Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[archergod]

can we actually get this "Zombie AI improved to stop and admire new wallpaper, window trim and wainscoting"

[toores]

 

I humbly accept all accolades and nerd rage alike. I haven't had the opportunity to pull a good prank in a long time, and as soon as I saw Roland's "B1" edit, I knew it could be so much more.

 

Good job, i had a laugh!

[Tetrameth]

gimme lava underground threat! imagine digging straight down and drown in lava

 

How about breaching caverns and unleashing forgotten beasts... oh.. hang on a minute...

[Ripperi]

One thing I think that the game really needs is random survivor rescue missions, have a settlement POI that you have to clear out of all zombies and then you can go out into the world and find survivors trapped in houses with zombies breaking down walls and doors to get to them and you have to kill all the zombies and break into the room the survivor is in and then escort them to the settlement.

 

Allow the survivors to carry a weapon you can supply them with allow them to ride in a vehicle with you as well. Once they are at the settlement they can stay there and help defend it and you have to risk leaving them there to die when you venture out or you can bring them with provided the AI is decent.

 

Like this?

 

[Demonoid74]

No what this game really , really needs...is time to get the feck done so we can play the sumbitch!

[twiztidshaggy79]

for mad mole ..somthing to look into

 

hay mm hope you enjoy playing around with a17. no, I'm not going ask, I've been playing around with FUSE, and I was wondering if you ever looked into it, as you as a designer i thought its something that could help the game out alot and give so much more to it. just thought i'd share that little info.

[lazyknob]

Hmm took a hiatus from the game and the forums, was wondering when A17 was coming out.

 

Whether it was in the 'middle' of indefinite waiting or 'tail end' of indefinite waiting.

 

Then I saw the HP bar. That is the most ingenious implementation to sooth my curious soul. In fact that's the biggest QoL improvement development ever made including the game. Not being snarky even.

 

It completely quells the notion of "Are we there yet?", providing a tangible, comprehensible 'when'. See you guys again when A17 is out.

[Merida]

Hmm took a hiatus from the game and the forums, was wondering when A17 was coming out.

 

Whether it was in the 'middle' of indefinite waiting or 'tail end' of indefinite waiting.

 

Then I saw the HP bar. That is the most ingenious implementation to sooth my curious soul. In fact that's the biggest QoL improvement development ever made including the game. Not being snarky even.

 

It completely quells the notion of "Are we there yet?", providing a tangible, comprehensible 'when'. See you guys again when A17 is out.

 

Since the HP bar is half way down and A16 came out 9 months ago, that means A17 will come out just in time for Boxing day!

[archergod]

@madmole can we have a Video on bicycle. really love watching killing zombie when riding .

[petruherro]

Can we get a little something for playing since the alpha version after the game gets out of beta? something small like a badge or something

[sillls]

Since the HP bar is half way down and A16 came out 9 months ago, that means A17 will come out just in time for Boxing day!

 

Boxing day?

[spud42]

@madmole can we have a Video on bicycle. really love watching killing zombie when riding .

 

already done...

[spud42]

Boxing day?

 

26th of december. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_Day

[sillls]

26th of december. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxing_Day

 

 

Thanks

[hawk949]

You should have made the bar almost empty on april fools. Saying it won't come out soon didn't really change anything.

[Roland]

You should have made the bar almost empty on april fools. Saying it won't come out soon didn't really change anything.

 

My Dad once April Fooled me by saying we were going to Disneyland. I got really excited and then he said "April Fools" and I just went to school that day instead. Trust me. I chose the less anger and disappointment inducing path.

[Royal Deluxe]

My Dad once April Fooled me by saying we were going to Disneyland. I got really excited and then he said "April Fools" and I just went to school that day instead. Trust me. I chose the less anger and disappointment inducing path.

 

[Cazmyr]

Good morning all!,

 

Just catching up from the weekend and the april fools list was great!

 

I think it would be fun to have an entry of:

 

Character growning from being hungry, thirsty, hot or cold has an increased Heat Value of 500%.

So make sure you give them food, water and clothing to stop their noisy b****ing.

 

Have a great rest of your day!

[qprophet]

I tend to stay away from video game sites and forums on April Fool's.

 

My brother and I have still never fully recovered from the World of Starcraft joke Blizzard pulled on us many many years ago.

[HobGoblyn]

My Dad once April Fooled me by saying we were going to Disneyland. I got really excited and then he said "April Fools" and I just went to school that day instead. Trust me. I chose the less anger and disappointment inducing path.

 

When I was about 12, I woke up one April fools day without realising the date, put the radio on and there was this big discussion about how due to something or other, we had gained a day too much over the past century, hence next Thursday would be cancelled.

 

I got so excited over only 4 days at school sigh

[eidobunny]

I had a dream that I came here and the red bar was almost all the way filled up again

 

I was pretty happy to wake up tbh

 

EDIT: Wow apparently you guys even did an HP bar gag yesterday? I haven't even visited the site for like a few days now lmao

[SittingDuck]

They forgot the most important Beta Change. Dog run speed increased by 100%!!!

