My Replayability Issue w/ A17

[PinkLed5]

I'm a huge fan of A17, but one thing I've noticed is a downtick in replayability. Everything I need or want to do is locked behind levels, which seemed ok at first, but now every game feels kinda the same.

 

My favorite part of this game has always been exploring/looting. I don't build bases, I rove from town to town admiring the RNG while searching for bigger and better loot. I remember in previous alphas going on massive looting expeditions trying to find the crossbow schematic or the parts to make the minibike, for example. Or the joy of finding a Crack-a-Book (RIP). There was a sense of unexpectedness and the thrill of discovery, but now I just have to harvest XP until I unlock all the things I want to craft or do. Seems much more linear now.

 

I'm still having fun, mostly by doing trader quests, I'm just less inclined to start a new game cuz there seems to be less unpredictability to the game's progression.

[Ornias]

I agree with this. Restarted 5 times now, and each one gets to be shorter because they all play out the same. I do not like that the best way to become a sneak thief is to face tank mobs with a club.

[Kalarro]

I'm a huge fan of A17

I don't build bases

 

I knew it.

[PoppaTot]

I've basically abandoned SP. My MP server is fun, but that is more about the people I play with, not so much the game. We are resetting around Day 50 because we're bored. RWG needs to get back to it's old glory so we can have larger maps and high-rises again. The hype of "unlocking" things is totally gone after the first playthrough, now it's: "ok, so level 20 by day 4 is pretty easy, I'll go grind zambies for a few days and get my forge." The joy of searching and finding things is gone. Ohhhh a Crack-a-Book high-rise, maybe I'll find the minibike book or auger schematics turned into "yay/yawn, I hit level 30 or 100... wlp, might as well server reset at 100 because the new AI pathing is tricked easily and I already have everything"....

 

Just how I feel at this point after getting past 100 a few times.

[Kalarro]

I've basically abandoned SP. My MP server is fun, but that is more about the people I play with, not so much the game. We are resetting around Day 50 because we're bored. RWG needs to get back to it's old glory so we can have larger maps and high-rises again.

 

 

A dev saying he is responsible for the map generation posted some days ago saying he will do that, he just hadnt had time yet.

 

They hype of "unlocking" things is totally gone after the first playthrough, now it's: "ok, so level 20 by day is pretty easy, I'll go grind zambies for a few days and get my forge." The joy of searching and finding things is gone. Ohhhh a Crack-a-Book high-rise, maybe I'll find the minibike book or auger schematics turned into "yay/yawn

 

Agree. I havent been so happy about finding anything in a17 as I was when finding recipes in previous versions.

[Randomdude]

The POI with 14764 zombies "living" in the same house (nerd pole to the roof/loot, done)

The AI of engineering college grad zombies

The stamina simulator 2018 (better now)

The "simplification" of guns and parts

The level gating "grindfest" / Changing of learn by doing

The almost "elimination" of mining underground

The "building" is kinda gone

 

ALL of these (with the exception of the mining underground) can be fixed by tweaking numbers and we should be fine... but... Trying to balance "survival, RPG, FPS, Tower Defense, Voxel building, sandbox" would be too much work or even impossible for a team like Blizzard or Bethesda. For this to work they'd need a team for each genre and listen to each to make sure that any of the other teams plans don't interpose the others.

 

The lack of direction and the confusion as to "what" the game is going to end up being is whats turning me off at the moment. Is this the next Killing Floor/Dying Light? The next great Minecraft for adults? Fallout 7??

 

If your answer is ALL of them, we have a problem...

[PoppaTot]

If your answer is ALL of them, we have a problem...

 

That is a pretty good sum up of the current state for me as well. Love the game, not so much the direction.

[Pizzalicious]

Join a server and a community. TFP may say the large scale servers which dominate the server lists now for numerous alphas over the small recommended 8 player servers arent supported however you would have a ton of fun being a part of something bigger than just SP.

[Sjustus548]

My wife and I are having the same issue. We've played on and off since before A13, when we started playing there was still the Minecraft style crafting squares if that tells you anything lol. We stopped playing in 16.4 to await the release of 17 and after playing 17e for a couple of weeks we have already ran out of things to log on to do. Yes this is highly due to us already having played the game for many hours so I'm not playing the devs at all for this issue. We have thought about restarting but we have just reached level 100 and don't really feel like starting the grind up again. I'm not quite sure what can be done about this. We are feeling kind of sad because this is only the experimental build of 17 and we are already done with it. We might not get any new content large enough to warrant another play through until maybe 18, if they do like 16 and have all the smaller patches mainly bug fixes and adjustments. We love the game and want to keep playing but the last couple of times we have gotten on it has been basically just to do a couple quests for the traders and to drive around the map looking at stuff. The traders keep sending us to the same buildings over and over so they have lost their appeal as well. I'll stop my ranting now lol.

[Kalarro]

ALL of these (with the exception of the mining underground) can be fixed by tweaking numbers and we should be fine... but... Trying to balance "survival, RPG, FPS, Tower Defense, Voxel building, sandbox" would be too much work or even impossible for a team like Blizzard or Bethesda. For this to work they'd need a team for each genre and listen to each to make sure that any of the other teams plans don't interpose the others.

