Alpha 16 is the best. All downhill from there.

Kalen said:
One of the things I'm most enjoying in my A16 game is the number of zombies.... they're everywhere. I really missed the wandering hordes of 20+ zombies.
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I did face a wandering horde and it was large. That was neat. They were very slow and easy to fight, but their numbers and the amount of damage each zombie took to kill was a challenge to the durability of my weapons. I'm used to carrying multiple clubs in case one breaks and if I hadn't done that I would have just had to run away to repair them. Those zombies hit pretty hard too, at least if you're wearing plant fiber clothing, so there's a price to be paid if you make a mistake.
 
Im currently playing A14.7 and in terms of skills its brilliant because crafting and combat are LBD but you CAN if you want to, boost them manually by spending points. The main reason for that being the not LBD skills often depend on certain level of LBD skills so you just fast track those bad boys if you need the skills ASAP.
 
Kalen said:
I've been replaying A16 for a couple of weeks now, and I think you're thinking of A15.... A16 added crafting skills that required skill point purchases. There was no spam crafting to increase skill in 16. The only LBD skills were active skills like combat.
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That makes sense. I gotta admit I was a bit confused when I tried rolling back to A16 last month.
Kalen said:
One of the things I'm most enjoying in my A16 game is the number of zombies.... they're everywhere. I really missed the wandering hordes of 20+ zombies.
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Yeah. It actually felt like a zombie survival game. You had to have a strategy to clear a town before you started looting or you actually snuck around and tried not to alert anyone outside. I really miss those days.
 
Krougal said:
That makes sense. I gotta admit I was a bit confused when I tried rolling back to A16 last month.

Yeah. It actually felt like a zombie survival game. You had to have a strategy to clear a town before you started looting or you actually snuck around and tried not to alert anyone outside. I really miss those days.
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Why? You can just play that version and be happy. You actually are playing it now, so what are you missing then?
 
YourMirror said:
Why? You can just play that version and be happy. You actually are playing it now, so what are you missing then?
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Yes, unlike other games we are blessed that we can play whatever version from the past we like. This doesnt excuse the state of the current version though and neither does it make the desire to have the newest version of the game work right irrelevant. Especially when it seems the game just keeps on going the wrong way.
 
YourMirror said:
Why? You can just play that version and be happy. You actually are playing it now, so what are you missing then?
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This statement confuses me. Is 16 perfect? No. But the actual gameplay for survival was better. The game fast tracks you now and its over in no time. Back then having a box of weapons was an accomplishment. Servers worked together to find things and trade and when we wiped it HURT, there were more zombies in the world.

The game was not sleeper central. Zombies wandered houses and can surprise you. Now you see everything and they think its clever how they place surprise sleepers but its easily identifiable once you go in.

Current 7 days has better gfx, zombies, vehicles and POI design. But the core gameplay (parts, LBD etc) were way better. A mix of the two would make the perfect game but alas every game is a throwaway now. Wiping means nothing because you know how to get it all again.

Dismissing fondness for systems we loved for years because we can go back is how we got here in the first place. We shouldn't HAVE to go back, these systems should have never been removed. They should have been expanded and improved on.

Now we just loot books and craft our forever weapon and sit around and do nothing. You could play for a month straight and STILL be upgrading your vehicles and weapons. Now its done in a week or two.

It became the Fortnite of survival.
 
YourMirror said:
Why? You can just play that version and be happy. You actually are playing it now, so what are you missing then?
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I'm not. There were a lot of stability and QOL changes in the newer versions. Not to mention the graphics are ugly as sin compared to the new. Also the minibike is the only vehicle. No, I tried it and it's not for me anymore. I tried the mod to try to make A21 like A16 and...let's just say it leaves a lot to be desired.
KirillWright said:
I can't, I'm going to die laughing!:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO: How they idealize A16. The version where mobs can't do anything to the player, poi are boxes with endless sofas and a lot of similar nonsense awaits in this version
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Hardly. I could make a long list of gripes about A16. POIs were just buildings, not rat-mazes. Regardless, I think I have continually praised the POI developers for their work enough in other threads that I don't need to repeat it here.
KirillWright said:
There are a lot of raw functions and bugs that don't let you play. But otherwise, it's a classic for all times! :ROFLMAO:
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I'm sure that was said with sarcasm but it's true.
 
