some of my new player friends are disapointed and i understand them

[delukard]

i told 7-8 of my friends about this game, they bough it and were very hyped about it.

We rented a server , and started the game

Day 14 we have almost all our tier 6 items from trader quests.

i told them the game was not this way (last time i played was a20)

trader rewards pretty much killed the game for them.

so my question is , wtf happened to the survival aspect of this game?
not to mention the water change LMAO

i pretty much feel like it was a big mistake showing a21 to them.

even if i install a nerf trader quests, what would the point be? the damage is done.

[Gamida]

This won't fix what you feel is wrong with A21 but you could get them all to download the A20 version and you should be able to set it up on the server.

That way you could show them the 7 Days that you liked.

As for setting up the server you will have to get advice from someone else as I am not up on the commands. Maybe your server provider know how to do it also.

[AllTheGoodNamesAreInUse]

I've introduced a few new players to the game by having them install A20 rather than A21 to avoid that issue. While it has its issues, A20 can still be played like a crafting and survival game, rather than a magazine collecting trader job game.

[binf_shinana]

a21においては、トレーダー報酬からあまりに品質6の武器が出るため、私は何かしらのバグが潜んでいるのではないかとさえ考えています。

 

In a21, too many quality 6 weapons are obtained from trader rewards, so I'm even thinking that there may be some kind of bug lurking.

[Gamida]

7 minutes ago, AllTheGoodNamesAreInUse said:

I've introduced a few new players to the game by having them install A20 rather than A21 to avoid that issue. While it has its issues, A20 can still be played like a crafting and survival game, rather than a magazine collecting trader job game.

 

I have seen others say they were partial to alphas even older than A20 and the nice thing is you can still go back to at least A8 from what I see on steam.

Not sure how far back you are able to make a server for them though.

[AllTheGoodNamesAreInUse]

33 minutes ago, Gamida said:

 

I have seen others say they were partial to alphas even older than A20 and the nice thing is you can still go back to at least A8 from what I see on steam.

Not sure how far back you are able to make a server for them though.

 

Indeed! In fact, for our next reset, we've been contemplating doing an Alpha 17 map just for fun. I don't think it's particularly difficult to make servers for previous alphas.

[Krougal]

Well the problem then becomes, what is a good reward?

I don't want to do quests to get half-assed rewards that aren't any better than what I could craft myself.

 

You are saying there are too many QL6 but what tier are they? I imagine you guys aren't getting T3 stuff or even T2 after 2 weeks if you are playing with a bunch of noobs.

 

I know this is partially the Pimps fault, because even they are inconsistent about references to Tier and Quality level, but they are not the same thing.

There are 4 tiers: 0, 1, 2, 3 although sometimes they are referenced as 1-4. QL runs at 1-6, although sometimes internally 0-5. Computers start sequences at 0, people tend to start sequences at 1. Then to make it more complicated they mix up tier and QL sometimes, and then of course the rest of us follow suit.

 

I don't know what tier quests y'all are at either, it depends how agressive you've been.  If you are getting QL6 pipe & stone weapons then that is hardly game-breaking. I would say even T1 wouldn't be out of place by week 2, but then I hit the quests hard.

 

Yes, I agree the emphasis on questing is too much and it has ruined the survival aspect of the game and dumbed it down a lot, but it is what it is.

[8_Hussars]

4 hours ago, delukard said:

Day 14 we have almost all our tier 6 items from trader quests.

 

Trader quest rewards are OP, especially if sharing quests in a party.

Try a no trader run...with no loot respawn

[Gamida]

3 hours ago, AllTheGoodNamesAreInUse said:

 

Indeed! In fact, for our next reset, we've been contemplating doing an Alpha 17 map just for fun. I don't think it's particularly difficult to make servers for previous alphas.

I have A5 - present versions saved on my hard drive (except for A6 which is not available for some reason)

Now and then I play them for a different view of the game.

Edited October 2, 2023 by Gamida (see edit history)

[Ramethzer0]

As a person whom habitually plays MP servers also with a large group of friends, there's a lot to know about things:

 

The first being, playing with this many people for long periods of time, if you're at vanilla settings or lower is going to launch you through the bulk of the content of this game.  You can always go backwards in alphas as people have suggested, and that is a viable path to go.  However, should you and your group wish to move forward - These are some things to know about how not to make that a speed leveling solution.

 

1.  You'll definitely want to turn up the difficulty.  Warrior and Survivalist are a wee bit difficult in the beginning, but it promotes group tactics.  Everyone should be relying upon each other anyway, for the most part.  Making zombies tougher is a great way to promote your group as a pack.

