A17's good and bads

[ShadowMoses1324]

Okay. I'm a long-time player of 7 days, I'm not going to talk about how many hours I have in the game, because I'm not that guy. But what I will say is that I've loved this game since the 5th release, and this is my top played game on my steam account. AKA, I'm not a noob. I've given many times to TFP, in the form of having bought 8+ copies of the game, and I was a huge supporter, and would still love to be, but I'll be honest. I've put quite a decent amount of time into the 17 experimenteal and I'm incredibly disappointed, like, to the point where I am near about to uninstall, and forget this game, while never recommending it again. Now, before I start, Yes, I know it's not the full release, and No, I'm not complaining about difficulty. There are just some things I've found thus far, that make the game quite nearly unplayable. I am also well aware of the turds that have dropped in the past as far as first releases of alpha builds, and am also aware of the fact that it is a huge build and there are going to be issues. No, I'm not being unfair, and No, I'm not just complaining in hopes that TFP will be catering to my own play-style.

 

So, Lets start with the good. The game looks amazing. I love how crisp everything looks, and how, while updating the texture resolutions of most of the items, none have really changed. I'm very impressed with how this is done. I love that there has been more focus on the POI's, so they're not just cookie-cutter, run in, loot, and out in 20 seconds with little to no danger. I also love the influx in sleepers and other zombies in the POI's. This adds a sense of danger and adventure to the game, while also, whether inadvertent or not, creating a sort of tier system to the different POI's. I love the new Leveling system, and while there are issues with it, that are game breaking, It's largely all-inclusive and far more intuitive, eliminating a lot of sitting and reading in your house. The loot generation is better, IMO, the extra crafting tiers are excellent, and overall play has changed enough to get me excited about re-learning the game all over again. And lets not forget the Arrows now. ./purrrrr. I love seeing where I hit the unsuspecting Z's with my bow, mixed with the new stealth system. While also being able to collect my arrows from corpses. And lastly, I haven't gotten to them yet because I can't stomach leveling this far in the state that the game is in, The focus placed on the vehicles. Excellent job on a lot of it guys. I love it.

 

Now, onto the bad. I'll try to keep it in categories, and there may be a couple of bug reports in this thread as well, sorry, but I'll just try to make one all-inclusive post here. I have two main gripes. Like, game-breakers for me, which kind of nestle into eachother, so I'm going to try to lump em together.

 

The leveling system's impact on early game. I know, I'm riding a fine line on whether or not I'm whining about how hard the game is, but bear with me, I'll expand. My first meeting with A17 was bittersweet. Tying critical damage via skill based actions, is asinine. I should absolutely not have to put points into perception, for my projectile attacks to deal more damage to a zombie, if I have the skill to shoot the Z in the head, I'm sorry for being a ♥♥♥♥ here, but it should be dead. (Unless it has a helmet or something on, then I'd get it.) The only thing that should cause any difference in this should be the quality of the bow, in terms of draw weight and what not. But when I see a zombie shambling towards me with 8 arrows in it's skull and it's still not down for the count, there's more than one issue there. in fact, hiding any rudimentary function of life behind a skill point is completely counter-productive when you're shooting for immersion. (Strength, in this sense, with melee weapons, makes a bit more sense, because if you're a tiny guy or gal' trying to beat in a zombie skull with the blunt end of a screwdriver, then obviously you're not going to do a whole lot. )

 