Arma Rex said:
In every thread discussing the problems with modern 7DTD or just 2.0, without a shadow of a doubt users like @YourMirror and @KirillWright throw a tantrum shouting down any negative opinions and glazing the state of the game. They're certainly the ideal video game consumer, mindlessly praising any change. Unfortunately though, that's the norm of people that enjoy this medium.
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Being negative is normal. You probably don't pay attention to what I write. There is a lot of criticism there, it is constructive and there is no anger. I actually think that the game can be better than what we have now. It's a pity that I do not praise A16 (which I played hundreds of hours) You just can't admit the truth that A16 is boring (the only elements of survival there are temperature and probably the smell of meat, if it wasn't cut before. The game is darker there. Starting with v1.0 the game is very bright, especially during the day (I mentioned this more than once) RWG in A16 is poor (except for minor details) Zombies are very stupid and not dangerous, except that there are more of them in natural spawn. The development in the game is very fast (in my opinion faster than now with the merchant) When looting before, you could find any items from the game in a short time. (This is despite the fact that I set the loot to 25%) You didn't have to worry about food and water at all, as well as medicine. I really don't see the spirit of survival in A16: except for blood moons (which were stronger before the fixes in v1.0), brightness, more natural spawning of zombies and animals, temperature (which they want to return later). By the way, this is the first time in half a year that I got into an argument. You apparently didn't like my cookies??? Forgive me! P/S The assembly of weapons by parts was better than the new system
 
I started back around A6 and I played most versions since then. I may have skipped an Alpha or 2 over the years as 7d2d wasn't the only game I played. I joined the team I think In A18/A19.

I do have fond memories of certain systems like weapon parts as it gave me something to work towards apart from just exploring. The hub city at 0,0 was a fun end game goal to work towards as it had the best loot and the most zombies.

People seem to forget how broken the hub city used to be. You could easily run through it in circle maxing out the zombie spawns and eventually having no zombies to contend with while looting.

Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of LBD. It was a very repetitive system that incentivized a ton of grinding. I get it might be more immersive for some, but there is a reason LBD systems were most prominent in MMO games where they want you grinding for months paying a subscription fee.

I actually enjoy the current perk system more as it respects your play time enabling you greater freedom to level of your character where you want.

Personally, I think a hybrid LBD + perk leveling system could exist and would love to see us try one in our next game. After all, 7D2D has been going for 10+ years and many fans just want us to finish the game already instead of another major system overhaul.

Edit: Regarding POIs, I feel they are the best they have ever been in 2.0 (biased opinion I know....😅)

Before the quest era, POI exploration was mostly a monotone experience and were not performant. You could easily hit the max entity count by waking up too many zombies.

I do wish we can increase the zombies counts one day but that will require some major tech. enhancements probably.

I do acknowledge some of our quest POIs are too linear. However, that gets better every update as our team gets more tools and improves in designing POIs.

We are also aware of the imbalance of questable POIs to free form explorable POIs (remnants). We have a goal to continue creating more non questables to balance the world out more.

Who knows...some of those remnants could have bandits roaming around them in the future...😉...
 
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A16 had some great concepts as does 1.0

Having more POIs and proper cities and towns is a massive upgrade from random places scattered on the map.

zztong said:
This comment inspired me to go back and play it today so I could remember. I played for about six hours. I had forgotten what it was like. Yeeesh, A16.4 (b8) is bad by comparison to the current game, but I do miss the old temperature. In the desert it can go so hot that you have to basically seek cover or go stand in a lake, kind of like... storms... but more frequent.

I had forgotten how easy it was to find food in the desert and that corn grew there. I had forgotten about death to bloody diarrhea -- that claimed my first life.

