Thoughts about POI's

[LuckyStar]

It's the TIME it can take to loot them. Coupled with bullet sponge enemies, this can be a very BORING experience. Some of them can take many in-game hours to loot. You might be in a hurry, because you just need a Pot or some Acid to make wheels. You might find looting a boring pastime and just want it over with as a means to an end. Yet they make you jump through all these hoops and spend hours just to loot a house!!

 

I do not know anyone who would state looting houses was their favourite part of the game, yet they massively extended this aspect of the game in A17!! They are just far too common and thus not special, and the old fall through the floor trick is extremely over-used to the point of predictability. Not to mention the fact that once you recognise some of them, you just nerd pole to the loot room and break in from the roof (or wherever), so they were a bit of a waste of time as far as design effort goes.

 

Okay well I'm one of those people who actually like it.

 

I like the suspense of not knowing which part of the floor is weak.

I like that there's WAY more zombies to kill.

 

Going into a POI now requires some serious thought.

We've got to do a risk assessment vs ROI for the POI or become a dead BOI.

 

See what I did there?

 

[Darthjake]

I've stealthed through quite a few of them, but if it's a choice between looting and potentially waking up sleepers, I'll try and figure out where they are and engage the sleepers on my terms before I attempt to loot and potentially wake them up. Granted I don't have the noise reduction maxed out yet, so maybe I could loot and not wake them up, I just don't to take the chance of getting caught looting, (pants down), and also potentially having a Z tear through the crate I was looting as it tries to get to me.

[Limdood]

Has nothing to do with taking a while to clear and/or get the loot.

 

The linear path is kind of stupid...add to the fact that sometimes the path isn't clear, and you end up breaking into a different part of the path and don't know which way to go (not always bad) but also maybe miss some areas (REALLY bad, if you're on a "clear" quest, since they're so bad at helping you actually finish the quest, especially in gigantic POIs)

 

My big pet peeves are the combination of punitive game design and unavoidable gotcha! moments

- punitive game design because the stealth section of the agility tree is tailor made for POIs...its unnecessary on lone wandering zombies, and doesn't work on blood moon, ergo, it only has value to POI clearing...which would be fine, if most POIs weren't deliberately designed to stymie stealth. open door, path over broken glass, wake up zombies. enter room, each zombie is hidden behind 2 corners of boxes so you need to walk adjacent to them and in their LOS to shoot/hit them, and they wake up...no stealth bonus. Enter this room through the hole in the wall...oops, you changed height! noise up to 50, all zombies in room awake. Ladder up to the attic with the hardest zombies...except ladders undo stealth AND have you "land" like hitting the ground after a jump at the top, waking all zombies in the room anyways.

 

You give us POIs that we should creep through carefully and sneakily, and then make us unavoidably end the sneakiness due to noise tiles, elevation change "landings," ladders, jumping, or zombies hidden in unapproachable places. TBH, its a big "♥♥♥♥ you" to the people who DO like methodically clearing POIs, and the 4th room in a row in these houses where a pair of zombies breaks out of a closet and runs at me leaves me wanting to just say "screw sneaking in this game."

 

- the unavoidable gotchas! are similarly stupid. the 3x3 broken floors that you WILL fall thru unless you know they're there...no creeping and testing the tiles....oh, and what a surprise, this one dropped me in a pit of 5-12 zombies/dogs too...whee. the holes and elevation changes and ladders that work exactly the same as the floor traps (minus the broken legs), automatically alerting all the zombies in the room - which just so happens to be super tight and cramped...and held 8 zombies in its 3x4 size?

 

I get wanting to have surprises and jump scares, and the adrenaline rush when you make it is great. But the frustration when you fall 2 stories into a pack of dogs and die, even though you were carefully moving tile to tile because you suspected a floor trap anyways makes you want to turn off the game and not come back sometimes.

 

What's better than an occasional boost of adrenaline from a jumpscare or sudden zombie attack? having caution pay off. Making use of sneaking and associated perks to avoid being mobbed because i built a smart/agile character instead of a sledgehammer Strength/endurance tank. Triggering a collapsing floor you didn't know was there because you were being careful. Actually spotting a nearly hidden sleeper and dispatching it silently, rather than having it burst out of 1hp LOS-blocking zombie holding pods. Finding/spotting a secret stash or hidden path around a danger, or to a better vantage point.

