PC A veteran players view on current vanilla

Pistols won't be enough to deal with zombies when radiateds show up, you need automatic or shotguns.


Nonsense. Pistols will be enough because when radiateds turn up in force then my pistol will be called "desert vulture" and it will have enough damage and magazine size for radiated. There are other ways to play than yours.

 
I want to say lvl 20 and day 15, but I won't be able to say for sure until I roll back to 1.0

Probably adventurer difficulty or whatever the default is.

I'm more or less the same, just str instead of agi build rn; I really don't seriously use the shotty until I get a pump. I could make a steel club but I've never liked the feel of it. Like it swings odd compared to the wooden club and bat. I dunno, I've never been fond of it, but then by that stage I am using guns more. The only pipe I ever use is the MG for "oh @%$#" moments and the odd deer. I've got a few legendary parts, but I am saving them. Very little steel. Yeah, I had noticed other than magazine bundles the quest rewards kinda suck now. I am still only t2 (maybe 3) with Rekt and only just visited Jenny.

I concur wholeheartedly. I've been saying the same thing forever. Yeah, grease monkey is terrible and I take it early as I can and then I get reset it once I've got the magazines. I feel forced to take it if I want to craft that gyrocopter sooner rather than later. Sooner being when it still actually makes a difference to my gameplay.


Yeah the fact you can reset the perks after you get the magazines is kinda silly, thats really exploiting the system there. Just goes to show how many perks serve no real purpose other than to get magazines faster. Grease Monkey being one fo the worse offenders of this. I only ever use the motorcycle in 7dtd, so I only need 45 magazines. I usually just rough it out without the perk.

I do wish vehicles though were at least 50% faster across the board, its not fun going to jen to get the next trader quest only for it to tell me its 4.2+ KM away. That takes for friggin ever on a bicycle which is all your going to have that early most likely. even low end hardware should be able to handle the vehicles being 50% faster. Bicycle with turbo would be about 11-12 m/s, minibike would be 13 m/s (though IMO minibike needs more than a 1 m/s speed increase over the bicycle maybe make it 15 m/s so it feels more like a major upgrade), Motorcycle would be what? 18-20 m/s in turbo mode? I don't remember how fast it is in vanilla its been that long since I've played a game of vanilla long enough to unlock the motorcycle as I usually get bored by day 7/8 due to a severe lack of content, and reason to keep going. Looting isin't any fun as the loot is terrible even in the desert, the book system sucks entirely with how it relys on stats and perks. Know what would be nice though? Why not bring back the old schematic system and have it alongside the magazines? So you have a chance just to find say a steel club schematic earlier? will only let you make Ql 1 till the magazine gets up there, but the damage diff would be quite noticable over that wooden club or baseball bat your currently using. I'd really like these for the guns/vehicles, as if you don't have points in the perk it takes forever to get magazines for it. Again not a MP problem its a big flaw of the stat system for single player.

 
want to say lvl 20 and day 15, but I won't be able to say for sure until I roll back to 1.0

Probably adventurer difficulty or whatever the default is.

I'm more or less the same, just str instead of agi build rn; I really don't seriously use the shotty until I get a pump. I could make a steel club but I've never liked the feel of it. Like it swings odd compared to the wooden club and bat. I dunno, I've never been fond of it, but then by that stage I am using guns more. The only pipe I ever use is the MG for "oh @%$#" moments and the odd deer. I've got a few legendary parts, but I am saving them. Very little steel. Yeah, I had noticed other than magazine bundles the quest rewards kinda suck now. I am still only t2 (maybe 3) with Rekt and only just visited Jenny.


Actually I really like the quest rewards now. I feel they are well balanced now (except for the magazine bundle being too much). There is a progression of money and ammo rewards in the quest tiers that feels about right. Sure, you sometimes get a reward selection where the best item is a single honey, but you get so many quest rewards in a typical game it can't be all christmas presents 😉

 
See now I hear this from a lot of other players, but I suck at abusing the trader as it seems I am always a day late and a dollar short for whatever I want to buy. I have trouble saving up enough to buy expensive items. I probably buy too many consumables and don't sell enough crap.

