My Replayability Issue w/ A17

[Maynard69]

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.

 

So you dont use mods on your 4 tools or weapons, or armors? I still excitedly hit up the book stores hoping to get schematics or full mods that will boost my item's stats. Already been stated that lots more mods will be added too.

[Roland]

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...

 

Frankly I’m surprised by this reaction. Have you not been paying attention since A11? Alpha 10 was the last version with zero RPG elements and every alpha release has increased the footprint of that genre within the mixture of this jambalaya of a game.

 

And it’s never been a secret that the developers were going to head in this direction if you read the Kickstarter goals with hindsight. The reactions should be more like, “Yeah but I didn’t think you were actually going to DO it!” instead of “WTF IS GOING ON?!!?”

 

A17 was not a sudden change. It is the culmination of the changes begun in A11 when for the very first time experience points were tallied and applied to tool and weapon progression. No, the direction has been clear and it’s inexorably going to continue on its course.

[Jugginator]

^ What Roland said. Hell, A15 (And 14, but I didn't get to play but just a tad bit total) was about surviving the zombies. Its just A16 the AI was broken so badly while the rest of the game scaled further with electricity/traps/etc the game seemed like a casual-sandbox game with zombies that did... things... and you only fought them if you stood in front of them and yelled "I'm right here zombies! Can you see me? Well, we're going to fight so get ready!" (zombies precede to flail at the air or start attacking a wall of dirt while getting punched from behind).

[Poojam]

Frankly I’m surprised by this reaction. Have you not been paying attention since A11? Alpha 10 was the last version with zero RPG elements and every alpha release has increased the footprint of that genre within the mixture of this jambalaya of a game.

 

And it’s never been a secret that the developers were going to head in this direction if you read the Kickstarter goals with hindsight. The reactions should be more like, “Yeah but I didn’t think you were actually going to DO it!” instead of “WTF IS GOING ON?!!?”

 

A17 was not a sudden change. It is the culmination of the changes begun in A11 when for the very first time experience points were tallied and applied to tool and weapon progression. No, the direction has been clear and it’s inexorably going to continue on its course.

 

I'm not. I was one of the first to lose in A10, where TFP decided PVP was of no interest to them. With every Alpha, fewer and fewer people get to play the game they want to play it in this sandbox survival. The mechanics are set deeper and deeper into rigidly defined roles. With the changes in A17e, the miner/crafter/scavenger have lost the world-based incentives to do their thing and survive in exchange for simply whacking zombies & unlocking perks.

[Bubbahotetp]

Agree with OP also quite a bit.

I felt it started to get boring already after the first random server reset. When it's one thing I hate in games it's having to do the same exact thing over and over again in order to get to "where I was before". I need a constant change of circumstances or the possibility to do things differently or to have different odds stacked against me all the time. Open world RMG and an open skill tree helps a lot with that. That's why 7dtd up until a16.4 was my favourite game ever and clocked nearly 4000 hours. It did those things I liked, it did them right, without even struggling hard! Not this version.

 

a17 is like a $2 Rolex. Looks like a Rolex but turns out to be a fancy egg timer, doing the same motions over and over and over without variation.

[Bubbahotetp]

And it’s never been a secret that the developers were going to head in this direction if you read the Kickstarter goals with hindsight. The reactions should be more like, “Yeah but I didn’t think you were actually going to DO it!” instead of “WTF IS GOING ON?!!?”

 

 

I've made this point before: They have already found something that a ton of people liked. All that was needed was a little tweaking and extending of the current concept. They can do what ever they want of course, they can also run around naked and scream "Bazinga!!!" all day, but I'll put it like this: Big changes are seldom good with an established crowd.

 

If you have spent years on starting a burger place, and people have started coming regularly and bringing new customers, you have a popular concept - then after X years you decide from one day to another - no! Let's not serve burgers any more! We're now a fancy restaurant! What do you expect to happen?

