An in depth discussion on zombie loot in alpha 17

[RestInPieces]

Except that the game has rested on this mechanic for ages now. Your predisposition of what a zombie apocalypse should or shouldn't be has no bearing on the way players have interacted with this particular game for 5 years.

 

The meaning of the term "zombie apocalypse" or "survival" is not even a matter of someone's predisposition. What exactly are you trying to say?

[skullpoker]

A in depth discussion...

A hero...

A English language fail...

 

It's plain silly to worry about this now. You won't know how this is going to work in the game until you're actually playing it, and since you can now build guns it becomes much less important that you won't be able to loot Hunting Rifles from western zombies. Don't worry about it and make yourself sad. Wait and see.

[Roland]

Except that the game has rested on this mechanic for ages now. Your predisposition of what a zombie apocalypse should or shouldn't be has no bearing on the way players have interacted with this particular game for 5 years.

 

That just means...."Its about friggin time!"

[Brimstone]

Zombie loot could be helpful, but never really made all that much sense. If there were some like the "Infected Survivor" from L4D2, it would maybe make more, but otherwise, they're zombies. Why would they be carrying stacks of wood, empty jars, stacks of paper... and where, anyway?

 

I kid you not, my very first zombie kill in this game was a cheerleader, and the loot was a doorknob and two bottles of oil. I don't think I even want to know why....

 

Let zombie loot be an occasional rare drop, sure. Maybe some dukes from their pockets, a knife in a sheath, things like that. Things that make sense. Maybe tweak some of the POI and garbage loot up a bit to compensate, and let zombie loot be rare and something special- and more so for the dangerous ones. Ammo always made sense for cop and soldier ones.

[eidobunny]

The meaning of the term "zombie apocalypse" or "survival" is not even a matter of someone's predisposition. What exactly are you trying to say?

 

What? Yes it is. It completely depends on a lot of predispositions. Are you predisposed to prefer gameplay over realism, or realism over gameplay. Are you predisposed to a certain set of zombie lore that makes it so zombies "should be" a certain way based on the ideas you've collected from a cumulative amount of fictional works surrounding the subject. What if "zombies" as we all knew them were all biker dudes strapped with guns and capable of motor and cognitive skills related to firearms handling? Then yeah, we would be able to loot zombies. You claim that looting doesn't fit with "the zombie theme" as if there's one absolutely unrefuted piece of zombie fiction with rules that need to be adhered to in terms of both concept and gameplay mechanics, and I'm saying that's ridiculous. I mean you're welcome to your opinion, but just don't act like zombie fiction adheres to the standards of scientific law or something.

[Ripflex]

I voted as a good decision, and these are the reasons why:

 

I hated playing on a server once in a group the entire base build was designed to FARM zombies for loot (minecraft style actually)... it was completely designed around it.

 

Having no loot at all from zombies would be preferable as it prevents the Corpse DUPING still in the game... yes I said it. Maybe just give more XP for killing them.

 

It reduces 7 day horde lag. It would be fine if TFP left a timer on the zombie corpses staying there like 30 seconds before disappearing with no hit box, a lot of games I play do that like Borderlands 2.

 

But with that said, if TFP do add a bit of helpful loot from zombies, maybe have it auto-loot into the player's inventory that made the kill for better game performance ?

[OzHawkeye]

I find myself pretty much agreeing with the idea that zombies should be something to be avoided, not to be farmed, as a general principle.

 

There may be need to do some re-work of loot tables for some crafting materials that were commonly obtained from zombies, but I'm generally in favour of this change - though I'll reserve final judgement till I play it myself.

[Jedo]

As of this post, I am the lone vote for "I don't care." Figures.

[Colin248]

im going to admit, i wasn't expecting the amount of people pro for this change. to me its felt like such a vital part of the game for ages.

 

in the vote i said i shall reserve judgement till the release. perhaps you guys are right and it needed to go. but to say i am sceptical is.... nah actually that does the job just right. XD il be sceptical till i get my hands on it and see how it plays for myself.

[OzHawkeye]

im going to admit, i wasn't expecting the amount of people pro for this change. to me its felt like such a vital part of the game for ages.

 

in the vote i said i shall reserve judgement till the release. perhaps you guys are right and it needed to go. but to say i am sceptical is.... nah actually that does the job just right. XD il be sceptical till i get my hands on it and see how it plays for myself.

 

Nothing wrong with having reservations about the evolution of the game through the Alpha process. I certainly haven't been in favour of every decision made during my time in the game. Ultimately all any of us can do, is try it out and see whether the benefits outweigh the costs for our own particular style of play.

[Roland]

im going to admit, i wasn't expecting the amount of people pro for this change. to me its felt like such a vital part of the game for ages.

