You've Stripped the Soul Out of 7 Days to Die

Annihilatorza

Annihilatorza

Scavenger

Dear Dev Team & Fellow Survivors,​

Let me start with a sincere thank you.
I've been playing 7 Days to Die since Alpha 6. I've lived through its evolution—bugs, rebalance passes, feature overhauls. This isn't anger; it's concern. Not a rage-fueled rant, but an honest attempt to highlight what’s been lost—and what desperately needs reconsideration.
I’m writing this because I truly believe: the soul of 7 Days is being erased. Unless we call it out, we’ll be left with a Borderlands-style looter shooter wearing a zombie mask.

Let’s break this down honestly:

1. Every Game Now Starts the Same (on Default Settings)​

No matter what world seed you use, every single run follows this exact pattern:
  • Spawn near a trader
  • Loot a few buildings
  • Craft a stone axe
  • Do the trader's quests
  • Run into the city
  • Search for magazines
  • Unlock the next trader
  • Repeat
Even when you unlock Trader 2, 3, or 4, the loop doesn’t change—it just grows in size. More quests, more loot runs, more POIs. By Day 30, you’ve seen everything. It’s not dynamic. It’s not survival. It’s a linear loop.
What happened to sandbox freedom?

2. You Removed Features Instead of Fixing Them​

Many systems that gave 7 Days depth and immersion were removed—not reworked, not improved—just deleted:
FeatureStatus
Smell systemRemoved in Alpha 19. Never replaced.
Water jarsRemoved in Alpha 20. Artificial progression cap.
Custom armor slotsReplaced by meta sets. No style, no creativity.
Farming in soilReplaced by crop plots only—makes no sense.
Temperature effectsNerfed. No real heatstroke or freezing.
Rain, wetness, stormsJust blurry visuals—no gameplay effects.
Random worldgen varietyFlattened. Biomes are samey, linear, and predictable.
These systems were core to survival gameplay. They forced the player to adapt. Their removal didn’t streamline the experience—it gutted the tension that once defined the game.

3. The New Skill System Forces One Playstyle​

Progression is now entirely locked behind random magazine drops.
You no longer level up by doing. You don’t improve by surviving. You improve by looting.
  • Want to be a base builder or a crafter? You’re useless without specific magazines.
  • Want to mine or farm in peace? You can’t progress without going to the cities or doing quests.
This punishes alternative playstyles:
  • Miners
  • Farmers
  • Base-bound crafters
  • Non-combat builders
Sandbox survival means letting players choose their path. This is the opposite of that.

4. Survival Is Nearly Nonexistent in Default Settings​

Let’s be honest: survival mechanics are almost cosmetic now.
Survival SystemCurrent Status
Thirst & HungerEasily bypassed with vending machines/canned food.
TemperatureNullified with biome badges. No tension.
Shelter & stormsStorms are just blurry visuals. No danger.
WetnessNo gameplay consequence. Just screen clutter.
These systems used to matter. You had to prepare. You had to plan. Now they’re just background noise.

5. By Day 30, There’s Nothing Left To Do​

Once you hit Tier 5 quests:
  • You’re god-tier
  • You’ve looted every POI
  • There’s no fear, no pressure, no reason to build smarter
  • You have every mod, every gun, every tool
The loop collapses.
You’re left with a base full of loot, surrounded by zombies that no longer matter, in a world that no longer challenges you.
No weather risk.
No temperature risk.
No thirst or hunger pressure.
No meaningful decisions.

6. Crops, Crafting, Clothing — All Gated​

This is where the illusion of sandbox really breaks down.
  • You can’t plant seeds in the ground. You must use crop plots—even on fertile soil.
  • You can’t craft a forge without the right magazine. Want to roleplay as a blacksmith? Good luck.
  • You can’t wear what you want. Everyone wears the same armor because stats outweigh style.
This isn’t creative freedom. This is railroaded progression.

Update: 2.0 Makes Everything Worse​

The recent 2.0 update ("Storm's Brewing") doubled down on all the problems above.
You’re now forced into a rigid biome progression system:
  • Loot is capped per biome
  • You must earn badges to progress to the next biome
  • Badges control whether you find better loot, not skill or survival
It’s no longer “survive the apocalypse.”
It’s “complete the challenge badge and graduate.”
You’ve replaced survival sandbox with quest-gated loot progression. It’s like WoW with zombies. Nothing says "immersive survival" like artificial badge challenges and loot locks.
Storms? They’re just worse screen clutter. They add zero gameplay pressure—just more fog and noise that gets in the way.

Final Thoughts – Let Us Survive Again​

You once had a survival game that let players:
  • Be who they wanted
  • Play how they wanted
  • Endure the world, not just run a loot loop
Now we’re forced into:
  • Loot
  • Trader
  • Badge
  • Repeat
No one is asking for perfection. We’re asking for freedom. For variety. For systems that make us think, plan, and sweat.
Let us:
  • Starve
  • Freeze
  • Struggle
  • Craft
  • Thrive
Don't turn this into another linear progression RPG. Don't turn it into another lifeless looter-shooter.
Please—give us back the survival game we’ve loved for over a decade.

With respect,
Annihilator
 
<Way too well formatted to not be AI-gen> / <Mostly feels like actual thoughts from a player>
You're confusing an innocent little virus here, you mean poster, you!

