A17 experimental - What the hell, is with this difficulty?

[Scyris]

Aha, finally some actual info! So, now we know - killing every enemy that see you is bad, running away now and then is good. *That's* what I did wrong. I wish you guys just published a list of Do's and Don'ts. Not killing zombies in a game where most exp comes from zombie kills is a bit counterintuitive.

 

I think he meant run away till they stop chasing you, then turn around and take them out/on 1 by 1 with a ranged weapon.

 

I do agree though that the ninja zombies and animals is getting a bit tiring in a17, At least wolfs howl every few seconds when they roam around, when I hear that I stop what I am doing, crouch and see where the hell the noise is coming from, then I go kill it before it tries to bite me.

[Sjustus548]

I don't understand why so many people are complaining that this patch is overly difficult. I'm finding it to be the easiest so far. Maybe try turning down the difficulty.

[Krougal]

Like everyone said, dog pack day 2, bad luck but not new. Bear day 1 bad luck not new, also was able to kite and kill with arrows with a little luck by backpedaling, sometimes turning and running and making every shot count. Was scary as hell but what a rush. Zombie bear day 1 also bad luck but not new (fortunately I was able to make it into the trader).

 

Now here is something new that sucks - T1 fetch quest, feral tourist or soldier in closet in small room, every time. The indoor growhouse POI. Now maybe you don't need to go into that room, maybe you do. I tend to clear the POI and then look for the loot, but of course once you die you blew the quest so I don't know. If it's my own fault then fine, but seems a bit excessive for a T1. Same for 5 vultures spawning on top of you in small POI for T1 quest. Otherwise love the new questing!

[Reth]

I think he meant run away till they stop chasing you, then turn around and take them out/on 1 by 1 with a ranged weapon.

 

Can't be. The concept of pulling a mob out of a crowd existed for at least two decades now. Everybody knows it. There is no way he would insult us by suggesting to use it. No, I'm pretty sure he was referring to gamestage ramping up with player level.

 

I get it, I totally do - they wanted to introduce an "early" game, which didn't really exist before. Great. They also wanted us to stick around in said early game for a while longer. Also perfectly fine by me. Early game stage can be very enjoyable if implemented right. The issue I have with this early game in its current state is boredom. Way too much waiting around and way too few meaningful activities for me.

[aloys]

standard difficulty, 2nd time trying A17. First POI had 8 zombies in it. each zombie took 4 or more arrow headshots plus some wooden club shots. survived but took 1 or 2 hits so my stamina dropped. had to spend the majority of the rest of day 1 making more arrows! day 2, was just out trying to get wood and stone when i saw a black wolf running at me. stamina was low, so there was no getting away. It seems almost impossible to try and gather any materials early game without always being very low on stamina. Which is fine, thats a part of the game.

 

Only thing that really bums me out about A17 is how they have made base building so much harder. I love end game 72d2. I want to be able to build crazy things. Horde bases, or just random giant bridges or pyramids. In order to do that, you need massive forge rooms with tons of forges burning all the time. Best way to do that was at bedrock, you could create and store supplies safely. in A17 that isnt possible, which just makes me sad. I'm not going to spend dozens of hours mining, looting, crafting, if at any point zombies can destroy my forge room, theres no point, and that makes me sad for my future playing this game.

[pApA^LeGBa]

It really isn't that hard to get away if you are paying attention.

If you feel that you must kill every enemy that sees you, the problem lies not with the game.

 

Or you finally figure out how to stop dog/wolvepacks, wich you can´t always predict early enough to get away, from spawning on day 1-5. No one would miss those.

 

Also they do sometimes just appear from behind you, come up a hill or from behind a house,without making a freaking sound before they are in reach. Don´t tell me i have to 360 all the time to be aware every single second.

[Boldero]

It really isn't that hard to get away if you are paying attention.

If you feel that you must kill every enemy that sees you, the problem lies not with the game.

 

What a crock, how about 'if the game feels that it MUST kill every player that plays, the problem lies within the game'

[postalcrazy616]

I think carbon summed it up well. There's playing the game, building your base and doing what you should be doing. Then there's just getting stomped by unfair hordes and having to be on guard 24/7 for these random events which can happen at any time, even when you're desperately attempting to get resources to prep yourself for the fabled "7th day". But you can't do that if you're getting decked at a low level by dogpacks and random vultures.

