PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Aldranon]

Multiplayer is not going to be affected by the change much if at all. Builders are going to be able to ignore looting and be just fine when playing with allies. The entire motivation for reading magazines is different than all the other books you have experience with. I've already gone over this a ton of times so I'm going to spare you the explanation. I'll just say that I believe the magazines by their nature are going to enhance team play and push teams to greater cooperation and coordination and communication than ever before. The purpose of the magazines encourages specialization and teams supporting their members in their specializations.

Single player is going to make it so that a no looting run is very challenging and an extremely slow progression since you will be using primitive gear and building lower tier blocks for a lot longer. The thing is that I doubt there are many builders out there who build in the survival game instead of creative mode and who also detest looting to the point that they never want to do it. The change is going to force the single player who wants to build in survival to do more looting. There is no question. But if most people who play SP are at least tolerant of looting they are going to be fine.

Speed runners are going to be the ones that go out of their minds, imo. Power grinding to buy their way up the skill ladders at lightning speed and having what recipes they learn and when they learn them completely 100% under their control is now gone completely. You can power loot but that still gives no control over what magazines will be found or how quickly you will find them. Maybe in this playthrough you'll get to cement by the first horde night but in the next you might not get cement going until much later with no control over being able to speed it up.

If slowing down the early game is the point and I believe it is, then get rid of all the newspaper stands OR make newspaper stands give mostly paper 90% paper.

Seriously, how many Popular Mechanics or Scientific American or "Guns & Ammo" magazine has anyone seen in a newspaper stand?

Oddly, this will be the first time my "Role-play" and "Min-Max" selves will be in agreement if Newpaper stands have a lot of critical survival information.

Realism is not remotely there, but I will loot every single one in the town I'm in.  (Maybe "Vouge" really has articles like: "18 ways to kill a man... With a Pencil!"

 

[Aldranon]

I didn´t say anything about making everything craftable and neither did i say anything about military grade weapons. Where did you get that nonsene from?

I said make something craftable that might heavily influence how this game can be played in a bad way.

If anything we shouldn´t be able to craft any firearm at all. But a filter? Really? That´s the right choice? Of all things that we have in the game one of the easiest ones is the right choice? And you dare to call that common sense? Come on.

If a person had the last three years' worth of Guns & Ammo and maybe the last five years of Popular Mechanics.  They probably could make a not terrible automatic weapon, if they had some key resources.

However, you would only find them in a few specific places and not in newsstands (you would find the same issue over and over).

So, its just a gimmick and that's that, unfortunately.

 

[YoSoyFreeman]

I think that finding a lv6 item is still a problem cause you wont need to craft more. Maybe LV6 items could be not repairable? This way you would need to choose when to use the best gear and still need to find replacements, which would be cooler in my opinion.

 

[Doomofman]

Any chance we'll see anything new of A21 in the next month? I noticed it was September the last time there was a piece of art posted on social media

 

[Elisabelle]

Good afternoon, I think the changes are even good for the game but I still feel that it has no endgame content. Is there any improvement on this?

 

[beerfly]

Good afternoon, I think the changes are even good for the game but I still feel that it has no endgame content. Is there any improvement on this?

Hello there. As bandits and factions are going to be added, there would be a really good fun in Navezgane and The Duke will decide how or if it would end. So far, The Fun Pimps are keeping that one in secret.

Keep up with us to find out, welcome to the forum, hope you enjoy the game as much as us !

 

[Roland]

@Roland You are so far besides my point it´s not even funny anymore. Do you even read? Or do you just see that someone isn´t fully happy about the change and give out slightly altered standard replies?

I said that "people" talk about how playstyles are dead and there are plenty of people who do say that this change will ruin the game for them and force them out of their playstyle. You, personally, in the post I responded to said that people would just be disadvantaged, true, but you also said that lots of people never would have bought the game if they couldn't play it the way they wanted. So you are kind of saying both things.

You want me to address "disadvantaged"? FIne. What's wrong with a bit of disadvantage? All that means is that things aren't going to be as easy and it will require some adaptation. Where's the fire? Also, disadvantaged compared to whom? Are you competing against others for how quickly you can learn all the recipes? The less you loot the slower you will learn all the recipes but your gamestage and lootstage will still advance so better weapons will start showing up at the trader and in loot (for that blue moon when you do open something up you didn't place) so really you won't be locked out of anything-- it will just be a slower paced progression. Who are you in a race against?

