So what is the End game for 7D2D

[Bhaaltazar]

So I have been with the game since A9 ( little over 7.5k hours in 10 years according to steam ).
Game has always been designed that you reach the Mid game ( well at least in my opinion when you max out your gear and you can comfortably defend against hordes that should be end of Mid game and that is the point where you switch to serious end game stuff ).

In all these years there has never been any talk about end game, more like let's just stretch the game and slow progression so this is the end game than.( therefore let's remove learn by doing progression and replace it with "comic books" because your character doesn't have any brain left to learn anything by using tools or weapons.
But lets leave that aside for now...

So according to little bits of information about further updates, it looks like there are 2 factions in game, White River and Duke and do not like each other ( from what I could pick up from Hugh dialog ) and there will also be bandits that will attack everyone.

Game is great until this end of the Mid game ( once you reach max T6 levels in progression with gear/quests often times you don't really have a real benefit to use that gear for  anything anymore, unless you just want to "challenge" yourself with repetitive T6 quests or running POI's and doing big builds and play with broken farming ( Bring back farming of A16 and before please ).
OK game still needs lots of balancing to do, but after A16 I have never bothered to collect brass to make bullets and stuff etc, farming, I mine much much less than before to fill my needs ( In A 16 I used to play usually to around day 70 horde now I stretch it and play at max to around day 42 maybe 49 - everything gets too repetitive after that. ). 

So what is the end game?

- clear the zombie plague ( is that what T6 quests are all about maybe, so you do this infested POIs that take couple in game days to finish so you find some sort of research to find out what they were doing in those labs that maybe caused the plague and look for cure ( Higashi, Dishong tower, army bases research etc... ) 
 

- or create a safe heaven for your faction where you build and protect a small town that can thrive and protect your citizens like maybe what you do in State of decay 1 and 2 where you clear the map of all the infestations so plague stops spreading ( though I saw one of staff members said they do not plan to introduce any new NPCs )

Modpacks like Darkness falls go for secret military bunker endgame with military research and portals for plague origins and all the mutations etc... 

What I worry about 7D2D currently is a great game with great potential which can be ruined with weak ending game mechanic where you don't find much satisfaction when you end the game.
Similar to what Game of Thrones last season did to the otherwise great series, quick lackluster rushed endings that hardly made any sense to the ark they built in previous seasons.
I do not know what TFP plans to do, but in 10 years there has never been any concrete information about how they plan to bring ark of the game to satisfactory ending and what the real end game goal will be.
Or how Pixar explained their big success: Brands that have the most compelling stories win.

Please do not take this as a rant ( I would still rate the current game lets say 85 - 90 out of 100, but without proper endgame at full game release that would drop down to probably solid 70 - 75 ). One of the games I replayed the most with friends and solo gameplays, but if there is lame ending after all these years of development than I will say Thank you for fun and many hours, it had a great potential but it wasn't meant to be one of the best after all.

So what would your suggestions be for a good end game for 7D2D?

[RipClaw]

The endgame is to defeat Thanos and his army and prevent him from getting hold of the Infinity Stones.

 

Oh wait that was Avengers Endgame. Never mind. 😁

[Suxar]

"A samurai has no goal, only a path" Yamamoto Tsunetomo

[Scyris]

7dtd doesn't have anything beyond early game, its why the devs in 1.0 have made that early game take as long as possible to get out of, as the game has no actual content yet after it.

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, Bhaaltazar said:

Game has always been designed that you reach the Mid game ( well at least in my opinion when you max out your gear and you can comfortably defend against hordes that should be end of Mid game and that is the point where you switch to serious end game stuff ).

 

"End-game" is as undefined as it can get. For me the still unfinished game always had an end-game where my progression was practically finished and I was just looking for getting all weapons and armor to q6. I called that end-game, but for someone else end-game could mean something different, like obviously for you.

 

From what we know, there will be bandits, and a few quests having to do with a main story, bandits and the duke. But don't expect too much from that. And once you killed either the duke or the other leader or both then the game has reached its "official" end. Naturally everyone is free to continue to play on like in many other games but I don't think there will be further goals provided by TFP after that.

 

 

Edited July 24 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Rotor]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

From what we know, there will be bandits, and a few quests having to do with a main story, bandits and the duke. But don't expect too much from that. And once you killed either the duke or the other leader or both then the game has reached its "official" end. Naturally everyone is free to continue to play on like in many other games but I don't think there will be further goals provided by TFP after that.

 

...and you steal Duke's radio, the holly grail of 7D2D, and you can now talk to those drones that drop supplies.  They send in a pick up, in a hot LZ becuase the idiots cant operate in silence, and all the Z's realized there is something happening "overthere".  So you fight the "last horde" and "get into choppa!"  However, some whisky bandit has better ideas with his last .50 cal sniper bullet, and shoots down the drone, far from where you were.  Which basically becomes a new map.  In the crash you suffer a concusion, loose your gear and clothes and cant remember why you are in your udnerwear, but there is a dead big Momma laying next to you.  And you barely remember how to drink water.

 

A new  nightmare............or "DejaVu all over again"

 

...to be continued...

[ElCabong]

The end game is you create a new random gen, start a new character, and play it a little different

[Grasamo]

The end game for me is when they release a new major release which breaks my save game, and I have to start over.  I've had this game for... nearly the whole lifetime of its existence, and I still have never had a motorized vehicle other than a minibike.