New group looking to play 7 days, some thoughts.

[WarMongerian]

So, good and bad news.

I got a bad case of the shakes, and had to crank up the heat, and had to stop playing and tinkering around with the spawnpoints.

 

OTOH, the husband and wife team hit me up for a game, and while I had to decline playing, I was able to teach them how to edit their player profiles, and get their game setup with just the single spawnpoint for their games. 

[Gamida]

One thing I will mention about spawnpoints that so far as I know use to work back when I was an admin.

 

If I wanted to spawn someone at a particular spot I would change the height number to -1.

 

So I would type it like this...

 

535, -1, 796

 

from what I remember the -1 was a default to have the player spawn at the "ground level" of those coordinates.

 

Ground level would be the height of whatever was at that spot so the player didn't spawn in ground or up in the air.

 

 

If there was a hill at that spot they would spawn on the hill, if there was a building they would spawn on the roof, etc.

 

Not sure if it still works that way now or not.

Edited February 25 by Gamida (see edit history)

[WarMongerian]

Got a very nice playing session in Sunday with the husband and wife team, and despite some ongoing computer issues, had a very positive playing session.  The biggest failings were because I my stupidity, because I wanted to teach them about the need/usefulness of mission stash's, twice we lost loot because I positioned them within the respawn radius of the POI's that we were clearing. 

 

I was having such a good time playing, I didn't take a single screen shot during our joint session.  We made it to day 5 with our latest game, so will be looking forward to our ongoing adventures...

[WarMongerian]

Multiple play sessions, some solo, some pairs, and a tri in the last week, learning the game as I make new characters and play with different folks.

 

 

[WarMongerian]

Lots has happened, got several characters playing with several different peeps.  Hard to keep all the different games sorted out, but that is helping me explore this great game!

 

I've had the game now for 36 days, and I can truthfully say, it doesn't take me any 7 days to die.

 

I die much faster than that, lol.  I've gotten 5 people to play with so far, 1 experienced player from back n the day, and 4 other brand spanking new players, most of whom can shoot farther and faster than I can.

 

Current hours played to date:

 

[WarMongerian]

Many good things happening.

Looks like not quite 700 hours played so far.

 

Had a good time playing with the husband and wife team last night, and might be able to play with them again this afternoon.

[WarMongerian]

Just about got things figured out enough to get things rolling.

 

Got 4 of us (in addition to myself) that play legit private games, and know others that play on public servers/modded versions of the game.  Our core group of five play different amounts, 2 play quite often/daily, while the husband/wife team play a bit less than that.  Our most experienced player doesn't get to play more than 1-2 times a week (and sometimes, not at all), but is a good sport about letting all of us newbs make an effort to explore the map, and explore the game for ourselves, and doesn't ruin the adventure for us with spoilers.

 

All games have only so much content after all, and the faster you run through it, the sooner you run out of new things to do.  I am deliberately going as slow as I can, so that, even though I have a huge number of hours in the game (considering I was downloading it on the 2nd of Feb), I'm still playing starter areas and concepts.  I spend lots of time making new characters, trying out new openings, and ways to build my character(s), discovering different way to build bases (and yes, how NOT to build a base), and having a blast as I explore things.

 

Current total hours played as of today, March 19th, 2024:

 

[WarMongerian]

Some thoughts.

Spawning in the same place for all team members has been achieved by editing the spawnpoint file.  While this works, and in no way could be considered hard, I'd like to put forward that making some such thing a part of the game creation GUI/settings would be a better option.  Let me post the game settings that my group and I are currently using while we learn the game.:

 

 

We are learning, and so are using the easiest settings the interface allows us to select, while giving us the best loot currently possible.  None of us want to play on public servers, and allowing an in-game day to take up 2 real hours seems good.

 

 

On the Basic tab, we see blood moon disabled (new players, remember), and no one wants to be chased down and swarmed, so zombies don't get to move faster than a walk.  Air Drops come every day, because reasons.

 

On the Advanced Tab, we see everything designed for the players to have the easiest time we can arrange, with the exception of leaving the second to last setting set to "ON", as we do want to have new/replacement zombies in our games.

 

The MultiPlayer Tab is how we roll.

 

 

This last Tab, would be where and how I would build my own settings, and just serves as an easy way of showing how it could be implemented in game at some point.  Replace the titles amd options to whatever you want, so this notional 5th Tab gives us space for 12 nre options to be implemented in an easy to work with interface.

 

 

1)  Initial Spawn locations option.  Right now, all initial spawn locations are randomly determined, and the players currently have no ability to spawn as a group, so perhaps the first one could be where the player could setup the "Party Spawn" from a list of options.