You think that if A21 introduces a disadvantage for people who build that this means those people probably would have never bought the game to begin with? If that disadvantage had been part of the game from the beginning people would have just been used to it from the get go and they wouldn't see it as a disadvantage compared to something before. It would just be the game. If all your worry is simply about a disadvantage then let me assure you that.....you'll get used to it and adapt and continue to enjoy building. And let's be clear. The only disadvantage (if there is one at all) is for people who play single player and never want to loot at all. Who are these people? If a single player already does some looting as part of their playstyle then they will be just fine. That very small percentage of people who only play SP and who refuse to ever loot so they can build 24/7 can enable the creative menu and godmode and will probably have more fun that way.

There is my non-stock non-standard reply to just you to stand alonside my previous general reply to all the other people who like to predict that this playstyle or that playstyle is now dead.

 

[Crater Creator]

...I just hope we get a bigger backpack, so much loot to carry and yes I am packrat, I strip every POI of everything thats not nailed down and then somethings that are....

We did get a bigger backpack.

And a bigger tool belt.

And things like raw iron/scrap iron, animal hide/leather, bricks/cobblestone etc. were combined, resulting in fewer types of things to carry.
And we got vehicles that hold more inventory.
And drones that increase that further.

And cargo mods that increase that further.

Some people are insatiable. They're going to keep asking for bigger backpacks until they never, ever have to think about an inventory limit.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Roland No it´s not a race. But i will be annoying af due to changes to water and inventory restrictions. I can already see that. And adding more back and forth due to encumberance is nothing i will ever get used to nor do i want to get used to it. And as much as i like slower progression, just adding back and forth isn´t the way i personally want for that. And for that it doesn´t matter if you are the person building and need to get where the magazines are after the looter found them or if you are the looter who needs to do a lot of extra runs home now.

Also the glue issue. Sadly we don´t know how the recipe changed (wich is kinda weird seeing how many details regarding magazines are revealed), but even if it´s still one water it will most likely become an issue if you have 2 people at home and 2 looting and that filter simply doesn´t drop (remember forge ahead? It will be exactly the same just that now the enemies scale with your gamestage). And even if one filter drops that gives you 3 jars a day? Is that correct? And it takes up 3x3 blocks so building bigger is now importnant?

And i have honestly no clue how people play in SP without looting not using creative mode. I bascially never build a single block more than necessary in SP. But i can assure you that some people who like building would have been going for other games if they see that this game doesn´t really support their playstyle. The days where 7 days to die was unique are long gone.

 

[meganoth]

Actually, most people I ran into complain because fixing the zombie pathing over arrow slits was done at the expense of using them as arrow slits. You used to be able to reach in through the gap, which was immensely useful for base building to wire your base up. Put up your trip wires, electric fences, dart traps and even restock. After the change, you have to break them every time you need to access them. I can't overstate how bad this is now, making their use extremely frustrating every single time you need access.

In other words, the price for preventing "some" players from using them in "cheesy" ways, was to prevent EVERYONE from using them properly. This is probably the worst trade off the TFP has ever done, where legitimate players gets punished by TFP trying to prevent cheesy players. It's one of the "fixes" that TFP really should revert, as punishing all those of us who never use them to cheese, just to stop those who might cheese, is really an unacceptable trade.

While I think fixing the lack of pathing in this case was good, if it can't be done without punishing regular use, it really shouldn't be done

If arrow slits had never been in the game you would find it quite natural that you have to build accessways to your defense turrets just like you need ladders to access a platform or doors to cross walls, or batterybanks and relays that have to be protected from cop spit. Below you say players have it too easy with the zombie pathing. But here you want easy build mode where you can just add unlimited traps everywhere on the floor without thinking much about the practicallity of it.

In development of a game anything you like can be removed again if necessary. All this "punishing" talk is players thinking what was once given is yours by right. Psychologically understandable, this is how humans tick.

I am not saying that the arrow slits are necessarily OP, but besides the comfort they brought they made a much higher density of traps possible and I think the builder is not the one who needs that buff.

And it was important that the bug was fixed, for balance AND because unsuspecting players could be using the slits on floors and then would be expecting the zombies to run over them. So someone makes a nice funnel, puts arrow slits on the floor and then is surprised that no zombies take that path.