 

First of all, you're probably not even good at making the food nealry as fancy as you're hoping from one day to another; secondly: you have to start from scratch attracting a new customer base. If your restaurant then sucks because you can't compete with the estabished market, you not only scared away your loyal customer base but you don't get new customers to stay either. The less people come, the less you can spread the good word. You can say all you want that you've had fancy food on your secret menu, if people come for the burgers, that secret menu isn't going to be other than a very risky switch once it goes live.

 

I've actually collected some data over the past two weeks and aim to continue doing so. I think this indicates that I'm not completely crazy in what I'm saying.

 

The following are the Steam statistics on how many people are playing 7DTD sice the 24th nov up until today:

 

Date Peak players Week day

24-nov 26572 sat about the 13th most popular game on steam

25-nov 27388 sun

26-nov 19746 mon

27-nov 19025 tue

28-nov 18504 wed 20th most popular

29-nov 18201 thu

30-nov 18880 fri

01-dec 21734 sat

02-dec 24273 sun

03-dec 17046 mon place 34

04-dec 16300 tue place 23

05-dec 15763 wed place 27

06-dec 15783 thu place 30

07-dec 15304 fri place 42

08-dec 19511 sat place 28

09-dec 20470 sun place 26

10-dec 14239 mon place 35

 

The following is a list of other popular games on Steam that are sort of in related genres and at what time they were in what spot in the game list:

 

On the 7th of dec:

Rust: 5

AKR: 8

Garry's mod: 17

Killing Floor 2: 21

Unturned: 27

Terraria: 28

7DTD: 42!

 

On the 10th of dec:

Rust: 9

ARK: 10

Garry's mod: 20

Terraria: 24

Killing Floor 2: 25

Unturned: 26

7DTD: 35!

 

7DTD according to TFP has sold 2.5 million electronic copies. Yesterday 0,56% of people who bought the game actually played it!

 

How many of those played 16.4? I have 3 to 1 people on my friendslist playing 16.4 compared to a17x, and a bunch who're not playing it at all even though they would if they weren't disappointed with the recent changes. However, that is not statistically relevant, it's impossible to know from my personal list how many people actually do play one version over another, but sure is that people are still playing 16.4, at the very least people who opt out of experimental builds.

 

The peak player numbers from my first spread sheet show a downward facing peak weekend player trend of an average of 13% the first week, increasing to an 18% drop of players the second weekend, losing a total of 7000 players over two weekends. The total number of weekday players is currently (today) under 15,000 per day, dropping by an average of a moderate 800-ish per day. If it were to continue exactly like that (which it won't because the curve will eventually balance out) it would take another 20 days and then nobody would play the game anymore.

 

The general trend of weekday players follows the same direction as that of the weekend players, just at a much lower amount of players.

 

Where it's going from here is hard to say because this isn't enough data yet. But it seems like it's pretty unlikely to be turning upwards if no drastic changes to the game happen. I dare predict that the game will probably plateau out in popularity, maybe losing another 5-8000 active players the next few weeks until the curve probably straightens out, staying popular with a select crowd and a small intake of new blood. Then at a new update the number of players will shoot up again of course. Where it goes from there, how fast it will go down or even up, all depends on what the game delivers. Sure is: down is never good for a buisness, you want straight or up. If you go down you need do seriously look out! In the gaming world, down is unavoidable (there are always new games that interest your player base), but your numbers should never dive bomb.

 

For sure right now the curve describes pretty much what people here are feeling. It would have been cool to actually have statistics from 16.4, but nobody thinks about insurance if they never had a problem in their lives. Then all of a sudden the fire strikes and you're pretty much f*.

 

This is only 2 weeks of statistics and if this was my business I'd feel the pressure. It's not like we're talking a loss of 7000 players coming from 300,000 players, but we're coming from 30,000! There is not really a margin of error here.

 

What the statistics also show: there are a lot of similar games that are more popular for what ever reason. They're doing something that TFP aren't doing. I'm glad this isn't my job because I'd feel the pressure right now. Let's hope there are some tricks up the guys' sleeves and that this isn't a surprise to them, because if it is, then they better get scrambling!