 

The lack of direction and the confusion as to "what" the game is going to end up being is whats turning me off at the moment. Is this the next Killing Floor/Dying Light? The next great Minecraft for adults? Fallout 7??

 

If your answer is ALL of them, we have a problem...

 

I agree this is the root of the problem. Up until a16, I thought this was a crafting+survival game. OFC you had to fight, and that was good, but it was never the main activity. With a17 suddenly it seems they try to stear the game direction into a combat game.

That's why some players are happy and some not. It's not good or bad, it just changed and some of us dont like the new direction

[Kosmic Kerman]

If your goal is power-leveling then combat is currently the most efficient choice in B208. If your goal is to just play the game, combat is just one of the things that you do. If you don’t want to fight zombies in POIs you can perk into range and stealth skills and one shot zombies. Or you can set traps outside and draw the zombies out. I just spent day 7 to day 14 doing little more than gathering resources, building, and fighting wandering hordes. In this regard, A17 is really no different than A15 or A16. The only difference is that I’m building different style bases and it’s taking more time to gather resources because of the size of the bases.

[Aerial]

I agree this is the root of the problem. Up until a16, I thought this was a crafting+survival game. OFC you had to fight, and that was good, but it was never the main activity. With a17 suddenly it seems they try to stear the game direction into a combat game.

That's why some players are happy and some not. It's not good or bad, it just changed and some of us dont like the new direction

 

The real tragedy of it is that there are lots of combat games out there and 7DTD is unlikely to ever come close to being the best of them. There are very few voxel-based, tower defense survival games out there and 7DTD was pretty clearly among the best if not THE best.

[Aldranon]

I wonder, as Quests are tier level and Perks are tier level... is there a future plan to have special quest POI's drive your perk progress?

 

I have only done one quest as I don't see the need yet, this would help utilize a large effort made by TFP and put them to good use.

 

Once the POI get cleared or something is found, players get an item:

To read, or work out some puzzle at a chem station with it, or make something at a workbench. Successful results give the player the perk. The possibilities are abundant!

 

Players can try a Perk tier 2 POI before other Tier 1's are completed, but the GS is boosted inside the POI. This would allow for a focused character build but it would be very difficult.

 

You could have mining perk POI's buried underground and the player has to dig down to them before starting!

 

Just throwing ideas out there.

[LuckyStar]

I'm not ready to write off A17 yet.

 

Fact is..... we still haven't seen A17 have we?

This is an experimental build and it's going to change.

 

I see lots of potential in A17.

A lot of what people are complaining about can be changed.

 

Let's see where it goes.

[SickPuppy]

Agree with OP. Enjoying A17e but miss the early game book search. Obviously we'll end up having everything but the journey was more enjoyable instead of just earning xp and unlock sth. Not complaining just some player feedback, we can hope.

 

Oh and pls bring back zombie loot/harvesting. Watched a stream someone on console looting corpses brought back many happy memories. Tone it down for balancing/performance issues if needed, maybe 1 corpse in 10-15 kills. It felt like a reward, looting from dead corpse is valid game play.

[UtahSleeper]

This makes me sad. Haven't played experimental, but reading about level gating has me worried about how much my friends and I will play.

 

The finding books, to me, seemed "realistic" for what waking up in the zombie apocalypse would be like. Most people don't just magically know how to do things and it gives excitement when randomly find something you need. Thats just my thought.

[LuckyStar]

This makes me sad. Haven't played experimental, but reading about level gating has me worried about how much my friends and I will play.

 

The finding books, to me, seemed "realistic" for what waking up in the zombie apocalypse would be like. Most people don't just magically know how to do things and it gives excitement when randomly find something you need. Thats just my thought.

 

Don't let that scare you off.

 

Many of us really like A17.

We just aren't as vocal as the nay-sayers.

 

Yeah it's got some balancing issues and... well, it's got issues.

But it's Experimental not Stable.

 

Give it a go and judge for yourself.

[Aerial]

I'm not ready to write off A17 yet.

 

Fact is..... we still haven't seen A17 have we?

This is an experimental build and it's going to change.

 

I see lots of potential in A17.

A lot of what people are complaining about can be changed.

 

Let's see where it goes.

 

I'm not ready to write it off yet, either, but it *is* obvious from the changes from A16.4 to A17e that TFP wants the game to be more like an action RPG and less like a tower defense survival game. Whether they will walk back that decision remains to be seen.

[PoppaTot]

Whether they will walk back that decision remains to be seen.

 

My opinion is they wouldn't have spent almost 1.5 years completely redesigning their game to walk it back after the latest experimental. Too bad, because they were headed down such a unique path of endless player opportunity. Now it's feeling like another run-of-the-mill "I'll do a couple play-throughs and re-visit in a year or so when it feels fresh for another one" or "it's now Halloween season, let's dust off 7DTD for a quick play" FeelsBadMan

[Aerial]

My opinion is they wouldn't have spent almost 1.5 years completely redesigning their game to walk it back after the latest experimental. Too bad, because they were headed down such a unique path of endless player opportunity. Now it's feeling like another run-of-the-mill "I'll do a couple play-throughs and re-visit in a year or so when it feels fresh for another one" or "it's now Halloween season, let's dust off 7DTD for a quick play" FeelsBadMan

 

A lot of the changes they made (particularly the Unity upgrade, new POIs, vehicles, graphics, etc) would remain time well spent even if they decided to rip out the new leveling system and replace it with something like the old. Much of what they did over the last year plus is absolutely value added, and what seems to be a wrong turn in the gameplay could probably be reverted or revamped with a manageable amount of effort.

