OccamsShavingCream
New member
I apologize. I had assumed that the whole point of the experimental branch was to solicit player feedback, but it appears that's not the case. I think I'll just sit this one out.
Have a good day.
PC What was the point of the water change?
- Thread starter GlassDeviant
- Start date
I apologize. I had assumed that the whole point of the experimental branch was to solicit player feedback, but it appears that's not the case. I think I'll just sit this one out.
Have a good day.
Roland
Moderator
*gasp*
And YouTube comments are typically so positive…
Joking aside, there are plenty of comments both positive and negative with thousands of likes. I can acknowledge the negative posts. I know that no feature is going to please everyone. Interesting that you can’t acknowledge any of the positive.
When has anyone ever tried to withhold the truth that TFP isn’t making a survival simulator? This is just a case of you letting your own expectations get in the way of you seeing the truth. The same thing happened about five years ago when all the PvP fans who expected that the game was going to be a voxel version of Rust finally realized that the game was actually being designed as a cooperative or single player game with role playing elements. Oh the outcry we had and all those players predicted the doom of the game if it wasn’t going to fully support 50+ player battleground gameplay.
Riamus
Well-known member
And when are YouTube comments not overwhelmingly negative about changes or pretty much anything. Sure, you can find certain areas in YT where they aren't (music is often more positive than negative, for example) but YT is generally a cesspool of negativity. I wouldn't ever look there for an idea of what most people think about anything.
Besides, we are only a couple weeks into experimental. You will always get way more negative posts than positive in the beginning of experimental because people do not like change. Many of those people will change their minds after they are used to the changes - in a month or two, or longer if they don't play much. So none of this right now really proves anything other than a general current feeling about change and basing changes on kneejerk reactions isn't going to make for a good game.
Roland
Moderator
Oh please…
Of course we have your feedback just like we have the feedback of others who don’t like it. What I meant is that your personal dislike isn’t going to be enough to convince them to change the game. There are others who like it and we listen to that feedback as well. I didn’t say that your feedback isn’t wanted or considered. TFP listens to the whole range of feedback. They won’t have the full range of feedback until A21 goes stable and people have plenty of time to play it and get beyond their first impression.
Look, you’re at least tangentially related to the razor. So let’s break this down to simplest terms.
1) The devs made a change they believe in and enjoy.
2) The internal team played with the changes for almost a year and some adjustments were made but the feature was kept.
3) Since release two-weeks ago there have been many comments. A lot have been positive and a lot have been negative.
4) Nobody has reported that the game is now unplayable or broken due to the changes. All of the comments have been of the nature of liking vs disliking the changes.
The simplest conclusion is that the feature is well designed and functions well within the game but that there are a lot of divergent opinions about whether it is fun or not. Since fun is a highly personal and subjective concept it is impossible to design a feature that is fun for everyone. All they can do is watch as time goes on to see whether most people come to find it fun.
Last edited by a moderator:
I'm not the most innovative player around but I figure there is no better way to go about the initial water problem than by doing quests, and buying a pot and a water filter. Along the way pick up all the murky water and maybe sell some stuff if you need drinking water ASAP.
You can, of course, opt to not buy a pot and loot it instead. But that's it, isn't it? For the life of me I cannot think of any better way. I cannot even think of any other way.
Buy a pot or loot it. Buy a water filter - because that's the only way. To get the money for that do quests because that's the fastest way to get it - and not just the fastest, the safest too. Rinse repeat until you have enough walter filters. Then forget about the whole thing and play the rest of the game.
Like I said, I'm not super innovative or imaginative or able to think outside the box. So I might be missing something. Is there any other way to go about it that doesn't amount to serious self-sabotage? I mean, even no-trader players are kind of shown the middle finger here, aren't they? I guess they could skip the whole dew collector thing and live a life of happy grinding for murky water.
Sorry, but I just fail to see the upside to the new system. Has anyone talked about the upsides, by the way? Except for that after a few days of doing what you're basically shoehorned into a game mechanic nopes itself out of the game?
Last edited by a moderator:
Roland
Moderator
I think you stated it quite well when you listed all of the tasks and the process involved with getting water going. That process is a huge gameplay improvement over the nonexistent effort required before. It competes with the other tasks you need to get done and creates additional choices for how to play the first few days. You don’t like it which is noted. But for those who do, it is much more engaging than what we had before. Hopefully it will grow on you as you adapt to it and/or if the devs make some adjustments based on the negative feedback to make it more enjoyable for a larger portion of their players.
"Nobody feels like that"
-- two people in this thread feel like that
"They don't represent thousand of players"
-- yes they do, but if you need thousands of players let's look at youtube
"Youtube doesn't count"
I'm tired of you guys moving the goal posts on your arguments, lol.
warmer
Well-known member
how did you learn something new without an instructor before you had unlimited free youtube tutorials?
Books and how to articles. Its super realistic if you ask me.
I have been playing piano nearly everyday since I was 5 (35 years) and all it takes is one great lesson about something I couldnt figure out on my own to jump ahead much further than self practice. A perfect combo for realism is learn by doing/learn by reading. That is the best analog to how ot works in real life I can think of.
First off Roland I just want to say that I understand your point, I really do. It's just the fact that someone said "Let's put lakes and rivers in the maps!" And then someone else said "Yeah and let's make water hard to get!"
When I try to hold those 2 dissonant thoughts in my head at the same time it makes me want to eat broken glass.
I don't care where the bottles come from. I don't care where they go. But if you want to make water hard to get then maybe don't put entire rivers of it everywhere.
