A New Chapter for The Fun Pimps and 7 Days to Die

Lets make an inofficial limited poll among us forum users, see if a recent claim has any basis in reality:

If there is a difficulty setting in 7D2D (without mods) where zombies are a danger to you, like this post with :love:

If even insane and maybe reduced loot can't give you any challenge on the other hand, like this post with :ROFLMAO:
I'm so tempted to :ROFLMAO: just to be different, but insane nightmare feral sense is oppressive as hell early game. Day 4 in my world and just walking down the street is a struggle.

Reduced loot doesn't actually make the game much more difficult sadly, 25% loot is the same as 100% loot. The containers that didn't have worthwhile loot still don't have worthwhile loot and the containers that do have loot are not affected by the setting.
Source: 25% loot is my default.
 
The Huenink brothers have a gangster business🤬🤬🤬.
It feels like zombies don't care, we want a balanced survival game with a map that has more elevation relief, more diverse biomes like the monsters. Soon we will have to pay for paid DLCs and microtransactions, everything we didn't want for the game.
The game sound is horrible, the game is painful to play, we are all looking for a game that will replace this betrayal of selling to a gangster publisher.
The contempt of the Hueninks🤡🤡💩💩. In 13 years, they have been unable to balance the game. Unity is an old, completely outdated and ugly graphics engine.
The zombie behavior is very annoying, they hit you without you being able to dodge, it's been very poorly done lately. Everything is unbalanced, the game is broken and has become disgusting.
Fun Pimps 👺👺are unable to make a good game.
Despite their experience, they still fail to make the Blood Moons that nobody wanted; FUN PIMPS LOOSE🤡🤡🤡🤡💩💩.
 
I have seen microtransactions used in multiple and confusing ways. I do not consider $10+ micro. $1 is micro, but I am cheap. All the guessing going on does not help as many things are unknown at this point.
The 10+ are called macrotransactions. MTX works for both.

The "too big to fail" precedent of studio acquisitions is what makes the outlook appear grim. I personally doubt industry precedent will be broken in TFP's case, but hope things work out for you guys regardless. I'd hate to see an Unknown Worlds incident or worse occur. Fingers crossed.

Afic, it's not separate from the phenomenon of the acquisition, centralization and homogenization of studios from Bioware to Bethesda to Obsidian and -- well -- let's just say they don't make most of their own decisions anymore. Wall Street algorithms do. Wish you guys could've stayed independent, but I imagine that's becoming increasingly difficult if not impossible.

Appreciate all your hard work on the game whatever may come.
 
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When people are talking about microtransactions, they aren't normally talking about standard DLCs or other out-of-game purchases. They are instead talking about in-game purchases like buying a currency with real money or buying boosts or whatever with real money, which generally moves the game into pay to win.

If TFP is pushing this idea of the game already having microtransactions, that is very bad news. That's them trying to make people think that they aren't a big deal since an out-of-game DLC isn't a big deal so that when they add actual microtransactions, maybe people won't hate them so much. I doubt such a twisting of words will help them if they go that route. People aren't that gullible... usually.
Those purchased "currencies" are just a layer used to obscure the fact that you're over-paying for a game. It's psyops. No more; no less. And psyops have taken over reasonable business practices in the industry. MTX is MTX.
 
I'm so tempted to :ROFLMAO: just to be different, but insane nightmare feral sense is oppressive as hell early game. Day 4 in my world and just walking down the street is a struggle.

Reduced loot doesn't actually make the game much more difficult sadly, 25% loot is the same as 100% loot. The containers that didn't have worthwhile loot still don't have worthwhile loot and the containers that do have loot are not affected by the setting.
Source: 25% loot is my default.

Interesting. Which containers are you refering to? I would have assumed ammo caches, but those should be affected AFAIK
 
Not gonna lie - having to constantly swap armor for Combat, Sneaking, Farming, Crit Healing, Driving, Bartering, Reading, Trading, Harvesting Wood, Mining, Scavenging, Looting & Lockpicking
Gets tiresome fast and clogs inventory.
But you don't have to? If you wanna min/max, sure, I guess it could be annoying. I typically only change when leaving my base for the day, and just pick what I think would help me the most that day. I usually just stay in my default that is either boosting HP, stam, or carrying capacity. I don't worry about salvaging, mining or any others unless I know I'm gonna spend the whole day doing it. I just leave any farmer stuff in a crate near my farm but I honestly usually forget to even equip it. I never carry multiple sets or pieces around with me on purpose.
 
Interesting. Which containers are you refering to? I would have assumed ammo caches, but those should be affected AFAIK
As far as i can tell, mailboxes, bookcases, most themed cardboard boxes(savage country, mo power etc), all end of dungeon loot containers, zombie loot bags, buried supplies, buried treasure, infested caches...

It could just be my playstyle and/or what i consider trash but the fact i can ignore 95% of the containers in a POI because they wont have anything worthwhile actually makes 25% loot faster for clearing them than 100%.

Edit: I will try and pay more attention to it during my current game to see if i'm simply remembering wrong though.
 
Those purchased "currencies" are just a layer used to obscure the fact that you're over-paying for a game. It's psyops. No more; no less. And psyops have taken over reasonable business practices in the industry. MTX is MTX.

If we are talking about over-paying then the picture isn't that easy. While inlfation in the last 20 years in most countries was about 50%-80% cumulative, the same can't be said necessarily about the price of AAA games. Additionally many players have changed their buying practice and wait for their games to appear in sales.
AAA publishers on the other hands could get some mileage out of cost reductions by using standards graphics engines and making games shorter or switching to (cheaper to produce) multiplayer games. But it is the question whether that is enough to combat the stagnating sales prices.
The number of gamers also may have gone up, but on the other hand many of them were also lost to smartphones. And some of them buy very few games nowadays as they have one game they play almost exclusively (Counterstrike, LoL, WoW, ...)

