What was the point of the water change?

[OccamsShavingCream]

On 6/23/2023 at 3:06 PM, Roland said:

The jars are now more consistent with how every single other consumable container is treated. 

 

The fact that other resource containers are not implemented is not a reason to remove ones that are. "Consistently bad" is the wrong kind of consistency.

 

In the past, players could always see things that weren't fully baked out and know that this game is a work in progress, but actually removing functionality is a step backwards, not forwards.

 

Even with this change, in SP on insane/75% loot I can find enough water past day two. It just means you focus on ransacking different things. Water becomes an infinite resource once you get enough dew collectors, so the only actual change is that in the first few days, players are forced to hit the traders for a pot (if they haven't memorized with houses have them) and do a bunch of quests to get water filters. Past that it's just tedium, which could be bypassed in a20 and before by just throwing a bunch of sand in a furnace to make jars.

 

In a20, the first day is a mad scramble to find resources and get on top of something solid so you don't get massacred in the night. Once you finally get set up and take stock of what you have, the decision is: what water do I drink, what do I save for tomorrow, what do I turn into glue for armor and pipe weapons? On day two, if you found everything to make a forge and found some sand or broke a bunch of windows, you could usually get enough jars to make what you need, but between red tea, glue, Molotov's and cornbread (if you were slumming it and didn't get enough animals) it was still something you had to keep track of.

 

Good gameplay comes from asking players to make interesting choices. This change removes choice from the player and forces a specific playstyle. Between this change and the skill magazines change (which turns skill unlocks into a lottery, further removing player choice) player agency is badly reduced in a21.

 

And why does a 'dew collector' need a filter, anyway? Dew is condensed moisture from the air. It's literally already naturally distilled. Even rain is safe to drink without boiling.

8 hours ago, Survior said:

P1. Yes, every poster here represents a thousand gamers at least who can't be bothered one way or another, but if that doesn't make you happy, if you go onto youtube you can find youtube comments with a couple thousand likes saying how they feel about the TFP and their nerf bat. If your too busy, I'll just say comments on youtube overwhelming are negative regarding these kinds of changes made over time.

 

P2,P3: There you go,  I feel good to read some honesty around here, I'm sure the 7d2d-fortnight edition is going to be bangers.

 

 

 

What does someone who literally made an account and signed up on this board to give negative feedback about this change count? I've been here since you could craft in a Minecraft grid or cast shotgun barrels out tin cans once you made a clay mold and never felt compelled to put in my two cents before. This one finally got my lazy ass to try to improve things.

[BFT2020]

3 minutes ago, OccamsShavingCream said:

And why does a 'dew collector' need a filter, anyway? Dew is condensed moisture from the air. It's literally already naturally distilled. Even rain is safe to drink without boiling.

 

Uh, no its not.  Rain water can collect pollutants before it even reaches ground level.

[AtomicUs5000]

49 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

Uh, no its not.  Rain water can collect pollutants before it even reaches ground level.

That's true in real life.
In the game, I suppose these pollutants are coming from the same air the character is breathing?

[theFlu]

1 hour ago, BFT2020 said:

Rain water can collect pollutants before it even reaches ground level.

Yeh, that and for a "dew collector" the same surface that is condensing the water will also gather all of the airborne particulate in the neighborhood. And then store the condensed water in a semi-open lukewarm container which is reasonably fertile grounds for all kinds of life forms, bacteria, mosquito larvae, whatnot..

 

Which makes it exactly the same as the "river" down the street, whose water is unusable .. wait.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, OccamsShavingCream said:

The fact that other resource containers are not implemented is not a reason to remove ones that are. "Consistently bad" is the wrong kind of consistency.

The fact that we never had one complaint or a single eyelash batted over all the other consumable containers being abstractions over 9 years shows that the design isn’t bad. The bad feeling you and others are getting is the normal aversion to change. If jars had been treated as they are from the beginning there would be about as much outcry about it as we’ve seen for every other container that shows up in your inventory when full but disappears when empty. 
 