I'm with Grue on this. Alpha 17 change over to a new AI pathing while it has benefits in POI's etc (less swiss cheese POI's), when it comes to Blood Moon Horde it's far inferior. Not only are zombies omniscient, they don't act like zombies. There are no more tower defense elements of 7dtd as a result.

Nonsense. Play a traditional tower defense game some time. Tower defense depends on enemies who usually go along fixed paths where the player distributes his traps and turrets, one main game element is to add traps at chokepoints. So A17 is the true tower defense, independent from advantages and disadvantages of that. Now I would immediately agree if you said you don't care for nomenclature, the more important thing is whether one of the two is more fun.

And in my view pre-A17 you had a slightly more active role as you were shifting positions while shooting the zombies, and I would agree that it might be more what you would expect from traditional zombies though I would hesitate to term that "realism". The disadvantage though was that it was an attrition game where it made no sense to have differently designed sides on a building. You always built a pillbox and it only mattered how long each side withstood the zombies and how much you could distribute the damage by walking around or the luck of zombie direction changing.

The most serious problem was that all bases got damaged all around which made repairing a long and boring task. I remember in A16 many players complaining that the repair time became a weekly grind

On the other hand A17 and later you have to put much more brains into building, it is more interesting to try out different designs, you have more variation and possibilities. And traps suddenly make sense to add them, they have a much higher effect. And I strongly prefer those advantages to the 20 brain cells you need to use in a A16 horde night to see that some part of the wall is near braking and doing a few steps to the side.

From A17 on I actually have build all sorts of horde bases that all had in common that I (tried to) direct the zombies along paths, I was the architect of their doom, not the passive observer of which direction the zombies might come this time: "Oh, they spawn in the south, let us go ... mmmmh, let me think, ... let me think ... to the south wall then".

Pre-A17 it was an attrition game where it made no sense to have differently designed sides on a building. You always built a pillbox and it only mattered how long each side withstood the zombies and how much you could distribute the damage by walking around or the luck of zombie direction changing.

The most serious problem was that all bases got damaged all around which made repairing a long and boring task.

I remember in A16 many players complaining that the repair time became a weekly grind

You used to be better off making layered defenses as zombies would come in from a direction and break down the base walls trying to get closer to the player from that direction. Now they lemming their way to their death seeking the path of least resistance and just making a kill-entrance is sufficient as you know the zombies won't go anywhere else.

I think TFP should keep the omniscient pathing in POI's (the zombies lived there, so it makes sense they'd know where to go), but use a different AI for blood moon hordes, make it cheap computationally, waves of zombies storming the base, and maybe we can have a horde defense game as opposed to small squads of zombie commandos.

 

[maxousara]

I agree that speed runners will be the most impacted.  How ever, I don't agree they will have no control over it.  I predict, once players know which loot containers have the best chances for which types of magazines, specific POIs will be targeted to improve their progression in said areas.

I don't want to go into more detail as figuring that stuff out is half the fun imo.

Its not completely random increase some perks and more chance to find those things exemple shotgun. I dont believe the alpha 21 Will be 100% random for me its a question of strategy and i dont do speed run anyway.

 

[Crater Creator]

Now that you mention it, I have hated the zombie AI since A17. 

Please bring back the zombies that actually act like zombies instead of the conga line of structural engineers who magically detect and path to the weakest block.

It was far less predicable and exploitable when the zombies would just swarm in waves and start beating on random parts of your walls. Now all horde bases are basically identical because the zombies are too "smart" for their own good.

I'm sure Crater will get right on that.

I'm with Grue on this. Alpha 17 change over to a new AI pathing while it has benefits in POI's etc (less swiss cheese POI's), when it comes to Blood Moon Horde it's far inferior. Not only are zombies omniscient, they don't act like zombies. There are no more tower defense elements of 7dtd as a result. You used to be better off making layered defenses as zombies would come in from a direction and break down the base walls trying to get closer to the player from that direction. Now they lemming their way to their death seeking the path of least resistance and just making a kill-entrance is sufficient as you know the zombies won't go anywhere else.

It seems like one of the game's perennial debates, which can be phrased many ways but one way is: should the zombies be effectual? There are (at least) two camps, and it's difficult to satisfy both of them.

People in the first camp, which has included me at times, bemoan the structural engineer zombies that know the weaknesses of a base, sometimes better than the player that built it does. The usually offered solution is zombies that just beat on random parts of your walls, because, y'know, they're just zombies and we don't expect them to behave overly analytically.