2.  Trimming down your XP setting is also sorta vital.   My group plays at less than vanilla (not sure what the precise number is) it prolongs the game by quite a bit because you can't just make the decision to go off all cowboy and farm XP whenever you get infestation quests chained back to back.

3.  Tone down the loot percentage:  It's really hard to stay hungry for content if everyone chains trader quests for max XP gain.  There is some nuance to this feature.  It might seem dumb at first, but if your group is good at its cohesion, then what loot does come around will likely go to the people that actually need it.

4.  If the traders are really the root of the problem, stay away from questing.   It will remain vital that they are around for the purposes of trading, but will continue to grant access to Water Filters for Dew Collection.  By extension, Duct tape and steel production is one of 7 Days most notable resource mid to end game choke points challenges.  How you handle that is going to be the most telling aspect of how your group begins to get bored with the game.

5.  Turn up your airdrop events.  While making things more difficult in other areas, this particular feature will bring value back to airdrops.  My own group doesn't really care about air drops at all, but I wont let that speak for everyone.

6.  Toggle your loot refresh in POI's.   Why?  Because it will either force you to go one of two routes depending on what you think will be more fun in regards to map size.  The first route is to refresh things quickly.  This will somewhat mitigate the notion of loosing out on double looting the same POI because of trader quests.  Refreshing POI loot faster will help sustain a group that may desire to grow roots on small maps.  The other route requires extending the loot refresh beyond normal, which forces a group to be nomadic.  So once a town is completely looted, you and your group have no choice but to move on entirely until the next however long it takes.   Turning off loot respawn entirely is an even more nuanced approach, because it also contributes to the decay of a any given map's life cycle.

7.  Try out frequent or random horde nights that come with no warning.  Wanna see people focus more about the unknown potential issues?  This setting does precisely that!  Maintaining paranoia is something I have found essential to keeping groups tight.

8. And finally, this is the most important thing to look out for with MP groups:  Once people start feeling completely and utterly safe, people start to loose interest.  It is the biggest turning point, because you'll see people start to be less and less focused upon helping each other - and more about personal pursuits, and/or build hybridization.  It may not be a slippery slope, but it is a slope.

 

Hope this helps.  My group and I still play together (2 nights a week for up to 4 hours per night) and we are often level 80 ish/day 32 before we consider turning the difficulty up even higher or changing maps.   But, we all seem to agree that the most fun is the early levels when the game is really about the resource crunch.  We've been doing this since A18, and it's absolutely vital to learn how your toggles offer different forms of entertainment.   One of the guys in my group is the server admin and he keeps most of the map gen details to himself, which keeps us always asking ourselves what will become important at any given play through.   I hear a lot of people complain about how the base game works, but in every single thread - all of them were really flippant about looking deeper at how they approach the game itself.  The one thing that can keep a game fresh is really about MINDSET.  Focusing on group logistics can be really rewarding, and if everyone feels like they aren't being challenged, then you might as well hang it up and call it a win.   In other words, straddling the edge of failure is essential.  It's what makes games like this so compelling!

Edited October 3, 2023 by Ramethzer0 (see edit history)

[Feycat]

Don't use the traders then.
 

My spouse and I are playing an "old school" type playthrough, we're just looting POIs. No quests, no respawn. It feels way more realistic to a zombie apocalypse than doing radiant RPG quests.

 

We're also doing Khaine's Romero overhaul, it's fantastic, it's so much like much earlier alphas but with the current graphics intact.

[delukard]

-these are the settings i had.

Difficulty, warrior (by the end of 1 week real time, this was pretty much easy because of all those trader tier 5-6 rewards)
loot 50% (redundant with trader rewards so op)
loot respawn disabled (again, redundant with trader rewards so high)

i could continue.

Unfortunately i went blind with a21 and did not knew how OP the trader rewards where.

by the time i catch one,  the damage was done.

only thing that really helped was a cooking build and thats it.

here is an example.

you do tier 4 quest, finish it, get a nice shotgun , go do tier 1 quests to get lots of shotgun bullets as reward, rinse and repeat.

then do 1 or 3 tier 5 quests and get steel armor tier 6 (before even have a way to craft steel) and then your almost set.

imho this is not a survival crafting game anymore , its more like , the MAP is a big lobby and the trader a hub for it.

log in, pick some quests, do them get loot.


wait till we get raiders or bandits, this game will become a looter shooter lmfao......





 

[Zxaiercese]

On 10/2/2023 at 10:32 AM, Krougal said:

Well the problem then becomes, what is a good reward?

I don't want to do quests to get half-assed rewards that aren't any better than what I could craft myself.

 

You are saying there are too many QL6 but what tier are they? I imagine you guys aren't getting T3 stuff or even T2 after 2 weeks if you are playing with a bunch of noobs.

