Adam the Waster
Hunter
But for real, the forest is such a peaceful area for the wrong reasons. God knows how long it's been sense the outbreak, nature should have taken over and be another danger to face
PC V2.0 Storms Brewing Dev Diary
- Thread starter Crater Creator
- Start date
Khalagar
Survivor
You can, if you are there, but there's not much else you can do. For example, I was coming back from a t5 POI and a storm hit while I was in the middle of nowhere. I had nothing i could do besides just dig down and put a block above me then sit AFK for 2 hours in game
I didn't have the medkits to waste heal tanking it, and there were no POI or anything nearby, and you can't drive well during storms so it was a pretty boring 2 hours sitting afk in a 1x1 dirt cave, not to mention I was too encumbered to even pick up anything else etc. I just alt tabbed until I heard the storm end
I love the storm visuals, but they aren't super fun to interact with as there *is* no real interaction with them. It's just "avoid engaging with this mechanic or take damage"
TBF the sandstorm in Conan and storms in Icarus are similar so it's not the end of the world to sit AFK for 5-10 minutes, I'm just explaining why a lot of gamers are losing their collective minds over it. Gamers tend to not take mild inconviences well
On the brighter side, I feel like Robotic Turret was maybe buffed? I haven't done hard testing on it, but it seems to actually be able to kill stuff with a more reasonable amount of ammo now which is nice. It still can't hold a candle to an unperked shotgun, but tbh that could just be the shotgun still being wildly over powered lol
KirillWright
Refugee
It would be nice to have an extra chance to drop bags of loot (interesting loot) when interacting with storms.
Riamus
Hunter
I wouldn't really consider the forest to be dangerous in real life is you are used to loving in the country. But I do agree that now animals in the first would be nice. I do miss seeing wolves and bears.
You want to loot the storm? j/k
khzmusik
Hunter
I would prefer an "acclimation" mechanic. Initially, you suffer the biome effects as you do now, but the longer you stay in that biome, the more acclimated you will be to its effects (health would drain slower, etc.). Eventually you suffer no negative effects from the biome at all.
This could be a reason to bring back the weather-related armor mods, like insulated liners. They could help with acclimation, but not eliminate it, so it wouldn't be a huge deal if people could give them to other players. If that's too easy, they could help by reducing damage over time, but also reduce the speed of acclimation - so if you got a 10% DOT reduction, you'd have to spend 10% longer in the biome.
In this mechanic, there would be no smoothies and no challenges. It would feel more realistic, and less like earning a Boy Scout badge from your scoutmaster.
Though, I do like the idea of surviving a horde night in a biome being a requirement.
Adam the Waster
Hunter
I mean yeah because we are more or less of civilization also navezgane is or has a national park. And sense they probably eat zombies, they would kinda see us as food too.
EvilPolygons
Survivor
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
Shakespeare predicted the Internet.
HammerDano
Scavenger
I have stayed out of this conversation until now...2.0 just launched. I have not seen/experienced all the new content yet. It seems a lot of people are upset this update actually was an update, not some reskins and a progression rework. I think a lot of the PC base want the game to stay the same, but also, be "more". So far I like the survival aspects added to the game. IT does change the game to a point, where, I understand those who feel like it is not the same game. I think some people are in their feels because they are not living in the moment...they are trying to do the old min/max rush start and can't. The perks have changed and just taking what you always did doesn't work as good as it did...yup...personally I like that I have to figure out what works well and what is synergistic.
It probably would help IF there was some Idea about how long the future updates will take...to a point...I wish you guys could pay more than lip service, to the fact that TFP earned their reputation with this community. Some of you band together here and only want to talk about the positive...but, there has been a lot of negatives. The pacing of development being the biggest complaint for most...outside of this place of course.
It probably would help IF there was some Idea about how long the future updates will take...to a point...I wish you guys could pay more than lip service, to the fact that TFP earned their reputation with this community. Some of you band together here and only want to talk about the positive...but, there has been a lot of negatives. The pacing of development being the biggest complaint for most...outside of this place of course.
EvilPolygons
Survivor
How exactly are you supposed to "engage" with a hailstorm or a tornado? I don't know about you, but when tornado sirens start going off where I live, there's no "interaction" going on. I'm heading to the center of my house and taking cover. Because I don't want to die.
Unlike zombies, severe weather actually exists in real life. We all know how it works. The only engagement possible when it comes to bad weather is preparation. That's pretty much it.