 

in the vote i said i shall reserve judgement till the release. perhaps you guys are right and it needed to go. but to say i am sceptical is.... nah actually that does the job just right. XD il be sceptical till i get my hands on it and see how it plays for myself.

 

Being skeptical is always a good sign of a critical mind. Being sceptical is always a bad sign of impending death. Be very careful my friend

[Jugginator]

I am fine with it 100%, and I am sure the rest of you will be, also. I get some of you are worried that zombies will be "worthless" to kill, but that IS why you picked the game up, right -- to kill zombies while figuring out how to survive? I solely believe it will improve everything. The survival aspect of the game, as of A16, is terrible. As soon as you get past early-game there is no difficulty in survival, for the zombies literally bring everything TO you. Now, you'll have to worry about building the base to defend against hordes on either horde nights or random hordes sent at ya due to forges AND have to LEAVE and HUNT out survival gear / etc. Before, the only reason to go out scavenging was sheer boredom or maybe some things you just weren't lucky to get. Plus, I don't know about anyone else, but I was utterly sick of having to wade through corpses to loot them because if there's a chance of loot I have to see before destroying them because of performance/annoyances of the gore blocks.

 

I am very happy to see that change. I wouldn't mind the bodies staying around a bit longer than instantly, but its minor. And I was utterly sick of gore blocks glitching out and exploding, so knocking out a dozen birds with one stone, this change is doing. Much love!

 

On a side note, the game isn't entirely based on realism... but I mean... a stripper-zombie with no bra/clothes and only a thong carrying an auger/gun parts/ gun/rocket launcher/steel pickaxe? The change overall makes sense lol.

[Roland]

ya..it's funny to read all these people who talk about how much they love killing zombies. It's their fave part of the game.

 

But if they can't get paid to do it they won't do it.

[Roland]

As of this post, I am the lone vote for "I don't care." Figures.

 

Your ambivalence is equal to the hate.

[RestInPieces]

What? Yes it is. It completely depends on a lot of predispositions. Are you predisposed to prefer gameplay over realism, or realism over gameplay. Are you predisposed to a certain set of zombie lore that makes it so zombies "should be" a certain way based on the ideas you've collected from a cumulative amount of fictional works surrounding the subject. What if "zombies" as we all knew them were all biker dudes strapped with guns and capable of motor and cognitive skills related to firearms handling? Then yeah, we would be able to loot zombies. You claim that looting doesn't fit with "the zombie theme" as if there's one absolutely unrefuted piece of zombie fiction with rules that need to be adhered to in terms of both concept and gameplay mechanics, and I'm saying that's ridiculous. I mean you're welcome to your opinion, but just don't act like zombie fiction adheres to the standards of scientific law or something.

 

It seems you have slightly misunderstood what I said. First of all, no, the words I used can't be "interpreted in a number of ways". Human language uses terms to describe everything in our environment - that is its main functionality, its value and it makes communication possible.

 

When a potential buyer browses steam and reads the "survival" tag on a game, a certain piece of information is communicated to him, which more or less is that the game is focused on the player's survival. When "zombie apocalypse" is mentioned to describe a game's theme, it means that the game's antagonists will be zombies, nothing more, nothing less.

 

How someone can imagine the zombie apocalypse details and characteristics may differ yes - they could be alien zombies with telepathic abilities and chicken wings if that's how you choose to imagine them to be, since the zombie term seems so fluid and someone may have made a movie about them in the past - but the fact is that the antagonists will be zombies and I think it is safe to say that this is the case with this game.

 

So, what I said had nothing to do with "how I imagined the zombie apocalypse survival to be" or certain lore details. And it's not that looting doesn't fit with the zombie theme or anything (which is not what I said), it's that if the players regard the game's main antagonist as a farm-able resource like they did up to now and especially in the past when they awarded quite a lot of exp, that would be a serious problem to say the least in a game that is tagged as survival. I am certain that the reasons are obvious as to why this is a problem.

Furthermore, since zombies are infinite and easily "farm-able", you can count on players never actively seeking anything that is included their loot table after mid-game.

[Colin248]

Being skeptical is always a good sign of a critical mind. Being sceptical is always a bad sign of impending death. Be very careful my friend

 

i appreciate the correction god dam one letter can make that much of a impact eh? well least its more worthwhile to mention then that snobby ponce on the other page. XD

[eidobunny]

It seems you have slightly misunderstood what I said. First of all, no, the words I used can't be "interpreted in a number of ways". Human language uses terms to describe everything in our environment - that is its main functionality, its value and it makes communication possible.