People in the second camp accept the traditional "tower defense" mentality that zombies will take the path of least resistance, and build their bases accordingly. They make funnels, mazes, choke points, kill zones, and what have you that specifically depend on the zombies taking a predictable and "exploitable" path.

This strikes me as a possible zero sum game.

For every step towards zombies that just beat on random parts of your walls, you annoy someone in the second camp. This is not theoretical. Already, one can find plenty of forum threads where a user describes this thoughtful path they constructed for the zombies to march to their doom, only for the zombies to ignore it and beat on something else seemingly at random. I don't know what Vedui is calling tower defense but it requires enemy pathing you can rely on. That is to say, predictability. Otherwise, if the zombies were dumb and just beat on random blocks, base design would be pointlessly trivial. Any blocks you lay down in any configuration would be as good as any other, in a world where zombies beat on blocks at random.

And yet, for every step towards zombies that can reach you and take an efficient route to do it, you annoy someone in the first camp that, again, thinks such zombies are conceptually "too smart for their own good." Immersion is lost, because it's not very zombie-like behavior to them. Maybe I'm not describing the grievance some have here well, but suffice it to say this conflict is not easy to resolve to the satisfaction of both camps.

I can see why, if you're the AI programmer, you'd go with maximally effectual zombies, at least as a draft before making further refinements. You want it to be possible for the zombies to reach the player, which (current bugs aside) they definitely couldn't do before A17. And zombies that deliberately go to sub-optimal places to attack unimportant blocks - that, compared to structural engineer zombies, are there for show, to create the appearance of danger - are wasting resources that could be given to a zombie that's going to do something that matters.

So my thinking on this has evolved. I don't like structural engineer zombies, but I accept the premise that they must be generally capable: effectual at their goal of eventually reaching the player, if the interventions the player puts in the way are insufficient. At least until we get bandits, I see it as a necessary evil.

 

[Aldranon]

My two cents on Horde nights.

-Now (A20), BMH's are pretty fun, lots of exp and they go pretty easy on your base.  I use ammo I don't bring on POI adventures (Shotgun and 44 mags for me) but this might change in A21 IDK.

-I don't use electronics but one well-placed Sledge turret (pointing at an inward corner) will trap/stun 1-3 zombies so shotgun fire from above them makes quick work of them. 

-I respect the vultures during late game horde nights and they get my attention more than the Demolition Zeds.

-A big fort of concrete will never fall (Thats A20. Who knows and is talking about A21 BMH?).

 

[Aldranon]

I think that finding a lv6 item is still a problem cause you wont need to craft more. Maybe LV6 items could be not repairable? This way you would need to choose when to use the best gear and still need to find replacements, which would be cooler in my opinion.

That is a great idea, a Tier 6 weapon represent mint condition IMO.  So how about once a tier 6 "breaks" it becomes a tier 5 weapon!

A less strict idea would be you can repair/clean a weapon X many times before it degrades to a lower level.  This would be great for me as I focus on getting the ultimate weapon (M60 MG).  But then the game is basically over.  Its double over with the drum ammo mod and any backup damage hose.

 

[Roland]

@Roland No it´s not a race. But i will be annoying af due to changes to water and inventory restrictions. I can already see that. And adding more back and forth due to encumberance is nothing i will ever get used to nor do i want to get used to it. And as much as i like slower progression, just adding back and forth isn´t the way i personally want for that. And for that it doesn´t matter if you are the person building and need to get where the magazines are after the looter found them or if you are the looter who needs to do a lot of extra runs home now.

I can’t speak to what is or is not annoying to you.  You often post a desire for more pure survival elements to be added to the game. The changes you would like to see added would most certainly be seen as annoying and tedious by others. The new design is solid and some people will find it fun and challenging and rewarding and others will find it grindy, annoying, and tedious. How people react is not something that can be predicted but I can say that the A21 features work. They are well designed and are tight. If you end up disliking them then I can’t say you’re wrong to feel that way. 
 

Also the glue issue. Sadly we don´t know how the recipe changed (wich is kinda weird seeing how many details regarding magazines are revealed), but even if it´s still one water it will most likely become an issue if you have 2 people at home and 2 looting and that filter simply doesn´t drop (remember forge ahead? It will be exactly the same just that now the enemies scale with your gamestage). And even if one filter drops that gives you 3 jars a day? Is that correct? And it takes up 3x3 blocks so building bigger is now importnant?