I don't know what kind of loot zombies would actually drop, because they don't exist. I do know that the only "loot" a severe thunderstorm drops are hailstones big enough to bust out your windshield if you forget to park your car in the garage.
Kalex
Refugee
I don't think it was a good change, but I also played with mods that made denser forests in previous alphas. A forest should look like a forest. Hell there are city parks with more trees in it than I am seeing in the game. I have yet to see ANY denser areas in game. 3 trees is the max I have seen clustered together.There was a change, but a good one.
The forest biome was same and same everywhere we went around from god knows which alpha.
I think it was faatal that said they gave a bit of kick of it, by making it not consistent, as we know it so far from the beginning, by giving it some dense forest areas and empty ones, like some sort of meadows.
There is a guy here in the forums that suggested if it is possible to make some dense forest places, which could be pretty interesting in the night time (fingers crossed for bears and wolfs in these areas).
Me and the guys that we do a playthrough now have a designated part of the forest biome that we plant with every seed of tree, we wanna do a horde night there, on foot if possible with proper preparation and enough ammo (we do a nightmare, props to our hardware that gives us the chance to do it).
A one thing that I bet not only me, but also lots of us miss is the danger in the night in forest biome, like bears, wolfs, even storms (why not ?)
EvilPolygons
Survivor
I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd imagine that's probably fixable with some simple biomes.xml tweaks.
Riamus
Hunter
Yes, it is.
As far as trees, I have a lot of trees all around the forest, with groups of around 6-8 in many places. There are open areas, but it looks a lot more realistic than before. No, it isn't a "forest", but it is a lightly wooded area. Even before, it wasn't a forest. The game can't support enough trees for a forest for console or any lower end computers.
Double G
Survivor
I'll tell you as someone that has a computer that can handle it, the latest mod that makes forests more dense is a frame tanker.
I don't know if there are any coding tricks to make dense forests be more performance friendly, but I know for sure the mod ain't doing it.
Mods are great, but if many of the popular mods were actual vanilla features...from visual weirdness to performance degradation - a lot of players would probably not be very happy.
As for Redditors and the like complaining more now with 2.0...it's the same as it ever was. And it really has nothing to do with 7 Days To Die as much as it has to do with people in general. Complaining seems to become a bit of a hobby for a lot of people. I don't know about you, but I've gotten tired of complaining about things I engage in that are voluntary. If something leads me to a point of complaining a lot...I stop engaging with it.
I don't know if there are any coding tricks to make dense forests be more performance friendly, but I know for sure the mod ain't doing it.
Mods are great, but if many of the popular mods were actual vanilla features...from visual weirdness to performance degradation - a lot of players would probably not be very happy.
As for Redditors and the like complaining more now with 2.0...it's the same as it ever was. And it really has nothing to do with 7 Days To Die as much as it has to do with people in general. Complaining seems to become a bit of a hobby for a lot of people. I don't know about you, but I've gotten tired of complaining about things I engage in that are voluntary. If something leads me to a point of complaining a lot...I stop engaging with it.
Roland
Community Moderator
But let's turn things back around so we're not ranters ranting about the ranters who love to rant.How are you enjoying 2.0 so far? ^_^
Anyone else? Anyone want to chime in? <3
I'll give my and my crew's report:
Biome Hazards: B+ The hazardous effects give real character to the biomes and are just an awesome way to represent crossing the border from one to the other. My team consists of me, my brother, and my Mom and while knocking out the badge is okay in single player it was a very cool cooperative experience. Helping each other find the mushrooms and spot the burnt zombies and then again in the desert for aloe vera and plague spitters was as rewarding and team building as everything else in 7 Days to DIe. The badge rather than some other icon doesn't really bother me because I don't stare at the icon for hours after gaining it but having it be a type of gear rather than a badge would definitely make it be more immersive. We would like to see a more involved process that takes game-time days to acclimate to the biome rather than a real-time 20 minute timer. Quests in the biome, survive a horde night in the biome, farm and harvest crops in the biome, etc. Extending the smoothie timer in connection with this would be great.
Storms: A- We love them. We have not yet experienced a situation where we weren't close enough to a POI or a border to get out of the storm. Never once have we had to dig a hole and cover up with a block and go AFK. I'm sure that situation could occur and believe the reports of others but for us there are enough wilderness POIs to get to so far. It makes sense to take cover from a storm and they add to the ambience of the environment in a positive way. That being said, our team loves progression mechanics and we would absolutely love ways to mitigate the damage from storms to be able to remain out in them. The smoothies could be one way to give them extra usage. Armor mods could be another way. I'd love a melee weapon mod that would grant storm immunity for 10 seconds after each kill. Vehicle mods to improve storm handling would be great.