So while I have adapted my playstyle to a21 mechanics I'm not one of those people who never think about it again. I do. Frequently. Every time I scoop a bottle of water out of a toilet I wonder why I can't do that down at the river. It hurts my soul, man. I die a little inside, over an approximate 7 day timeframe.
How is it a huge improvement? Before A21 it was kind of a realistic approach. Water was easy to be found but it was not safe to drink without boiling it. Very much what you'd expect in a game about survivial in a post-apocalyptic world.
Now, water is still easy to be found but:
- If you drink it straight out a river or lake you take immediate health damage, as if there is glass in it or something
- You cannot scoop it up and take it home though because ... basically the devs decided it shouldn't be possible
- You can find portable water in toilets, coffee machines, etc. though
- The best method to get water is to build yourself a dew collector or three for which you have to buy a water filter
- But you cannot craft that water filter because ... basically the devs decided it shouldn't be possible
I'm not saying that the new way is objectively worse than the old way but it is definitely more gamey, isn't it? If you're fine with gamey, if you're fine with being shoehorned into a very specific approach, if the inexplicibility of having a river in front of you and not being able to scoop up some water and carry it home, or the inexplicibility of you one day being able to build your own drones but never being able to build your own water filter, if all of that doesn't matter to you then sure, the new way can be called an improvement. After all, now we can have dew collectors. And there's less clutter.
But what really does not seem to be true is that you have additional choices for how to play the first few days. Get money to buy water filters, that's the first few days. It's what everybody does and what everybody will be doing. Alternatives for beginners: Die. Alternatives for pros: Grind POIs for murky water. If they enjoy the challenge of hamstringing themselves, that is.
If I come across as a little hostile, I'm sorry. I'm just angry. I'm angry that after one and a half years one of the two major game mechanics changes to 7DTD is one that - to me - comes across as really not well thought through.
And where is the learn by doing element your speaking of? Btw, your piano flex made me laugh. Thanks.
It's not well thought out. None of the changes for a21 are, the magazine system has a million holes in it, it's garbage, and this water thing is just as bad. It doesn't matter who are willing to support it, because all of those people want 7d2d to be an arcade shooters instead of a survival game.
warmer
Well-known member
not a flex, just facts.
Learn by doing is practice. You only get so much better, prior to instruction/guidance from a better source. Is that so hard to wrap your noggin around?
It is currently since you seem to be unable to answer the question, where is the learn by doing mechanic that you are saying exists currently?
theFlu
Well-known member
RipClaw
Well-known member
If you had asked some people before the Alpha 21 release, they would have said that Alpha 21 comes with Learning by Doing. Apparently someone confused Learn by Looting with Learning by Doing because of the similar name and then this misinformation spread.
No, He is clearly defending the current system and saying it's super-duper realistic and goes on to misspeak that it's somehow LBR and LBD.
edit:
I totally agree that a LBR/LBD (and if I could say, a learn by selection (perks/skill points) is the most realistic method, but that's not what we got, we got an arcade simulator, which is the very thing that he's refuting. So let him explain it.
If that was the case that's a single mechanic and he clearly defined two mechanics. So that's not it.
Last edited by a moderator:
Riamus
Well-known member
He stated that the learn by reading system was realistic in that people do learn by reading. He then, later, gave the example of piano lessons and stated that a hybrid option would be better... not that it is what we have now.
He is not wrong that LBR is realistic and you rewording it as "super-duper realistic" doesn't change the fact that he is right. People learn by reading. They learn by instruction. They learn by doing. It's a combination of things but people can learn by any one of those things individually if they want. Nothing unrealistic about LBR. I mean, just reading a manual on how to put something together is LBR and I'm sure you've seen plenty of manuals.
In any case, trying to make it sound like he is saying that the current system is perfect is misleading at best. Neither he nor I are saying such a thing. That doesn't mean we don't like it better than what we had before or like it for different reasons than what we had before. Liking something doesn't mean we are some kind of fanatic like you seem to be trying to portray us as. We see the flaws. Just reading other of our posts around the forum will show that we see the flaws. That doesn't mean we still don't like the change. We just want to work on fixing the flaws rather than trying to make the devs reverse the changes entirely, which they aren't going to do and so is a waste of time.
AtomicUs5000
New member
Better ideas in general would come about if more people took this approach to expressing opinions about changes. If enough people do it, others will learn by example.
Last edited by a moderator:
Riamus
Well-known member
You know... learn by example could be an interesting addition to a hybrid model. If you are within LOS of another player, you gain a small bonus to experience in a skill related to what they are doing. So if they are sneaking and you can see them, you'll gain a little in a sneaking skill. Heh. It could be a fun addition to a game that would encourage teamwork.
AtomicUs5000
New member
Yeah, when I wrote that my mind slipped away in thought as well and that was the first thought. It's not an amazing idea, but definitely interesting and different. It suffers the similar flaws.You know... learn by example could be an interesting addition to a hybrid model. If you are within LOS of another player, you gain a small bonus to experience in a skill related to what they are doing. So if they are sneaking and you can see them, you'll gain a little in a sneaking skill. Heh. It could be a fun addition to a game that would encourage teamwork.
Back on topic of the water changes specifically though, I do wish things were more of a mix. Like I've said before, I want the struggle of having to deal with carrying water in a little container at first, but then I want to earn that reward of the more convenient dew collectors. Part of the reason why people argue their likes and dislikes in such a black and white manner might be because quite often when these changes come about, the changes themselves are black and white. When LBD switched to LBP, this change was black and white and many of the opinions were black and white. Some of us had thoughts that a hybrid system would be best but it was difficult to be heard as a shade of gray in between all that black and white. I'm finding it to be the same regarding this water change even though its significance is so small compared to that of a skill system.