Glue is the same recipe but uses boiled water instead of murky water. It is more common in garbage and cupboards. Filters are always available to be purchased as far as I’ve seen. I’ve never not been able to get multiple. Building solutions for dew collectors will be discovered by the community as time goes on. 
 

And i have honestly no clue how people play in SP without looting not using creative mode. I bascially never build a single block more than necessary in SP. But i can assure you that some people who like building would have been going for other games if they see that this game doesn´t really support their playstyle. The days where 7 days to die was unique are long gone.

You probably should just speak for yourself instead of advocating for these other people. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve yet heard from someone speaking for themselves who only build and refuse to ever loot when playing single player. It’s always someone speaking for them and when I challenge them they say, “Well, I build and loot so don’t get on my case. It’s just these other guys who will be hurt”

7 Days not unique? We’ve just gone through months of people complaining that no other game does survival like 7 Days and who ever heard of a survival game with thirst where you can’t carry away as much water as you want from a lake?  I’d say this game is as quirky and unique as it ever has been…

 

[meganoth]

The problem with single player builders is not that they won't loot, but that they spend much more time building than perhaps the average player does.

For example, I have been working on my current base for two in-game weeks straight. I just bounced between my crafting base, the mines, and the horde base. During these two weeks I got some levels by building and of course some time went by. This has of course also increased the gamestage.

The question is simply how much time we have to spend looting so that the gear is still adequate to the gamestage. With the system in place, can we even afford not to loot for longer periods of time?

I don't think gear (aka weapons or armor) is a problem at all. A miner/builder type single player can make money too and with money can simply buy weapons and armor at the trader and make ammo himself.  His only problems are workstations and food/seed magazines.

And we already know that a likely way to "control" what magazines you get with the least "scavenging" effort is checking the trader for hardware stores and supermarkets and concentrating on those quests. How well that works? We'll have to find out.

In that vein: It would be nice if TFP eventually adds a hint to quests what type of reward the player can expect. It would suffice to give a hint about the first choice and ignore any additional choices added by the adventurer perk. It also would improve player agency as the decision between taking random_house_4 500m away and random_house_12 700m away got another dimension to it.

 

[Gamida]

Sorry for the long read.

I think 100% of us will agree that you will never get 100% of us to agree that this game (or any game for that matter) is perfect for everyone.

There are too many playstyles to have it so.

For instance, I myself, have never, ever used electrical objects in game such at the traps or even the smg and shotgun turrets.

I should say build. I have once or twice on occasion in a MP game put ammo in them and have repaired a trap.

I hardly even use spikes.

The thing is to me that there are a lot of single players of this game but I think it shines best when played in MP PVE. (My opinion, not fact)

I like to mine and farm. I find it relaxing as hell. Now I do go out and loot and rarely I will even do quests. I do know though that there are

others who live to do those things. They thrive on it. So it makes sense to try and band together with a group of players who like different

things. I think akin to all the fantasy books, movies where you have a heroic group of adventurers made up of different members with specialties 

in different things. Imagine how awful those stories would be if the group was all just say mages, or archers or whatever (yes, I am screwing up my

analogy as I am not well versed on the genre )

Anyway to make a long story longer, I think variety is the spice of life and we need to just join a group of misfits on an adventure to rid the world

of these zombie pests and create a new and exciting civilizati..............damn it there goes Leroy Jenkins again...

"Damn it Leroy, work on your timing!"

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Roland, i am always talking about MP Coop wich should be clear from my last posts. Don´t know where you got the idea i said SP shoudl be possible without looting, i never said that. And we do have people in the group who absolutly won´t go looting. If they are forced to, they won´t play. And i have done the builder/miner part myself already aswell in several playtroughs and will do so again propably. So i am talking for myself here.

And to your example, with water not beeing transportable is unique:  Really? That´s what you choose to say it´s unique? This is the typical case  of "Just because you are special, doesn´t mean you are usefull" right there. I can see the ads for 7 days now. "Play 7 days to die. The survival game where you can´t transport water" Oh my. Such an artifical challenge beeing praised as an advantage sounds actually desperate.

I mean can you imagine someone telling a friend that they should play 7 days because it´s so unique? "Hey mate, you should really play that survival game where you can´t take water from a lake and cook it so you can drink it. That´s so unique."

Thanks for the laugh, can we now be serious again?

