and water seem almost indentical in their progression.

 

 

I do feel a small dopamine rush of using the very thing I crafted after finding it, but that required actually getting to that spot. So for bacon and Eggs, I needed to progress through magazines for my monke brain to finally understand how to crack some eggs into a pot with some pork fat, so it feels rewarding (especially with the amount it gives you as an early game dish blows grilled/charred meat out of the water, get owned, tier 0 cookers!), only thing to maximize it even further is someone somehow modding a new animation kit of eating actual eggs and bacon when choosing said dish. 

 

I suppose it does, but I...never had a problem with it, I had a nice, small stockpile of nearly 20 purified water from doing the new method of looting/exploring/questing and very little to no base building. I bet it is a huge problem with desert regions, though, so if you were unlucky to spawn in there, guess the first task is to leave the premises ASAP and build up a supply of water elsewhere before dipping back into the region. 

 

I'm with @Vaeliorin on this. The water change isn't bad, or good. To ME, it feels like nothing has really changed, except added tedium with no survival changes whatsoever. Also that mod sounds like a blessing. 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Zerginfestor (see edit history)

[Gideon]

20 hours ago, CoolJ said:

In my opinion, this is better. Build 4 dew collectors. Forget water forever.

Agreed. Water and food both are a complete non issue for me shortly in to the game.

It does let me focus quite a bit more on the non-survival aspects.

[Survior]

6 hours ago, Roland said:

Because that would obviously break the water survival gameplay of the early game so infinite collection of water from bodies of water is limited to just drinking. If you want a bottle of murky water to go into your inventory every time you press E while standing in water then you may as well just open the creative menu and give yourself all the water you want. It would amount to the same thing. 
 

 

 

So instead devs removed jars and made water filters common so the player could do exactly the thing you are describing via helmet mod.  Brilliant.

 

[Roland]

17 minutes ago, Survior said:

 

So instead devs removed jars and made water filters common so the player could do exactly the thing you are describing via helmet mod.  Brilliant.

 

I've found two filter mods for the helmet during the early game after countless restarts over the past year. I agree that finding an early helmet filter mod ruins the water survival gameplay but I wouldn't exactly call it a common occurrence. In both cases, I just sold it because I wanted to play the water survival game but I guess it is there for someone like you who doesn't. If you're finding it as a common item in all your restarts over the past two weeks you must be very happy. congrats.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)