On the other side of this coin, the other, and for me, the main game breaker is the food and water system. Okay, you made food harder to get ahold of. I'm okay with that. But here's the problem. Swinging a club, burns hunger and stamina. Stamina is used in everything, but the only way to get it back, is to use it to clear a house, in hopes of possibly getting enough food or water to replenish maybe 25% of what you've used trying to get said food. Out of 4 total fresh starts that I've done in A17, only one of them did not lock me into an endless hunger loop, (and just to twist the knife further, when I loaded this save today, a tree had grown in the center of my house that I couldn't knock down, and it covered up my loot box where I was storing everything, so I had nothing all over again....). What's worse, is that I'm about to have people tell me, "Well, you can get food from other sources." yes. You are correct. But lets explore this for a moment. You find corn, yet have no cooking skill. Sure, you can eat it. But you have a 20-ish% chance of food poisoning, which puts you in an even more dire situation. Potatoes are worse, clocking in at a 30% FP rating, while only yielding 2% of your hunger. Oh, and lest I forget. You can't use them without a pot or grill, so, unless you get insanely lucky in the beginning and loot a pot in a car or house that you've spawned in, then you're boned. Animals aren't much better either. Early game, you have a stone axe. Use the axe on your first kill to get a bone to make a shiv, for more drops off of the next animal you kill. So. Basics right? Well, not really. Because if you consider how terribly uncommon wildlife is in the game for some reason, (Which has been a thing over the past few Alpha Builds, and I'm okay with that,) You'll have zombies to kill while looking for the next animal. Which means, you're draining more stamina and hunger. Oh, and for more fun, you finally get yourself about 20 raw meat, then go to cook it, and realize that it takes 5 meat to make the lowest tier of food in the game, which only generates 10% hunger at the most. All while draining your hydration. So, you have to double time your search for water, in order to counteract the whole ordeal. So, to the hunter-gatherer argument, I disagree fully, and go back to the fact that looting is about the only way to gain enough food, early game. Also, in a half of a day, you can literally starve to the point of uselessness? For a game that's trying to gain some ground on realism, it's sure not doing a good job on the basics like hunger... Thirst, I could understand. I can go a few days without eating, Personally. Which means a digital toon on a game shouldn't have an issue with dwindling stamina, at least not in the severity that this game in it's current state lets on. Food is horrendously unbalanced, and needs to be assessed, because This single thing, breaks the whole game, and it's just an absolute asinine way of hampering a character. Not even going into which I think it a bug, where after you die, your hunger stays where it was when you ate the ol' turd sammich.

 

Smaller issues I've discovered, are with personal opinion. Level 20 (Or 21, if you're spending points to counteract the other broken elements in the game,) to make a forge is just too bloody much. For the love of god, make it to day 5, just looting to eat.... there is no time for Zombie killing to level, and if there is no leveling, there is no progression. It's pretty straight forward, especially on such a pivotal piece of equipment. Having to unlock simple cooking recipes with a skill point is also dumb. Any idiot can grill a piece of meat.... or boil it.

 

The quality system is far less rewarding, and the straight 1-5 or 6 levels of the different qualities, takes a lot of the reward from looting, and crafting, and this for me, is one of the biggest letdowns. I don't know about the rest of you, but I feel accomplished just seeing the difference between a 400 and a 425 club I find in a trash pile while out and about looting. or when I can craft that level 450 after grinding levels for just that tiny increase in damage, regardless of the color quality. If you Take that away, who cares? You get an orange club, you level until you make a green. It's super lame, and needs to be changed back. There's no random nature to it, as it's basically either you have it or you don't.... This just gets worse when you start building yourself a diamond plated death-stick later on in the game. Y'know, sorting through endless lootables for that one gun part that replaces your crappy one, (And by crappy, I mean 1-2 point difference,) It makes you feel like your gun is yours. It's a feeling of accomplishment. That's no longer there, and that ruins it for me, Personally.

 

(Body is too long on OP, Continue reading in first comment.)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Now, lastly, on the heels of that last point, I'm going to address the Death punishment length... If you're going to make it harder to survive, and punish us for dying.... for christs sake, lower the amount of time that it takes for the punishment debuff to wear off and for good measure, lower the penalty... after one death, you may as well put on a football helmet, drool on yourself and attempt to mario jump on everything that crosses your path, because that will be far more effective than you actually giving a damn and trying. Oh, and 60 min debuff... Most in-game days on default, I believe are 48 min. I'll leave you all to do the math on that.

[Jedo]

...and you literally cannot take a step without burning through some precious, near-irreplaceable stamina...

 

If this is so, then how are so many people managing to do it?

[Spider]

I agree with many of your points lets hope the Devs are listening.