 

[Roland]

@Roland, i am always talking about MP Coop wich should be clear from my last posts. Don´t know where you got the idea i said SP shoudl be possible without looting, i never said that. And we do have people in the group who absolutly won´t go looting. If they are forced to, they won´t play. And i have done the builder/miner part myself already aswell in several playtroughs and will do so again propably. So i am talking for myself here.

And to your example, with water not beeing transportable is unique:  Really? That´s what you choose to say it´s unique? This is the typical case  of "Just because you are special, doesn´t mean you are usefull" right there. I can see the ads for 7 days now. "Play 7 days to die. The survival game where you can´t transport water" Oh my. Such an artifical challenge beeing praised as an advantage sounds actually desperate.

I mean can you imagine someone telling a friend that they should play 7 days because it´s so unique? "Hey mate, you should really play that survival game where you can´t take water from a lake and cook it so you can drink it. That´s so unique."

Thanks for the laugh, can we now be serious again?

7 Days to Die is the sum of its quirky parts. The new water survival is just one of those quirks. I never meant to say that we would sell the game based on it alone. If you play MP then you will be fine. The changes will help your team work together even more. There is no reason you should be left behind if you are building and others are looting. I've already stated why and how MP will not be negatively impacted by the changes. If you don't trust my word then you will have to wait to play it with your group.

 

[Gronal]

It seems like one of the game's perennial debates, which can be phrased many ways but one way is: should the zombies be effectual? There are (at least) two camps, and it's difficult to satisfy both of them.

People in the first camp, which has included me at times, bemoan the structural engineer zombies that know the weaknesses of a base, sometimes better than the player that built it does. The usually offered solution is zombies that just beat on random parts of your walls, because, y'know, they're just zombies and we don't expect them to behave overly analytically.

People in the second camp accept the traditional "tower defense" mentality that zombies will take the path of least resistance, and build their bases accordingly. They make funnels, mazes, choke points, kill zones, and what have you that specifically depend on the zombies taking a predictable and "exploitable" path.

This strikes me as a possible zero sum game.

For every step towards zombies that just beat on random parts of your walls, you annoy someone in the second camp. This is not theoretical. Already, one can find plenty of forum threads where a user describes this thoughtful path they constructed for the zombies to march to their doom, only for the zombies to ignore it and beat on something else seemingly at random. I don't know what Vedui is calling tower defense but it requires enemy pathing you can rely on. That is to say, predictability. Otherwise, if the zombies were dumb and just beat on random blocks, base design would be pointlessly trivial. Any blocks you lay down in any configuration would be as good as any other, in a world where zombies beat on blocks at random.

And yet, for every step towards zombies that can reach you and take an efficient route to do it, you annoy someone in the first camp that, again, thinks such zombies are conceptually "too smart for their own good." Immersion is lost, because it's not very zombie-like behavior to them. Maybe I'm not describing the grievance some have here well, but suffice it to say this conflict is not easy to resolve to the satisfaction of both camps.

I can see why, if you're the AI programmer, you'd go with maximally effectual zombies, at least as a draft before making further refinements. You want it to be possible for the zombies to reach the player, which (current bugs aside) they definitely couldn't do before A17. And zombies that deliberately go to sub-optimal places to attack unimportant blocks - that, compared to structural engineer zombies, are there for show, to create the appearance of danger - are wasting resources that could be given to a zombie that's going to do something that matters.

So my thinking on this has evolved. I don't like structural engineer zombies, but I accept the premise that they must be generally capable: effectual at their goal of eventually reaching the player, if the interventions the player puts in the way are insufficient. At least until we get bandits, I see it as a necessary evil.

The thing is, for me - these 'intelligent' zombies are actually just kinda dumb still in a way. Predictability is the biggest downfall of the current zombie pathing, and is what makes them actually LESS effectual. In my opinion.
More variability to the zombie pathing would decrease the predictability and add more challenge. Say 50% of zombies take the current pathing, the other 50% are "dumb" perhaps. POI zombies should definitely be smart for reasons already discussed.

Why can't we have both? (disclaimer: I am not a programmer and have no idea how hard it is to develop the game)
From my perspective it seems like a gameplay choice to have ALL zombies be smart. Could it not be a simple dice roll whether a zombie is spawned in smart or not? That can't be that resource intensive a change.

Is it better to choose something that pleases one camp and not the other? Or to choose something that pleases both maybe slightly less?

p.s. I do actually respect whichever direction TFP want to go with the zombies. Even if I don't like it.