PC 12 years and THIS is the big 1.0?
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InfiniteWarrior
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Controversial and touchy subject, I know, but I picked the game back up with A21 and immediately noticed the division in the community over old and new systems. I wasn't familiar with the water bottle collection system, etc. as I hadn't played it since it first hit Steam. It soon became obvious that there was a tug of war going on between the devs and a minority of players who "exploit" systems the very same as a minority "exploited" Skyrim's systems by spending their precious lifetime crafting hundreds of iron daggers to artificially inlfate their smithing skill.
Well, originally, I'm sure it was a pretty creative feedback loop. Players would come up with some creative solution to a problem and TFP would institute a way to thwart it, e.g. tunneling zombies, likely making the game a much better game in the process. Players inspiring devs and vice versa. Lately though, I get the impression its become highly detrimental, someone actually describing it as a "death spiral" for the game. Honestly, I'd have to go along with that. Far too much attention is being paid to coming up with ways to minimize resources to practically nothing, imo, supposedly to make the game more challenging or difficult when my experience with it since picking it up with A21 has been tedium and drudgery for the most part, especially early game.
I've extensively tested it with and without mods such as the jar mod that reinstitutes the bottle collection system and, now that I've tried that mod out, guaranteed I wouldn't play the game at all without it myself, not so that I could have an infinite supply of glue but because it's way more fun and immersive, for lack of a better term, than the dew collector system, which now requires yet more expensive mods to produce a decent supply even of drinking and cooking water. The reason for the change is obvious, but the simple fact is the vast majority of players won't be playing it to "exploit" its systems. Speaking of exploits, speed runners accomplish their speed runs by learning, knowing inside-out and "exploiting" a game's systems and bugs. By the same token, players who choose to craft hundreds of iron daggers to artificially inflate their smithing skill will find ways to turn any kind of system TFP chooses to implement to their advantage. Meanwhile, people who just want to just kick back, relax and enjoy the game are being penalized for what said minority is doing.
They'll change the systems. They'll change the systems again. In fact, I imagine they'll be changing the systems for the duration of the game's lifetime because I honestly don't think they get that. Rather, I get the distinct impression, they're watching how streamers and YouTubers min-max the game and are designing the game around those min-max playstyles, which harms its appeal to the wider audience they might otherwise have aboard.
n2n1
Well-known member
Don 't be ridiculous . Joel and the people who "had a light burning in their chest" are no longer working on the game. They themselves said that they want the game to be understandable and accessible to "everyone" - that is, there is a justification/stupefying of the gameplay. They just do what is in demand.
gamerpaddy
New member
anyone remember making rebar frames, covering them with wood and pouring concrete then wait til it solidifies before it became stable?
or farm plots on soil which you can fertilize for more yield
or dead zombie corpses you need to get rid of to stop others from climbing ontop or slow you down
its way too simplified since the first console port, let alone today.
or farm plots on soil which you can fertilize for more yield
or dead zombie corpses you need to get rid of to stop others from climbing ontop or slow you down
its way too simplified since the first console port, let alone today.
Yeah, it is an overused argument by whiteknighters.
The fact is anybody who is in this to make a living is making the game they think the consumers want.
There is a name for the guy who makes the game HE wants; starving artist.
I don't understand the people who feel the need to try to shut down people giving feedback just because they disagree and feel like everyone needs to be nice to everyone else all the time. To me they are ruder douchebags than the person they are criticizing and hypocrites to boot. Part of the early access agreement is that the devs are supposed to take feedback from players. Good or bad.
Yes, most of us who have been around a while have gotten a lot of hours of enjoyment out of the game. It is still under development. That means it should still be open to feedback. We will stop complaining when we stop caring.
Anyway, being an early dew collector hater (and I still think it is stupid that we can't get dirty water from water sources) I have to say in 1.0 with all the upgrades it is quite nice. I only even have 1 and I haven't made use of my ability to get water from modlet since the first week. I haven't looked at the recipes lately, but I suspect they got a balancing pass and use less glue now, will see when I start cranking out T3 QL6 gear.
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InfiniteWarrior
New member
Yes, I know. It was gifted me by a friend on Steam. I played it for few hours and uninstalled it. Just struck me as impossible without friends also playing it with you and that particular friend was more into WoW at the time. Heard good things about A21 and decide to give it another try. I started and restarted the game, essentially due to the tedium and drudgery experience. Then I realized, "Hey. This is an alpha so test it like its an alpha" and have derived most of my own "fun" with the game doing just that: testing the vanilla experience with and without mods and, especially, testing community complaints about it trying to figure out what the big foofaraw is all about when it's a video game for heaven's sake, not a global crisis.
