PC Is there a plan to return to survival horror?

[4sheetzngeegles]

Part of what Roland posted points to the perspective of this game's evolution. He mentioned genre
and the inclusion of various elements. This in turn Created a Hybrid-Genre. Hybrid vigor, even in nature means
flowing, adapting, and selecting the best choices for survival. If you had the pleasure of playing each
alpha from 1 to now, it would be easier to see the progression from then to now. I'm not referring to the
graphics, ai, those progress with technology and experience. The actual game play has always centered on
survival "Your way" "Your choice" well maybe except for the Mole bases. Are all of the choices the same anyone
else would have made probably not, but TFP, as the genre, audience, staff, and tech changed so to did aspects
of the game.

A real world thought, If you had an idea, to build what you thought was the most nearly perfect home,
and you had a revolving array of friends, input, and stimuli, for ten years. That meaning you built your
dream home over a period of ten years. Truthfully, ask yourself, But only answer in private. Would the original
foundation laid home that you laid plans for, if it were a 60' x 60' home on a ten acre lot, be the same idea
and ideal for you today as when first conceived?

Would you still be satisfied with that 25" tv, a pentium 2 processor, basic cable, no streaming services,
and even the furniture, non-spring foam top wasn't a thing then, that was first added to the list to purchase?

Now add the plumbing issues that Will arise, hvac/insulation requirements raised per year to stay relevant, and
the potential resale value. Your journey to build your dream home, would progress and advance as you do. Over
the course of time pricing, availability, relativity, desire, and comfort ideas would change. This would necessitate
adaptation to the original plan.

The thought is a bit abstract but can be applied to the game as well.

An PimpDream idea: Since a (volume, not all) of the QOL things requested are subtle variances that can be controlled by
the xml files. QOL is my thought regarding personal preferences, ranging from weather to famine to danger.

A front end tick box, based off of a batch file, and the various config files, could allow each person to
contour the game closer to their ideal. It could be modded that way, but Not By Me.

Your house definitely would not look like mine. But I definitely like visiting their home more than most others.

 

[Dark Wun]

I kind of see the OP's points and I think there's something the devs could do relatively easily and cheaply:

Introduce a "food scarcity" game setting:

Setting this to high scarcity would reduce the amount of food items found in loot and also the number of game animals in the world.

The OP could then also significantly reduce the horde night settings, e.g., longer time between blood moons, etc. and presto, you've got more of a survival game.

I'm sure there's a few other similar settings that could help achieve this too.

 

[Riamus]

I think everyone would agree that food is far too easy to come by.  Considering they've made changes to water for A21, I would not be surprised to see them make a similar change to food before gold.  I mean, in my current game with one other player, we do not hunt and although I can grow crops, I've only harvested twice because there just has never been any reason to.  We are getting so much food just from questing that there's never any shortage.  Yes, it was a little harder in the first few days or maybe week but after that it wasn't ever an issue.  Other games haven't given us so much food, so this was just RNG "luck".  Even in the other games, food isn't really that difficult.  And not at all once you start farming.  And I never hunt except if I really need animal fat and don't end up with enough just from being attacked by wolves and boars and such.

 

[Dark Wun]

yeah, I forgot about traders as a source of food too. They could also make a slider for that too, or make the price ridiculously expensive (kind of what you'd expect in post-apocalyptic world).

I'm really thinking they could pretty easily create "survival game" mode quite easily. Just incorporate a quick setting to make food much more scarce in containers, quest rewards, traders, less game animals. I'm thinking less ammo too. Horde nights would still be a thing, but less of a tower game like the OP mentioned, maybe by substantially reducing the number of zombies, which grows way too fast btw.  I've always felt the first 5-6 days are the best days when you don't have anything and it's really that survival feeling - trying to get that first cook pot.

This would only be an optional game mode, other players could still play vanilla settings. How hard would this be to code in, really.