1 hour ago, OccamsShavingCream said:

Even with this change, in SP on insane/75% loot I can find enough water past day two. It just means you focus on ransacking different things. Water becomes an infinite resource once you get enough dew collectors, so the only actual change is that in the first few days, players are forced to hit the traders for a pot (if they haven't memorized with houses have them) and do a bunch of quests to get water filters. Past that it's just tedium, which could be bypassed in a20 and before by just throwing a bunch of sand in a furnace to make jars.

 

In a20, the first day is a mad scramble to find resources and get on top of something solid so you don't get massacred in the night. Once you finally get set up and take stock of what you have, the decision is: what water do I drink, what do I save for tomorrow, what do I turn into glue for armor and pipe weapons? On day two, if you found everything to make a forge and found some sand or broke a bunch of windows, you could usually get enough jars to make what you need, but between red tea, glue, Molotov's and cornbread (if you were slumming it and didn't get enough animals) it was still something you had to keep track of.

 

Good gameplay comes from asking players to make interesting choices. This change removes choice from the player and forces a specific playstyle. Between this change and the skill magazines change (which turns skill unlocks into a lottery, further removing player choice) player agency is badly reduced in a21.

1) Anyone can reduce any mechanic in the game down to a tedious sequence of repetitive mouse clicks. The fact that you find the new mechanic of overcoming the water survival problem more tedious than the old method is immaterial. Everyone finds the fun in any sequence of mouse clicks to a different degree. It’s already known that some like the change and some don’t. That was anticipated long before the release. 
 

2) Everyone plays Day One differently. Thanks for sharing your version of Day One. In my version of Day One I almost always had many jars by the end of day one regardless of sand or windows or forges and it seems that was the case for many others as well. Once the forge was complete there were so many jars available that there were never any choices involved with how to use water. Some important recipes didn’t even use clean water. When there is enough abundance to do everything then there are no choices. 
 

3) This change creates tough choices. Every update when a change is made, those who initially dislike the change think that it creates less choice and more forced gameplay but after  some time goes by it becomes apparent that all of the perceived restrictions and forced non choices were just a product of unfamiliarity with  the changes. It’s happened so many times now.  

 

In my opinion, within a few months, most if not all game play styles will once again be present as innovative players adapt and figure things out. Some people will never think that the series of mouse clicks involved in building dew collectors is fun. That’s given. But the devs like it and are betting enough players will also like it. 

 

[OccamsShavingCream]

14 minutes ago, Roland said:

The fact that you find the new mechanic of overcoming the water survival problem more tedious than the old method is immaterial.

 

I apologize. I had assumed that the whole point of the experimental branch was to solicit player feedback, but it appears that's not the case. I think I'll just sit this one out.

 

Have a good day.

[Roland]

10 hours ago, Survior said:

if you go onto youtube you can find youtube comments with a couple thousand likes saying how they feel about the TFP and their nerf bat. If your too busy, I'll just say comments on youtube overwhelming are negative regarding these kinds of changes made over time.

*gasp*
And YouTube comments are typically so positive… 😉

 

Joking aside, there are plenty of comments both positive and negative with thousands of likes. I can acknowledge the negative posts. I know that no feature is going to please everyone.  Interesting that you can’t acknowledge any of the positive. 
 

10 hours ago, Survior said:

P2,P3: There you go,  I feel good to read some honesty around here, I'm sure the 7d2d-fortnight edition is going to be bangers.

When has anyone ever tried to withhold the truth that TFP isn’t making a survival simulator?  This is just a case of you letting your own expectations get in the way of you seeing the truth. The same thing happened about five years ago when all the PvP fans who expected that the game was going to be a voxel version of Rust finally realized that the game was actually being designed as a cooperative or single player game with role playing elements. Oh the outcry we had and all those players predicted the doom of the game if it wasn’t going to fully support 50+ player battleground gameplay. 

