Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[merlinfire]

I can't really speak to your Diablo comparison (I never got around to #3), but I remember on release that people were talking about the many changes. Even now, a quick google search reveals that many people think that core gameplay elements were removed. (Aside, I'll point to Breath of the Wild's removal of classic/core gameplay elements. It's still a great Zelda game.)

 

"Fun" is a subjective word, as you can tell from the many discussions past and present on this forum. This means that certain elements of the game are fun for some and not fun for others. Also, it's weird to say that the hazards of a game are a core element that people would choose to participate in. When playing classic Mario, I was more than happy to avoid tangling with Goombas and Koopas and Bullet Bills. This did not take away from my fun.

 

Finally, citing the fact that people will change their strategies is a non sequitur from the rest of your argument. Changing strategy does not mean that people suddenly are not having fun.

 

So you can't see any issue with disincentivizing base defense gameplay.

[Viperel]

Dozens and dozens of people have a very good idea of how their gameplay will be impacted

You have described an extremely small and unrepresentative minority. Having thousands of hours in-game does not equal to anything more than they enjoyed playing it, there are a lot more unheard players which might or not embrace the changes. We do not have any numbers for the 90% of the loot being gone, its just pure speculation at this point. All that happened in the past 2 days since the video was released is based on interpretation and not on specific numbers or well-defined/explained mechanics.

[gav_328t]

 

What of noticeable value to a zombie apocalypse survivor do you have in your pockets right now? =P

 

A Smart phone. Google maps for the win, i can find ANY shotgun messiah, AND find out if it’s open!!

 

I can also order chinese, cantonese, etc. At least the delivery zombie won’t nick it, they tend to eat brains instead of noodles, lol

[Jedo]

With all due respect, should not the concerns of the players come first?

 

No.

 

There. That was simple.

 

(To expand: Remember back in the day when players didn't have any input on their games? The game was released. If you liked it, you bought it. If you thought you might like it, you bought it, then returned it or sold it if it wasn't what you wanted.)

 

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So you can't see any issue with disincentivizing base defense gameplay.

 

That's what you took from my quote? Dang. No wonder it's so hard to have a conversation with you.

 

My base defense gameplay won't be disincentivied by the change.

[KingSlayerGM]

I don't think there will be an A18. We'll probably do a beta update and go gold after that. That doesn't mean there won't be some content updates though.

So in which alpha are you planning to release the bandits?

[Menace312]

Looting every zombie after a horde night could add up.

 

The problem is, we don't see 7 day or wandering hordes as delivery guys. =)

 

What of noticeable value to a zombie apocalypse survivor do you have in your pockets right now? =P

 

May it also have a little to do with, encouraging us to try out the new POI dungeons?

 

No shame in that... It is experimental after all.

 

I imagine the loot drop chance could be increased later if so desired... By mods even...

[KingSlayerGM]

I'm pretty sure I could destroy you in any game, I used to smash whole teams of people against me alone in quake and counter strike and was offered to be sponsored years back to travel and compete but I was wanting to make games so I declined. I do stupid stuff deliberately to make the videos entertaining so think what you want to think. I already proved the game can't kill me in my dead is dead video series I posted an alpha or two ago, and look at my kill 20 dog challenge video. After we shipped Gore (a pvp shooter) the best guy who was hands down the top player in the whole community challenged me and I smoked him 20 to 3.

 

And your the one who is comical, the pvp player base is less than 1% of our customer base. Maybe its 40% of the vocal minority community, but its literally nothing, all our players are friends playing coop with friends or single player on private servers.

 

MadMole, in a friendly way:

 

by the shots you missed using the bow in your video, it looks like you are very rusty

[merlinfire]

No.

 

There. That was simple.

 

 

Would have been nice to have that as a disclaimer in the Kickstarter. But I'm assuming you do not speak for TFP.

[Aldranon]

I'm not sure it makes sense to use real-world logic to justify an in-game change that was made for the sake of performance. Kill zombie -> get loot is a CORE GAMEPLAY LOOP in 7D2D and has been since the earliest alphas.

 

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I mean, zombies aren't real in real life, so I guess they should be deleted from 7 Days. It just makes sense, and we're all about 100% fidelity realism here

 

You could get 28 Days Later type of "Zombies", if the Rabies virus mutated to have no dormant period.

[KhaineGB]

What of noticeable value to a zombie apocalypse survivor do you have in your pockets right now? =P

 

A lighter.

 

Now if I were out of the house, it'd be lighter, wallet (good source of paper), keys (less useful but could be melted down) and phone (screen is quite shiny so could be used as a mirror for scouting around corners)

[Andrivullar]

Jedo is probably a goonswarm member, if you've played any MMO's at all, you'd gather its best to just ignore him. [Although, he does remind me of one nerd I used to spawn camp back in ultima.]

[Jedo]

Would have been nice to have that as a disclaimer in the Kickstarter. But I'm assuming you do not speak for TFP.