[Poojam]

And this, kids, is why people don't really bother to post anything helpful. Trying to help the community, and everyone complains about how long it is to read. It's not for you. You can agree or not. The purpose of the experimental build is for them to receive feedback. So, again, if you've nothing helpful to say, just don't. It's that simple. Thanks!

 

I'm sure Roland or Hawkeye will be in here any minute now to moderate and/or remove their posts. Any minute now.

[ShadowMoses1324]

Spider and Poojam, We can only hope, on both accounts, I don't know. I've been a member of this forum and active player of 7D since 2015. lol, I have a total of 11 posts after this one. The only time I say anything is when I'm actually trying to provide something in the way of feedback to make a game that we all love, better. I just don't understand why people have to behave that way. ./sigh, t'is what it is. lol.

[Perramas]

ShadowMoses1324 I agree with most everything you have laid out in your post. For me this is the most disappointing release yet. I enjoyed the base building not the killing. With this release I am forced to do far more killing and scavenging instead of building and crafting.

[R0bb0b]

And this, kids, is why people don't really bother to post anything helpful. Trying to help the community, and everyone complains about how long it is to read. It's not for you. You can agree or not. The purpose of the experimental build is for them to receive feedback. So, again, if you've nothing helpful to say, just don't. It's that simple. Thanks!

 

Dude, just a little bit of formatting goes a long way. If you want people to consume your walls of text then you need to provide in a consumable way. IMO, nobody with a tight schedule, especially the devs or anyone else analyzing feedback, are going to sit down and read a massive wall of text if you don't take the time to present it in an organized and easily consumable way.

[Viktoriusiii]

Agreed. Read completely. Would change one or two things, but overall well written. Sad that it takes 20 lines just to take away common complaints from those too lazy to do their own thinking... but luckily you didn't specify that you were sorry for the long post but that it was the only way to give a nuanced factbased feedback, so at least they were able to dismiss it for beeing too good and well thought out.

[thraka]

And this, kids, is why people don't really bother to post anything helpful. Trying to help the community, and everyone complains about how long it is to read. It's not for you. You can agree or not. The purpose of the experimental build is for them to receive feedback. So, again, if you've nothing helpful to say, just don't. It's that simple. Thanks!

 

You're misinterpreting their responses, IMO. They don't object to the length. They object to the criticism, and simply say anything to discredit your points. There is nothing wrong with what you wrote. It's plenty clear. It just doesn't contain glowing priase, so some people don't like it.

[ShadowMoses1324]

Yeah, However, it was. Everything was catagorized, and crystal clear. so... Again, it wasn't intended for you. We all play the game, we all know what's broken. Devs don't. The more description, the better. So, along that vein, I don't really care. If someone wants to read that "Wall of text" which.... is kind of something most people looking for, to either get help with or to help fix similar issues are doing, more power to you. Apparently, I don't cater to skimmers, and if you want to read and have a helpful discussion, I'm all for it. If not, please just stop. I don't care if you disagree with the composition of my post. It was organized, and if you didn't recognize that, I'm sorry about your luck. Yes, there were a few things I could change, but I'm not writing a college essay, (For those who obviously hate reading for actual information, you may not know what that is,) It's a comprehensive paper, providing insight to a particular topic. One that is proof-read, formatted, and edited. Which, this is not. so, again. If you want to keep railing on my literary skills, do so in a PM, stop wasting space and time here, because you're not making me feel or look bad at all, just yourself. So, on that note, I'm done discussing the length of my post. I'll discuss my points with you, but not how I presented them.

 

Thanks!

[aloys]

i'm sad to say i agree. I want to love A17, but its really tough to say that right now lol.

 

I think i'm done with experimental, just going to wait for 17.3 or 17.4 to come out and see how everything is then!

[Guest]

The food and water system is not nearly as punishing as you make it out to be. It needs tweaking, but it is far from the game breaking drama that you're trying to paint it as. Unless you're being very uneconomical with your tool & weapon swings, or ignoring the right loot containers for some reason, keeping food and water up is challenging, but far from impossible. And it becomes easy once you find a pot, of which there are quite a few to be found strewn about in POIs.