[Riamus]

10 hours ago, Survior said:

I'll just say comments on youtube overwhelming are negative regarding these kinds of changes made over time.

And when are YouTube comments not overwhelmingly negative about changes or pretty much anything.  Sure, you can find certain areas in YT where they aren't (music is often more positive than negative, for example) but YT is generally a cesspool of negativity.  I wouldn't ever look there for an idea of what most people think about anything.

 

Besides, we are only a couple weeks into experimental.  You will always get way more negative posts than positive in the beginning of experimental because people do not like change.  Many of those people will change their minds after they are used to the changes - in a month or two, or longer if they don't play much.  So none of this right now really proves anything other than a general current feeling about change and basing changes on kneejerk reactions isn't going to make for a good game.

[Roland]

18 minutes ago, OccamsShavingCream said:

 

I apologize. I had assumed that the whole point of the experimental branch was to solicit player feedback, but it appears that's not the case. I think I'll just sit this one out.

 

Have a good day.

Oh please…

 

Of course we have your feedback just like we have the feedback of others who don’t like it. What I meant is that your personal dislike isn’t going to be enough to convince them to change the game. There are others who like it and we listen to that feedback as well. I didn’t say that your feedback isn’t wanted or considered. TFP listens to the whole range of feedback. They won’t have the full range of feedback until A21 goes stable and people have plenty of time to play it and get beyond their first impression. 
 

Look, you’re at least tangentially related to the razor. So let’s break this down to simplest terms. 
 

1) The devs made a change they believe in and enjoy.

 

2) The internal team played with the changes for almost a year and some adjustments were made but the feature was kept. 
 

3) Since release two-weeks ago there have been many comments. A lot have been positive and a lot have been negative. 
 

4) Nobody has reported that the game is now unplayable or broken due to the changes. All of the comments have been of the nature of liking vs disliking the changes. 
 

The simplest conclusion is that the feature is well designed and functions well within the game but that there are a lot of divergent opinions about whether it is fun or not. Since fun is a highly personal and subjective concept it is impossible to design a feature that is fun for everyone. All they can do is watch as time goes on to see whether most people come to find it fun. 
 

 

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

[Skaarphy]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

In my opinion, within a few months, most if not all game play styles will once again be present as innovative players adapt and figure things out. Some people will never think that the series of mouse clicks involved in building dew collectors is fun. That’s given. But the devs like it and are betting enough players will also like it. 
 

I'm not the most innovative player around but I figure there is no better way to go about the initial water problem than by doing quests, and buying a pot and a water filter. Along the way pick up all the murky water and maybe sell some stuff if you need drinking water ASAP. 

You can, of course, opt to not buy a pot and loot it instead. But that's it, isn't it? For the life of me I cannot think of any better way. I cannot even think of any other way. 

Buy a pot or loot it. Buy a water filter - because that's the only way. To get the money for that do quests because that's the fastest way to get it - and not just the fastest, the safest too. Rinse repeat until you have enough walter filters. Then forget about the whole thing and play the rest of the game.

 

Like I said, I'm not super innovative or imaginative or able to think outside the box. So I might be missing something. Is there any other way to go about it that doesn't amount to serious self-sabotage? I mean, even no-trader players are kind of shown the middle finger here, aren't they? I guess they could skip the whole dew collector thing and live a life of happy grinding for murky water.

 

Sorry, but I just fail to see the upside to the new system. Has anyone talked about the upsides, by the way? Except for that after a few days of doing what you're basically shoehorned into a game mechanic nopes itself out of the game? 

Edited June 25, 2023 by Skaarphy
Typos (see edit history)

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Skaarphy said:

Sorry, but I just fail to see the upside to the new system.

I think you stated it quite well when you listed all of the tasks and the process involved with getting water going. That process is a huge gameplay improvement over the nonexistent effort required before. It competes with the other tasks you need to get done and creates additional choices for how to play the first few days.  You don’t like it which is noted. But for those who do, it is much more engaging than what we had before. Hopefully it will grow on you as you adapt to it and/or if the devs make some adjustments based on the negative feedback to make it more enjoyable for a larger portion of their players. 