 

You thought that backing a Kickstarter campaign meant that you get to make decisions on the project, whether directly or indirectly? I know that Kickstarter looks like what investors do, but it really isn't and it doesn't afford you that privilege. You didn't become a shareholder, and TFP isn't beholden to your views or input.

 

Basically, TFP said, "We have this idea for a video game," and you said, "Here's some money to help you make your vision a reality." In exchange, you get access to the game throughout development, maybe some special merch or whatever other things they offered to you. Still, TFP makes the game that they want. End of story.

 

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Jedo is probably a goonswarm member, if you've played any MMO's at all, you'd gather its best to just ignore him. [Although, he does remind me of one nerd I used to spawn camp back in ultima.]

 

No idea what that means. I don't play MMO's. (At least I don't think that I have.)

 

At any rate, I'm sorry that logic is such a burden that so many here can't be bothered with it.

[Tarquinn]

Always Ready

 

 

What of noticeable value to a zombie apocalypse survivor do you have in your pockets right now? =P

 

Taurus .357 Revolver (with licence to carry it)

[eidobunny]

Theres millions of silent customers who just played the game solo 2-20 hours who never used the forum in their life.

 

If we're talking about active long-term players in multiplayer servers and disregarding single player or private servers, there's a significant active PvP community as a portion of all active players.

 

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Servers numbers does not account the thousands of single player games lowering your pvp percentage considerably I think.

 

I'm talking about active multiplayer players, I'm not even considering single players or people who bought the game and never played it. Considering the set of active multiplayer servers, a good 20-30% are PvP-centered.

[merlinfire]

Taurus .357 Revolver (with licence to carry it)

 

it's a cop zombie! get him!

 

jk, got a S&W 38 special in my pocket too

[eidobunny]

Lol. He stated that the playerbase is friends playing coop and single player on private servers and your rebuttal is to look at the public server figures. You are arguing with the guy that has access to ALL of the numbers. I defended you earlier but you are on your own this time.

 

I get it, everyone here hates PvP, but if you look at public server numbers there is a huge interest in the PvP subgenre of this game. It's a rather large percentage of all active multiplayer servers. Of course people are going to be doing single player and private games and that's important to consider as a developer, but I think if you look at long-term players and multiplayer servers you'll see a much larger percent of PvPers than 1%.

[Gamida]

With all due respect, should not the concerns of the players come first?

 

No.

 

There. That was simple.

 

(To expand: Remember back in the day when players didn't have any input on their games? The game was released. If you liked it, you bought it. If you thought you might like it, you bought it, then returned it or sold it if it wasn't what you wanted.)

 

Would have been nice to have that as a disclaimer in the Kickstarter. But I'm assuming you do not speak for TFP.

 

From an earlier post...

 

[DividingByZero]

I don't think there will be an A18. We'll probably do a beta update and go gold after that. That doesn't mean there won't be some content updates though.

 

Good to know! I was sort of thinking you maybe getting toward the end of things... I have to imagine you and the team are ready to move onto something new (not that you are unhappy with this, but it has been a long dev process).

 

Do you know if and when bandits will make it into the game? Is that still happening? In the past you have discussed a faction like system, NPCs, etc... is that all still on the table? Or is the door shutting on those things?

[Gnomaana]

1. yes. but if you never give a scientific data, using only hyperboly or other kinds of avoiding actual numbers, you come across as unknowing or at best as a ♥♥♥♥ for not simply telling you the numbers

Why would you call yourself a ♥♥♥♥? OH, you were talking about the guy that has all the numbers. I think I'll trust his numbers over you looking at server totals and then disregarding everyone not playing the game that way. In my informal poll, 100% of players never engage in PvP. My sample set was me. My numbers have just has much "scientific" basis as yours.

 

Steam gives the developers much more detailed information than you can get from looking at the server list. By the way, are you assuming that because a server has PvP turned on it is a PvP server? It's been on on every server I've ever played on but not a single one of those were PvP servers. It was on just to make us be more careful when fighting in groups.

[KingSlayerGM]

From an earlier post...

 

LMAO rekt

[katarynna]

For those worried about the zombie loot changes, it sounds almost identical to the way zombie loot is handled in the gnamod horde mode mod. All you do in that mod is base defense and zombie killing.

 

It took a bit to get used to not looting zombies and instead watching for the loot bag, but when the bags dropped they often had a LOT of loot. Once i got used to that system, I actually preferred it over vanilla.

 

If TFP handle it as well as that mod, I think most people will end up liking it. In the meantime, while waiting for a17, you could always install the mod and see how it actually feels. Multiplayer is much easier in horde mode, btw, so if you have friends bring them along.

[Gnomaana]

If we're talking about active long-term players in multiplayer servers and disregarding single player or private servers, there's a significant active PvP community as a portion of all active players.

