Well, I have to say that my latest game ended with a very bad decision on the part of those who program the AI behavior during my beloved hoard night, specifically day 56 horde night.
I was stoked up and ready to test out all the painstaking improvements I had made to my base. Right off the bat, I got a Demolisher, and like always, I separated him from the other nearby zombies so that I could be careful to earn that red bag. First thing that was off, after I had his attention (by hitting him w/melee attack), I went to have some up close and personal time to fight and kill him. Instead of simply following me, he broke off the pursuit and started whacking a building!!!
I thought that this must be a glitch, I mean, an uninfected human is right there, on the ground with you, and just hit you by shoving his shovel into your face, and your going to just ignore him, and start attacking some random building? If that kind of defective AI is going to be the way zombies are programed from now un, 7dtd is headed directly for the uninstall/flush down the toilet list, composed of games I used to play.
Zombies must be programmed to come after me, no other priorities exist, nor should they. Killing the players character must always be priority #1.
I went back to the Demolisher guy, and poked him again. Once again, he took a swing at me, but then failed fo break off his 'oh so entertaining battle with a building' and went back to hitting a building rather than my character. After a third time of this, and taking hits from multiple other zombies that had now had time to catch up, I was forced to keep mr D with a clear path to my character, without having him have to take the extraordinary measure (that was never a problem before), of having to walk around a corner to pursue me.
This must not happen. Either the zombies are after me, or there being told to attrition my base. If my base is their target, game is over, simple as that. I spend many hours building my various bases/buildings, and if the developers now think to change the gameplay from the zombies always trying to attack the player over and above anything thls, this will not work.
Yws, the scene from TLOTR, the two towers, where the Orc's blow up a huge hole in the wall of helms deep was visually interesting and enjoyable, in a movie, it is not anything I want in my own private gaming time, much less when I have had to spend hours and hours building my base, home, castle.
Any way, I'll try to control my anger/disappointment with what ruined my latest game, and finish telling what else happened.
So there I was, on the ground, taking totally unneeded hits from multiple zombies, and finally got mr D to leave off his thrilling attack on a building and try to chase me back into the main avenue of attack that the hoard was coming from. I start taking ranged fire from a zombie sniper (a cop, using his extraordinary long ranged spit/fire). Still trying to earn that red bag, I put a torch tower between the cop and my character, so what happens? The cop hits mr D, and that triggers me D! No red loot bag for me, not to mention damage to my base, as an added insult/salting of the wound. Had this happened only once in lifetime of playing 7dtd, that would have been twice to many time to accept. Bur wait, there is more. All this took just a few minutes of real time, and then, right after I wiped out the offenders/healed my hurts, another D comes in, so another chance at a red bag. What happens, mr D is once again set off by another incident of friendly fire from yet another ranged attack by another cop. Twice in a row is not happenstance, nor is it a 'coincidence', rather, it is something that the programmers have worked hard to inflict what they want, into my personal gaming time.
For me, I'll be taking a break from 7dtd. I'll come back from time to time, to check and see if these behaviors have either been remover from the game entirely, or the came creation user interface is updated to allow players to customize their play experience to exclude this kinda thing, at least in their own private games.
I have long prided myself on playing as legit as I can (The one modification I made was for group spawning, not by some huge effort at editing the game, but just limiting the spawn points to two locations), in a doomed effort to make playing (and spawning in) as a group a viable thing, when a family or group of friends want to play together. I failed in that particular, because of the lack of loot to support a 3 man team. A very easy fix to this problem of single player over group playthroughs, would be to make all the quests/missions have instanced loot for all those in the party when the quest/mission is started. This would totally solve the lack of loot to make multiple player groups viable, so groups of friends trying to learn this great game could play together, learn together, and then progress to harder and harder difficulty settings
I still love this great game, but trying to attrition my base is not a thing I'm interested in having in my private games, and playing with friends in a party is still a thing I want to become viable, and I would prefer not to have to mod the game files to customize my playing experience, but rather just have an additional tab built into the game, that has multiple new fine tailoring options for those that want them.
If 7dtd had extra 'option packs' available for purchase, that fully documented what the options could/would change in the way the game plays out, that would be great. If they went further, and came out with a full blown expansion pack, with extended playability, that would be awesome.
For me at least, having many "option packs" available for purchase, say for $10/each, would be an ideal way for me to continue supporting the 7dtd franchise, while assuring that my concerns w/playing issues can be addressed and corrected, I would love that.
On that note, I would also love it if TFP could take a look over at the Paradox games forums, specifically at the badges/medals that show up of the forum posters accounts, which shows at a glance who has bought what within the franchise, that would be great.