WIlderness Spawns: A We have all noticed and commented on the general increase of roaming biome spawn zombies. It's great needing to clear out the zombies in locations we arrive at once again. We haven't seen this level of outside activity since before sleepers were introduced so its been really fun. For an A+ we would like to see a slight adjustment in the frequency of the spitter. We don't want fewer outdoor zombies but just a bit fewer of the spitter.
Biome Progression: A- Like I said, we like progression mechanics and have a friendlier attitude towards the idea of working our way up through the biomes one at a time even if it means we can't just willy-nilly go anywhere on day one. I've read plenty of posts by those who put "sandbox" way higher on their preference totem pole than "progression" but we enjoy progressing from one trader to the next and one biome to the next and even the loot caps haven't been any kind of noticeable gate for us. We are in the desert now and getting close to being ready to go to the snow biome but we still like the loot we find in the desert and the traders have some tantalizing things to buy for too much money. We build a new base in each biome and enjoy trying different base designs each time. Right now in the desert it is an underground bunker across the street from Trader Bob and it works really well vs spitters whose swarms can't get to us.
Zombie 1x1 Movement: A++ Wow! What a difference this makes. Not only has it forced us to rethink our horde base designs but it has changed POI exploration as well. It is creepy and scary to see feral zombies running and climbing over and under rubble to very quickly get to you in ways they never could before. Outdoor zombies only have to bang out one block and then they are inside coming at you in close quarters. We've died more often to this change than any other and we have enjoyed adapting. We used to do a quest together and split off and cover the house in different directions. Now we stick closely together and cover each other because zombies come out of the cracks and if you are alone you can quickly get surrounded more than ever before.
Perk Changes: B We like them fine. The new mastery perks are fun. None of us have tried the sledge hammer build yet so that might up the score when we try it. My brother is Perception, my mom is Fortitude, and I'm Intellect and there's been some appreciation with the perks that are in the general category. My mom likes to farm but she chose Fortitude anyway so this run hasn't felt much different to her. Next run if she does strength and is also able to farm I think she'll feel more impressed by the changes. The 4th and 5th rank of fortitude mastery are not super exciting. More HP is definitely beneficial but just not very exciting. I like the baton mastery perks so far and my brother loves the perception one. He destroys couches for coins like crazy and warns us all away from his sofas during quest runs....lol
Performance: A All of us notice on our various rigs better performance. Hopefully the gains that were made from 1.0 to 2.0 will continue forward to 3.0. Our hope is that optimizations and performance gains can translate into even more zombies (and bandits).
I know some of you will roll your eyes that Roland gives this update a positive report but it really is my honest opinion. I'm not copy pasting from TFP talking points. My family has been very pleased with the update and even if they kept storms and the biome hazards the way they are right now we all agree that we wouldn't want to play the game without them. Any improvements they make to them from all the community feedback would be icing on the cake. Cheers!
Riamus
Hunter
That's really funny! I can see people doing that.
Regarding performance, it definitely seems to perform better. However, I've had one CTD already and one time of the game going non-responsive. That isn't normal for my games, so it seems 2.0 may still be buggy. Unfortunately, my logs showed nothing unusual for either of those.
Roland
Community Moderator
I didn't mention this in my report but we like the dense clumps of trees and underbrush in the forest. Driving through them at full speed is a bit like flying a 74-Z speeder bike on the forest moon of Endor. Making it through a clump and keeping a bike health of 100% is almost proof of a high midichlorian count....
KirillWright
Refugee
I totally agree! I would like to see more challenges for biomes or their complexity (maybe through the settings)
Dark Sun
Scavenger
To add onto this, thank goodness the wasteland wilderness is actually traversable now by ground vehicle. The removal of all those rubble and metal pieces has made such an improvement to the biome.
Riamus
Hunter
I stepped into the wasteland for a second and it does look a lot better. Of course, now all my practice driving at full supercharger speed on my motorcycle while trying to avoid hitting anything is no longer worth anything. Hehe. I actually got pretty good at it.
Dark Sun
Scavenger
Goodness me, I hate the super charger on the motorcycle. I salute you.