[Survior]

6 hours ago, Riamus said:

 

 

"Nobody feels like that"

 

-- two people in this thread feel like that

 

"They don't represent thousand of players"

 

-- yes they do, but if you need thousands of players let's look at youtube

 

"Youtube doesn't count"

 

I'm tired of you guys moving the goal posts on your arguments, lol.

 

[warmer]

On 6/24/2023 at 8:07 PM, Survior said:

 

People who support this change are supporting a dumber less sandbox-y game in favor of an arcade game, that in conjunction with  the magazine system has pushed 7d2d WAY into that field. 

 

how did you learn something new without an instructor before you had unlimited free youtube tutorials?

 

Books and how to articles. Its super realistic if you ask me.

 

I have been playing piano nearly everyday since I was 5 (35 years) and all it takes is one great lesson about something I couldnt figure out on my own to jump ahead much further than self practice. A perfect combo for realism is learn by doing/learn by reading. That is the best analog to how ot works in real life I can think of.

[Razorpony]

On 6/24/2023 at 1:14 AM, Roland said:

 

I'm talking about the actual containers of consumables as they are represented in the game and yes, they are factually all consistent with each other now. Are the gathering methods of consumables all exactly the same? No. Is the history of what substance was loot only and what substance was harvestable or craftable the same? No. But I never claimed they were. I agree that for veterans who can't let go of the past, the history of how things used to be is probably a very important piece of this. I also agree that for someone who wants the method of extraction of different resources to be consistent then that piece is very important.

 

All I am telling the OP who asked the question was why TFP got rid of the physical representation of a container for a consumable and that is because it was the only one in the game and they wanted such empty containers to be consistent across the board. As to how water vs shale is collected or the historical differences in the game between water and acid, those things weren't the concern. But getting rid of jars was which is why I didn't want the OP to have false hope that jars would be reinstated by the developers in case the OP thought that getting rid of jars was simply collateral damage for the water change. It was, in fact, the impetus for the water changes. It's fine by me if you disagree with that design goal or think the game was better before. I'm just giving information about why the change occurred and why it is unlikely to be reversed.

 

 

Not everyone thinks every aspect of a game is fun. Fun for 100% isn't a realistic goal. The developers and the team found it fun and have continued to find it fun for about a year (The water change was implemented about a year ago internally). They are developing the kind of game they like to play. There are other features that have been implemented and then removed before they ever were experienced by the public because the devs decided that they didn't like them once they got to play with them. It's not like they would have left it in after playing with it for a year if they didn't think it was fun. So there are some (pretty important) people you waved at. It's only been a couple of weeks with the public so we will see if there are others. So far there have been a lot of positive comments about the water changes on many social media platforms including here. Since you're waving at them maybe they'll say "Hi".

 

 

First off Roland I just want to say that I understand your point, I really do. It's just the fact that someone said "Let's put lakes and rivers in the maps!" And then someone else said "Yeah and let's make water hard to get!"

When I try to hold those 2 dissonant thoughts in my head at the same time it makes me want to eat broken glass. 

I don't care where the bottles come from. I don't care where they go. But if you want to make water hard to get then maybe don't put entire rivers of it everywhere. 

So while I have adapted my playstyle to a21 mechanics I'm not one of those people who never think about it again. I do. Frequently. Every time I scoop a bottle of water out of a toilet I wonder why I can't do that down at the river. It hurts my soul, man. I die a little inside, over an approximate 7 day timeframe. 

[Skaarphy]

9 hours ago, Roland said:

I think you stated it quite well when you listed all of the tasks and the process involved with getting water going. That process is a huge gameplay improvement over the nonexistent effort required before. It competes with the other tasks you need to get done and creates additional choices for how to play the first few days.  You don’t like it which is noted. But for those who do, it is much more engaging than what we had before. Hopefully it will grow on you as you adapt to it and/or if the devs make some adjustments based on the negative feedback to make it more enjoyable for a larger portion of their players. 