I did remember it was "7 Days to Find/Make a Cooking Pot" (blech) and that it made sense to base near a water source (yay). This extended the survival period, which I kind of miss, but not because of the silly cooking pot limits. The struggle was not for food or water, but to cross terrain and find a place that could sustain you. That's what I miss from that era. To do that in 2.0 you would have to make a really big map and really spread out the Wilderness POIs.

Zombies are easy to defeat but take lots of hits. They're slow, stupid, and not very perceptive. Vultures were so slow I could hit them with an arrow as they approached. Wolves were the challenge. If I ambushed the wolf I was good. If it ambushed me I was toast -- that claimed my second life.

Stealth isn't very developed, and made killing zombies pretty easy as they had a hard time perceiving me. I fought three in a small cave POI and they couldn't find me.

I didn't see a "Run and Gun" option, which I really missed. I also missed not having power attack on my club.

It took a few minutes to remember the skill system. I wouldn't say it is better than the current system. It's different. I understand the appeal to those Learn by Doing skills, but they don't make A16 better or worse than the magazines.

Visually, A16 is completely unappealing and the POIs aren't very involved. I did find the old ranger station, which is a POI I've always liked and long ago brought forward to more current versions. RWG just decimates the terrain around it to place a POI.

Overall, A16 is pretty crude compared to today. I can see why from A14 through A18 I would put the game aside pretty quickly. I may not have played A18, but I know A19 hooked me.
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Water is the desert was the issue food in the snow biome was more impactfull.

The cooking pot ordeal was indeed not fun but stripping out half the content to fix it is overkill. Also diseases meant something then. Now they don't.

Stealth is a nothing burger for many POIs with enemies spawning when you get within range and spawn behind objects and trigger on proximity.

The skill by doing system allowed more diverse gameplay as stated in another thread. With the current skill system you are pushed into a path.

Obviously graphics can be easily updated along with animations, etc. The point is that many good concepts like weather got left behind and replaced by newer and worse concepts. Yes they said they will be adding it back in but it's not yet so it matters.

Tweaking older concepts would have saved development time quite a bit more than developing new ones. I appreciate TFP trying to make the game more accessible to a broader audience but I think along the way the game became more watered down in the process to which every year they try and go back and fix the issues created by their new changes.
 
Arma Rex said:
In every thread discussing the problems with modern 7DTD or just 2.0, without a shadow of a doubt users like @YourMirror and @KirillWright throw a tantrum shouting down any negative opinions and glazing the state of the game. They're certainly the ideal video game consumer, mindlessly praising any change. Unfortunately though, that's the norm of people that enjoy this medium.
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I think it seems unfair and inaccurate to characterize their posts and attitude as you do. It can certainly be frustrating to discuss things with people who have a different opinion, but that's life. A post like this doesn't really accomplish anything. Calling somebody "mindless" isn't going to be persuasive. It might even be counter productive to your goals, entrenching them against you.
 
Laz Man said:
I started back around A6 and I played most versions since then. I may have skipped an Alpha or 2 over the years as 7d2d wasn't the only game I played. I joined the team I think In A18/A19.

I do have fond memories of certain systems like weapon parts as it gave me something to work towards apart from just exploring. The hub city at 0,0 was a fun end game goal to work towards as it had the best loot and the most zombies.

People seem to forget how broken the hub city used to be. You could easily run through it in circle maxing out the zombie spawns and eventually having no zombies to contend with while looting.

Personally, I wasn't a huge fan of LBD. It was a very repetitive system that incentivized a ton of grinding. I get it might be more immersive for some, but there is a reason LBD systems were most prominent in MMO games where they want you grinding for months paying a subscription fee.

I actually enjoy the current perk system more as it respects your play time enabling you greater freedom to level of your character where you want.

Personally, I think a hybrid LBD + perk leveling system could exist and would love to see us try one in our next game. After all, 7D2D has been going for 10+ years and many fans just want us to finish the game already instead of another major system overhaul.

Edit: Regarding POIs, I feel they are the best they have ever been in 2.0 (biased opinion I know....😅)

Before the quest era, POI exploration was mostly a monotone experience and were not performant. You could easily hit the max entity count by waking up too many zombies.

I do wish we can increase the zombies counts one day but that will require some major tech. enhancements probably.