It gets fun for me personally when most of that tedium and drudgery are out of the way and I'm into the fun stuff, which just doesn't even show up until much later in the game. It's not at all surprising to me that everyone I've seen play it blitzes through those teir 1 odd jobs (I refuse to call them "quests") just to get their hands on the bicycle when it doesn't take long to unlock if you're just invested in the vehicle skill, for example. There are so many incrementally increasing skills in the trees, though, it makes no sense to spread your points out thinly enough to cover all that are required just to start having a little fun with the many toys. (And does anyone know why Master Chef is in the strength tree, btw?)
All those timers that can be sped up by spending points in the skill tree have eaten up too much of my own real and precious lifetime. 16 real life minutes to boil a few bottles of virtual tea? Really? Sure, you can do other things if you have the workbenches and skills to do them in the meantime, provided RNG is magically on your side, but early game has involved an awful lot of just drumming my fingers on the desk and rolling my eyes.
If TFP really want to appeal to a wider audience, they'll streamline those skill trees so overspecialization isn't a concern. Otherwise, mods, mods and more mods and/or don't play the game at all are the way to go, afic. There is no in between. I think there's a great, bare gameplay loop there, but that's about it thus far. Ergo, I can't and don't in good conscience recommend it to anyone else, though I honestly hope it succeeds beyond TFP's wildest expectations because there's an old school charm to it I find immensely appealing myself.
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InfiniteWarrior
New member
I can envision those particular systems working side by side. It'd take a good deal of balancing, but most of the balancing is already in place, methinks, considering how hard it is to come by the mods for them. I'd eliminate the possibility of crafting jars. Players who choose to use them will wind up with enough just getting them back after the avatar drinks. They're consumed when making glue, which makes sense. Why would anyone want to drink from a water bottle with glue residue in it?
There should be more ways than just the vendors to get those mods, though. I think I've surprisingly picked up a filter looting a destroyed dew collector only once in hundreds of hours of gameplay, so that's probably a little too rare an occurence. Some prominent players are talking about making a mod to craft the mods for the dew collector. Provided the necessary items are sufficiently scarce, that would make jar collection more viable in the meantime and both camps of the controversy would be satisfied.
n2n1
Well-known member
Well, at least decide - what are they doing?
Are "developers make the game they want" (as he put it earlier) or are trying to make money?
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If we compare with the movie industry: 3rd rate directors and actors need to take every job they get offered to make a living. But Kubrick, Spielberg, Villeneuve, Cameron or actors like Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks, they do movies they want. Sure, they all want their movie to be liked and successful, and they might even make compromises for that, or not.
I would guess this here is similar. 7D2D was successful enough that they could continue to make the game they want. Obviously they for example implemented features to make it easier for new players, like the intro quests, but intro quests can be ignored. They made default difficulty quite easy, but there are other difficulty settings they themselves might find right.
On the whole they still could be making the game they want to play themselves but also compromise to make the game more appealing to everyone. Not all questions have a clear answer of yes and no.
I would guess this here is similar. 7D2D was successful enough that they could continue to make the game they want. Obviously they for example implemented features to make it easier for new players, like the intro quests, but intro quests can be ignored. They made default difficulty quite easy, but there are other difficulty settings they themselves might find right.
On the whole they still could be making the game they want to play themselves but also compromise to make the game more appealing to everyone. Not all questions have a clear answer of yes and no.
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It's generally a compromise. My point though was that it shouldn't matter one way or another when we are sharing our feedback on games. I am sick of hearing "well it's the devs game and they will make it how they want and not to suit you" yeah, yeah, we all know that. It is a really pointless statement. Those same people still tend to think their opinions are always somehow more valid than everyone elses.
Here isn't so bad compared to some other games on Steam, where the rabid fanbois will jump on you in a heartbeat "How dare you make a suggestion that the devs precious time might be taken away from something I consider more important. "
I agree this is too simple an answer. Though I think if something is eventually a dead-horse topic maybe nobody has the energy anymore to cite reasons why a chance has been made or why it could be beneficial to the game. Sometimes bringing up reasons is ignored anyway even though words like "There was absolutely no reason to..." started the discussion. Mistakes and tempers flaring happen on both sides of the divide.