 

[Sozia]

I and two others are currently playing a game with no mods but we did change the settings some.  We started with loot set to 75 percent. It does drastically lower the amount of loot you get.   Food was a struggle. We do set it to insane setting but imo that doesn't make the game much harder. We maxed out the amount we get on horde night and increased the hordes to every 4 nights.  We increased our experience to 150 percent though.  It gave us a chance to try some skills that we might not have tried otherwise.   There really are a lot of settings that are fun to mess with, I think.  For us, changing the loot setting was the hardest to adjust to.  The other 'fun' way to make the game a bit of a rougher start is just change what biome you are start your base in.   That certainly can make things different.  - Hopefully, everyone finds the settings that suit them best.  - cheers. 

 

[bobrpggamer]

I think everyone would agree that food is far too easy to come by.  Considering they've made changes to water for A21, I would not be surprised to see them make a similar change to food before gold.  I mean, in my current game with one other player, we do not hunt and although I can grow crops, I've only harvested twice because there just has never been any reason to.  We are getting so much food just from questing that there's never any shortage.  Yes, it was a little harder in the first few days or maybe week but after that it wasn't ever an issue.  Other games haven't given us so much food, so this was just RNG "luck".  Even in the other games, food isn't really that difficult.  And not at all once you start farming.  And I never hunt except if I really need animal fat and don't end up with enough just from being attacked by wolves and boars and such.

I am too busy collecting resources to build my base than to worry if the food situation is more difficult. I prefer it the way it is now, but then I spend 90% of my time just trying to build my final base. Even bloodmoon is just a thorn in my side that keeps getting in the way of building. I will still do bloodmoons every 7 days to keep the game the way the developers made it, so I don't complain about frequency of the bloodmoons, Its just that the more repairs I do to my initial base and 2nd temp base means less resources for the end base and more grinding - which I do not mind either - I like to grind so I can appreciate my final base more even if it take 100 days to do so.

I guess it would be cool to have sliders to adjust all survival aspects of the game, just not for me, I like it the way it is - I guess I am easy to please.

I guess it depends on your type of play. I prefer base building / tower defense myself.

 

[RyanX]

Survival Horror typically involves severe limits on ammo and weaponry and relies mostly on mood, setting, creepy sound effects and music, limited visibility, evasion, and puzzle solving. 

And the game used to be that way.  The beginning was hard, food/ammo/weapons were scarce, the world looked bleaker, you had to figure out where to put your rotten meat so the zeds couldn't sniff you out, try and evade them at the outset.  And I think this is what made the game popular (and better imo) to begin with.  Now as soon as I spawn in with a new character if I see a zed I run to kill it for the xp.   It was the default setting, but now the default setting is as the OP stated.

I don't think "there are mods" is an acceptable answer for extremely casual players.  I play with my wife and we work a lot so I don't have as much time to deal with trying to download mods, or even searching to see what mods are available.  We come home and just want to log on and play.  We put tons of hours up through about A17 or 18 and we have basically stopped playing because the game is sooooooo easy now.  We could adjust sliders (and have) and try to "fix" the game, but that's a far cry from when the game didn't need "fixed" beyond glitches.  With our playstyle, the game mechanics were fine, it was the graphical glitches and other bugs that were the nuisance.  But the devs decided that the mechanics and graphics were the focus rather than the bugs and glitches (which still remain).

The downfall of this is that now the average player is used to "easy mode" and the multiplayer servers (which we exclusively play on) have followed by doing things like actually INCREASING loot percentage and  xp.  The pinnacle of this game for me was around A16 when multiplayer servers were running mostly vanilla.  There was atmosphere, difficulty, feeling of accomplishment.  When folks say things like "just mod it" I'm like....meh.  We play so infrequently now, checking back in with each update to see if the devs have decided to trend back towards making things difficult in a meaningful way again, that we would have to reinstall mods every time we play.

But alas, it's like everything else in this world.  All good franchises get swallowed up eventually by someone who thought they had a "great idea" that causes it to become something different.

So now what you have is "you play this game how you want if you have the time to deal with mods, or if you are casual just suck it up and play easy mode".  Which is fine if that's what they want to do, but this isn't always how it has been.

 

[Roland]

And the game used to be that way.