 

Defeats the purpose of the game a bit. Spotting and stamina is a major issue in this build really, as it's great saying "run away" and all, but sadly it's a bit difficult when your character has the stamina of a drunk 10 pack a day smoker with lung cancer, alongside the whole "reduced backpeddaling" so walking backwards is inaffective. Major issue is alertness... No sound as to when these events happen and how close they can just drop in on you without making a squeak makes the game impossible to enjoy.

 

As for Aloys words, gotta admit there, resoures for base building is real damn scarce now, before you could fortify (albiet roughly) a small little house for the 7th day, get a fair bit of it broken down but bearable and repairable, now it seems that'll be more than a chore and prevent you from scavenging, finding things, prepping ammo etc. And. Dog packs on day 2. It isn't just bad luck after 3 random maps being made and getting it time after time, second day without fail. It's just bad balancing I'm afraid.

[Jedo]

Remember when people said of A16 that it was too difficult to gather resources, particularly because they removed the bonus harvest?

[SnowDog1942]

Remember when people said of A16 that it was too difficult to gather resources, particularly because they removed the bonus harvest?

 

I remember calling A16 a snoozefest and Roland diving down my throat about it. I apologized at the time... but now.. I retract the apology. ---- because compared to A17, A16 was a snooze fest. A17 is awesome.. except for the crappy random gen of course.

[KeiraR]

Ferals will always run, so if they were feral soldiers, they would have. But, I'd wonder where those came from, as there is nothing that will spawn them at a low gamestage that you'd see in day 3.

 

My pack of dogs came out of nowhere, literally.

Day 2, standing on a boulder checking the perks.

Suddenly a pack of dogs turns up and I was dead.

[LordoftheMoo]

My pack of dogs came out of nowhere, literally.

Day 2, standing on a boulder checking the perks.

Suddenly a pack of dogs turns up and I was dead.

 

Yup, unfortunately, wandering hordes do that (and that's where the dogs came from, the AIDirector spawned a wandering horde). Horde control does seem to be off - we think it's possible they are pathing at the player instead of near the player - but I do not know if that change was a bug or intentional. A16 it was "near" and much of the time you'd never notice them forming up and moving. Just when you'd look around you would see them nearby.

[KeiraR]

Yup, unfortunately, wandering hordes do that (and that's where the dogs came from, the AIDirector spawned a wandering horde). Horde control does seem to be off

 

Yes, i know.

I might poke around the xmls some more later to fix some of the nonsense I get thrown at me.

I made sure to have no zombies around so I could have a look at the perks in peace, right...

Is it too much to ask to have a little time to do things like that without getting attacked every twenty seconds?

[pApA^LeGBa]

Criticism is a vital part of early access. And this is going on since A15 (i think), if they would finally fix this, we wouldn´t have to write about it.

 

It´s a shame that they can´t fix this. Or don´t want too. All you hear from staff is "Easy to spot, easy to avoid". Easy my ass. They just appear and were silent untile the point they hit me. After the first hit, i could hear them loud and clear. Not for long ofc. On day 2 this is just too much to handle. With no chance to leave in time. So, "just don´t fight everything you see" is a stupid advice.

 

I can´t be aware all the time looking for packs. Impossible. Finally fix this so they can´t spawn before day 5.

Or bind it to the difficulty on wich day they can spawn first.

 

The current state is a cheapass random surprise challenge that can easily get you at the wrong time so you don´t have a chance to survive.

 

And give us challenges other than fighting, this is a genremix. Not a FPS. Doesn´t need cheap challenges like the dogs if there is more different ones.

[DaVegaNL]

Criticism is a vital part of early access.

 

It´s a shame that they can´t fix this. Or don´t want too. All you hear from staff is "Easy to spot, easy to avoid". Easy my ass. They just appear and were silent untile the point they hit me. After the first hit, i could hear them loud and clear. Not for long ofc. On day 2 this is just too much to handle. With no chance to leave in time. So, "just don´t fight everything you see" is a stupid advice.