 

If we are talking about active long-term players on MP servers and disregarding all other players then your stats are true? Lmao. If we are talking about active long-term players on my local machine and disregarding MP, SP and private servers then PvP doesn't even exist in this game. My stats are as valid as yours.

[Janna3921]

I think most everything has been said by now for and against the notion that looting lots of corpses or other containers becomes tedious and undesirable. But one method of reducing that tedium could be further deployed: bigger stacks.

 

Finding one steel arrowhead, as Madmole does, is almost useless. It takes up an inventory slot, and you have to queue up crafting the arrows, make a bow, switch ammunition, use it, and then retrieve your one arrow. Better to find 10 steel arrowheads at once. The effort to actually use them would be much more worthwhile. Of course, I'm not looking for more or less loot overall. That cache of 10 steel arrowheads would be found roughly 90% less often, in order to keep the balance.

 

This applies to a lot of things in Alpha 16 and earlier. One nail? I literally can't make anything with that. Enough concrete mix to make two blocks?? A waste of space. But 20 blocks? Now it's an exciting find. Now it starts to affect my decision making, and could affect how the personal narrative of my game unfolds.

 

With zombie loot to be consolidated to backpacks, and loot containers branching into empty and not-empty versions, now would be an excellent time to up the minimum quantities on many loot items. ComSenMod provides good baseline numbers, if anyone's interested.

 

 

In agreement with you. If they will have less zombies dropping loot, have less cabinets, cars, trash bags and such have less loot, it should be much better. The harder to kill zombies give no loot, which I think is disgraceful, but loot needs to be increased. A incentive to go looting in buildings, houses. I won't waste my time going into a house if I know I will get a sandwich, shirt and a glass jar, but I definitely would for 25 rebars, or 100 concrete, no weirder than finding a gun in the toilet or ammo in the freezer.

 

In the area of losing bones and rotten flesh, they could be added to the fridge. How many people take bones to make stock with for soup. Buy a ham hock and cook it, get some of the fat out and take the meat off the bone and freeze it all to have for beans. Same with beef and poultry and other animals. They need to think outside the box; if we take away the bones and rotten flesh, how are the players going to get it. Fridges, coolers, make cooler for the stores so they can find the rotten meat and bones in some of them. Put a dumpster and reshape it a bit and put deep freezer storage, like the huge ones in stores and restaurants. Meat, bones, tubs of lard and more could be in them.

[Obsessive Compulsive]

I don't think there will be an A18. We'll probably do a beta update and go gold after that. That doesn't mean there won't be some content updates though.

 

You have left the core game play so incredibly broken for over three years, it would be impossible to ever operate a PVP server long term. I know because I helped run them and gave operators fixes. I am one of the coders for ServerTools who is fixing and making features you guys refuse to do after three years. When the populations went down, the PVP was still full but I have had friends quitting for years as they were tired of no PVP focus and the single player was broken. They were falling through the world for three years solid.

 

You added minibikes that could not hold items for over a year without falling out or the bike itself disappearing.

 

What kind of PVP would you expect when single player is just barely functional. If you build it they will come. You have adamantly fought PVP in this game and as such, you have little to no PVP base which is what keeps any game going for years. What single player game stays in the minds for years since the days of Fallout?

 

If you want to make a single player game, take the multiplayer off the steam page. You have stated you have not been developing the multiplayer for years^{[citation needed]}. You also state the game can only support 8 people. I have tried it and the game lags to the point where you can not play. None of this makes any sense after three years.

 

If a17 is your final go before beta, I hope its the greatest thing you have ever made with little to no bugs or the servers will not even reopen. There are 15 PVP servers that shutdown waiting for the game to develop. I am in touch with them all and they gave up waiting for this to be developed past a buggy minecraft mod.

 

Maybe you have never done your own numbers before but our PVP server had 1/6th of your entire user base play on it or enter at the very least. 15 of the top PVP servers that all gave up would make up over 30% of your users then.

 

This is not to nit pick, it is to shake you awake. Stop telling people how to f'ing enjoy it. They have found out they like multiplayer and they like PVP. Support the weirdos who gave you millions and are still waiting to not fall through the world.

If they wanted to use the game as a door stop and loved doing so, support it! What are you always fighting against Moley?

[Gnomaana]

I get it, everyone here hates PvP, but if you look at public server numbers there is a huge interest in the PvP subgenre of this game. It's a rather large percentage of all active multiplayer servers. Of course people are going to be doing single player and private games and that's important to consider as a developer, but I think if you look at long-term players and multiplayer servers you'll see a much larger percent of PvPers than 1%.

 

Where do you get I hate PvP? Every MMO I've ever played I only played on the PvP servers. I quit Ultima Online because of the PvP changes. I don't hate PvP. I detest the kind of idiotic logic you have been spewing to try to make some point that doesn't mean anything anyway. 99% of all players could be PvP enthusiasts. This is still mainly a PvE game. You want to know why? Because, that's the game the devs wanted to make.