Now I feel the opposite about LP, I find it useful and I generally use it. I also hate the Bethsoft way (actually that orginated in Thief I think) and in Fallout4 I started using a mod to bypass it, I am so bored to tears with it. I mean the first time it is like "wow! this is cool!" and then the it gets to be old, by the time it gets to be ancient...well, you mod it away. I think the way 7DTD does it is adequate. I also see a big difference in how fast I go through picks with or without the skill.

Yeah, the weapons are a joke. A .22 LR would still rip through a zombies skull like butter. I use a headshot multiplier mod to deal with what I consider a bad design choice.


I mean don't get me wrong I find the skyrim/fallout style lockpicking minigame annoying too, and usually use a autowin mod in those games, as you still need to have the skill/perk high enough to event attempt it. But it'd be far better than the lockpicking vanilla has atm. Which is what I am comparing it to. I'd rather it be player skill, than praying to rngesus that I am not going to break 15 picks going from 5s remaining to unlocking, as I notice 90% of pick breaks happen in the final few seconds. Itd be less annoying if the timer didn't reset back to 25% time remaining when one breaks too, like it remembers exactly where you were, so you could brute force it. My record is breaking 10 picks instantly in the last 25% of time remaining on a lockpick, with the perk maxxed, thats when I realized the perk doesn't really do a damn thing, its still completly rng. Literally everytime I hit E to start the lockpick it'd just instantly fail in a split second. Fallout/skyrim style system would be FAR better than this. Darkenss Falls uses it, and even improves the lockpicking perk if you decide NOT to use the fallout/skyrim style minigame, as you can remove the lock pick minigame by removing the mod, however the base perk is far better in DF, with top levels of it lowering pick time by 60-80%, and making it so you rarely ever break a pick. Like I said, only thing I lockpick is cop cars, and the only reason I lockpick those is because I don't wanna deal with the 4-5 ferals that spawn from bashing it open. I also swear in a22 aka 1.0 one of those 4-5 ferals that spawns has feral sense, as i've always had one chase me for over 5 minutes real time across a city, I'd get far enough away I can't even see it anymore, and then 30-50 seconds later it'd catch up to me, while the rest usually give up chase pretty early. I usually have to kill it, or run half the city away to lose it, meanwhile all the rest do not chase far, and despawn by the time I get back.

Actually I really like the quest rewards now. I feel they are well balanced now (except for the magazine bundle being too much). There is a progression of money and ammo rewards in the quest tiers that feels about right. Sure, you sometimes get a reward selection where the best item is a single honey, but you get so many quest rewards in a typical game it can't be all christmas presents 😉


I'd still prefer balanced gear over no gear. Alot of quests I do has literally nothing really of value to me as a reward even early game. I basically never use guns till I am dealing with poi's full of ferals and up, and on day 8, I only really see ferals and up in t3 infested quests. Non-infested quests usually never have a single feral in them in the desert, so I can just 1-2 shot most of the zombies with melee attacks, I play on warrior btw. None of that easy mode adventurer 25% more player damage delt and 25% less player damage take garbage, why the hell was that made the default difficulty? Nomad was fine, both sides did full damage to each other, it just feels weird for the default difficulty to be what would be considered Easy. Nomad is normal, Warrior is Hard, Surv is Extra Hard, Insane is well, Insane. It was Nomad till a more recent alpha why did they lower it? was it because casuals kinda suck at the game? as that can be the only reason I see for it being lowered. Me? I've always played on warrior even the very first time I played the game back in 10.2.

I just miss when trader quests were fun in a21.2 and below as it was basically the excitement of "what goodies will I get offered for this quest?" where as now, every quest basically is the same exact reward, its just lost all excitement to it, as you know what your most likely going to get offered since like most of v1.0 the game has been made pretty static, even RWG was ruined in 1.0, with locked city sizes by biome and lack of trader diversity in biomes. Yes, I know your going to say "well hurr durr use a mod" just becase it can be modded doesn't mean it wasn't orignally a poor decision in the first place. TFP excuses way to many of their bad decisions with the excuse "Well just mod it out", TFP is the ONLY dev team i've seen pull this stunt too. Its also the only dev team i've seen remake the skill system like 4 times during the games early access period... Oh wait, its still early access its still alpha, as its not even beta state by the usual defenition of beta which is "feature complete but needs testing", 1.0 is deff not nearly feature complete its missing too much atm.