 

I can´t be aware all the time looking for packs. Impossible.

 

Survival of the fittest at its finest.

 

Don't fight everything you see is a perfectly acceptable piece of advice. Being able to judge whether to stand your ground and fight, or run away to live another day, is the epithome of Darwinistic survivalism.

[Northstar63]

I tried A17 at default level, and found I had to drop it down to an easier level. The Zeds are tougher by a lot, POI's seem to have a minimum 5-6 zeds in them. At lower level it is more playable for me, but have had random hordes every game day if I am in a POI for any length of time. Random hordes are brutal, but for me it is the framerate hit I am seeing. Was at 50fps A16, now I am in the 30's and when hordes hit can be in the single digits.

[Doctor3D]

I promise you that if you keep at it - it's not that difficult AT ALL. I think a big part of the problem with people perceiving this build so much more difficult is just due to the character stats curve. You start off a lot slower and weaker, but there is quite a arching point to where you actually become even stronger in A17 than you ever were in A16.

 

The current perk balance is analogous to the older ES game Morrowind. For those who have had the pleasure of playing it, you'll remember in that game - you start off incredibly slow, weak and clunky and can barely kill a rat - but by the end of the game - you can literally fly across the map and wipe out an entire town without even thinking.

 

Now - the actual problem - the real problem is - that this game is NOT Morrowind - it doesn't have a strong quest line - it doesn't have a narrative purpose. It's a sandbox game - and a curve that aggressive doesn't work on a game like this for most people.

 

In this game - you're too slow to have a desire to do much in the beginning - and you're too OP to want to continue playing later on. The arch needs to be adjusted (in my opinion). The game is truly not much harder than before. The only exception is possibly the blood moon - if you're used to cheesing the AI - then you might have a hard time getting used to the actual tower defense part. Once you do though - gravy..

[Gipothegip]

Or you finally figure out how to stop dog/wolvepacks, wich you can´t always predict early enough to get away, from spawning on day 1-5. No one would miss those.

 

Also they do sometimes just appear from behind you, come up a hill or from behind a house,without making a freaking sound before they are in reach. Don´t tell me i have to 360 all the time to be aware every single second.

 

I've had a similar issue myself. My problem though is the spawning is whack. I was in my base, all the doors closed, and three wolves spawned right on top of me in the same room I was.

 

This has been an issue out looting as well, but that has more to do with sleepers, or maybe non-sleepers. It seems there's some delay to them spawning or something, and so the zombies don't spawn until I'm inside the building for a bit, then I have a handful of them just on top of me.

 

Really, I find the spawning is making this version more difficult than it needs to be. Of course, iirc, this was a problem in the previous version as well.

 

As for overall difficulty, I haven't played it much, but I feel like a retired granny in the beginning. Once you get some perks invested, it seems to get better. I'll have to play more and try out different strategies before saying the difficulty is unreasonable, but I definitely got screwed over in my first game.

[ricp]

I wouldn't consider myself a particularly good gamer but I am an experienced one (considerably so) and I find 7DtD very easy. From the normal zombies, wandering hordes, ferals and blood moon hordes.

 

Yet 7DtD is very hard. "Why is that?", you ask, "You just said the opposite."

 

What does absolutely completely and utterly make the game hard is the dreadful frame rate. I have to play it as low as 1368x768 on the lowest quality just to get a stable 60+ fps in the wild, but hit a PoI or worse a "dungeon house" where you triggered all the zombies and you'll be lucky not to be getting massive 10fps lag spikes. What's more, that aforementioned 60+ fps is never a "smooth 60"; it always feels clunky.

 

Now don't get me wrong, I have a lot of sympathy for any developer trying to hit the moving target of public opinion, system specs and general expectation but ultimately A17, experimental or not, is pretty unplayable and not just for me but for dozens of streamers who have considerably better kit than both I and the majority of the 7DtD player base.

 

There is so much to like about A17, there really is, but it's locked behind a very harsh performance firewall.