I do acknowledge some of our quest POIs are too linear. However, that gets better every update as our team gets more tools and improves in designing POIs.

We are also aware of the imbalance of questable POIs to free form explorable POIs (remnants). We have a goal to continue creating more non questables to balance the world out more.

Who knows...some of those remnants could have bandits roaming around them in the future...😉...
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I agree in a future game a combination of LBD + perks would be nice. Perks should offer more general bonuses while LBD would provide the specifics. This would allow diverse gameplay rather than me going into a skill tree and only using those weapons until I resoec.

Adding reasons to go off script would be nice as rushing quests is the fastest way to progress even leaving POIs unexplored once you grab the fetch.
 
Kyoji said:
Water is the desert was the issue food in the snow biome was more impactfull.
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Agreed. Movement was slower too, so you had to really work to get across a biome at the start.

Kyoji said:
The cooking pot ordeal was indeed not fun but stripping out half the content to fix it is overkill. Also diseases meant something then. Now they don't.
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The ability to boil water in cans halfway overcame the need for a cooking pot, but I couldn't cook any of the meat I had harvested. You lose me when you say "stripping out half of the content to fix it" as I don't understand what you mean. Specific to cooking pots, 1.0 added them to traders but there was also a "Cooking Pot Helper" block added to the game which led to more cooking pots in POIs.

Kyoji said:
Stealth is a nothing burger for many POIs with enemies spawning when you get within range and spawn behind objects and trigger on proximity.
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I hear this opinion a lot, especially on Steam and Reddit. I use stealth all the time. It is my preferred method for clearing a POI. I completely disagree with it being a "nothing burger." While new trigger features can create some pretty rough ambushes, they don't preclude the use of stealth. I wouldn't take A16's stealth over a modern implementation of it -- not because it didn't work -- but because it had no nuance.

It's unclear to me if folks know techniques for breaking contact and regaining stealth or if they think that's unreasonable. It's also unclear to me if folks expect Stealth to be 100% effective, rather than 90%. I mean, if I clear an entire POI with the exception of 2 encounters, have to evade and regain stealth in 1 of those encounters, and resort to using a gun for 1 encounter, then I'm happy. I converted sticks and stones to kills and saved a lot of ammo for horde night.

Stealth isn't the fast way to clear a POI and to be good at it you have to be more cautious.

Kyoji said:
The skill by doing system allowed more diverse gameplay as stated in another thread. With the current skill system you are pushed into a path.
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I don't really understand that. What's the path?

Kyoji said:
This would allow diverse gameplay rather than me going into a skill tree and only using those weapons until I resoec.
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Is this referring to the path?

Kyoji said:
Adding reasons to go off script would be nice as rushing quests is the fastest way to progress even leaving POIs unexplored once you grab the fetch.
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What script?

Please correct me if I'm wrong, as I don't want to put words in your mouth and only seek to understand your opinion. Is it fair to say that you feel compelled to play taking advantage of efficiencies and synergies such that you consume the game content faster?

Adding options to temp folks away from quests would be cool. What ideas do you have there?
 
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zztong said:
I think it seems unfair and inaccurate to characterize their posts and attitude as you do. It can certainly be frustrating to discuss things with people who have a different opinion, but that's life. A post like this doesn't really accomplish anything. Calling somebody "mindless" isn't going to be persuasive. It might even be counter productive to your goals, entrenching them against you.
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Personally, I have nothing against him (even if he insults me, I will not stoop to his level) The opinion in this post is also worthy of attention (the post just makes me laugh)
 
The one thing I miss about the earlier alphas is something that has been brought up a couple of times, and that's zombie spawning & behavior outside of POIs.

I remember as recently as A19(?) that you had to be really careful causing any kind of commotion outside because it would VERY quickly begin spawning more zombies in the area until you had a horde on top of you. I haven't seen anything like that in a long time. The only time I ever see a lot zombies in one place anymore is during an Infestation quest. And that's just a shame.

I have no idea exactly what under-the-hood changes have happened over the last couple of years to nerf outdoor zombie spawns so badly, but it's something that needs to be looked at.
 
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