 

When a potential buyer browses steam and reads the "survival" tag on a game, a certain piece of information is communicated to him, which more or less is that the game is focused on the player's survival. When "zombie apocalypse" is mentioned to describe a game's theme, it means that the game's antagonists will be zombies, nothing more, nothing less.

 

How someone can imagine the zombie apocalypse details and characteristics may differ yes - they could be alien zombies with telepathic abilities and chicken wings if that's how you choose to imagine them to be, since the zombie term seems so fluid and someone may have made a movie about them in the past - but the fact is that the antagonists will be zombies and I think it is safe to say that this is the case with this game.

 

So, what I said had nothing to do with "how I imagined the zombie apocalypse survival to be" or certain lore details. And it's not that looting doesn't fit with the zombie theme or anything (which is not what I said), it's that if the players regard the game's main antagonist as a farm-able resource like they did up to now and especially in the past when they awarded quite a lot of exp, that would be a serious problem to say the least in a game that is tagged as survival. I am certain that the reasons are obvious as to why this is a problem.

Furthermore, since zombies are infinite and easily "farm-able", you can count on players never actively seeking anything that is included their loot table after mid-game.

 

Language is definitely up to interpretation, anyone who says otherwise either hasn't communicated with enough people or hasn't thought enough about linguistics. Almost every human interprets any given statement slightly differently thanks to their past experiences in life and with specific words. That's why we all have different senses of humor, and why different people react to different kinds of statements differently. Say the same phrase to every person and record how many people laughed, how many got upset, how many gave you a blank stare, etc. Language is a lot more malleable than you're letting on here in your post.

 

But linguistics aside, I interpreted your original post as saying that zombies being an infinite source of income pushes the game away from the survival genre, and "It goes against everything its zombie-apocalypse survival concept stands for, both thematically and in gameplay terms." which I think is a bogus claim. There is no irrefutable standard of zombie fiction or zombie survival video games that dictates that zombies can't be income sources, or that zombies can't carry valuables, etc. Which means that you are making assumptions (there's nothing wrong with that, we all make assumptions), based on what "zombie apocalypse" means to you. Which is why I made my post and the post after that.

 

And I'm not seeing how having loot would take away from the survival aspect. In Outlast you can find batteries and medical supplies around the world, does that mean it's not a survival game?

 

7 Days to Die has been touted as a lot of things. It's survival, it's crafting, it's building, it's an RPG, it's a tower defense. You're trying too hard to categorize it into what you personally determine makes a survival game. I'm posting because I disagree with that sentiment. If that's not what you meant by your original post then it's just a simple miscommunication.

[Roland]

i appreciate the correction god dam one letter can make that much of a impact eh? well least its more worthwhile to mention then that snobby ponce on the other page. XD

 

Given your handle it would be particularly bad for you to be sceptic...lol.

 

You're a good sport. Thanks for letting me use you to hopefully lighten the mood. repped.

[Jedo]

Your ambivalence is equal to the hate.

 

There is balance to the Force.

[skullpoker]

Zombie loot could be helpful, but never really made all that much sense. If there were some like the "Infected Survivor" from L4D2, it would maybe make more, but otherwise, they're zombies. Why would they be carrying stacks of wood, empty jars, stacks of paper... and where, anyway?

 

I kid you not, my very first zombie kill in this game was a cheerleader, and the loot was a doorknob and two bottles of oil. I don't think I even want to know why....

 

Let zombie loot be an occasional rare drop, sure. Maybe some dukes from their pockets, a knife in a sheath, things like that. Things that make sense. Maybe tweak some of the POI and garbage loot up a bit to compensate, and let zombie loot be rare and something special- and more so for the dangerous ones. Ammo always made sense for cop and soldier ones.

 

If you think that doesn't make sense, this one will make your head spin: To make Oil you need a tin can. The icon for oil is a plastic bottle like you would buy in the store. When oil is in your hand or on the ground it is in a glass bottle. Because reasons

[eidobunny]

I mean basically nothing in this game makes sense. 99.9% of people wouldn't have the technical know-how to make anything beyond a wooden club. Smelting iron and glass and all of that? Bollocks. But it's fun as hell.

[Jugginator]

If you think that doesn't make sense, this one will make your head spin: To make Oil you need a tin can. The icon for oil is a plastic bottle like you would buy in the store. When oil is in your hand or on the ground it is in a glass bottle. Because reasons

 

Hehe, or take medkits. Bag of blood, some cloth and duct tape makes a medical-kit with the red cross and when you hold it you hold a cloth-cone which you drink... and apparently, a magic defibrillator shocks you.