 

I think if they did stop running in circles it would be hard enough ^^

[HobGoblyn]

[quote=Shado47;801994

I have to agree with Hob to some extent. He is wrong about a number of things tho.

 

Yep totally admit that

 

The 7dtd devs are some of the most community-interacting dev's I have followed throughout the last 6 (?) years. While especially madmole was constantly communicating with players, for example the DayZ developers just sat around not listening to their community whatsoever. So after like 6 (?) years of doing that and doing nothing about the fact that DayZ pretty much has no gameplay to offer and so all players just turn on each other, DayZ is practically dead. In 7dtd that is not the case, TFP kept communicating with the players about features and adding player requested stuff, and while some decisions are and were rather dubious (oversimplifying the crafting system, adding the health bars now, getting rid of gun quality difference outside of just 6 main states the guns can have, some more), most did the game really good and always resulted in a better gameplay. I've been playing this since the very first Alpha version and I'll admit that I used a cracked version from Alpha 1 to Alpha 4, loved it so much that I bought it and have bought it for a few friends since as well and recommended it to many others. This game is unlike any other game out there and so is the community. In 7dtd there is so much to do even in MP you don't feel the need to go out and kill players. As long as you don't have a heavily fortified base, you can't even afford to. You need all those 7 days to prepare for the horde night and make sure your base will make the stand, and you need those 7 days to progress in the crafting system, to unlock perks, to grind resources.

And lots of features have been added that were requested by players.

 

I was the one who first came up with sleeper zombies back in the day when TFP still used to respond to Pimp Dreams threads every now and then. And guess what, the next version ingame while the map was loading, Sleeper zombies were announced on the "Upcoming Features" screen. It has become a core feature of the game, requested by a player and not having been mentioned by anyone on the forums before that thread.

 

I don't disagree with that at all, well maybe I disagree with "most did the game really good and always resulted in a better gameplay."

 

Madmole has always been a great representative for 7d2d, the questions and answers he did etc, I'm not disputing any of that.

 

Likewise they've added in some user requested stuff, and top marks for that.

 

My quoting those other two peoples reviews and saying I agree with them is regarding the update times and the games release date.

 

Wont repeat what I said in my earlier post, surely they have some sort of time frame when they will finish this game? It would be very bad business practice if this was not so.

 

I totally understand that if they give a release date and don't stick to it, all hell gets released as players complain and complain.

 

likewise I play a reasonably popular online game that has had loads of updates released with game stopping bugs etc even though they were pointed out by players on their test server, I presume because the suits upstairs insisted the game/update was released on the advertised date, regardless.

 

So I know it's a kind of catch 22 situation.

 

I don't want a firm date, I just want a rough time line, say we are hoping to release x more alphas before the beta stage etc.

 

The trouble is, the time between Alphas is soooo long thst it becomes frustrating for many (Alpha 16 was released 10 months ago)

 

To be perfectly honest, had Madmole not given his time frame for the game to be gold, I would have kept my MP server going, but we had a chat, and decided rather than restarting every update, we would wait until the end of 2017 when it gets released and come back then.

 

Now that's gone and no future date is mentioned.

 

While some people may argue this is a good example of why they shouldn't give time frames, I disagree, it's a good example of why they shouldn't pick a time frame out of thin air, and while I'm sure at the time MM thought this time frame to be accurate, they really do need to work out what they want to do with this game, how far they want to go before it's ready to be released, whether they will stop working on it once it is released (in which case they need to get everything in it before hand) , or whether they will work on updates once released.

 

But of course they also need to know that future paid updates wont require a game restart, I'm not saying this sort of stuff is easy.

 

Personally had the horde situation been fixed and many other bugs fixed, I would have been happy if it was released then, and would happily have paid for the Gyro-copter, better motorbike etc (I appreciate they might have been promised early in so that night not be an option).

 

But time and time again we wait for an update, it's feels like years of waiting, and when it does come along, it's got a ton of new stuff in it which is good, but quite often the old bugs are still there and the core game play still hasn't been fixed.

 

Then we patiently wait for the next update to find the same, new stuff added, old problems not fixed.

 

Of course getting rid of bugs isn't easy.

 

This game was released I think mid 2013, bearing in mind they must have been working on it before it was released, to have some sort of game for the early access guys to play with, that's a good 5 years so far.

 

I appreciate they are not a big studio, but by not being a big studio it also means they need a steady income coming in, they probably haven't got huge backers giving them millions to play with like some other companies.

 

I suspect the console release was done out of necessity to gain some more funding, what does the 7d2d wikipedia page say about that

 

7 Days to Die received "mixed" reviews for the PC, and "unfavorable" for Xbox and PlayStation 4, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic in 2016.

 

As of June 2017 the game scored a "very positive" review by over 35,000 reviews on Steam and was one of the "top 100 selling games ever released on Steam" despite still being in alpha stage development.