 

2)  Looking back at the experiences of my and my groups poor characters, I would set the second line to bedroll respawns, where one selectable option would be to keep the most recently laid down bedroll as the only one a player could select, but other options would allow for more than a single bedroll to be active (and therefore selectable for respawning at).  My own preferences would be to allow multiple bedrolls to be active, as long as all the others were in the land claim blocks radius of the player.  As I understand it, currently any player can have up to three land claim blocks at a given time.

 

3)  About the land claim blocks limit, I would want options here as well.  Maybe players might want to just allow folks to have a single claim, but I myself would prefer to have a higher limit, and use a bit of roleplay in the process, say something like, basic 1 land claim block, plus one additional block for each and every trader that their stalwart character has contacted/completed all tier one missions for.

 

3a)  This ties in with the multiple bedroll respawn points idea above, have the more renowned characters being allowed better respawn options than those that don't bother with land claims.  If your playstyle is "Back-Pack AD&D" style, no change would be affected by this option, but for those that wanted to build up their respawn options list, by being allowed to select one bedroll from each of their bases, in addition to the one they are presumably laying down before attempting a particularly hard PoI.

 

Anyway, just a few quick options for the notional "New Options" Tab in the game creation GuI.  I see 12 options max per tab, and if the 5th Tab were to become a thing, how would you folks fill out the remaining 9 potential spaces?

Edited March 20 by WarMongerian
I don't know how to wrap text around images, so post and edit are how I have to do this, and a bit of rearranging things to make for a better, more clearly readable post. (see edit history)

[theFlu]

27 minutes ago, WarMongerian said:

as we do want to have new/replacement zombies in our games.

Note that that's not for "respawns" - that setting controls if you have enemies At All.

[WarMongerian]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

Note that that's not for "respawns" - that setting controls if you have enemies At All.

Are you sure about that?  I was told that all enemies would still populate (Once), and then no new foes would get placed.  I have not tested this out myself in A21, but can anyone either confirm or deny this, so I can avoid the time needed to test this out?

[theFlu]

10 minutes ago, WarMongerian said:

Are you sure about that?

Well, now you made me check.. happy now?

- Spawned in my test world, ran around in snow until I saw couple lumberjacks spawn.

- Exit, turn setting off, see the previously spawned lumberjacks where they were, but run around to see only rabbits spawning from there on out

- Exit, turn setting back on, no running around needed to spot the first lumberjack spawn a couple dozen blocks away.

[WarMongerian]

4 minutes ago, theFlu said:

Well, now you made me check.. happy now?

- Spawned in my test world, ran around in snow until I saw couple lumberjacks spawn.

- Exit, turn setting off, see the previously spawned lumberjacks where they were, but run around to see only rabbits spawning from there on out

- Exit, turn setting back on, no running around needed to spot the first lumberjack spawn a couple dozen blocks away.

Thanks!  So, if we didn't want wandering monsters at all, this setting would do that.  I guess I didn't exactly phrase my question properly, in that, I need to know if there is a difference between wandering monsters, spawned all over the place, and fixed monsters within a PoI?  I ask because I don't know, and I thank you for your help.

[theFlu]

39 minutes ago, WarMongerian said:

spawned all over the place, and fixed monsters within a PoI? 

Yeah, soz, those were indeed just biome spawns. I did poke my head into a couple POIs and didn't have any zeds spawn in those either, until turning the setting back on.

[WarMongerian]

1 hour ago, theFlu said:

Yeah, soz, those were indeed just biome spawns. I did poke my head into a couple POIs and didn't have any zeds spawn in those either, until turning the setting back on.

Gotcha, so now I'm wondering if there was any point to trying the game with that setting set to off.

[Vaeliorin]

11 hours ago, WarMongerian said:

Gotcha, so now I'm wondering if there was any point to trying the game with that setting set to off.

If you just wanted to explore and build, it would be fine to turn it off.  I've often considered turning off all zombies except for horde nights, because I don't particularly see any benefit to them during the rest of the week.

[Riamus]

37 minutes ago, Vaeliorin said:

If you just wanted to explore and build, it would be fine to turn it off.  I've often considered turning off all zombies except for horde nights, because I don't particularly see any benefit to them during the rest of the week.

Being able to walk into POI and loot everything without any danger seems pretty boring to me. 

[Vaeliorin]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

Being able to walk into POI and loot everything without any danger seems pretty boring to me. 

I can already do that.  The zombies aren't really a threat, more of an annoyance.  Granted, I bought the game mostly for the building and tower defense aspects.  I actually don't like FPS games at all.