I'd also like the game options to be expanded in new/continue game to have stuff like the abilitiy to unlock rwg to make it completly random again, at the risk of messing with the story if you choose to do so, and to have options like being able to disable zombie rage, the way you can change their run/walk speeds, and whether feral sense is on or not. I'd like to see Zombie Rage, Zombie Digging, and a few other things be in the ingame options as disableable. Yeah I can use a mod to remove it, at least the zombie rage, but there is no valid reason why it can't be added to the options like feral sense and zombie move speed is. I bet most players would shut off the rage if they could do it from within the game, as its stupid when you hit a zombie and it suddendly goes nightmare speed in your face for a cheapshot, often with 0 actual attack animation as the animations are buggy as hell still without having proper limits set as to attack animations need to be unable to play until their stumble/get up animation is completly finished.

 
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Only way to make the game actually fun/difficult is to impose your own restrictions, or mod it, the vanilla experience has been rather poor for years. I for example will not buy books or magazies off a trader, has to be loot, or quest reward only. This stretches out the early game a little bit more, takes longer before you get overpowered. There is actually only a very small selections of things I allow myself to buy off the trader. Cooking Pot, Mods, Food/water, and stuff like Adv bellows, Anvil, Crucible etc. Other than those, I don't really buy anything else the trader sells. Early game I am tempted to buy duct tape or glue if they have it, but by day 2-3 I usually have 4 dew collectors going and have more water than I need, depends how lucky I get with duct tape/glue drops. Day 9 now, and I have like 50 Duct tape I can craft at will, and have like 4 stacks of boiled water just sitting in storage.

I get bored in 1.0 usually before day 7, as the loot sucks, traders suck, both scale far to slowly. I don't even really notice a diff between burnt forest and desert loot wise either. This game on day 9 I have a tier 1 Pistol, Tier 3 Double Barrel shotgun, and like a tier 3 pipe machine gun. Shotgun is self crafted. I wish traders gave gear for quests again, I do admit in a21.2 it needed some balancing as you shouldn't be getting steel tools from tier 2-3 quests, from tier 4-5 quests would make more sense though. I'm swimming in ammo but why waste it when my baseball bat does more damage than a bullet from most of the guns I have? The guns as a whole need a damage upgrade, like a gun should do AT MINIMUM the damage listed on the ammo, with higher tier's and better models of the gun getting a bonus on top. Would make 7.62 the defato best early game ammo thou for non-close range, as it has 42-47 base damage. Honestly only gun that sort of feels like it does the damage it SHOULD be doing is the shotguns, everything else just feels bad to use. Until you get to the top tier guns anyway.

Doing a t3 infested quest on day 6 is not a fun time when you have radiated bikers showing up, and the best gun you have is a pipe machine gun and a tier 1 pistol with 0 in the stat/perks for it as the stat system blows in single player and is way to limiting especially weapon wise. Preacher gloves kinda help wit this though, would help better if the game didn't fail at math consistantly. 60+20% is 72, not 67. I've tested damage, and the preacher gloves do not seem to be added to the right part of the damage formula, they should be on the end increasing the final number. It never matches up to what the damage SHOULD have been. my guess it is works like mods, and just adds 20% of the base weapon damage on the end, and it doesn't get multiplied by perks etc. Still a damage increase but a very minor one, since it doesn't multiply the final damage, just adds some flat damage on the end.




What I don't get is how you first say the game is not difficult enough unless one puts restrictions on the gameplay. But then you say guns should do more damage and "it is not fun doing an infested tier3 quest on day 6 and getting two radiated bikers"? What now? Is the game too easy or too difficult?