 

But we will probably find out in time (soonish) if this is something they counted on and were ready for, or if they were not, or if something completely different is going on behind the curtains.

 

With a deminishing fan base in early access, going to the numbers we see, there is a risk the game will never really sell well when coming out of early access. The only thing left then is good sales in EA. But if you lose a big chunk of your fan base then all you can do is start digging into your profits and savings in order to hopefully straighten things out in the long run. That's never the purpose of doing good buisness. What you want is to always stay on top, and fresh and keeping everybody interested.

 

What I would try to do in this case would be to first of all talk to the fans as a dev, the head of the team or company - let everybody know what the plan is so that the customers can calm down a little. Next (in the current situation) I would try to make both siddes happy, to give the a16.4-ers and a17-ers the best of both worlds by extending the game options and making what ever they want as core gameplay *optional*, thus breaking the negative trend, buying time. Then slowly try to build up the fans' and new customers' trust again by slowly implementing changes that build on the existing concept and leave the options in place. And NEVER take away something as part of your product chain if it is something popular, leave it in until the customers themselves chose to opt out of it, but NEVER take something away from them that they like! Because they'll make you pay for it, it's going to be your money, not theirs, paying the bills. This is now putting TFP in a dilemma because unless they create something that makes both camps happy they are bound to make one camp dissappointed in the future updates. That's not a smart business move when relying on 15,000 players that are quickly falling away.

 

I hope TPF don't rely on the voices on this forum to tell them how well things are going, because I'm sure that many people opposed to much of a17 have already left and don't care to speak up anymore. So all that's left is the typical fanboi and some more mature people who are trying to see things from a neutral to positive perspective. The positive people on here are hardly representative of the total number of players 7dtd has had. It's like killing off all your critics and only listening to the three people who are left and pretending those are all there ever were. You can chose to do that of course, but it's not going to change the facts of what's going on and you'll soon be done sawing through the branch you're sitting on.

[Aldranon]

@Bubbahotetp

 

Your post was well thought out, as I read I was waiting for the flaming to start, but you remained reasonable. Thanks.

 

The real test will be when A17 is released to the public. I stopped playing A17-E, only because my Titan Graphics card started smelling like burn metal. I (rightly or wrongly) fault Unity 2018. My reasoning is the game Emypyrion rolled back from Unity 2018 to Unity 2017.

 

When it goes live, a 40K max players starting point would be great and if they can keep even half of that number for a few months, it would be a victory for TFP and anyone who wants to see what TFP have planned for the future!

 

 

Lets all hope for the best, as its in all our best interests.

[babspsol]

It's a tower defense game so not building a base is going to impact your game which for me takes up over half my game time.

 

Anyone can jump between expendable POI`s every 7 days, that's not challenging because you are basically killing the difficulty of one of the game's main mechanics.

 

Add that play style with power levelling and you have a game that is going to get boring fast.

 

We are free to play as we wish but common sense can often reveal tactics to keep the game fun even if human instinct is to cheese and take shortcuts whenever we can.

 

My last save was my 3rd in A17 and on 28 days I was about level 30 enjoying the game and every 7 days more than any other build before this.

[Bubbahotetp]

@Bubbahotetp

 

Your post was well thought out, as I read I was waiting for the flaming to start, but you remained reasonable. Thanks.

 

The real test will be when A17 is released to the public. I stopped playing A17-E, only because my Titan Graphics card started smelling like burn metal. I (rightly or wrongly) fault Unity 2018. My reasoning is the game Emypyrion rolled back from Unity 2018 to Unity 2017.

 

When it goes live, a 40K max players starting point would be great and if they can keep even half of that number for a few months, it would be a victory for TFP and anyone who wants to see what TFP have planned for the future!

 

 

Lets all hope for the best, as its in all our best interests.

 

Not sure if I should say thanks. Maybe I should. Thanks!

Yes I can flame pretty hard and I'm always up for a fight to the bare bone, but everything has its place.

 

I hope you're right and I'm wishing them all success, but I also hope that I'm not the first person in 7DTD's history who has crunched those numbers, because that would be pretty horrifying talking about their business strategy.

