PC First impressions of A19...

[Fox]

Believe me when I say I have not touched the game since A18.4. This is a proper first impression for me for A19 stable release... or at least so called stable. You can probably already tell that my impression is negative and if this triggers you too much, then go away.

I loaded up the game, and as usual, wanted to test the graphics no matter what fps I get, so I set it all up to Ultra... or in this case, Ultra + now as the devs call it (Blur off, V-Sync off, G-Sync on, Dynamic res off, 1080p). I restarted the game to ensure proper implementation of the new settings. Started a new world and this was what I saw:

(Right click open in new tab to see image in full size... to see the gross low res grass)

So my first reaction was "Eww, why does the grass look so gross?". I rechecked my graphics settings to make sure the Ultra+ settings were indeed implemented and they were. To me, the image looks like the grass was painted on a canvas, that's how cheap it looks now. I allowed the game to sit idle for a minute or 2 to ensure the game fully loaded and then decided to start moving around to collect stuff and was surprised by how janky the animations felt (again) and how camouflaged / blended in everything felt to me (as if there was no depth to anything anymore). I was getting anywhere from 60fps to the capped 72fps and yet it felt more like I was getting 10 - 15 fps (probably horrible frame times). Either way, if this is the stable version, what the hell was everyone else playing during the experimental? And are they faking the fps now? Because I really should not be getting 60+ fps while on Ultra+ with my Ryzen 5 1600x / GTX 1060 setup (which I plan to upgrade both in September).

Anyways, to keep this post short... I just thought to myself, "How is this better than A18? And why is anyone even happy about it?". The game just seems like yet another step backwards. I'm sure there's a lot of great new flashy stuff to distract ppl into believing this was overall a nice large update... but if the game visually looks this gross and with no depth... then I say "No thanks".

Would love to know what others think and if I'm the only one who thinks this way.

 

[Hellsmoke]

Yeah this was pretty much my experience as well. Just got a new card and was looking forward to playing the new alpha and was instantly turned off by the performance. On top of what you mentioned I had some weird light that was around me that was showing when I moved the mouse, as if I had a torch or something. That combined with what I saw on YT made me decide to wait for a later alpha. I was already on the edge with alpha 18 and I can't even describe why, things just feel off. 

Not many new blocks for builders

Bad loot system

Screamers every 5 minutes while mining (too predictable)

Have always hated the constant eating 

Can't go underground without having your map ruined

No zombies around, all packed into closets

There's a bit more but I can't think of it atm. I think I'm just old school and learned to love the game as it was ,I'm not feeling the direction it's going in but am keeping an eye on development as I know there is still a ways to go. 

My new stats:

Rog Strix RTX 2060 Super

I5 9th gen

32 gb ram 

Running at 1080P on Windows 10

 

[JCrook1028]

If you're trying to say it looks worse than 18 you're either lying or you have something seriously wrong with your hardware. Fact.

 

[Hellsmoke]

If you're trying to say it looks worse than 18 you're either lying or you have something seriously wrong with your hardware. Fact.

Looks are subjective, fact.

 

[Jugginator]

I mean, the game can't look like Crysis and be fully destructible at the same time unless they want to alienate the game to <1% of gamers.

 

[Fox]

I mean, the game can't look like Crysis and be fully destructible at the same time unless they want to alienate the game to <1% of gamers.

I suggest you take a look at the game Rising World and then rethink what the world could look like in a voxel fully destructible world compared to what we have right now. And keep in mind that Rising World is many years behind 7d2d in development and with a much smaller dev team.

 

[Jugginator]

I suggest you take a look at the game Rising World and then rethink what the world could look like in a voxel fully destructible world compared to what we have right now. And keep in mind that Rising World is many years behind 7d2d in development and with a much smaller dev team.

I mean I get it but that.. doesn't really look good and it looks like it's just a Minecraft version of Rust, 7 Days has rather intelligent AI in the zombies w/tower defense and at some point bandits *shrug*. Not knocking your opinion, just thought it was a bit harsh to judge it solely based upon graphics mainly grass.