[PoppaTot]

A lot of the changes they made (particularly the Unity upgrade, new POIs, vehicles, graphics, etc) would remain time well spent even if they decided to rip out the new leveling system and replace it with something like the old. Much of what they did over the last year plus is absolutely value added, and what seems to be a wrong turn in the gameplay could probably be reverted or revamped with a manageable amount of effort.

 

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. However; we've been told time and time again here in the forums that the current state of A17e is the closest the TFPs have been to their "vision" of the game in final state so far. That is why I'm not hopeful in regards to them walking it back at all.

[Scyris]

I'm not ready to write off A17 yet.

 

Fact is..... we still haven't seen A17 have we?

This is an experimental build and it's going to change.

 

I see lots of potential in A17.

A lot of what people are complaining about can be changed.

 

Let's see where it goes.

 

Same, I am really waiting for stable after most of the balancing and such has been done before I judge it, they are still in the bug killing scramble right now, so no real time to balance it all out. That said I am still bitter about the sledgehammers power attack block dmg nerf. Its a tool made for destroying things, you get nothing from harvesting, so why they lower it from 150 down to 99 (steel pickaxe) power atk block dmg. I mean I could see dropping it to 120 or so though.

 

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Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. However; we've been told time and time again here in the forums that the current state of A17e is the closest the TFPs have been to their "vision" of the game in final state so far. That is why I'm not hopeful in regards to them walking it back at all.

 

There is always mods thankfully. I spent most of my time in a16.4 playing various mods as they offer much better progression and content than the base game does. Mods will hit a17 but the major ones not till stable most likely with how often item/block id's are changing so far. Darkness Falls in A17 is going to be intersting thats for sure.

[Limdood]

I agree for the most part...I will say that I still GREATLY value the bookstores (and some crazy new museum/underground bunker/testing facility POI i found) for the mod schematics.

 

The mods are definitely the "new" macguffin/holy grail that players are seeking in the game. The problem is that A17 bought in HARD to that concept. All other loot is SUPER quickly, if inconsistently attainable....any gun, any armor, any weapon, any tool, you can probably loot, quest, or buy it pretty easily...or can craft it at 100% strength the moment you unlock it. But the mods necessary for it are currently too few, too unvaried, and too late in the game.

 

I spend a lot of levels 40-100 just scouting around for mods or mod schematics so i can make my gear the way i want it later...but pre-40 could REALLY use some mod love too...something more than just the dye you find all over. There are also so few mods that every weapon DOES end up looking the same at high levels, despite one of the main purposes of them being to customize your weapons and tools differently from everyone.

 

There are few enough mods and numerous enough mod slots that, given all the mods and top end gear, all the gear will look pretty darned similar...even for gear where there is more than 5 possible mods that can be used at the same time, it just ends up shunting out clearly UNIVERSALLY inferior choices for clearly UNIVERSALLY superior ones...not choice, just X is better than Y.

 

Also, the mods are completely loot/quest only...complete RNG, so its less customization and more roguelike..."oh, in this game i ended up with this combination of mods to make this frankenstein monster of a gear combination" - no choice, just RNG and "this is what you get this playthru"

 

I'm really hoping mods get greatly and QUICKLY improved and expanded....player interest and replayability seems to rely on it, since TFP have seemingly decided that this is where the RNG loot aspect of the game is headed.

[Aerial]

Don't get me wrong, I totally agree with you. However; we've been told time and time again here in the forums that the current state of A17e is the closest the TFPs have been to their "vision" of the game in final state so far. That is why I'm not hopeful in regards to them walking it back at all.

 

Me, either, but I think they expected their player base to be overwhelmingly positive about the changes, and I think they really believed the vast majority of their players would *love* the new skill and stamina systems. So, it'll depend on what the game looks like to them in hindsight and from an unexpected perspective, and if they end up agreeing that the reality didn't turn out to be as cool as it seemed when it was just in their imaginations.

[PoppaTot]

There is always mods thankfully. I spent most of my time in a16.4 playing various mods as they offer much better progression and content than the base game does. Mods will hit a17 but the major ones not till stable most likely with how often item/block id's are changing so far. Darkness Falls in A17 is going to be intersting thats for sure.

 

Yeah, but from what I've read, there is no way to mod back in progression by doing (yet?). That's what I'm going to miss 2nd most. I will miss the RNG of finding books and schematics the most (and gun parts, that's right, I'm one of those guys lol). That was always the most fun to me. I used to get genuinely excited to find a Crack-a-Book, now it's hardly worth going inside for the paper, or magazines that insta-scrapped for the paper lol.