[RestInPieces]

Language is definitely up to interpretation, anyone who says otherwise either hasn't communicated with enough people or hasn't thought enough about linguistics. Almost every human interprets any given statement slightly differently thanks to their past experiences in life and with specific words. That's why we all have different senses of humor, and why different people react to different kinds of statements differently. Say the same phrase to every person and record how many people laughed, how many got upset, how many gave you a blank stare, etc. Language is a lot more malleable than you're letting on here in your post.

 

But linguistics aside, I interpreted your original post as saying that zombies being an infinite source of income pushes the game away from the survival genre, and "It goes against everything its zombie-apocalypse survival concept stands for, both thematically and in gameplay terms." which I think is a bogus claim. There is no irrefutable standard of zombie fiction or zombie survival video games that dictates that zombies can't be income sources, or that zombies can't carry valuables, etc. Which means that you are making assumptions (there's nothing wrong with that, we all make assumptions), based on what "zombie apocalypse" means to you. Which is why I made my post and the post after that.

 

And I'm not seeing how having loot would take away from the survival aspect. In Outlast you can find batteries and medical supplies around the world, does that mean it's not a survival game?

 

7 Days to Die has been touted as a lot of things. It's survival, it's crafting, it's building, it's an RPG, it's a tower defense. You're trying too hard to categorize it into what you personally determine makes a survival game. I'm posting because I disagree with that sentiment. If that's not what you meant by your original post then it's just a simple miscommunication.

 

Miscommunication indeed since what I said was:

Human language uses terms

which means that I am talking about terms, not language as a whole.

A term is, "a word or expression that has a precise meaning in some uses or is peculiar to a science, art, profession, or subject."

Language is a system that consists of the development, acquisition, maintenance and use of complex systems of communication

(wiki)

 

Of course language as a whole is malleable and constantly evolving and sometimes can be interpreted differently depending on culture, experiences etc. Terms not so much, since their very definition is that they have a precise meaning. Terms are one of the most primal language elements and without them we wouldn't be able to communicate. Imagine a world where terms were open to interpretation by each individual.

 

As for people reacting differently to different kinds of statements and receive the message in a different shade of color - that depends on a great many things like psychology, culture, education, intelligence etc, but the actual words, if literal, are still conveyed. If terms were open to interpretation communication would not be possible. Being painfully pedantic here, but conversations without accuracy aren't worth squat.

 

Again, who said that there is an irrefutable standard of zombie fiction? I already told you in the previous post, that if someone wants to imagine zombies having telepathic abilities, pink antennas or whatever, it is their irrefutable right to do so, since there is no irrefutable standard of zombie fiction as you say. But the whole "how we imagine zombie fiction to be" is completely beside the point - never brought it up, not sure why you made this assumption. The term "zombie apocalypse" at its minimum (in the video game context) implies that the game's antagonists are zombies. Nothing more than this was implied.

 

Doesn't matter if 7dtd has been touted as a lot of things, as long as one of these things it has been touted as is survival (not to mention it is the only genre-defining tag on steam). And "survival" in the video game context does have a clear term indicating a game in which, at the very least, the player has to survive - it is not what I personally determine it to be as you claim, otherwise steam tags would be completely useless and wouldn't convey any substantial information to a buyer.

 

So, after clarifying that to get to the point, the antagonists of a game (aka zombies in this context however they may be) that is considered to be survival or contain the survival tag, shouldn't be seen as farm-able crops/farm-able resources/zombie husbandry/chests of loot. Do you realize how all these characterizations contradict the word "antagonist"? And if the antagonist of a game is regarded as a loot (or exp) pile doesn't that also contradict the whole survival concept? That is the thematic reason which doesn't completely exclude zombies from having a small amount of thematic-friendly loot on them. The gameplay/practical reason though, because of which I believe that we are better off getting no actual loot from them, is that zombies are infinite, plentiful and easily farm-able en masses. Anything in their loot table will be common/abundant and one less reason for the player to explore and scavenge which hurts any survival elements the game contains. Pretty much this.

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Being skeptical is always a good sign of a critical mind. Being sceptical is always a bad sign of impending death. Be very careful my friend

 

Only if you're American. Over here where we use British English they're both "sceptical".

 

Anyway, on the actual subject, for a while now I've been shouting (well, politely saying) that killing zombies should be a necessary evil where you expose yourself to danger in order to survive; rather than something you do for loot and experience.

 

So I'm very happy with #lootgate and I'm waiting for the xp rewared to be removed from them as well...

[Roland]

Only if you're American. Over here where we use British English they're both "sceptical".

 

I did not know that. How USA-centric of me.

 

Colin, if you're British or at least watch Dr. Who, I retract my tongue-in-cheek spelling correction.

 

 

Especially since I was wrong: the spelling I was thinking of was septic...Dammit Jim, I'm a Math Teacher