Idk come to think of it something looks off and not Ultra+ in your screenshot too. Take a look at the bottom here at the new a19 shots.

 

[Roland]

The game tries to compensate by lowering texture quality automatically if your system isn't handling the graphics well. Fox, you said that you pumped it up all the way probably past what your current specs can handle and keep it at 100% so it could be that the game is automatically not loading in the best graphics for the grass that is further off. The closest tuffs of grass look pretty good.

Now this other guy's screenshots look pretty amazing so he probably has the speccs to actually run the game at Ultra + without the automatic performance manager lowering stuff down.

Once you get your new card you should do another screenshot for comparison.

 

[Stranded_Napkin]

This game acts weird. I game on a 47" tv, not a high fps gaming monitor. Until now I was using NVidia's vertical sync to prevent screen tearing. The game kept dropping into the 30s and occasionally the high 20s when under full load. I set the horde night at 64 zombies. Then I turned off the vertical sync and set the maximum framerate at 55 fps. This does a decent job of stopping screen tearing. Oddly though my framerate doesn't drop anywhere near as much as with the vertical sync. No other game did this. 

On the game itself, my issues with A19 are less with graphics than they are with the new system in-game. I like the variance in the trees. It does help with looks...a little. Until this alpha I didn't see the comparison between 7D2D and Borderlands like some others did. A little in the metal doors, but now I see it more. The grass has that look. The loot system is my biggest gripe. That was the last straw for me. In some ways I do think that the new graphics aid in the overall look of the game. If you look up, it tends to look good. If you look at the ground, no. Basically, if you are a perpetual tourist you'll love the look of the game.

 

[Fox]

The game tries to compensate by lowering texture quality automatically if your system isn't handling the graphics well. Fox, you said that you pumped it up all the way probably past what your current specs can handle and keep it at 100% so it could be that the game is automatically not loading in the best graphics for the grass that is further off. The closest tuffs of grass look pretty good.

Now this other guy's screenshots look pretty amazing so he probably has the speccs to actually run the game at Ultra + without the automatic performance manager lowering stuff down.

Once you get your new card you should do another screenshot for comparison.

I could maybe understand the game doing an auto setting if my fps tanks if I had that setting enabled, but I don't and my fps never tanked once. Besides, I was getting 60 - 72fps while on Ultra+ settings (according to in-game fps counter and Steam fps overlay). I have of course lowered it back down to my usual High settings so that the animations become less janky (better frame time). But the detail still looks painted on despite maintaining a stable locked 72fps (never dips even when in town or hordes coming at me).

I sort of get the impression that the game is doing what it wants and completely ignoring the settings I set it to. If that's the case, then it's a pretty obvious bug and this should not have been missed during the experimental versions IMO.

I did get a chance to spend a few hours today playing the game and I can see a lot of changes (swapped zombies for colorful ones, more furniture and unusable vehicles, more building variety, different UI again, tweaked skill tree, etc), but nothing overly impressive. Is this the 6th or 7th time they change the UI, I lost count?

 

[Roland]

I didn't notice a major change to the UI. They added sorting buttons if that is what you mean. The patch notes are available to read so I'm not going to list all the changes for you. One man's major change is another man's meh change. I like the dynamic music, personally and how the zombies turn their heads to look at you. I like the direction they are going with loot progression and that the traders are in the towns now. For my rig I experienced better graphics and performance though I have all my settings mostly on medium with a few things turned up. But for a comprehensive list of all the changes the patch notes are there.

 

[Solomon]

One thing i noticed in the stable is that im getting these strange lagspikes randomly.

Like im sitting on the top of a house, absolutely no crafting or anything going on the fps is stable around 40 then suddenly it drops to 2 for less than a second and it goes back to 40. Nothing changes, nothing moves, it just drops for no apparent reason?