 

Accomplishment feels a lot better than adrenaline. Especially when the adrenaline has a good chance to make you just think "well, that was BS" and turn off the game.

[Randomdude]

Okay well I'm one of those people who actually like it.

I like the suspense of not knowing which part of the floor is weak.

 

I like them, not love them. About the knowing them, they have a little weakness... After you've been in them more than 4-5 times you can just nerdpole to the "treasure". You don't get scared after the 5th time because just like in the jump scare movies, you know when the bad guy is behind the door.

 

To be honest "special" POIs feel like what warfronts are for Warcraft. They spent a whole expansion developing them and when implemented, people "liked" them, not loved them. Why? They're repetitive and after a while you lose the replay factor.

 

Bad thing for WOW developers is that those warfronts ARE the new expansion. They put all eggs in one basket and people went... meh. Now what? We'll find out tommorrow as Dec 11 is 8.1... but i digress.

 

TL;DR: POIs are good, not great, as they lose value of replayability really quick.

[HerrKingsley]

Well Im a bit torn about the new POI's. I love the details in them, finally it feels like some one actually have lived there. even though everyone collects concrete???!!!

So that part of the design I love. But!

Then there is the "Level" design of the POI. Which feels a bit too forced.

 

I actually had to start up a new game and lvl up 20 with a stealth build to see if it works better.

Build:

Perception: 4

Archery: 1

Boom Headshot: 2

 

Agility: 4

Ninja movment: 1

Hidden strike: 2

From the Shadow: 2

 

And It works pretty well. I must say, I can sneak up close to the Zds and oneshot most of the regular zombies. The fast reload (Archery) made it even possible to kill a Feral Farmer in a small room.

So playing the POI as intended works pretty well and was amusing i must admit.

But!!...This is 7dtd a survival sandbox!Meaning that there should be more ways to tackle a POI.

And sure there is, gunz blazing and nerd pooling straight to the loot.

 

There are a few things that breaks the sandbox and immersion of POI's for me.

1. Rotten floors that don't have anything to indicate that they will break is just a lazy "Got you!" design.

2. Go fishing! You can only lure out zombies that are in the same room unless they have spotted you. I shot a bullet 20cm beside a sleeping zombies head without it wakening, I throne pipe bombs at sleeping zombies, emptied a magazine with my smg, even detonate TNT inside the house. And the only thing that happened was that it attracted Zombies from the OUTSIDE!!!! Thats poor AI design.

3. You cant sneak efficient since you have to be lvl 30 to sneak jump over 1 block. Plus the sound is apperently louder to a zombie than a gunshot!

4. You cant place frames IN holes in floor, or over some trap floors.

5. Opening doors, looting and breaking doors are super loud.

 

Those things combined makes the POI's feel more like a "Game level" than house the scavenge! which breaks immersion for me.

 

I would love to see TFP fix at least some of this things by:

1. Indication rotten floors either texture (there are some of them) or by holes/rotten texture in the roof above. That way a player that pay attention will survive easier.

2. You should be able to lure all the zombies out of the house. Decoys should matter, playing safe and smart should be rewarded.

3. if you jump while sneaking it shouldn't make any sound, think of it like crawling over boxes. Also unevenness in the terrain shouldn't make you jump while sneaking.

4. Be able to place frame for safe passage in a way that don't give away that this POI was made to kill you!

5. New skills for silent looting, opening doors and lock picking locked doors.

 

Stealth/passive play style IS survival and should be rewarded.

[iejen]

Has anyone tried a stealth build and used it in POI dungeons.

Can you sneak through a whole house or are you bond to get detected or fall in a pit of zombies?

 

I always sneak through houses with my bow and arrow.

Most of the times i'm able to get to al least 70% before waking someone up.

The only problem are cops, I can't kill them quick enough.

[Blackrook]

I'm loving the new POI, each one tells a little bit of story, or at least leaves you wondering what the hell happened here.

 

At level 80 now and playing with a couple of friends on NAV map it takes about 1 game day to clear out a medium POI house,

which is probably about right.