How is it a huge improvement? Before A21 it was kind of a realistic approach. Water was easy to be found but it was not safe to drink without boiling it. Very much what you'd expect in a game about survivial in a post-apocalyptic world. 

Now, water is still easy to be found but: 

- If you drink it straight out a river or lake you take immediate health damage, as if there is glass in it or something

- You cannot scoop it up and take it home though because ... basically the devs decided it shouldn't be possible

- You can find portable water in toilets, coffee machines, etc. though

- The best method to get water is to build yourself a dew collector or three for which you have to buy a water filter 

- But you cannot craft that water filter because ... basically the devs decided it shouldn't be possible

 

I'm not saying that the new way is objectively worse than the old way but it is definitely more gamey, isn't it? If you're fine with gamey, if you're fine with being shoehorned into a very specific approach, if the inexplicibility of having a river in front of you and not being able to scoop up some water and carry it home, or the inexplicibility of you one day being able to build your own drones but never being able to build your own water filter, if all of that doesn't matter to you then sure, the new way can be called an improvement. After all, now we can have dew collectors. And there's less clutter. 

 

But what really does not seem to be true is that you have additional choices for how to play the first few days. Get money to buy water filters, that's the first few days. It's what everybody does and what everybody will be doing. Alternatives for beginners: Die. Alternatives for pros: Grind POIs for murky water. If they enjoy the challenge of hamstringing themselves, that is.

 

If I come across as a little hostile, I'm sorry. I'm just angry. I'm angry that after one and a half years one of the two major game mechanics changes to 7DTD is one that - to me - comes across as really not well thought through.    

[Survior]

8 hours ago, warmer said:

I have been playing piano nearly everyday since I was 5 (35 years) and all it takes is one great lesson about something I couldnt figure out on my own to jump ahead much further than self practice. A perfect combo for realism is learn by doing/learn by reading. That is the best analog to how ot works in real life I can think of.

And where is the learn by doing element your speaking of? Btw, your piano flex made me laugh. Thanks.

 

4 hours ago, Skaarphy said:

If I come across as a little hostile, I'm sorry. I'm just angry. I'm angry that after one and a half years one of the two major game mechanics changes to 7DTD is one that - to me - comes across as really not well thought through.    

It's not well thought out. None of the changes for a21 are, the magazine system has a million holes in it, it's garbage, and this water thing is just as bad. It doesn't matter who are willing to support it, because all of those people want 7d2d to be an arcade shooters instead of a survival game. 

 

 

[warmer]

2 hours ago, Survior said:

And where is the learn by doing element your speaking of? Btw, your piano flex made me laugh. Thanks.

not a flex, just facts.

 

Learn by doing is practice. You only get so much better, prior to instruction/guidance from a better source. Is that so hard to wrap your noggin around?

[Survior]

20 minutes ago, warmer said:

not a flex, just facts.

 

Learn by doing is practice. You only get so much better, prior to instruction/guidance from a better source. Is that so hard to wrap your noggin around?

It is currently since you seem to be unable to answer the question, where is the learn by doing mechanic that you are saying exists currently?

[theFlu]

8 minutes ago, Survior said:

where is the learn by doing mechanic that you are saying exists currently?

He didn't say it exists, he said it's the best.

[RipClaw]

10 minutes ago, Survior said:

It is currently since you seem to be unable to answer the question, where is the learn by doing mechanic that you are saying exists currently?

If you had asked some people before the Alpha 21 release, they would have said that Alpha 21 comes with Learning by Doing. Apparently someone confused Learn by Looting with Learning by Doing because of the similar name and then this misinformation spread.

 

[Survior]

17 minutes ago, theFlu said:

He didn't say it exists, he said it's the best.

 

No, He is clearly defending the current system and saying it's super-duper realistic and goes on to misspeak that it's somehow LBR and LBD.