No, its never been that way. Ammo and weapons have always been plentiful. A wooden club is a zombie killing machine and it is craftable on day one and always has been.  The game was less puzzle-like in the past with POI's just being open empty shells with no maze to traverse which also brings up visibility. The game was much less limited in what you could see back then. Open a door and immediately see all zombies in the room.  No, the game has never been a dedicated survival horror game although it has always been able to be played that way if you made adjustments-- just like now. Except that I would even argue that it is easier now to get a true survival horror vibe than it ever was before--again thanks to the POI redesigns since A17.

Now as soon as I spawn in with a new character if I see a zed I run to kill it for the xp.

I agree that XP rewards for killing zombies ruin the simulation survival aspect of the game. It makes it more arcade and gives the player incentive for hunting zombies when in an actual scenario players would more likely avoid zombies as much as possible and only engage with them when absolutely necessary. That being said, you don't have to go out of your way to farm zombies for xp. That is a choice you are making.

I don't think "there are mods" is an acceptable answer for extremely casual players.

That's why iPhone games exist...

Extremely casual players by their nature are stuck with whatever they are offered. Its always been that way and it will always be that way. "There are mods" is always an acceptable answer for anyone, casual or not, who wishes to play the game differently than it is designed. If someone can't be bothered to mod because their life is so busy, then that person has to take whatever is offered and the developers can't be expected to tailor-make the game they want for themselves.

It's right there in the label YOU chose to describe yourself: extreme. Extreme anything is exactly why mods exist. The base game is going to have broad appeal to most new players. Players in extreme categories whether that be extreme veteran, extreme hardcore, extreme casual, extreme survival sim, etc. need to mod the game to make it the extreme experience they want.

I feel bad for you that the game has moved beyond what you enjoyed and that your life is so filled to the brim with obligations and work and whatnot that you can't take any time to try out mods. But, those are choices you are making and probably more important than a video game anyway.

 

[RyanX]

That's why iPhone games exist...

Don't you have phones?

Best answer ever.

You seem to think I expect them to tailor the game for me.  I never said that and I don't expect it.  But I'm glad you are around to decide what is acceptable for me and what is not.

And I'm certainly free to state my opinions and say my piece on what I would like to see and my preferences.  It's not really a thing that these forums promote.

 

[BFT2020]

I don't think "there are mods" is an acceptable answer for extremely casual players.  I play with my wife and we work a lot so I don't have as much time to deal with trying to download mods, or even searching to see what mods are available.  We come home and just want to log on and play.  We put tons of hours up through about A17 or 18 and we have basically stopped playing because the game is sooooooo easy now. 

FranticDan has a good mod to increase the difficulty of the game, might be something you are looking for.  Not a complete overhaul like Darkness falls or Undead Legacy are.







I am also working on a pet project myself changing how the game is played, but not going into an overhaul either.  But mine won't be released until after A21 drops and I can finish it up at that point.  Plus, I have some weird tastes when it comes to survival gaming so it might not be up your alley

 

[Roland]

Don't you have phones?

Best answer ever.

What did that have to do with what I said other than the fact that we both referenced phones? That line is infamous because Blizzard announced a mobile game for casuals to an audience of hardcore Diablo fans that were expecting more content

for PC. My point was that if playing a modded PC game is unacceptable for extreme casuals, at least they have mobile games to keep themselves occupied. In other words, 7 Days to Die on the PC doesn't cater to extreme casuals. They can play, of course, but the expectation is that you will play the base game and then move on to modded versions of the game for additional experiences. Therefore, modding is the solution for changing the gameplay from the default version to some other desired way to play.

You seem to think I expect them to tailor the game for me.  I never said that and I don't expect it.  But I'm glad you are around to decide what is acceptable for me and what is not.

No, I seem to think that you reject modding as the way for players to tailor the game for themselves. It seems that way because you stated it clearly. Whether you expect TFP to tailor the game the way you and your wife like to play it, I have no idea. I only have what you actually said to go by and it sounds like you can't or won't use mods and don't think they should be what people are expected to turn to if they want a different experience than vanilla.

And I'm certainly free to state my opinions and say my piece on what I would like to see and my preferences.  It's not really a thing that these forums promote.