 
What I don't get is how you first say the game is not difficult enough unless one puts restrictions on the gameplay. But then you say guns should do more damage and "it is not fun doing an infested tier3 quest on day 6 and getting two radiated bikers"? What now? Is the game too easy or too difficult?


Well I didn't place any restrictions on combat, just mostly trader use, as if I was to go all in with the trader the game would be even more of a joke than it already is in vanilla since item progression is locked to magazines for the most part, having full access to those makes it stupid easy to get overgeared fast.

Also I never did really complain about zombie difficulty, its just kinda annoying to deal with radiated zombies that early when all you have is pipe guns, they just have to much health is all. I did kill them though, with some wood spike and melee/gun useage. Wooden spikes are great for stalling zombies and doing a decent bit of damage, can even kill non-ferals on their own, well unless its Big momma, the bowler or biker anyway. I always have some on my toolbar as they are great for slowing down zombies in a doorway so you can get some free shots on them, or need time to get away. I blame the stat system though for part of the problems with guns, I am sure they are fine once you have the stat/perks, the problem is, getting those stats and perks and not having it feel like you waste skill points to do so. As I said the stat/skill system really shows its major flaws when you play single player and nothing is being done to address those flaws, as some stats are just far more viable/useful than others. Its why I always go str early, I feel lockpicking is garbage, so I go str for miner 69'er to get steel tools fast, I usually have ql 1 steel tools by day 3-4. Only steel tool I make early is the pickaxe. Plus it has shotguns and clubs, both fairly good weapons, mind you shotgun is kinda garbage till you get the pump shotgun, thats the only problem with it. As the pipe shotgun is just trash due to its long reload time, and the same issue with the double shotgun, reload and the fact 2 shots is prob not even going to kill a feral if you somehow land all pellets on the head. Only time I pull out guns is when I have several zombies after me at once with 2+ of them being feral, otherwise I just melee.

 
Lots of subjectivity based on people's personal gamestyle, settings, and how 'they' want to play. I gave up long ago on developers adjusting games to suit how I want to play. I play within the confines of the game, and really appreciate games that have toggles, sliders and such on settings (and mods). Might as well enjoy life; you only get one (aside from you reincarnationists out there).

 
What I don't get is how you first say the game is not difficult enough unless one puts restrictions on the gameplay. But then you say guns should do more damage and "it is not fun doing an infested tier3 quest on day 6 and getting two radiated bikers"? What now? Is the game too easy or too difficult?
It can be both I guess. Some parts might be too difficult, some too easy.

Of course a lot of it comes down to personal preferences.

Myself, I hate bullet sponges, which is why I tend to play on lower difficulties. I thought default was 100%/100%, I guess I do up it a notch or two, but then I use a headshot mod that makes most any headshot 1 shot, 1 kill even on higher difficulty. I know the engine will never support large hordes and so making individual zeds tougher is the only viable choice, but I don't like it. I like my slow shambling Romero/TWD zeds. Before someone says, but yeah what about "big daddy" all the movies done after Romero as homage to Romero did their own wacky things; they don't count to me.

Now my recent bout with insane/nightmare, yes, you can make the game pretty hard. Now granted the guy in the vids I been watching has perfect situation awareness and reflexes I guess, because I have never seen him get hit. Me, some of it is getting old and slow but I swear zeds spawn right behind me and the first time they make a sound being when they are already eating my face. It is not for lack of experience or skill on my part.

 
See now I hear this from a lot of other players, but I suck at abusing the trader as it seems I am always a day late and a dollar short for whatever I want to buy. I have trouble saving up enough to buy expensive items. I probably buy too many consumables and don't sell enough crap.

Now I feel the opposite about LP, I find it useful and I generally use it. I also hate the Bethsoft way (actually that orginated in Thief I think) and in Fallout4 I started using a mod to bypass it, I am so bored to tears with it. I mean the first time it is like "wow! this is cool!" and then the it gets to be old, by the time it gets to be ancient...well, you mod it away. I think the way 7DTD does it is adequate. I also see a big difference in how fast I go through picks with or without the skill.