[Scyris]

standard difficulty, 2nd time trying A17. First POI had 8 zombies in it. each zombie took 4 or more arrow headshots plus some wooden club shots. survived but took 1 or 2 hits so my stamina dropped. had to spend the majority of the rest of day 1 making more arrows! day 2, was just out trying to get wood and stone when i saw a black wolf running at me. stamina was low, so there was no getting away. It seems almost impossible to try and gather any materials early game without always being very low on stamina. Which is fine, thats a part of the game.

 

Only thing that really bums me out about A17 is how they have made base building so much harder. I love end game 72d2. I want to be able to build crazy things. Horde bases, or just random giant bridges or pyramids. In order to do that, you need massive forge rooms with tons of forges burning all the time. Best way to do that was at bedrock, you could create and store supplies safely. in A17 that isnt possible, which just makes me sad. I'm not going to spend dozens of hours mining, looting, crafting, if at any point zombies can destroy my forge room, theres no point, and that makes me sad for my future playing this game.

 

The main problem here is the zombies are way to good at detecting you, if your below 20-30 blocks of soil/rock they should have 0 chance to find you (other than horde night anyway as they gps), I've said it before but i've seen a zombie from 100 blocks out literally beeline it right to me on the 2nd floor of a poi when I was crouched, I made some sound by stepping on something. Zombie beelined it and stopped right where I was standing last.

[Ghostlight]

Dog horde on day 2 is just bad luck.

Respawn and proceed.

 

There always has been a 1/50 chance that your twice daily wandering horde will be 6 to 12 dogs. This was also in A16 etc.

[postalcrazy616]

So judging by some people's opinions, it's not an issue that dogpacks and wandering hordes spawn quite literally on top of the player? I fail to see sense in that really, as it is kinda an issue, the only thing you can really pray for is that you get lucky as hell and the pack spawns on you when you're inside a house and they spawn outside it. Apart from that I'd say it needs a serious overhaul.

 

And please, let's not turn this topic into a fight, let's have a muddle through the opinions and debate things.

[beHypE]

Regarding zombies, I gotta admit it's poorly scaled right now. With a friend of mine that just bought the game (literally his first playthrough), we were absolutely going easy mode during day time (so much that I upped the zombie's daytime approach speed from 0.2 to 0.35, to make it feel a bit more challenging).

 

Yet, on our 3rd night, we were surprised by a horde of about 12 zombies that came in... at 21:45. Needless to say our 4x4 wooden "base" on which we planned spending the night didn't last long and there was virtually nothing we could do. This echoes the people saying dogs by day 2 is a bad idea. The overall zombie game is decently balanced, daytime is really easy and you "only" need to prepare for blood moon hordes. It actually gets quite harder when you waste a good chunk of a day retrieving your dead body, not even mentionning how frustrating it is to feel that helpless because of a random horde coming by at the wrong time this early in the game.

[giltirn]

Yet, on our 3rd night, we were surprised by a horde of about 12 zombies that came in... at 21:45. Needless to say our 4x4 wooden "base" on which we planned spending the night didn't last long and there was virtually nothing we could do. This echoes the people saying dogs by day 2 is a bad idea. The overall zombie game is decently balanced, daytime is really easy and you "only" need to prepare for blood moon hordes. It actually gets quite harder when you waste a good chunk of a day retrieving your dead body, not even mentionning how frustrating it is to feel that helpless because of a random horde coming by at the wrong time this early in the game.

 

I get the impression that building with anything less than reinforced concrete is a noob trap. You're a lot better off just camping on the roof of a POI for the night. Sad really because base building used to be the most fun part of 7D2D - if I wanted to loot dungeons I'd just play Fallout 4.

[giltirn]

So judging by some people's opinions, it's not an issue that dogpacks and wandering hordes spawn quite literally on top of the player? I fail to see sense in that really, as it is kinda an issue, the only thing you can really pray for is that you get lucky as hell and the pack spawns on you when you're inside a house and they spawn outside it. Apart from that I'd say it needs a serious overhaul.

 

And please, let's not turn this topic into a fight, let's have a muddle through the opinions and debate things.

 

They could definitely do with an audio cue for dog packs. I went out looting and out of nowhere, from complete silence, a dog attacks me from behind. Almost before I could react I was down to half health and was bleeding out. I didn't even bother trying to attack it - I just ran as fast as I could until my stamina completely drained.