[Gazz]

The real test will be when A17 is released to the public. I stopped playing A17-E, only because my Titan Graphics card started smelling like burn metal. I (rightly or wrongly) fault Unity 2018. My reasoning is the game Emypyrion rolled back from Unity 2018 to Unity 2017.

Whoa! A game can not damage a graphics card by using it. If something starts to smell then you either have a defective gfx card or a faulty / badly installed fan on it.

 

Something to look into before it starts smoking. Computer components run on smoke so it is important that the smoke stays inside.

[LuckyStar]

Whoa! A game can not damage a graphics card by using it. If something starts to smell then you either have a defective gfx card or a faulty / badly installed fan on it.

 

Something to look into before it starts smoking. Computer components run on smoke so it is important that the smoke stays inside.

 

Ooop. Someone's being cheeky.

 

 

Hehe.

[Maynard69]

I've made this point before: They have already found something that a ton of people liked. All that was needed was a little tweaking and extending of the current concept. They can do what ever they want of course, they can also run around naked and scream "Bazinga!!!" all day, but I'll put it like this: Big changes are seldom good with an established crowd.

 

If you have spent years on starting a burger place, and people have started coming regularly and bringing new customers, you have a popular concept - then after X years you decide from one day to another - no! Let's not serve burgers any more! We're now a fancy restaurant! What do you expect to happen?

 

First of all, you're probably not even good at making the food nealry as fancy as you're hoping from one day to another; secondly: you have to start from scratch attracting a new customer base. If your restaurant then sucks because you can't compete with the estabished market, you not only scared away your loyal customer base but you don't get new customers to stay either. The less people come, the less you can spread the good word. You can say all you want that you've had fancy food on your secret menu, if people come for the burgers, that secret menu isn't going to be other than a very risky switch once it goes live.

 

I've actually collected some data over the past two weeks and aim to continue doing so. I think this indicates that I'm not completely crazy in what I'm saying.

 

The following are the Steam statistics on how many people are playing 7DTD sice the 24th nov up until today:

 

Date Peak players Week day

24-nov 26572 sat about the 13th most popular game on steam

25-nov 27388 sun

26-nov 19746 mon

27-nov 19025 tue

28-nov 18504 wed 20th most popular

29-nov 18201 thu

30-nov 18880 fri

01-dec 21734 sat

02-dec 24273 sun

03-dec 17046 mon place 34

04-dec 16300 tue place 23

05-dec 15763 wed place 27

06-dec 15783 thu place 30

07-dec 15304 fri place 42

08-dec 19511 sat place 28

09-dec 20470 sun place 26

10-dec 14239 mon place 35

 

The following is a list of other popular games on Steam that are sort of in related genres and at what time they were in what spot in the game list:

 

On the 7th of dec:

Rust: 5

AKR: 8

Garry's mod: 17

Killing Floor 2: 21

Unturned: 27

Terraria: 28

7DTD: 42!

 

On the 10th of dec:

Rust: 9

ARK: 10

Garry's mod: 20

Terraria: 24

Killing Floor 2: 25

Unturned: 26

7DTD: 35!

 

7DTD according to TFP has sold 2.5 million electronic copies. Yesterday 0,56% of people who bought the game actually played it!

 

How many of those played 16.4? I have 3 to 1 people on my friendslist playing 16.4 compared to a17x, and a bunch who're not playing it at all even though they would if they weren't disappointed with the recent changes. However, that is not statistically relevant, it's impossible to know from my personal list how many people actually do play one version over another, but sure is that people are still playing 16.4, at the very least people who opt out of experimental builds.

 

The peak player numbers from my first spread sheet show a downward facing peak weekend player trend of an average of 13% the first week, increasing to an 18% drop of players the second weekend, losing a total of 7000 players over two weekends. The total number of weekday players is currently (today) under 15,000 per day, dropping by an average of a moderate 800-ish per day. If it were to continue exactly like that (which it won't because the curve will eventually balance out) it would take another 20 days and then nobody would play the game anymore.

