A different perspective on the new Death Penalty in A17 after extended play.

[Wulf]

Preface: I consider myself a powergamer who minmaxes, and currently thinks A17 is still too easy, but I realise I am in the vast minority on both counts. It doesn't really matter to me what they end up with, *BUT* I do want this game to be enjoyed by as large an audience as possible.

 

A potential problem I see with the deathpenalty right now, is that in the early game, where players are most likely to die the most, there is no counter to the statpenalty.

 

The further you progress in the game, the more ways there are to counter the stat penalty. This can be done via means of +stat-magazines, special consumables that gives statbuffs, items that have statbuffs and other buffs that affect stats.

 

All those things are generally not at your disposal at the early game so the player is stuck with the penalty. Yes the stat penalty becomes bigger later on, but can still be easily countered by buff stacking.

 

Personally, i believe *a* deathpenalty should be there to really make you do your best not to die. This is a survival game after all. However it should not be more penalizing in the early game than in late game. Of course it's entirely possible that I'm still missing something here.

 

So, the deathpenalty should be something you really want to do your best to avoid getting, and when you *do* get it, should not make the game (much) less fun to play. A temporary setback of sorts.

 

What form should this temporary setback take, if not via means of statpenalties? I'm not sure yet. Discuss!

[rolu315]

i am cool with a death penalty or death buff, but make it reasonable. It makes no sense to have it an actual 60 minutes, rather than in game time. So right now i just hit level 20, want to make a forge, but can't because of the death buff I got from looting a home that had a HUGE horde in it...I just don't think they gave this much thought. The devs might want to try out some other games and see how the death buff works. Making buffs based on real-time is ridiculous unless its pvp events.

[canadianbluebeer]

I dropped it to 10 minutes, which is now 4 hrs gametime (60 min days) instead of a full day.

 

I expect this is something they'll be tweaking (I hope so, anyway)

 

I'm sure there's a way to make the timer based on level/gamestage. Shorter early on when you're weak, but much longer

when higher level and should know better.

[Scyris]

I use a modlet that drops it to 15 mins, as 60 mins is far to long for how powerful it is.

[Wulf]

The duration of the debuff is not the issue i am raising.

Dropping the time will only make the debuff even more irrelevant in the mid-later game.

[chinothepony]

For me, I hate corpse runs. I think losing my bag is death enough for me. Especially with the new POIs that can so easily trap you in the basement full of zombies. So I'm good with the 15 minute modlet as well.

[CrashKZ]

It makes no sense to have it an actual 60 minutes, rather than in game time.

 

My guess is if it was in-game time, then hosts could log out, lower the day-time length and start the server back up until the debuff was gone. Also changing the time in the debug menu could affect it. Maybe they wanted to avoid this by making it in real time.

[DarlingCows]

I think it would be good to increase it with the new difficulty system. I forgot what it was. Something like days alive and zombies killed increases difficulty.

[Rockspider]

Death penalty should be removed especially with the current hit boxes on zeds. Personally i do not care if players abuse it, they are only cheating themselves and I am sure they are few and far between.

It is just taking the fun out of the game for new and old players alike.

I died, 5 mins later after huffing and puffing more then ever I thought sod this back to a16 happy days (a17 does look so nice tho ah well)

This is just bad for new players who will probably just go off and tell their friends not to buy the game

[tracy1285]

My advice would be a slider system like loot percentage or time. 0, 15, 30, 45, or 60 minutes so a player can choose the severity. Right now everything is locked behind lvling and if your not the greatest of a player and there are also game issues such as zombies magically spawning in hordes of 15 every night and automagically knowing you are upstairs in the second floor of a building crouched in stealth with an 8 on the stealth bar and then wander upstairs and kill you. I have died a ton I actually want to play the game and mess with the lvls and the new stuffs but I cant because my hour keeps getting reset over and over again. A player should be able to choose the penalty but a player shouldn't be outright punished because of the games bugs or pc lag or that a player cannot play like a professional youtber and just wants to casually play the game. I do not know if this is where to post advice but if anyone likes my comment on this and wants the devs to see it and know where it can go feel free to copy and paste it.

[Zourin]

You seem to forget, Players are Triple-penalized for dying.

 

The most precious thing in 7DTD is time. Just like Stardew Valley, players are forced to operate on a day-by-day cycle of activity, followed by 'rest' (which varies depending on how advanced you are).