Yeah, the weapons are a joke. A .22 LR would still rip through a zombies skull like butter. I use a headshot multiplier mod to deal with what I consider a bad design choice.


I actually sell very little to the trader, I get almost all of my dukes from just quest rewards. I only buy food/water if I am desperate, which does not happen often. In fact my food bar rarely goes below 60%. First trader tier complete reward I take is always the bicycle, as I usually do not have one till then, the 2nd time I take the 5000 dukes, which on top of the 2000-5000 the base tier up awards, thats a easy 7000-10000 dukes right there. If you save up from previous quests you can have 15k for a crucible by the time you unlock tier 3 quests, I usually unlock t3 quests on day 6, so by day 6 I can already craft the endgame material, its why the game needs a tier above steel badly, and this tier of material has to only be avail in like the wasteland, with some special requirements to harvest it so its properly progression gated. Darkness Falls does this, titanium, plutonium and uranium is used in the top tier items, it only is avail in the wasteland, but the wasteland has a radiation death cloud that kills you in seconds if you do not have 100% radiation resist (Hazmat suit, Mods on armor, or top tier Powered armor) Its even cheaper to buy the crucible if you happen to have barter perks/buff items. I play with a 60 slot backpack mod and a 15 slot toolbar mod mainly, and even a 60 slot inventory is still too small to carry much back to the trader to sell. I've never exploited the trader by selling like stones, or crafted items to them in mass quantities to make easy dukes. I mean 6000 iron which if you have a steel pickaxe does not take that long to mine even with 0 in motherload just 4/5 miner 69'er, sells for 1200 dukes. There is stuff you can make that sells for thousands a stack that often aren't hard to make, don't know what this item is in a22 but its prob one of them. It usuallly gets price nerfed once its found out which one it is, or the stack size gets massivly lower so its far less profitable, as traders can only have 3 copies of a item, or 3 stacks before they will outright refuse anymore till they restock and cycle it out.

I actually exploit the trader far less than I could be, since I do not buy most things they sell, as I said first thing I buy is a cooking pot, then a steel tool part, just a single one for a ql1 steel pickaxe later, other than that I buy the odd mod, or maybe food/drinks, and thats about it, isin't really anything else I buy. I don't buy books or magazines from the trader either, I only accept them as quest rewards or in loot. If I was to fully exploit traders I'd have far higher craft skills. But at the same time, this means I get bored faster, so I don't buy those magazines/books from traders to slow down the progression craft wise. Might have to change this rule though in a22/1.0 as traders no longer give gear for quests and in a21.2 thats where alot of my equipment came from was the trader quests. Now that its gone, and looting is garbage even in the desert (Still only find pipe weapons on day 9 in t3 poi's in the desert). Means I am not going to find any real upgrades there, I might be forced to start buying magazines off the trader. Which i've never done yet.

It can be both I guess. Some parts might be too difficult, some too easy.

Of course a lot of it comes down to personal preferences.

Myself, I hate bullet sponges, which is why I tend to play on lower difficulties. I thought default was 100%/100%, I guess I do up it a notch or two, but then I use a headshot mod that makes most any headshot 1 shot, 1 kill even on higher difficulty. I know the engine will never support large hordes and so making individual zeds tougher is the only viable choice, but I don't like it. I like my slow shambling Romero/TWD zeds. Before someone says, but yeah what about "big daddy" all the movies done after Romero as homage to Romero did their own wacky things; they don't count to me.

Now my recent bout with insane/nightmare, yes, you can make the game pretty hard. Now granted the guy in the vids I been watching has perfect situation awareness and reflexes I guess, because I have never seen him get hit. Me, some of it is getting old and slow but I swear zeds spawn right behind me and the first time they make a sound being when they are already eating my face. It is not for lack of experience or skill on my part.