 

The general trend of weekday players follows the same direction as that of the weekend players, just at a much lower amount of players.

 

Where it's going from here is hard to say because this isn't enough data yet. But it seems like it's pretty unlikely to be turning upwards if no drastic changes to the game happen. I dare predict that the game will probably plateau out in popularity, maybe losing another 5-8000 active players the next few weeks until the curve probably straightens out, staying popular with a select crowd and a small intake of new blood. Then at a new update the number of players will shoot up again of course. Where it goes from there, how fast it will go down or even up, all depends on what the game delivers. Sure is: down is never good for a buisness, you want straight or up. If you go down you need do seriously look out! In the gaming world, down is unavoidable (there are always new games that interest your player base), but your numbers should never dive bomb.

 

For sure right now the curve describes pretty much what people here are feeling. It would have been cool to actually have statistics from 16.4, but nobody thinks about insurance if they never had a problem in their lives. Then all of a sudden the fire strikes and you're pretty much f*.

 

This is only 2 weeks of statistics and if this was my business I'd feel the pressure. It's not like we're talking a loss of 7000 players coming from 300,000 players, but we're coming from 30,000! There is not really a margin of error here.

 

What the statistics also show: there are a lot of similar games that are more popular for what ever reason. They're doing something that TFP aren't doing. I'm glad this isn't my job because I'd feel the pressure right now. Let's hope there are some tricks up the guys' sleeves and that this isn't a surprise to them, because if it is, then they better get scrambling!

 

But we will probably find out in time (soonish) if this is something they counted on and were ready for, or if they were not, or if something completely different is going on behind the curtains.

 

With a deminishing fan base in early access, going to the numbers we see, there is a risk the game will never really sell well when coming out of early access. The only thing left then is good sales in EA. But if you lose a big chunk of your fan base then all you can do is start digging into your profits and savings in order to hopefully straighten things out in the long run. That's never the purpose of doing good buisness. What you want is to always stay on top, and fresh and keeping everybody interested.

 

What I would try to do in this case would be to first of all talk to the fans as a dev, the head of the team or company - let everybody know what the plan is so that the customers can calm down a little. Next (in the current situation) I would try to make both siddes happy, to give the a16.4-ers and a17-ers the best of both worlds by extending the game options and making what ever they want as core gameplay *optional*, thus breaking the negative trend, buying time. Then slowly try to build up the fans' and new customers' trust again by slowly implementing changes that build on the existing concept and leave the options in place. And NEVER take away something as part of your product chain if it is something popular, leave it in until the customers themselves chose to opt out of it, but NEVER take something away from them that they like! Because they'll make you pay for it, it's going to be your money, not theirs, paying the bills. This is now putting TFP in a dilemma because unless they create something that makes both camps happy they are bound to make one camp dissappointed in the future updates. That's not a smart business move when relying on 15,000 players that are quickly falling away.

 

I hope TPF don't rely on the voices on this forum to tell them how well things are going, because I'm sure that many people opposed to much of a17 have already left and don't care to speak up anymore. So all that's left is the typical fanboi and some more mature people who are trying to see things from a neutral to positive perspective. The positive people on here are hardly representative of the total number of players 7dtd has had. It's like killing off all your critics and only listening to the three people who are left and pretending those are all there ever were. You can chose to do that of course, but it's not going to change the facts of what's going on and you'll soon be done sawing through the branch you're sitting on.

 

Except that the numbers mean not much, most people either try out the experimental and then wait for stable, or test. Its always lower numbers during experimental. People dont want to wipe their maps or invest time into playthroughs that wont last unless they are testing They dont want to deal with the bugs and stuff. Same thing with continuing to play a16, why bother when a new experience is right around the corner. Most people take a break and play other stuff until there is an stable release.

 

Try again after stable.

 

If people leave and quit and whine because of results of an early experimental, thats on them (and pretty silly too). Its not like they pay monthly for the game, so big whoop lol

 

Personally I am one of those who quit during a16 because it was a bore after awhile, no suspense, no challenge. (6k hours since a10 before that without ever quitting) Now Im back and excited to see how stable comes out.