[WarMongerian]

Hey folks, my sounds in discord and in game are way lower than they were and used to be, any suggestions on how to restore them?

 

[theFlu]

Game AND Discord? Well, sounds like a system setting; OS controls or the volume knob on your headset..

[WarMongerian]

18 hours ago, theFlu said:

Game AND Discord? Well, sounds like a system setting; OS controls or the volume knob on your headset..

Thanks for the help.  I got the discord sounds working correctly again, so my discord is now WAD (Working As Designed).  The remaining problem is that, for some reason, my installed copy of 7days is treating my ingame sound settings as if I were crouched down, even while standing.  This makes it very hard to play, when I cannot hear the zombies sneaking up on me.

 

Next update is going to focus on the differences of two player (team play) verus just single player play, for  the initial 2 hours of a characters' players time investment.

[WarMongerian]

Some Quick Ideas, before I go into the team play stuff.

This is how cooking currently Looks, with the time remaining super imposed over the items icon, and is very hard to see.

A simple solution would be to have the active cooking projects have their timer set up in a black box below, as in the image above.

The timer can be more easily read.

Edited March 23 by WarMongerian (see edit history)

[Gamida]

I can't recall if you ever said if you would use mods. If so I think this is one I am using.

 

https://7daystodiemods.com/styx-change-timer-place-color/

 

First pic is in campfire, second pic is in forge.

I think it is pretty spot on to what you had in your example.

 

 

 

Edited March 24 by Gamida (see edit history)

[WarMongerian]

I'm putting my forum postings on hold for the moment, as all of my group has moved on from legit to heavily modded 7DTD.   That and those that moved to other games entirely.

[WarMongerian]

Ok, so back now that I'm basically a one man show...

I have to report that mods are eating away the legit player base, even though I was getting my players to use the easiest settings as new players, they wanted the 160 storage the modded version offered up.  I have some suggestions:

 

1)  Redo the storage as shown above.  You don't lose any functionality and having 99 storage instead of 45 is going to go a long way to reduce the appeal of the cheater mods, so more folks would presumably play legit if this were made to be the case.  See below for more details...

 

2)  Tired of having to empty out your vehicle's storage before putting it away?  Allow vehicles to be stowed while loaded.  This would allow players to keep/haul around more loot with greater ease, and thus make legit more attractive to new players than it currently is versus mods.

 

Now, if folks don't like the idea of a much larger personal storage (for whatever reason) just being handed out to every character at level one, we could put some effort into roleplay kind of thing, and only unlock the added storage once folks have reached level 100, and are no longer getting any life/stamina when they gain a new level.  My main character is now north of level 170, and I have to say that not getting as much for each level as before is getting to be a drag..  So, why not gain more storage, improving retention of players playing without mods, and having something to look forward to at the higher levels.

Edited April 7 by WarMongerian (see edit history)

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, WarMongerian said:

Ok, so back now that I'm basically a one man show...

I have to report that mods are eating away the legit player base, even though I was getting my players to use the easiest settings as new players, they wanted the 160 storage the modded version offered up.  I have some suggestions:

 

1)  Redo the storage as shown above.  You don't lose any functionality and having 99 storage instead of 45 is going to go a long way to reduce the appeal of the cheater mods, so more folks would presumably play legit if this were made to be the case.  See below for more details...

 

2)  Tired of having to empty out your vehicle's storage before putting it away?  Allow vehicles to be stowed while loaded.  This would allow players to keep/haul around more loot with greater ease, and thus make legit more attractive to new players than it currently is versus mods.

 

Now, if folks don't like the idea of a much larger personal storage (for whatever reason) just being handed out to every character at level one, we could put some effort into roleplay kind of thing, and only unlock the added storage once folks have reached level 100, and are no longer getting any life/stamina when they gain a new level.  My main character is now north of level 170, and I have to say that not getting as much for each level as before is getting to be a drag..  So, why not gain more storage, improving retention of players playing without mods, and having something to look forward to at the higher levels.

 

Assume that 99 of the 100 ideas you get have already been posted on this forum in its 10 years of existence. There is limited storage because it makes it a choice what to keep, what to scrap and what to drop. Most survival games have this limitiation implemented. Growing storage through backpacks was as well suggested hundreds of times and the developers decided instead to make part of the storage still available but it hinders you through costing stamina.

 

And TFP has made great effort to make their game very modding-friendly (they have been starting out as modders themselves), why should they be spooked out by people playing the game with mods?

 

 

 

Edited April 7 by meganoth (see edit history)