Naw that does happen, the zombies are coded to basically not spawn in the players view, so they often spawn to the side/behind you in the wild, and often close enough that by the time you realize one is there its already hit you as it spawned extremly close to you and didn't make a sound till it attacked, it happens to me all the time. Its really annoying too when you look around 360 degress see no zombie in sight/clip range, then second you turn back forward the way you were going you suddendly get hit when there was nothing there 5 seconds or less earlier. It just feels fake, kinda like the zombie rage system and how many cheapshots it allows the zombies to often land. Its worse with runners, as they often run INTO the player and glitch into you so you can't even hit them back. Its been something I been noticing once they allowed zombies to attack when moving, In old alpha's they had to stop every other animation before they could swing, this is not the case for the last few alpha's and it results in alot of cheap hits on the player some of them with the zombie having 0 attack animations as they don't play during the other animation, often happens when it stumbles towards you, it can hit you with 0 animation during the stumble, as its not programmed properly so it cannot start an attack animation while that one is playing. Darknes Falls has a mod as part of the overhaul that actually fixes this, and blocks zombies from attacking during their stumble animations since TFP seems to not wanna ever fix it. It looks a bit jank at times though, but it does help solve the cheapshot problem a bit.

 
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I actually sell very little to the trader, I get almost all of my dukes from just quest rewards. I only buy food/water if I am desperate, which does not happen often. In fact my food bar rarely goes below 60%. First trader tier complete reward I take is always the bicycle, as I usually do not have one till then, the 2nd time I take the 5000 dukes, which on top of the 2000-5000 the base tier up awards, thats a easy 7000-10000 dukes right there. If you save up from previous quests you can have 15k for a crucible by the time you unlock tier 3 quests, I usually unlock t3 quests on day 6, so by day 6 I can already craft the endgame material, its why the game needs a tier above steel badly, and this tier of material has to only be avail in like the wasteland, with some special requirements to harvest it so its properly progression gated. Darkness Falls does this, titanium, plutonium and uranium is used in the top tier items, it only is avail in the wasteland, but the wasteland has a radiation death cloud that kills you in seconds if you do not have 100% radiation resist (Hazmat suit, Mods on armor, or top tier Powered armor) Its even cheaper to buy the crucible if you happen to have barter perks/buff items. I play with a 60 slot backpack mod and a 15 slot toolbar mod mainly, and even a 60 slot inventory is still too small to carry much back to the trader to sell. I've never exploited the trader by selling like stones, or crafted items to them in mass quantities to make easy dukes. I mean 6000 iron which if you have a steel pickaxe does not take that long to mine even with 0 in motherload just 4/5 miner 69'er, sells for 1200 dukes. There is stuff you can make that sells for thousands a stack that often aren't hard to make, don't know what this item is in a22 but its prob one of them. It usuallly gets price nerfed once its found out which one it is, or the stack size gets massivly lower so its far less profitable, as traders can only have 3 copies of a item, or 3 stacks before they will outright refuse anymore till they restock and cycle it out.

I actually exploit the trader far less than I could be, since I do not buy most things they sell, as I said first thing I buy is a cooking pot, then a steel tool part, just a single one for a ql1 steel pickaxe later, other than that I buy the odd mod, or maybe food/drinks, and thats about it, isin't really anything else I buy. I don't buy books or magazines from the trader either, I only accept them as quest rewards or in loot. If I was to fully exploit traders I'd have far higher craft skills. But at the same time, this means I get bored faster, so I don't buy those magazines/books from traders to slow down the progression craft wise. Might have to change this rule though in a22/1.0 as traders no longer give gear for quests and in a21.2 thats where alot of my equipment came from was the trader quests. Now that its gone, and looting is garbage even in the desert (Still only find pipe weapons on day 9 in t3 poi's in the desert). Means I am not going to find any real upgrades there, I might be forced to start buying magazines off the trader. Which i've never done yet.
See now that is very interesting about Darkness Falls and how you feel about tiering and progression.

People rave to me about Darkness Falls and I'm like, it sounds terrible. I absolutely despise arbitrary tiers and hard gates.

What makes it so interesting though is that you and I tend to agree more often than not in various discussions over the years.

I guess we agree what's broken but not how to fix it lol.

T3 on D6 is pretty aggressive though. Especially with the daily limit. I assume you disable it.

You don't think you are grinding out quests like a madman and then saying, "Somebody stop me!" 