 

I know this is partially the Pimps fault, because even they are inconsistent about references to Tier and Quality level, but they are not the same thing.

There are 4 tiers: 0, 1, 2, 3 although sometimes they are referenced as 1-4. QL runs at 1-6, although sometimes internally 0-5. Computers start sequences at 0, people tend to start sequences at 1. Then to make it more complicated they mix up tier and QL sometimes, and then of course the rest of us follow suit.

 

I don't know what tier quests y'all are at either, it depends how agressive you've been.  If you are getting QL6 pipe & stone weapons then that is hardly game-breaking. I would say even T1 wouldn't be out of place by week 2, but then I hit the quests hard.

 

Yes, I agree the emphasis on questing is too much and it has ruined the survival aspect of the game and dumbed it down a lot, but it is what it is.

I considered anything I didn't have the skill points invested in to craft myself, to be a good reward. 

[warmer]

I think a question that should be asked is when should tier 6 gear be available?

 

Everyone has a different answer. When I play I typically get bored by day 25 because I have everything I want. Then again, I play on 2hr days and solo most of the time, so that's like 50hrs of game time. Which, if we are being honest, is more time than most games take to complete.

 

So when is end game to you? At what point should you be at end game? That to me feels like appropriate tier 6 territory.

 

If people want tier 6 at day 100, I'll never play that long before I start a new world. 7d2d to me is all about discovery and finding the perfect spot for a base. All that has been done by day 25, if not sooner for me.

 

At what point are you asking for more of a reason to keep playing than this game is designed for?

[pApA^LeGBa]

@warmer Day 25? Seriously? You don´t even get a full horde night until 4am at this point. Or demolishers. And while i can reach T6 at day 25, i really don´t want to. That would be rushing for no reason tbh. Do you even get a lot of rads in your games?

 

And actually this is his point. That the trader is currently designed for a too short playtrough. You can have engame gear way too early. Way before demolishers show up wich are supposed to be endgame enemies. That´s not a good balance.

Edited October 11, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[binf_shinana]

@warmer

In my case, in vanilla, I can craft M60 quality 1 in 7-9 hours, so that's essentially the end of the game.
It takes 10-14 hours to get some kind of quality 6 from trader rewards.

[saltychipmunk]

Just play an overhaul mod pack. pretty much all of them focus heavily on overhauling progression to give the game a better tail. 

 

 

[Ramethzer0]

3 hours ago, saltychipmunk said:

Just play an overhaul mod pack. pretty much all of them focus heavily on overhauling progression to give the game a better tail. 

 

 

Not knocking on mods here, but the game's lifespan could definitely be improved (IMO) by the continuation of making progression seeming a bit more contextual.  I know not everyone would agree with that, but we have the evidence of lengthening the early game progress for this purpose, so why couldn't we look at mid game progress as well? 

[pApA^LeGBa]

The balance should at least be in a way that you don´t get endgame gear before demolishers show up. They do show up at gamestage 150, in A20 i got them at day 42 or 49 in SP i think. Before that you shouldn´t get Q6 of the highest tier as a trader reward. 

 

And you shouldn´t be able to craft a M60 or anything similar on day 7-9. That´s just badly balanced. I hope those things get fixed before the game goes gold.

Edited October 11, 2023 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[warmer]

On 10/11/2023 at 12:39 AM, pApA^LeGBa said:

@warmer Day 25? Seriously? You don´t even get a full horde night until 4am at this point. Or demolishers. And while i can reach T6 at day 25, i really don´t want to. That would be rushing for no reason tbh. Do you even get a lot of rads in your games?

 

And actually this is his point. That the trader is currently designed for a too short playtrough. You can have engame gear way too early. Way before demolishers show up wich are supposed to be endgame enemies. That´s not a good balance.

2hr days and basing in Wasteland I am usually around level 40 at this point and my game stage is 100+. It's plenty exciting

 

But the game doesn't change much for me after that. It's more of the same. Quantities changes, gameplay does not really. 50 hrs in and their isn't much of a reason to keep going. My base is practically AFK at that point and I don't cheese mechanics, so the challenge is gone. 

 

I also play without loot respawn to force me to travel around. If I didn't I would be bored much quicker.

 

Edited October 12, 2023 by warmer (see edit history)

[Whorhay]

Demolishers showing up is usually my queue to start a new game. They aren't a fun, entertaining, or rewarding enough experience for what they do. In my current game I'm on day 30, level 56, gamestage just hit 102, have a few T6 top tier pieces of equipment with tons of room for improvements. I'm still using melee for most everything except horde night. Game is plateauing, but still fun, once Demo's appear though it just gets tedious and I'll start a new game.