 

While the last sentence of that quote is no mean achievement at all, and something they can be proud of all their lives, there is the danger (pure presumption on my part of what possibly could happen) ithat they can get caught up on the hype themselves so to speak.

 

It's easy to think "hey this game has been bought about 3 million times, people love it, lets take our time and get it right

 

Rust has been in development about the same time as 7d2d (from what I can see on the internet) and was released Feb this year.

 

Likewise Ark development began in 2014 and was released August 2017

 

But still zero info on 7d2d going to beta yet alone gold.

 

If I look at steam stats for the three of them.

 

Ark: Owners, 5.8 mil, players in last 2 weeks, 506,873, Peak concurrent players yesterday 58,388, Price $59.99

Rust: Owners, 6.6 mil, players in last 2 weeks, 523,751. Peak concurrent players yesterday 34,328, Price $34.99

7d2d: Owners, 2.9 mil, players in last 2 weeks, 177,354. Peak concurrent players yesterday 12,614, Price $24.99

 

The figures I cant find is how many Rust and Ark had sold prior to release, it could be they were worse than 7d2d and their releases have been huge successes, in which case I hope the same is true for 7d2d.

 

But people are fickle. Sure you will always have die hard fans of any game whether it's a great game like 7d2d or some crap game, there will always be people that stick with it for years and wont hear a bad word said against it.

 

But the majority of people switch to the next greatest thing whenever it appears.

 

And like it or not, while I think most of 7d2d is better than Rust or Ark, it is another survival game, it has competition that have actually released their games, and it runs the risk that if it takes another year or two to get released, missing the boat, and I would hate for that to happen.

 

And of course I agree that 7d2d is unique in a lot of ways, but it isn't me that has to be convinced, it's someone whose played rust for a few hundred hours etc.

 

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-best-survival-games-on-pc/

 

lists 18 games including Rust, Miscreated, DayZ and Ark but sadly not 7d2d, no idea why.

 

We can argue until we are blue in the face about what (if any) on that list are any good.

 

In my opinion someone who has played Rust, Miscreated etc and then sees 7d2d, on FIRST impressions, looking at scenery, houses etc etc, in my opinion, many people who see 7d2d will sadly make an instant wrong opinion that it's more of the same.

 

I know this isn't the case, you know this isn't the case, but it's not you and me thats got to be convinced.

 

Sorry for yet another long rant about this, I'm honestly doing it in support of 7d2d, I'm not just having a go for the sake of it.

 

Continued in next post

[HobGoblyn]

With regards to my comment on you saying "most did the game really good and always resulted in a better gameplay."

 

I've no problem with the sleepers, or any other new stuff thats being added.

 

But like you mentioned, I personally think (and have ranted about it loads before) that to me, they annihilated a good crafting system into a generic easy mode that lost all it's appeal.

 

I don't dispute for one second that some people prefer the new system, but something that's become prevalent over the past 10 odd years is most games end up dumbing down the game play to the lowest common denominator (Dark Souls series which I love is one very good exception) , meaning everyone can get instant gratification, no one wants to work for anything any more.

 

I loved having to finish chopping down a tree to get the wood, that way of a Zombie appeared, you had to do something about it or no wood. Now you can run past trees, hit them once and get some.

 

I preferred the look of the old crafting system it felt like you were using a forge, not a spreadsheet.

 

I liked having to kill different animals to get different meats

 

I also liked having to start off by building a basic chack (or repairing a house with basic mats) then haviong to demolish those bloclks before you could place your newer stuff.

 

That gave the game longevity to me, it meant it would take months of gameplay to get my perfect building.

 

Now all I have to do is get the mats and I can change one block into another.

 

I used to spend hours online building and creating (and mining) what used to take me a week can be done in a couple of hours now. If the hordes and zombie fighting was non stop full on, you could possibly have an argument for this (although I would still say you should find a brick building, get up high and start from there etc)

 

I'm sure many people are horrified at the thought of doing what I suggested, but I want a long term survival game I can play for months if not years, not one ewhere once I have the mats, I can build fort knox in about an hour.

 

I once spent two weeks of about 4+ hours a day mining with a pickaxe to join two of our bases together, getting that tunnel complete was a real achievement to me and gave me great satisfaction. It's that sort of thing that gives me more pleasure than actuary fighting the zombies.

 

With the current one, 4 hrs a day, you would be twiddling your thumbs, having ransacked everything, and have nothing to do while waiting for the next 7th night etc

 

And I loved it when we were onthe roof fighting zombies and the hornets suddenly started attacking.

 

Then again, I love the crafting aspect most in MMOs and get just as much enjoyment gathering mats for a few weeks as I do in a raid.

 

Here's one of my mines

 

 

 

Here are 3 pics of our main base that we all enjoyed building before crafting was simplified. We spent ages and ages on it, and finishing it felt like we had accomplished something mammoth

 

 

 

[SnowDog1942]

can we limit posts to100,000 characters?