Im kind of sure that the system requiements have once again risen a bit but at the same time it doesnt look too stable.

 

[Fox]

I didn't notice a major change to the UI. They added sorting buttons if that is what you mean. The patch notes are available to read so I'm not going to list all the changes for you. One man's major change is another man's meh change. I like the dynamic music, personally and how the zombies turn their heads to look at you. I like the direction they are going with loot progression and that the traders are in the towns now. For my rig I experienced better graphics and performance though I have all my settings mostly on medium with a few things turned up. But for a comprehensive list of all the changes the patch notes are there.

The UI change wasn't anything major, I just thought I'd mention it because the devs can't seem to ever make up their minds about it. The food and water bars under the belt are back... again. Which is great, I'm sure everyone loves it being back again. But it's just that they bring them in, then they take them away, then they bring it back again, then they take it partially away with pop ups instead, then they bring it back once again... like seriously, just make up your minds already. Do you remember what Minecraft's UI looked like back in the very early Alpha release? It was more or less the same exact UI it is today, and no one cares. They added a few minor things to improve the crafting aspect so you can play without involving a web wiki as much, but that's about it. And that's pretty much how it is with most games.

And the release notes are boring to read since most of it are things I wouldn't care about or understand or even notice in-game. I'd rather just play the game and find out first hand what's changed. I know I'll miss a lot, but who cares... must not have been important if I missed it, that's how I see it.

And I've always had music disabled in pretty much all games I've ever played. I did notice the more subtle AI attack animations and the 50% chance of lack of animation but somehow receive damage from something which makes you turn around thinking someone else is hitting you but it's still just the one right in front of you. I don't like the fact that you can find gun parts once in a while but the guns themselves don't seem to exist anywhere, not even in locked gun safes, at least not in early stages. Also, stone tools in sealed hardware store boxes? wtf? The most predictable and most boring loot system. You can't harvest anything from fat zombie bodies, so finding fat for torches is a pain in the butt, and I see chickens everywhere and the occasional rabbit which I ignore because they cost more than they're worth, but no other animals in sight. And what's with there being zombies hiding in the most impossible places and in nearly every closet, traps in which half the time make no sense what-so-ever? And why do bows suck even more now? I swear I wasted over 20 arrows while trying to zero in on a black wolf, never did hit it. I assume there's some skill I need to find and waste points on... but still, annoying, especially since there's no way of knowing why I'm missing other than trial and error.

Btw, I've been watching a lot of Bill Burr comedy in the last 2 days, so I'm starting to see some of him influence me a little bit here. The only thing I apologize for is for not being funny like him.

One thing i noticed in the stable is that im getting these strange lagspikes randomly.

Like im sitting on the top of a house, absolutely no crafting or anything going on the fps is stable around 40 then suddenly it drops to 2 for less than a second and it goes back to 40. Nothing changes, nothing moves, it just drops for no apparent reason?

Im kind of sure that the system requiements have once again risen a bit but at the same time it doesnt look too stable.

Sounds to me like a buffering issue somewhere. Do you have the game installed on HDD or SSD? How much ram and Video memory do you have? Game should be on SSD or better, 12+GB of ram and I think 3+GB of video memory. It could also relate to that auto resolution scaling thing which likely requires re-buffering / time to set the new settings. It's probably better to aim for 50+fps with manually adjusted settings so you never have to worry about the auto feature taking over whenever it dips below 30fps.

 

[PoloPoPo]

Your screenshot looks strange, maybe that is a result of setting your options to Ultra+ with a system that is not good enough to handle that?!

I am sure that 9/10 casual gamers with a decent enough PC to meet 7D2D's requirements would say "wow that looks amazing" after a first few minutes in game. The longer you play (hundreds+ hours) the more you are bothered about any kind of flaws you find and the more you stick at trifles. Not saying those flaws don't matter but the game is still in development and a lot of things will be improved even more in future.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

We like it a lot. Performance is good, i get stable 60FPS with Vsync on and it doesn´t look strange like your screenshot with "only" high settings.