 

Passing judgment on the new item quality system before you even got close to using the modification system doesn't help your case either.

[Jedo]

We all play the game, we all know what's broken. Devs don't. The more description, the better.

 

If they didn’t get in the first dozen threads, I’m not sure why you think this one will get through to them.

 

Also, not “all.” Quite a few (many?) don’t think these things are broken.

[Krougal]

It really is TLDR, and just more paragraphs would help. This is from a guy who just wrote his own wall of text

 

Getting food and water is not bad. Water is also handled well enough, judging from hearsay of Madmole and my own gameplay, as long as your hydration is over half you're good. The max stamina decay is constant, even sitting around doing ♥♥♥♥all it goes down the minute your foodmeter does. Also you can fill your food meter and still not refill your stamina. It would be better if as long as you were reasonably fed (above half) then your max stamina would replenish even slowly then we wouldn't have to waste so much food. I think just that 1 small change would help a lot.

 

And of course if they decide they like it as it is, there's always baked taters - no longer require a grill, I don't think they even need cooking skill, they give no health and not much food, but I munch on them when my health is full but my stamina is not. Helps save the good food for when it's needed. As discussed in another thread there's plenty of food to be had, you just need to prioritize looking for it.

 

Yes, the new POIs are ♥♥♥♥ing amazing. I even found a large spooky house with a large "dungeon" underneath it. Love the quests.

 

I think the simplified tiers are much better, gone are the days of fretting over my QL 600 ♥♥♥♥ losing QL from repairs vs dealing with constantly degraded output. Things are meant to be used, and now use them we do. So one mans con is another mans pro.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

If they didn’t get in the first dozen threads, I’m not sure why you think this one will get through to them.

 

Also, not “all.” Quite a few (many?) don’t think these things are broken.

 

LOL. Yeah I think "Devs please read this" is filtered texts for all devs everywhere, but you can guarantee the rest of the forum will argue over the thread for days....

[Poojam]

Dude, just a little bit of formatting goes a long way. If you want people to consume your walls of text then you need to provide in a consumable way. IMO, nobody with a tight schedule, especially the devs or anyone else analyzing feedback, are going to sit down and read a massive wall of text if you don't take the time to present it in an organized and easily consumable way.

 

I did, and I appreciated all the detail. I agree on many of his points. Some of them I do not.

[Kosmic Kerman]

Shadow. Thank you for posting your thoughts. Ignore the noise in this thread. Form what I’ve seen in this experimental and the last one, Roland does read most of the feedback posts in the forum and shares that feedback with the devs. Of course, that doesn’t mean that the devs will make any changes.

 

I struggled with food in my first game as well. My real problem was not finding a cooking pot early. RNG can be a cruel mistress. I think I ended up having to live off baked potatoes for a while.

[ShadowMoses1324]

@Kosmic: Yeah, I had one runthrough that worked out that way, And it really does have a lot to do with how you spend your points, but it seems like, in order to progress at all, you have to spend your points in exactly the same way that everyone else does. We went from having a little wiggle room with how you spend your points, to, either spend them this way by level 5, or you shall not pass. lol. I know most of it has a lot to do with needing to change up the way I play, which is why I didn't fly off the handle, complaining profusely on day one of it's release. I've tried and tried again, but it seems like the food is the biggest hindrance overall, even if it is just a fuzz unbalanced. (It may not be horribly unbalanced, and at least it's not like breaking your leg every 3 seconds by jumping off of a bush. lol as A12 or 13 was.) I dunno. I just look at what I see. I don't expect everything to change, but the information can't be known if the information isn't made known. If that makes sense. You can't know what you don't know that you don't know. lol. They're focused on finishing the build, not playing it. That's why the Experimental builds are a thing. We test it and provide the feedback. =/ I'm not claiming that they don't care or anything, they just likely don't have time to play and test while they're focused on building.

[Jedo]

...but the information can't be known if the information isn't made known. If that makes sense. You can't know what you don't know that you don't know. lol.