You certainly are. Don't interpret my disagreement with your opinion about the role of mods with this game as some kind of statement that you can't post at all. I have no problem with you listing your own preferences and what you would like to see the game become. I never refuted any of your personal preferences. My disagreement with you was solely about your statement about mods not being the answer. I believe that mods are the answer. The developers planned from the very beginning that mods should be the answer because they built this game in such a way that PC gamers who aren't afraid to use mods or who are somehow too busy to install mods could tailor the game for themselves. 

 

[RyanX]

No, its never been that way. Ammo and weapons have always been plentiful.

Absolutely untrue.  Remember when you had to get lucky on a loot box just to get the tool and die set to even make ammo?  Remember when there were no pipe guns?  How about back when there were gun parts you had to put together to get one that worked?  All that wasn't obtained early game.

Now a couple quests at the OP trader and you're gold.  Heck, this game is over now at like level 10, just put all your points into INT to build a motorcycle and you get everywhere quickly, don't need as much food, and you can snowball massive amounts of quests to buy whatever weapons you want early game.  Everything is obtainable early game now and it definitely wasn't like this in the past. 

It's like a shopping mall apocalypse now.  An asteroid of loot destroyed the population.

And of course you can mod whatever, and change whatever but that's not the point of this post.  The point is that you are absolutely wrong when you say vanilla didn't use to be harder.

There is serious need of stretching out the early game.  But maybe that's part of the issue...todays gamer population wants easy mode for everything by default and I'm just a relic now.  So be it.

 

[Jost Amman]

Everything is obtainable early game now and it definitely wasn't like this in the past. 

Well, it depends on how far back you go...  :heh:


Spoiler

 

[Dark Wun]

Now a couple quests at the OP trader and you're gold. 

Yep, couldn't agree with this more, traders allow you to progress too quickly. Then the real challenge of the game with fast progression is the tower defense aspect. I still feel horde nights progress too quickly. Once you're at the 3rd or maybe 4th horde night in a new game , the real game is revealed - a race against time to get adequate supplies for the next horde night - with no time for fun. Someone pointed it out in another recent thread but basically you have to start counting every minute. If you waste a few minutes and 'dawdle' you won't have enough resources/ammo for the next blood moon. I just wish there was more time to actually explore and check corners that you've never checked or that you don't have time for - maybe have a little fun. The game is a race against time at ~ day 28 or so and less enjoyable than the first ~ 10 days.

Possible solution: scale back trader rewards but also scale back horde night progression. I know I can reduce horde night frequency but I want to play 7days to die.

 

[Roland]

Absolutely untrue.  Remember when you had to get lucky on a loot box just to get the tool and die set to even make ammo?  Remember when there were no pipe guns?  How about back when there were gun parts you had to put together to get one that worked?  All that wasn't obtained early game.

Sure it was more of a process to craft your own weapon at different times in the past but you could always loot weapons and ammo without needing to craft them. The game has gone back and forth between having craftable weapons and no craftable weapons but the constant unchanging feature has always been lootable weapons and ammo--even before traders and quests were a thing.

We have been discussing this game in terms of survival horror. I agree that there have been periods of time when weapons were easier and harder to obtain but even during the times in earlier versions when weapons were more scarce they were nowhere near the level of scarcity that you see in actual survival horror titles. For as long as I have played it, you've been able to get a lucky find during the first week that can set you up weapon-wise for the rest of the game.

Since the beginning people have complained that finding weapons in loot that are better than you can craft have diminished the crafting aspect of the game. A21 is the first time in forever that I feel like I can often craft better stuff than I can find.

Now a couple quests at the OP trader and you're gold.  Heck, this game is over now at like level 10, just put all your points into INT to build a motorcycle and you get everywhere quickly, don't need as much food, and you can snowball massive amounts of quests to buy whatever weapons you want early game.  Everything is obtainable early game now and it definitely wasn't like this in the past. 

Everything CAN be obtainable but you can choose to have a different experience without ever touching a setting or installing a mod simply by.....not doing quests. Ignore the quests. You can go a step further and ignore the trader completely if you want but for sure nobody is holding a gun to your head and forcing you to spam quests. Any POI can be explored and looted without a quest attached.  It is perplexing that you find questing such a detriment and source of making the game too easy but....you do them anyway?