 

Not sure how we will feel when we have to start redoing the same houses over, but each ones fresh and new at the moment,

rather than the cookie cutter POI we had in the last. Maybe a better mixture of old style and new tougher ones will be good, but really the ultimate is just to keep adding as many different types as possible - variety will keep late stage more interesting.

 

Oh and the breaking floors don't bother me, and the 1 path thing isn't a problem , sometimes we follow it , sometimes we smash walls to find a better way, its all good to me.

[dr.toast]

I had no idea I was so controversial in my playstyle....

 

Seems I'm the only person that acknowledges my ability to burst through walls like they were made of paper, and chooses to explore the predefined path because they are all unique adventures and admire the craftmanship of the alternative routes...

 

Also I saw posts about stealth and there are absolutely too many instances in these POI's where you cant pre empt zombs. Like, I can smash that cupboard with a single arrow and the sleeper inside stays sleeping, on the other hand smash that suspicous wardrobe door from across the hall and the next room away with a long range arrow and the train of 9 ferals in the closet are going to mess me up severely unless i bail out of a window and risk them smashing loot to get to me. Or use a gun, which is fun and more viable in 17 than 16.4, but wakes up the whole building and said smashed loot is once again a problem.

 

Which if you read the stealth text of zombies going to noise locations in the world makes no sense. They should pile up at the broken door in puzzlement, and absolutely not detect me sneaking round the house next door to escape silently with magical homing zombie senses.

 

 

 

 

 

On the thoughts of zombie AI and stealth and related systems, I saw a lovely video exploiting pathing of AI by vedui and realised how absurd it is that the zombies can path via omniscient knowledge of doors and ladders they cant possibly see and computing that running out of the ground floor of a certain POI, in the POI entrance next door and pathing the stairs ladder and one blockwide bridge between rooftops to attack you from the rear is.... certainly something for half rotted meat to manage.

[HerrKingsley]

Or use a gun, which is fun and more viable in 17 than 16.4, but wakes up the whole building and said smashed loot is once again a problem.

 

 

I tried that, purpose was to lure the zombies out. But nothing happened! Only zombies from the outside heard it and came bashing in.

[Ghostlight]

I like them, not love them. About the knowing them, they have a little weakness... After you've been in them more than 4-5 times you can just nerdpole to the "treasure". You don't get scared after the 5th time because just like in the jump scare movies, you know when the bad guy is behind the door.

 

To be honest "special" POIs feel like what warfronts are for Warcraft. They spent a whole expansion developing them and when implemented, people "liked" them, not loved them. Why? They're repetitive and after a while you lose the replay factor.

 

I guess it doesn't really matter that they get old after about a dozen of them have been experienced, because after that dozen you will basically never have to enter a POI again. I am 100% serious here. I have recently hit level 100 (day 30), and I now have everything in the game (and at top tier) due to the crappy perk system, and I have more mods than I could ever use. I looted a few house in a town I spawned near to achieve this. There is no need for me to ever loot again in this play-through. Ever.

 

I am maxed out and have looted a total of HALF an average sized town of POIs. My map is hardly opened up at all, other than the original trip to the nearby trader.

[Laz Man]

In general, they add more to the game then take away.

 

Perhaps what is needed to keep them fresh is less duplicates of them or several variations of each so the experience is not exactly the same each time.

[LuckyStar]

In general, they add more to the game then take away.

 

Perhaps what is needed to keep them fresh is less duplicates of them or several variations of each so the experience is not exactly the same each time.

 

I think players are also going to help a lot.

 

I spoke with Magoli before A17e got released and he's going to keep up the Combo Pack.

There's going to be plenty of new POI's to choose from soon enough.

 

TFP is going to eventually get all the editing stuff working and we'll see a ton of new POI's.

 

I'm even going to remake all my old ones for A17's new dungeon crawl style.

 

Right now TFP's POIs are great and fun to be in.

So what if they are predictable one you've looted them a few times.

Is any other game different?

[Ghostlight]

It is not the predictability that ultimately bored me with them, but the forced combat against the most tedious enemies one could ever have to fight....bullet sponges.

 

I don't mind that out in the world where I can run the other way if I want to, but when you NEED to loot a few POIs for the early basics, you are stuck with having to kill 20+ bullet sponge enemies. God lord that is BORING. It's not hard. It's not challenging. It's tedious.