 

edit:
I totally agree that a LBR/LBD (and if I could say, a learn by selection (perks/skill points) is the most realistic method, but that's not what we got, we got an arcade simulator, which is the very thing that he's refuting.  So let him explain it.

 

 

9 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

If you had asked some people before the Alpha 21 release, they would have said that Alpha 21 comes with Learning by Doing. Apparently someone confused Learn by Looting with Learning by Doing because of the similar name and then this misinformation spread.

 

If that was the case that's a single mechanic and he clearly defined two mechanics.  So that's not it.

 

Edited June 26, 2023 by Survior (see edit history)

[Riamus]

23 minutes ago, Survior said:

No, He is clearly defending the current system and saying it's super-duper realistic and goes on to misspeak that it's somehow LBR and LBD.

He stated that the learn by reading system was realistic in that people do learn by reading.  He then, later, gave the example of piano lessons and stated that a hybrid option would be better... not that it is what we have now.

 

He is not wrong that LBR is realistic and you rewording it as "super-duper realistic" doesn't change the fact that he is right.  People learn by reading.  They learn by instruction.  They learn by doing.  It's a combination of things but people can learn by any one of those things individually if they want.  Nothing unrealistic about LBR.  I mean, just reading a manual on how to put something together is LBR and I'm sure you've seen plenty of manuals.

 

In any case, trying to make it sound like he is saying that the current system is perfect is misleading at best.  Neither he nor I are saying such a thing.  That doesn't mean we don't like it better than what we had before or like it for different reasons than what we had before.  Liking something doesn't mean we are some kind of fanatic like you seem to be trying to portray us as.  We see the flaws.  Just reading other of our posts around the forum will show that we see the flaws.  That doesn't mean we still don't like the change.  We just want to work on fixing the flaws rather than trying to make the devs reverse the changes entirely, which they aren't going to do and so is a waste of time.

[AtomicUs5000]

27 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Liking something doesn't mean we are some kind of fanatic like you seem to be trying to portray us as.  We see the flaws.  Just reading other of our posts around the forum will show that we see the flaws.  That doesn't mean we still don't like the change.  We just want to work on fixing the flaws rather than trying to make the devs reverse the changes entirely, which they aren't going to do and so is a waste of time.

 
Better ideas in general would come about if more people took this approach to expressing opinions about changes. If enough people do it, others will learn by example.
 

Edited June 26, 2023 by AtomicUs5000 (see edit history)

[Riamus]

6 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:

 
Better ideas in general would come about if more people took this approach to expressing opinions about changes. If enough people do it, others will learn by example.
 

You know... learn by example could be an interesting addition to a hybrid model.  If you are within LOS of another player, you gain a small bonus to experience in a skill related to what they are doing.  So if they are sneaking and you can see them, you'll gain a little in a sneaking skill.  Heh.  It could be a fun addition to a game that would encourage teamwork. 

[AtomicUs5000]

2 minutes ago, Riamus said:

You know... learn by example could be an interesting addition to a hybrid model.  If you are within LOS of another player, you gain a small bonus to experience in a skill related to what they are doing.  So if they are sneaking and you can see them, you'll gain a little in a sneaking skill.  Heh.  It could be a fun addition to a game that would encourage teamwork. 

Yeah, when I wrote that my mind slipped away in thought as well and that was the first thought. It's not an amazing idea, but definitely interesting and different. It suffers the similar flaws.
 
Back on topic of the water changes specifically though, I do wish things were more of a mix. Like I've said before, I want the struggle of having to deal with carrying water in a little container at first, but then I want to earn that reward of the more convenient dew collectors. Part of the reason why people argue their likes and dislikes in such a black and white manner might be because quite often when these changes come about, the changes themselves are black and white. When LBD switched to LBP, this change was black and white and many of the opinions were black and white. Some of us had thoughts that a hybrid system would be best but it was difficult to be heard as a shade of gray in between all that black and white. I'm finding it to be the same regarding this water change even though its significance is so small compared to that of a skill system.