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a17 Thoughts, Suggestions, and hopefully some humour.


DaChibii

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Oh look it's another 'feedback thread' from an unknown forum user with a low post count. It's almost as a bad as guessing how many sleeping zombies are actually *sleeping* in a POI. You never know when one will pop up and say, "Grah. Fun Pimps WHY?!?!" or "a16 was better and I looked better then too."

 

Anyways... On to the actual feedback.

 

So my initial thoughts on a17 was: This feels the same. Nope. Different. Huh. Day 1 feels harder. Definitely harder. *Several restarts and playthroughs later...* Okay. Not harder. Different. More combat focused in the early game. Less base defence. Definite balance issues.

 

Which then lead to reading various forums and websites and videos on a17. And now this:

 

I like some of the fundamental approaches that they are testing out in a17. Yes, there are balance issues but this is first build of these systems so really we shouldn't expect polish. I don't know why people are expecting a Cowboy Bebop from an artist that is trying out the anime art style from the first time.

 

Things that I liked:

  • That power-attacks (alt attacks) feel different and useful. Corollary: I'm slightly disappointed that normal attacks feel useless. Maybe change it that primary weak attacks don't use stamina or cause degradation, offering the player a choice between stamina & durability costing but high damaging and special effecting power attacks, and a free action that can spam for low risk or emergency no-options left response.
  • The AI pathing and focus on mazes for base construction opposed to brute force fortresses relying on passive defenses like bedrock pits, rows of spikes, and a few shotgun turrets. I still dislike the pacing that makes wood structures pointless almost immediately followed quickly by cobblestone, and then it's just concrete to steel. For a game that considers structure creation as a primary feature, I'm surprised that wood isn't used as a safe & quick material to prototype and test builds.
  • I like the simplicity of 1 to 6 quality levels of tools and weapons. I like the modifications that allow for limited customization and specialization. But right now it's near cheating level with how easy it is to repair and acquire high level tools. If the game is going to have three tiers of tools, then maybe have three tiers of repairing (stone tools can't be repaired, iron can be repaired in the field, steel tools needs a workbench/forge, and mechanical ones need to be combined at a workbench). Also, link the loot tables to one step higher than what the player has currently access to. So no finding (or buying) a steel pick-axe or auger on day 2-3.
  • POIs as instanced dungeons are great. Almost all of them are well designed and feel great. Maaaaaaybe a little heavy on light sleeping zombies, but really that's a minor balance concern. But not all POI needs to be a dungeon, in fact they feel a little too common and frankly the same challenge (since the difficulty is tied to the gamestate). There needs to be more of a variety other than just what the building contains and how many floors it has. You could break down to how often the POI resets the zombies (ie. Never, Once a week, Daily, leaving the POI, hourly, etc.), what challenges exist (special zombies, parkour jumping and puzzle solving, or passive defenses/materials), or the rarity of the POI (unique one of a kind per world, one per city, city only, etc). And some buildings don't need to be dungeons at all, but just a simple loot resource spot.
  • Traders now give QUESTS! Woooo! It's almost like an 80s RPG. Now that you know that the mechanic works, build on it. Instead of just kill all zombies, or find loot quests. Maybe include a reverse fetch quest where you search for an unkillable NPC in a POI and trade it a 'map' object that teleports the NPC to the trader, allowing the player to treat the trader as a starter neutral player-developed city.

 

Things I disliked:

  • The death penalty. Dying is a penalty. Losing all your stuff, trekking back to it naked and unarmed, and then searching for it in the tall grass while white noise pattern of zombies try to kill you is the challenge and penalty. This is game where a player is going to die. And often. If I was Madmole, I would hope that the player dies at least once a week. It is after all called, 7 Days to Die. If players aren't dying then it needs to be more challenging. But it needs to be death by poor player choices and not unavoidable (RNG dog horde casts group stealth and successfully backstabs your character. No roll for save. There is no save against Sneaky Dog Packs) or repetitive boring ones (like requiring to drink every 5mins, or bandaging after every combat scenario).
  • The Random World names. Really, give the player the agency to name their world and not just their savefile. The seed thread is filled with creative seed names. Also this makes the worlds feel more unique instead of 'Oh you got that RNG world too'.

 

Overall I liked a17. Unfortunately, I didn't like it enough to get those creative juices following for base design, group therapy sessions, or random casual horde killing. Which ultimately is what I feel like 7DTD is missing: a focus. Currently it's a sandbox survival game with horde enemies, battle royale (before BR was even a thing) PvP, and massive RNG worlds. Really it should pick one and focus on it, and make it great instead of being pulled in several directions trying to make all them great. As popular as PvP is, I feel like it could be left to the modders to perfect and instead have Fun Pimps focus just making the single player great, and once that's gold move on to the co-op PvE experience.

 

Oh. And thanks for the game, Fun Pimps. Keep up the good work. I'll definitely be hyped for a18 after the bombs fall and we are all living in a zombie holocaust for real.

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Yeah, you know I think zombie base damage may be better off scaled per week or something. Wood (and hell, even iron) gets shreaded in a heartbeat even after the little buff. I dont base build till the morning after day 14, which I dont mind, but I dont bother with anything but concrete at this point. Cobblestone.. maybe. But its just cannon fodder that lasts just enough time for me to kill them before morning. Spikes are the way to go lol. I like it, but sorta dont? Just a small tweaking. I dont want to relive the a16 days of me struggling to figure out how to build without being bored to death because I accidently built an invincible fortress out of wood and iron.. lol.

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I agree with your points.

Changing the way you can repair your tools should be something to investigate.

It would also slow down the pace of your game and forces you to make decisions before you leave your base.

For a quest; am I really leaving with only 30% durability on my sledgehammer?

 

I do like the new death penalty since its updates to 30 minutes.

An hour was too long, it got me very frustrated.

But with this 30 minutes, I focus on doing something else than mining or questing.

 

For Random World names, I just don't care :fat:

 

#TeamA17

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Hello fellow unknown forum users! Really good post and I like your points.

 

I never considered the repairing solution you mentioned and I actually think its a nice consideration. Another addition to that is they could possibly make it where if you don't repair it at the 'correct' place, you can only repair it to maybe half or 3/4 durability.

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