[Kalarro]

Likeing a game less after an update doesnt mean you will drop it. I dont really think the number of active players after the update proves anything.

7d2d is the best survival game out there by far. Making it a bit worse by stearing the focus into combat instead of defense survival doesnt mean it will still not be the best survival game.

[Ghostlight]

Many of A17's most serious problems do not manifest until you have played quite a bit into it, or have started a second play-through. These include:

 

1) Severe lack of replayability. Since every player gets the same items unlocked at the same level every game, variety in subsequent runs is gone.

 

2) Player is OP by day 30. On day 30, or whenever the player hits level 100, all perks that matter will be maxed. The player is basically maxed. Now this also happened in all previous alphas, however, it never happened as early as this (day 30 jeezuz); and the player was never as OP as this (2-shotting Irradiated Cops? On max difficulty? Seriously?)

 

3) Player is guaranteed OP by level 100. Again those stupidly designed perks. They give me everything by level 100. So not only is level 100 OP, it is guaranteed OP. Every single run. As a side effect, this means there is zero need for the player to ever explore/loot again, as he has every item in the game at top tier by this point. You may hope to start looting mods at this stage in the game, but on day 30 I had enough mods to fill multiple tier 6 items many times over, so....no.

[Ghostlight]

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.

 

 

 

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

 

What about glue and bones? I am REJOICING in A17 on finding those. Gun safe? Air drops? Useless! But give me glue pleeeease.

 

How SAD is that?

[Spider]

@Bubbahotetp-

 

 

WoW that's the best post I have seen since 17 dropped. But what do you think the odds are that they will listen to anything you posted. Slim to none and Slim just left town for the holidays.

[Scyris]

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.

 

Yeah, my major gripe with a17 well one of them is how heavily it depends on the mod system, yet finding a full set of mods for something is damn near impossible. Useable mods need to drop alot more in loot imo.

[Ghostlight]

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

 

If this really is the direction they are going, then there is ZERO point in having a Voxel engine. Port the entire game over to a classic polygon-based engine and at least it will look decent. Right now the game gets a lot of flak for its ancient graphics because people do not realize it is a Voxel game. No point in Voxel if you want to push the players away from building a base.

[Scyris]

Many of A17's most serious problems do not manifest until you have played quite a bit into it, or have restarted a second play-through. These include:

 

1) Severe lack of replayability. Since every player gets the same items unlocked at the same level every game, variety in subsequent runs is gone.

 

2) Player is OP by day 30. On day 30, or whenever the player hits level 100, all perks that matter will be maxed. The player is basically maxed. Now this also happened in all previous alphas, however, it never happened as early as this (day 30 jeezuz); and the player was never as OP as this (2-shotting Irradiated Cops? On max difficulty? Seriously?)

 

3) Player is guaranteed OP by level 100. Again those stupidly designed perks. They give me everything by level 100. So not only is level 100 OP, it is guaranteed OP. Every single run. As a side effect, this means there is zero need for the player to ever explore/loot again, as he has every item in the game at top tier by this point. You may hope to start looting mods at this stage in the game, but on day 30 I had enough mods to fill multiple tier 6 items many times over, so....no.

 

I feel the player is pretty op by level 50, Motocycle, lv 4 healing factor (regen 1 hp every 5s), tier 4 crafting. I never bother with the food/water perks, as i've never once had a problem with food or water in a17, I tend to have way more of both than I need without ever trying to find food. Actually come to think of it i've never ever had a problem with food/water since I started playing 7dtd.

[Ghostlight]

If your goal is power-leveling then combat is currently the most efficient choice in B208

 

Even if your goal is simply levelling, cmbat is the mosrt efficient way to do it.

 

If your goal is to just play the game, combat is just one of the things that you do.

 

Not really since almost every activity in the game has one or more "essential" skills locked behind perks. If you want perks you need to level. If you want to level you need to fight. Hence no matter what you want to do, you need to fight first and foremost to get the EXP to do <whatever>.