Riamus
Well-known member
Not sure what you're even trying to say here. "The developers" in what I said include anyone in charge of the development process and even though Joel isn't still doing the active development, I'm sure he still says yes or no to things. Also, developing the game that they want can include being accessible to everyone or being something players will like while still sticking to an overall design goal that they like. Just about every design choice (like removing LBD) will have people who like it and people who don't. They aren't going to please everyone and shouldn't try. They can either just stick to what they want, or they can compromise some, or they can make something they feel more people will want. But each of these is a choice based on how they want to develop the game. I didn't say they will make the game the same way they originally envisioned it. Plans change. They'll see how people play and adjust their plans accordingly. But in each case, they will still make decisions based on what they want to do (even if it's a compromise or a change based on feedback). They aren't required to make a game that any given player wants.
It may sound like that and maybe even some posts do that, but it goes both ways and more often in the direction of the person who hates something shutting down the person who likes it rather than in the way you're meaning. I just recently had a reply to my thoughts about a topic that complained because I was giving an opinion. Of course I was giving an opinion. But because I disagreed, they complained about it because they didn't want to hear a different opinion. Just because someone disagrees doesn't mean they are "shutting down" anyone. Do some posts go too far? Sure. But the majority are just giving peoples thoughts on a topic. And just because someone supports a particular design choice or change doesn't invalidate their opinion. Am I wrong because I think that the changes for 1.0 are overall good changes? Am I wrong because I hate LBD or think magazines are at least okay, though they could use some more work? Am I wrong because I was happy jars were removed? Of course not. And neither is the person who has the opposite opinions.
InfiniteWarrior
New member
There are a number of other posts in general discussion questioning the wisdom of tying tier progression to specific vendors in specific biomes in RWG, if not Navezgane/story mode. That's about the only thing I think they might want to carefully reconsider before it goes any further. Biome "progression" is essentially already in place as the biomes have varying degrees of difficulty and loot stages. Nothing else really to be done there, imo. Players can visit them if and whenever they like. Tying tier progression to them and specific traders, otoh, takes the "r" right out of "rwg," rendering it more or less pointless. The way to go there, imo, would be to reserve the linearity for Navezgane/story mode and cordone off RWG freeplay as its own thing. "Story mode" and "RWG mode" (or a rose by any other name) could just have their own menu items on the start screen. Perhaps, the story mode could still be played with other players, though I've no idea how they're going to pull that off when BGS couldn't. I'm pretty sure that's why there's no group tier progression on "quests" anymore. You can do them together, sure, but only the "team leader" will get credit for doing them and that just smacks too much of Fallout 76 for my taste. BGS couldn't figure out how to make that happen in time and under budget, if at all, and everyone playing it shares a world, but not quest instances, If TFP does 7 Days the same way, they're essentially copying an unresolved issue from another game. 7DTDs is not a MMO or even a MMO/SP hybrid, but has historically done online connectivity much the way it used to be done and as John Carmack himself has gone on record saying it should be done. Just keep story mode and RWG mode separate from one another and that issue won't rear its ugly head.
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This is outdated information. All players in a team get credit aka progression points again, but the default setting is that only 4 quests per day give progression points. (Actually first the default was 3, which I thought was the better value to balance out single player with multi player progression).
How is that? When I stay with Rect in the forest he will readily give me higher and higher quests when I have progressed. The only problem is be that tier4 and especially tier5 buildings won't appear in the forest
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InfiniteWarrior
New member
Gotcha. Story mode will prove a little different, though. The quests won't be random stuff to do, but advance the storyline as well. To save a lot of headaches that don't need to happen, I'd still keep story mode/Navezgane and RWG completely separate.
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The danger is certainly there that they adjust traders to follow the story mode in the future. And it still seems in the cloud how much of the story and related quests will be added to RWG.
Much depends on implementation though. The game is full of features and progression you can ignore if you really want (with exceptions)
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InfiniteWarrior
New member
That's why I think none of it should be. Just let RWG be the "freeplay" mode everyone will go for once finished with story mode because I very much doubt there's a way to allow every player on a team to go through the dialogue with NPCs, especially if their are different choices and consequences to that dialogue. (And if there isn't, it won't be a RPG, afic.)
I'd be using Jedi Outcast as a template of inspiration for SP vs MP gameplay rather than Fallout 76 or similar were I TFP. I get he impression they want to get in on the "in-game store"...stuff...that has driven most of us away from the triple As and I sincerely hope they don't, but the game is not a MMO per how users connect with one another on community run servers as opposed to a central server.
I don't think there will be much ado with choices, dialogues or consequences. Roland often tried to curb any expectations that the story would be anything like in an RPG, or even MMO. And he listened in on developer conferences, he would know a lot more of their plans than anyone else here.
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