People who want a challenge set limitations on themselves all the time. They reset the world if they die. They start themselves in an upper floor room of the hospital. And....they ignore the trader to varying degrees depending on the level of challenge they are after. You want a challenge. So play it in a challenging fashion.

It's like a shopping mall apocalypse now.  An asteroid of loot destroyed the population.

And of course you can mod whatever, and change whatever but that's not the point of this post.  The point is that you are absolutely wrong when you say vanilla didn't use to be harder.

Yes, it can be that way if you exploit it. A21 has a better balance than A20 but perhaps hasn't gone as far as you might wish. 50% loot is a much tougher beast in A21 than in A20 since it affects your loot AND your ability to learn so that setting might be to your liking.

I don't think I said that vanilla didn't use to be harder. I feel like the challenge of the early game has fluctuated over time. I haven't really been talking about difficulty anyway. I've been talking about this game as a survival horror genre title. 

 

[meganoth]

Yep, couldn't agree with this more, traders allow you to progress too quickly. Then the real challenge of the game with fast progression is the tower defense aspect. I still feel horde nights progress too quickly. Once you're at the 3rd or maybe 4th horde night in a new game , the real game is revealed - a race against time to get adequate supplies for the next horde night - with no time for fun. Someone pointed it out in another recent thread but basically you have to start counting every minute. If you waste a few minutes and 'dawdle' you won't have enough resources/ammo for the next blood moon. I just wish there was more time to actually explore and check corners that you've never checked or that you don't have time for - maybe have a little fun. The game is a race against time at ~ day 28 or so and less enjoyable than the first ~ 10 days.

Possible solution: scale back trader rewards but also scale back horde night progression. I know I can reduce horde night frequency but I want to play 7days to die.

I'm not sure what you are experiencing is the norm. Do you have your trigger finger pressed the whole night through? Then change how you build, use traps (barbed wire for example) to slow down the horde. Give the horde a long-winded pathway they have to follow before reaching you. Push them into pits where they have to walk out again and then follow that same long-winded pathway to you again. Only shoot at zombies that attack critical blocks.

 

[Riamus]

Yep, couldn't agree with this more, traders allow you to progress too quickly. Then the real challenge of the game with fast progression is the tower defense aspect. I still feel horde nights progress too quickly. Once you're at the 3rd or maybe 4th horde night in a new game , the real game is revealed - a race against time to get adequate supplies for the next horde night - with no time for fun. Someone pointed it out in another recent thread but basically you have to start counting every minute. If you waste a few minutes and 'dawdle' you won't have enough resources/ammo for the next blood moon. I just wish there was more time to actually explore and check corners that you've never checked or that you don't have time for - maybe have a little fun. The game is a race against time at ~ day 28 or so and less enjoyable than the first ~ 10 days.

Possible solution: scale back trader rewards but also scale back horde night progression. I know I can reduce horde night frequency but I want to play 7days to die.

As mentioned, you can avoid trader quests if you don't like them, or do fewer of them.  They are not a required part of the game. 

As far as ammo, there are many factors that affect the amount of ammo you are using and how hard it is to get enough before the next horde night.  But those can pretty much all be changed.

1) If you use 7.62 for hide night, don't use it during the rest of the time.  If you use 9mm during horde night, don't use it during the rest of the time.  Etc.  

2) Use fewer auto turrets during horde night, especially if you are playing solo.  Try replacing one (or two at max perk) with robotic turrets.  The ammo is far easier to make.  And use things like spike traps and blade traps to reduce the amount of ammo you need to use.  Let the traps do the work for you, though you of course get less XP that way.

3) Try increasing the day length.  You may find you like 2 hour days better.  And remember that you can change this setting at any time just by exiting the game and changing it when you start the game again.  This means you can have shorter days in the beginning if you want and longer after you start having trouble having enough time to do things.  Or you can even have long days a couple of days each week and short days the rest of the time if you don't want to fully commit to longer days.  If nothing else, you can try it and change it back if you don't like it.

4) Use melee more often.  It works very well in most instances and saves you a lot of ammo.