Didn't read every word, but I agree with the sentiment ... :)
 
theFlu said:
<Way too well formatted to not be AI-gen> / <Mostly feels like actual thoughts from a player>
You're confusing an innocent little virus here, you mean poster, you!

Didn't read every word, but I agree with the sentiment ... :)
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I do agree with alot of this but it's probably ai generated. But still I agree.
 
I do use AI to fix my voice dictation but its all my own ideas and thoughts, I have been sitting on this since Alpha 21, I just cant play it like this anymore and I love the game so much. I spent over 1600 hours playing, building pois and more.
 
Last edited:
I could kill for
  • alpha 16 style generation survival and harshness, biomes, etc
  • Mix of learning by doing, reading and magazines
  • Book (not magazines) system of now
  • Mining of alpha 16
  • Water from afterlife
  • Weapons, player mechanics of Izzios mods
  • POIS of now
  • Wildlife of now but in all biomes so it's more difficult
  • Melee weapons types, power attacks and added stuff like kicking and blocking
  • Armor of now with a family's of each armor types (like althele light mid and heavy) and underclothes of alpha 20
  • Traders being a luxury like alpha 16/15 but with quest too do but the only reward is money
  • Food sickness from alpha 18/19
  • Critical effects of now plus more
  • Temperature of alpha 15
  • Zombie types of now plus a few more
  • Better general tree for everyone to use but if you want to invest into other trees then you can.
  • The creepiness of alpha 15/alpha 7/lower
  • Biomes of alpha 16/lower WITH BIOME PROGRESSION
And more
 
NiteVIper said:
you had to collect 4 different parts (I think) to piece together a single gun
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Quite likely, but what you describe here wasn't the good part of the system. The good part was twofold:
1) having a "permanent" weapon that you'd grow attached to and could
2) upgrade; whenever you found a new weapon, you'd check it for good parts and get a little happiness from finding an upgrade for your old faithful.
 
theFlu said:
Quite likely, but what you describe here wasn't the good part of the system. The good part was twofold:
1) having a "permanent" weapon that you'd grow attached to and could
2) upgrade; whenever you found a new weapon, you'd check it for good parts and get a little happiness from finding an upgrade for your old faithful.
Click to expand...
Yeah, that's right, let's say you had a mixed level 3/4 gun and you found another 3/4 gun but the 4s on the second gun could be taken off and swapped with the 3s on the first one to give you a level 4 gun instead of a roughly 3.5 gun. (If I'm remembering correctly lol)
 
You are running trader quests - those ruin the game. I never do them, and I won't run or join a server until they release an option to disable them. They are completely unbalanced and result in the tedious grind you describe. What I am currently doing is playing with feral sense on at night, and delete all when I die (with no loot respawn or airdrops). I also play on 25% xp with no walking zombies.

Try making the game more of a challenge, and it will be more enjoyable.
 
NiteVIper said:
Yeah, that's right, let's say you had a mixed level 3/4 gun and you found another 3/4 gun but the 4s on the second gun could be taken off and swapped with the 3s on the first one to give you a level 4 gun instead of a roughly 3.5 gun. (If I'm remembering correctly lol)
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That is correct and I miss it. Like picking between the sawed off or normal shotgun.

Imagine if they kept if what they could do like covenverstions
 
Annihilatorza said:
Many systems that gave 7 Days depth and immersion were removed—not reworked, not improved—just deleted:
FeatureStatus
Smell systemRemoved in Alpha 19. Never replaced.
Water jarsRemoved in Alpha 20. Artificial progression cap.
Custom armor slotsReplaced by meta sets. No style, no creativity.
Farming in soilReplaced by crop plots only—makes no sense.
Temperature effectsNerfed. No real heatstroke or freezing.
Rain, wetness, stormsJust blurry visuals—no gameplay effects.
Random worldgen varietyFlattened. Biomes are samey, linear, and predictable.
Click to expand...
Smell system - Replaced with feral sense. The smell system required too much overhead to be playable on low-spec hardware, and TFP did not want to alienate a large part of their player base.

Water jars - extra container system that existed ONLY for water. It didn't make sense. And the way it did function completely obliterated survival aspects of the game.

Farming in soil - Removed because the ground mesh system it relied on was no longer functional with improvements to the overall biome mesh system. As such was replaced with the crop plots. Which actually simplified farming quite a lot.

Temperature effects - Removed because the old system was extremely broken. A Work in Progress item still, that was not ready for 2.0. It has been stated that it will return.

Rain, wetness, storms - This was only wetness. It was extremely basic. Also removed with the temperature effects for the same reason.

Random worldgen variety - Stabilized for better map generation with fewer map errors and issues.
 
Agree with the OP, generally speaking. I'll take sandbox simulation over linear RPG any day.

But -- and I hate to sound like a broken record -- but much of what the OP is complaining about has either already been fixed/reverted by various mods, or could be.

And before anyone says, "I shouldn't have to resort to mods!": Yeah, you absolutely should.

Why? Because TFP put a lot of effort into making the game incredibly moddable and customizable. Literally, we are meant to mod 7DTD into whatever we want.
 
Adam the Waster said:
Can you show me where you found this so I can share it with others?
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We were talking about it in Discord and Jugg let us know that it's being worked on.

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