 

Unless you’re the thirtieth person to say it...

[ShadowMoses1324]

Bro, I wasn't even talking to you. I don't care how many times you've seen "the same post." Have you provided any useful feedback? Judging by your pointless and rude comments, I'd assume not. So please, stop. If you have nothing useful to say, please just move on. You aren't the forum police. Leave that job to the mods.

[Redoutz]

Shadowmoses - don't waste time arguing with the trolls who have the attention spans of goldfish, they'd have already swum on and forgotten if you didn't remind them by replying.

 

I found your "good and bad" format useful and I largely agree with everything. Personally, I'm on day 9 and getting food hasn't been an issue. But keeping the stamina high enough to fight (80% plus of mac IMHO) is a pain in the @$$. My opinion the stamina mechanism is totally borked. I eat until I'm stuffed and I can starve to the point where I can't run or usefully fight in a half a day? Stamina should drop only when your on the verge of starving. Most people and predatory animals are more active when hungry not crippled by hunger.

[ShadowMoses1324]

That would actually make the system a lot more usable. Or even as it hits certain percentage tiers. That's more or less what I was hoping for. But as one percent diminishes, so does your max stam? That seems more than a bit off. Especially when you're first getting started.

[Reth]

To OP: I agree with some of the issues you've raised, disagree with others.

 

I, for one, don't see food and drinks as a problem, but lack of stamina early game is a deal breaker for me. Death penalty is another big one, I hope I can mod it out, just haven't looked at it yet. Mining needs love and I'll definitely adjust the skill system and probably up crafting exp if I can.

 

Right now I'm waiting for a stable release while scouting forums for interesting suggestions I can mod in. There is tons and tons of good info here, just have to filter out all the fanboi crap.

[CypherTodd]

I get it, I was SUPER mad for the first couple of days. But I did adapt, yes stamina and food need to be looked at agreed (maybe like the temp buff when you spawn in for like 2 days). But I was able to survive, there are pig farms everywhere (at least on my gen) so meat was not a big issue. and later levels when I had 150+ stamina and a garden and all I was able to manage it, but it was a chore to do so, and a lot of focus had to go into it. Looting whole new approach, small house yes, first floor yes, all the trash cans in town yes, but anything outside that I would get eaten. Hope you give it a few builds and see where the devs go with it. they DO listen, of that I have no doubt.

I agree to the level of loot, did feel nice getting that pick 25 points better. But If I had one sad moment it was the loss of doing things giving you skill in that area. This was the one game that if I mined I got better at it, if I used a bow I got better at it. Was VERY sad to see the whole "have to by the perk" thing

[DeadGerry]

Its funny how many people don't have the time to read the post, but find the time to reply to it saying nothing or - even worse - "just writing to tell you that I have nothing useful to add, but want to post something anyway". Seriously forum, if you got nothing useful to add just jog on and say nothing.

 

I agree with much of what the OP says; the new systems have massive potential, and I can see why they've been put in place; and a LOT of new stuff has been put in together. The overall balance is a little out, I think.

 

There is little noticeable difference between difficulty settings; because the basics are skewed; and it's making the ealry game disproportionally harder without making the mid to late game harder.

 

All of the new challenges are currently too lethal in the first week, avoidable by level 20 and completely by-passed afterwards.

 

The EARLY game suffers from

 

Too many high level spawns

too easy to bleed

to hard to reliably heal

too little food to maintain stamina

too many ways to get ill / infected / stuck in a cycle

Little difference to the above by turning the difficulty down

 

What it needs is either a longer grace period, a bigger difference for low to high settings and / or more useful and rewarding tutorials early

 

I think the perks need re-balanced, but that was always gonna be the way for the new alpha; and thye don't need much - just a little attention so that nothing is 'vital for all playstyles' and nothing is 'useless to all playstyles.'

[Tin]

I may not agree with everything you said, but it was a good post. You expressed your likes and dislikes well. May have been a bit long winded, but it got your points across without going from "0 to RRRrreEEeeEeeee" like I've been reading from others.