5) Do you best to find the magazine that increases ammo in loot as soon as possible for extra ammo.

6) Try to focus on certain tier 4 and 5 quests that have ammo crates to have a better chance getting more ammo after the quest than when you started.  Dishong almost always leaves me with far more ammo than when I start, for example.

7) Even at higher tiers, run through some tier 1 and tier 2 quests each week.  More often than not, especially once you increase the number of reward choices, you will have a reward option of 100 9mm.

8 ) Always go after the treasure maps as those are always ammo and ammo crafting materials.

There are some ways to help you with ammo so you have more time to explore.

 

[bobrpggamer]

The opposite of the OP:

I played A12 somewhere around 2015 and I had no clue what to do and died every couple of minutes. This was before they had tutorials in say A16. The biomes were close the first time I spawned which was on the edge of the burnt forest and the plains and I hated that. I had no luck in doing anything so I finally find a house as this seemed safe and thought is was strange that they were so far apart for some reason. So the house gets overrun after dark in what seemed like seconds. I hated the game so much I did not try it again until A16.

In other words it seemed so impossible to play at A12, that it was not enjoyable or fun in any way. I will say A16 was great but A12 to me was a joke that the developers seemed to make so impossible there was no point in playing.

This of course was coming from games like Half Life 2, FEAR and Far Cry type FPSs I loved, but I decided to try it as it was on sale and I then turned into the AVGN when playing.

 

[Dark Wun]

I'm not sure what you are experiencing is the norm. Do you have your trigger finger pressed the whole night throug

As far as ammo, there are many factors that affect the amount of ammo you are using and how hard it is to get enough before the next horde night.  But those can pretty much all be changed.

I really do appreciate these tips (seriously no sarcasm). I play with a friend and he prefers to google all kinds of vids on YouTube that explain how to take advantage of AI , pathing, etc. I know pushing zombies around into pits and tricking them isn't always exploiting pathing per se, but I just wanted to point out that we do know how to build tower bases that allow us to conserve ammo. Again I do appreciate you taking the time to share strategies. I do still enjoy the game over all, my point was just that I think the devs need to tone down the speed at which horde nights progress ... just a tad and this is in-line with the OPs original points because it will allow people to focus more on the horror/survival aspect of the game for a bit longer. I do think horde nights should progress , just quite a bit  slower, and eventually become insane, but both the OP and I share the same view in that we should be able to play a survival game longer before all that happens .

One thing I thought of since making these replies is that the devs might be trying to appease the random/public multiplayer community by making the game 'more accelerated'. I play other survival games online and most people don't plan on playing on a pub more than a day or two, so people would of course want to progress fast. I get it , but maybe there should be a game mode specifically for that type of game play and for people who enjoy the tower defense aspect of the game more.

For example,  there just simply isn't any time to say pack up a whole bunch of food and go explore that military installation a couple hundred miles away from your main city because you need to use every last minute preparing/repairing your horde base, replenishing ammo, etc. I know most of you have 1000's of hours playing the game and so you know those POIs inside and out, but try to think of someone just learning/exploring the game and their world and just wanting to have fun surviving.

 

[Roland]

You don't have to play the blood moon event by defending a base that you've spent every moment of the week prepping. You can ignore the blood moon by exploring that military installation miles away from your main city and then sealing all access to the top of it and just chilling up there until the night is over. You can certainly do that every once in a while. You can also change the settings to make the blood moon occur every 10 days or every 14 days.

Personally, I think the game's blood moon difficulty progression curve is a bit on the slow side compared to player power progression. Players can get access to concrete and traps and produce ammo in huge quantities weeks before they actually have to do so in order to survive the weekly horde nights. TFP cannot slow it down even further without destroying any kind of challenge at all. That's why they offer game settings that allow you to change how dominating the blood moon event is in the game. 

The game was called 7 Days to Die long before the blood moon was added to the game and the weekly horde night was ever a thing. If it could be called 7 Days to Die with no blood moon horde at all, then it certainly can still be called 7 Days to Die with a blood moon that only happens once every 30 days if that is how impactful you want the event to be in the game.