Everything on ultra+ is nice wishfull thinking tough, not only in this game, you can get a 2080Ti with a I9 10900K struggling on 1920x1080 easily often enough. (Nope i sadly didn´t test this myself. )

New POI´s are great, sadly no new T5 buildings tough, more weapons are always welcome (i can see a desert vulture nerf coming tough, that thing is crazy)

Now they need to come to reason with the sorting buttons and give us lockable slots in the backpack and containers to make it actually worth using. For me right now it´s totally useless. (Why is this not implented ffs? It´s in the game. Do they want us to use mods so badly?)

Rising world still having that totally awful menu where you need to go trough several pages everytime you want to craft something?

 

[Fox]

Your screenshot looks strange, maybe that is a result of setting your options to Ultra+ with a system that is not good enough to handle that?!

I am sure that 9/10 casual gamers with a decent enough PC to meet 7D2D's requirements would say "wow that looks amazing" after a first few minutes in game. The longer you play (hundreds+ hours) the more you are bothered about any kind of flaws you find and the more you stick at trifles. Not saying those flaws don't matter but the game is still in development and a lot of things will be improved even more in future.

You say that like my PC is a potato or something. Besides, I know it doesn't make sense, but I was still able to hold onto 60+ fps while on Ultra+ settings with auto scaling stuff disabled. Something is either broken or the game truly is that ugly at certain angles. Either way, don't blame my computer as there are arguments to say that a PC with Ryzen 5 1600x, GTX 1060 FTW+ 6GB and 16GB of ram, all overclocked is still a powerful PC for gaming at high settings.

Rising world still having that totally awful menu where you need to go trough several pages everytime you want to craft something?

Crafting is still a bit weird, ya. Gotta go through several tabs to find the thing you want to craft. I just compare the game graphics wise to this game because in my opinion, the terrain / grass fills out and looks so much nicer than this game ever will despite both being voxel destructible world games. Aside from that, it's obviously nothing like this game.

 

[Raestloz]

One thing i noticed in the stable is that im getting these strange lagspikes randomly.

Like im sitting on the top of a house, absolutely no crafting or anything going on the fps is stable around 40 then suddenly it drops to 2 for less than a second and it goes back to 40. Nothing changes, nothing moves, it just drops for no apparent reason?

Im kind of sure that the system requiements have once again risen a bit but at the same time it doesnt look too stable.

That's the game flushing out unnecessary objects from memory.

 

[PoloPoPo]

I have never used the word "potato" or anything similar. Your system certainly is powerful for most uses but playing a game like 7D2D on Ultra+ settings is something else. My PC is more powerful than yours and I found out that the game offers best graphic / performance ratio for me on high settings. I could play on ultra but I'd have to lower settings during horde night with increased zombie count, which I don't want to do. All bound to be subjective of course.

 

[Fox]

I have never used the word "potato" or anything similar. Your system certainly is powerful for most uses but playing a game like 7D2D on Ultra+ settings is something else. My PC is more powerful than yours and I found out that the game offers best graphic / performance ratio for me on high settings. I could play on ultra but I'd have to lower settings during horde night with increased zombie count, which I don't want to do. All bound to be subjective of course.

I agree... that's why I play this game on high settings, because that's the settings I was playing at for every other version of the game. But the fact that the game doesn't dip in fps much when I set it to Ultra+ tells me that something isn't right, especially since the grass looks like crap even at those settings.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Arguing about performance is useless anyways during an alpha. We know that optimization isn´t done fully during alpha. Some early access titles don´t give a @%$*#! at all about optimizing during alphas.

So do i get it right that your complaint is basically that everything on ultra with no performance dip is bad (the grass doesn´t look like that for me, it´s weird looking, agreed, but not normal) and that there is no major changes in gameplay?

And why does the forum censor things you hear uncensored in game from NPC´s? How does that make sense?