 

The FIRST penalty is the corpse run. The loss of an inventory's worth of loot and probably a day or several days' worth of effort is suddenly at risk if you do not retrieve it. This is minor if you die near your homebase, but if you get closet-zombied away from home, you then have to spend even more precious daylight hours retrieving it.

 

The SECOND penalty is being set at half, or lower, health on respawn. This is an immediate resource penalty, since you need food and medical supplies to restore both. The only current ways to raise Max Health is with the perk, or bandages. This is minor 'late game', but brutal in the first two weeks depending on your luck.

 

The THIRD penalty now is the stat debuff that puts you at risk, again, of the first two penalties. Not only are you already penalized for time and resources, you are in a 1-day-cycle state of weakness that dramatically inhibits progress. This is both a time, material, and experience penalty. You kill slower, you loot slower, you have less stamina and health and durability, etc. You even lose the ability to invest skill points in advanced skills.

 

 

The wellness system was a better system, because it only involved the first two penalties. Time and the resources needed to restore your maximum stamina and health. It's obviously incompatible with the current system, but that's the critical difference beween the two.

 

In ANY survival game, the more established you are, the more prepared you are to deal with setbacks. A setback on day 1 is a mulligan. A setback on day 100 can be shrugged off. There has never been a game mechanic that has been able to equalize the two. Between early and late game, the early is always the most critical. A death on day 1 or 2 can stop a playthrough.

 

You can ask for a razor-and-sandpaper enema, disemboweling, and a thousand stripper zombies demolishing a 100-block radius around your land-claim each time you die, but nobody's going to play that ♥♥♥♥ if it's going to happen on day 5.

[themirror]

My guess is that the death penalty should be relative to your gamestage (lowering the debuff time maybe), or level... if you are on lvl 20-30 de death penalty will destroy you

[chinothepony]

You seem to forget, Players are Triple-penalized for dying.

 

The most precious thing in 7DTD is time. Just like Stardew Valley, players are forced to operate on a day-by-day cycle of activity, followed by 'rest' (which varies depending on how advanced you are).

 

The FIRST penalty is the corpse run. The loss of an inventory's worth of loot and probably a day or several days' worth of effort is suddenly at risk if you do not retrieve it. This is minor if you die near your homebase, but if you get closet-zombied away from home, you then have to spend even more precious daylight hours retrieving it.

 

The SECOND penalty is being set at half, or lower, health on respawn. This is an immediate resource penalty, since you need food and medical supplies to restore both. The only current ways to raise Max Health is with the perk, or bandages. This is minor 'late game', but brutal in the first two weeks depending on your luck.

 

The THIRD penalty now is the stat debuff that puts you at risk, again, of the first two penalties. Not only are you already penalized for time and resources, you are in a 1-day-cycle state of weakness that dramatically inhibits progress. This is both a time, material, and experience penalty. You kill slower, you loot slower, you have less stamina and health and durability, etc. You even lose the ability to invest skill points in advanced skills.

 

The wellness system was a better system, because it only involved the first two penalties. Time and the resources needed to restore your maximum stamina and health. It's obviously incompatible with the current system, but that's the critical difference beween the two.

 

This. The death penalty would work better if we didn't have limited daylight and night to do all our indoor things.

 

I miss the wellness system. Especailly with the new recipes coming it, it would've been wonderful!

[DeadGerry]

DEFINITELY agree; the new perks, loot, stamina, health and enemies all add to a harder game, which is good. We all want rid of the easy 'Forge, Farm, Shotgun, Minibike, GG' system of having everything you need in the 1st week - but I think the current set up is balanced badly.

 

The struggles, the bad effects and the tough breaks all happen more in the early game than the later game and can all be by passed by the mid game making the beginning MUCH harder than the later stages.

 

It's back to front.

 

I'm not sure what the solution is, but either the early game needs to have a more extensive grace period - whether it's limited by level, distance or time - OR the new difficult systems need to be toned down.

 

The Perk level gating forces the player to build up more slowly; which I think everyone agree's needs to happen; but at the minute it feels a little too contrived and is hamstringing the player that needs help without really increasing the challenge for the advance player.

 

I wonder if perhaps the game simply needs to slowly up the difficulty settings (more zeds, more variety of zeds, less loot etc...) as time goes by, rather than hurling complicated and punishing death from day 1.

 

It seems that a decent player ought to reliably be able to survive the first night and run into death by trying to expand / loot / mine / explore. Risks should increase as level / time does

[Drakkar77]

Exp gained after dyeing and/or killing zombies should lower the death penalty incrementally.