I rush the bicycle but then I slow down to probably like 2 quests a day, and then T5/T6 seems like 2 days a quest of course I am driving myself insane jack-assing all over the map from trader to trader and POI to POI.

Hmmmm...maybe I like the idea of the quests giving crap rewards so I can go back to ignoring them like the old days. It has been fun in my current playthrough not doing any quests at all, everything I've done in this first week has been driven by survival needs and construction of 1st base. 

 
Lots of subjectivity based on people's personal gamestyle, settings, and how 'they' want to play. I gave up long ago on developers adjusting games to suit how I want to play. I play within the confines of the game, and really appreciate games that have toggles, sliders and such on settings (and mods). Might as well enjoy life; you only get one (aside from you reincarnationists out there).
I agree. That's why in my original post I tried to not include things such as my difficulty level or personal play styles outside of what I felt were true criticisms of the balance of the fundamentals of the current vanilla. I really do think for many years TFP have had a lot of good or at least interesting ideas but poor solutions to how to balance them. 

 
Lots of subjectivity based on people's personal gamestyle, settings, and how 'they' want to play. I gave up long ago on developers adjusting games to suit how I want to play. I play within the confines of the game, and really appreciate games that have toggles, sliders and such on settings (and mods). Might as well enjoy life; you only get one (aside from you reincarnationists out there).
Well, it's pretty hard to be objective about it.

Still, you are right. I have to remind myself frequently that I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game over the years and I probably only payed like 10 bucks, even if I don't agree with a lot of the decisions made over the years, I have certainly gotten my entertainment for the price of admission and then some.

It is just in the nature of sandbox games that we will @%$# about their flaws, we tend to put many more hours in them and as they say "familiarity breeds contempt"

Take a triple A game like Days Gone or Dying Light where I have gotten like 120 hours (if that because Steam doesn't know when I went and watched TV with the wife for a few hours and then went to bed but forgot to shut the game down) out of them but paid probably $60 for and yet I think happy thoughts about them. They had a start and an end. I played through once or twice and put them aside. I didn't have a lot of time to sit and examine their flaws or think about their balance. Yet, the fact that they are finished products vs ongoing development might factor in as well.

 
Well, it's pretty hard to be objective about it.

Still, you are right. I have to remind myself frequently that I have gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this game over the years and I probably only payed like 10 bucks, even if I don't agree with a lot of the decisions made over the years, I have certainly gotten my entertainment for the price of admission and then some.

It is just in the nature of sandbox games that we will @%$# about their flaws, we tend to put many more hours in them and as they say "familiarity breeds contempt"

Take a triple A game like Days Gone or Dying Light where I have gotten like 120 hours (if that because Steam doesn't know when I went and watched TV with the wife for a few hours and then went to bed but forgot to shut the game down) out of them but paid probably $60 for and yet I think happy thoughts about them. They had a start and an end. I played through once or twice and put them aside. I didn't have a lot of time to sit and examine their flaws or think about their balance. Yet, the fact that they are finished products vs ongoing development might factor in as well.
You make an excellent point.  A lot of people want to have the game continue to add things and get better so they can play forever and not get tired of the game as if it was a service game like an MMO.  A big part of that is because the game has been in early access for so long and gotten many updates over the years.  But it is still just a regular game.  But without a real end to the game, people just keep staring over and that will make any game get stale.  And when something changes that people don't like, it just gets all the more frustrating because they have put so many hours into the game with the old way.  It is very different if you have played 50 hours and something changes versus playing for 1000 hours and something changes.

 
Overhaul mods always come up in these kinds of discussions, but I think it's probably not the balance of the mod that's important.
Some mods build on old systems, and the fact that they can look fresh against new versions shouldn't be underestimated.

I also create overhaul mods (although since Japanese is my first language, they're only popular among Japanese speakers).
My mods remove magazines from the game, so the more magazines become commonplace in the vanilla game and in many overhaul mods, the more the "absence of magazines" is cited as a reason for their high ratings.

My conclusion is that vanilla makes big changes every time to keep things from getting boring, so they get replaced with new elements before the balance is adjusted.

 
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