 

If you don’t want to fight zombies in POIs you can perk into range and stealth skills and one shot zombies.

 

Where are you going to get the EXP to buy those perks if you do not fight?

[Scyris]

If this really is the direction they are going, then there is ZERO point in having a Voxel engine. Port the entire game over to a classic polygon-based engine and at least it will look decent. Right now the game gets a lot of flak for its ancient graphics because people do not realize it is a Voxel game. No point in Voxel if you want to push the players away from building a base.

 

Kinda agree, you don't need voxels to have base building, look at Ark survival evolved and such.

[Ghostlight]

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. .

 

You are doing it wrong, I'm afraid. Just put 3 points into Daring Adventurer, then spend 1 to 2 days running the most time-efficient Trader quests you can. Bingo! More mods than you will ever need. I am level 100 and have one full storage full of mods that i have no item to put them all, because all my items are fully modded. I even have multiple weapons of the same type just to find a place to put the mods I have.

[Ghostlight]

The following are the Steam statistics on how many people are playing 7DTD sice the 24th nov up until today:

 

Date Peak players Week day

24-nov 26572 sat about the 13th most popular game on steam

25-nov 27388 sun

26-nov 19746 mon

27-nov 19025 tue

28-nov 18504 wed 20th most popular

29-nov 18201 thu

30-nov 18880 fri

01-dec 21734 sat

02-dec 24273 sun

03-dec 17046 mon place 34

04-dec 16300 tue place 23

05-dec 15763 wed place 27

06-dec 15783 thu place 30

07-dec 15304 fri place 42

08-dec 19511 sat place 28

09-dec 20470 sun place 26

10-dec 14239 mon place 35

 

Holy cow, I've never seen a new experimental alpha fall off so quickly. That is shocking. I really hope TFP take note of this and don't let their arrogance ruin their game. Swallow your pride TFP, and own up that the new systems and mechanics are more or less garbage across the board. You will very quickly be forgiven by your loving playerbase.

 

Bottom line: A16.4 with only the new graphics, AI, vehicles and POIs would be without doubt, a superior game to A17. Fix it!

[Ghostlight]

I feel the player is pretty op by level 50, Motocycle, lv 4 healing factor (regen 1 hp every 5s), tier 4 crafting. I never bother with the food/water perks, as i've never once had a problem with food or water in a17, I tend to have way more of both than I need without ever trying to find food. Actually come to think of it i've never ever had a problem with food/water since I started playing 7dtd.

 

Well, that will depend on the player and the difficulty level. In my post, I decided to cite level 100 because while you might be ANECDOTALLY OP by level 50, you are FACTUALLY OP by level 100, because there is simply no way to get any more powerful. You have every item in the game at top tier and full of mods, and all relevant perks maxed. There is nowhere else to go.

[Randomdude]

A17 was not a sudden change. It is the culmination of the changes begun in A11 when for the very first time experience points were tallied and applied to tool and weapon progression. No, the direction has been clear and it’s inexorably going to continue on its course.

 

"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."

 

First... Never once did I say I minded the RPG aspect of the game. I think is unbalanced but I also explain that with tweaking it should be fine.

 

Second... I stand by my comment for the reason of being turned off. The time needed to balance all this genres together and the PvP aspect of it would take the next 5 years (look at the "gutting" of the building aspect, just to make the zombies "feel" dangerous/smarter). Money will run out eventually and another injection will be needed to continue development. The decision at that time would probably mean "selling" something or just cutting your losses and releasing an incomplete/unbalanced game quoting all the "bullet points" of the kick starter and making sure you're not liable.

 

Hypothetical, yes... But I've seen enough "big" projects to see a pothole from a far and raise a red flag about it before we get there.

 

This is what turns me off... The rabbit hole that is balancing a game that tries to be EVERY game.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

I've made this point before: They have already found something that a ton of people liked. All that was needed was a little tweaking and extending of the current concept.

 

This is an amazingly informative post. GJ!