Gist of it, at least AAA companies have looked for other ways to finance their titles because raising the price of the base game has been almost impossible. That should not be an excuse for predatory practices.
But if you have the impression you are over-paying for a game, that is an entirely subjective feeling based on a feedback loop with other players. But is it based on any facts? The simple fact is that it is very very difficult to attach a price on a virtual good, especially from the outside.

Are companies, especially ones traded on the stock market, money-grabbing monsters who always want more? Sure, there are even laws allowing investors to sue CEOs that don't take every (legal) opportunity to make more money. But there are also some signs that AAAs have actual problems financing their games with the sale price alone.
 
DLC's and MTX are worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. I spent 130$ on a turtle mtx in the game Path of Exile, yet have not purchased a 7dtd mtx skin yet. I'm not saying i would purchase a 130$ armor skin for 7dtd but if i see an armor set or mtx i liked you better believe i'm buying it.

If in the future TFP released a paid expansion pack i would buy it without a second thought, 5000 hours in this game is more than worth the money for another 5000 in my opinion.
 
As far as i can tell, mailboxes, bookcases, most themed cardboard boxes(savage country, mo power etc), all end of dungeon loot containers, zombie loot bags, buried supplies, buried treasure, infested caches...

It could just be my playstyle and/or what i consider trash but the fact i can ignore 95% of the containers in a POI because they wont have anything worthwhile actually makes 25% loot faster for clearing them than 100%.

Edit: I will try and pay more attention to it during my current game to see if i'm simply remembering wrong though.

Since you regularily play at 25%, maybe you underestimate what would be in those boxes at 100%. Especially players who clear POIs much faster than the average player but don't decrease loot have the impression that they are buried in loot.

Just as a crude estimation:

If I play stealth, I often need maybe half an hour or more to clear just one tier 3 POI

If I play non-stealth but wrench lots of stuff in the POI and collect all contents in the containers and have to be careful not to get too many zombies at once I am faster but not by much

If I assume I would run through with blazing guns and loot only the valuable chests I could get through in less than 5 minutes, right? And get about 3/4 of the value in comparison.

If my numbers are halfways correct the "speed-run" way would be more than 4 times as efficient.
 
Since you regularily play at 25%, maybe you underestimate what would be in those boxes at 100%. Especially players who clear POIs much faster than the average player but don't decrease loot have the impression that they are buried in loot.

Just as a crude estimation:

If I play stealth, I often need maybe half an hour or more to clear just one tier 3 POI

If I play non-stealth but wrench lots of stuff in the POI and collect all contents in the containers and have to be careful not to get too many zombies at once I am faster but not by much

If I assume I would run through with blazing guns and loot only the valuable chests I could get through in less than 5 minutes, right? And get about 3/4 of the value in comparison.

If my numbers are halfways correct the "speed-run" way would be more than 4 times as efficient.
Its possible i am underestimating the difference, it has been years since i played at 100%, though much faster clear AND decreased loot i am still buried in loot mid-late game lol!

A friend i know was complaining about the speed difference between a stealthy agi build is and a brawler build earlier today in fact, they were saddened by the fact that they were always getting left behind the progression curve on the server.

And yes looting only the valuables and blasting the POI in 5 minutes does get you 75% of the loot, compared to full clearing at 30 minutes. With reduced loot i think that goes all the way to 90% for 5 minutes of clear.
 
there are also some signs that AAAs have actual problems financing their games with the sale price alone.
Bloated budgets, ever more ridiculous development cycles and the pressure/demand to produce the next "blockbuster" might have something to do with that. ;) Seems to me, triple A wants to be Hollywood. In fact, it's hard to tell anymore whether you're actually getting a video game or a glorified far-less-than-interactive movie if you buy (actually, lease) a triple A game these days.

However, I'm looking at these trends from the perspective of the broader global (lack of) economy. The games industry doesn't exist in isolation from it. Tim Cain, for one, has noted that the industry appears to be bifurcating between triple A and independent with double A squeezed in the middle, when not squeezed out. Honestly reminds of the squeezing out of the middle class in America and abroad.

Deregulation, the lack of a wall (the repealed Glass–Steagall legislation in the States) between commercial and investment banking and the entry of private equity into every industry in existence has driven the incessant mergers and acquisitions (as though antitrust laws don't even exist) of all industries, including the games industry, and they're all still in the grip of the "too big to fail" mentality. The games industry couldn't offload its losses on the public as other industries have, e.g. after the 2008 financial crash in which taxpayers were left holding the bag for quite a few major corporations. So, it's found another way and that way is "ongoing monetization strategies," as I see it.

In my lifetime, I've seen a shift from a product to service economy and physical to digital distribution of pretty much everything intangible. I've also watched the privatization of everything as well the enclosure of the commons and the hollowing out of local communities unfold. It's all connected.

That's why I get the gloomies when indies bite the dust. They're not isolated from all that rot. They have to deal with it as best they can and all too often simply can't keep it up because they generally can't compete with the behemoths, their power and veritably unlimited pockets. TFP was to me little different than the family-owned business down the street until this announcement, and family-owned businesses are fast going extinct while utterly unaware, unconscious and conscienceless behemoths (and algorithms) take their place in our lives, not necessarily because we want them to, but because of a worldview and paradigm that has long outlived its shelf life, imo. Most people think of it as "just the way things are" and "there is no alternative." I don't.

TFP was going in the right direction with crowd-sourced capital; a reliance on sales and physical merchandise to stay in business and fund further development of 7 Days, etc. and so on. What changed? I have no idea and it's none of my business, but suspect a slowdown over the years in sales and perhaps some recent losses may have played a part.

As I said to faatal, I hope the acquisition works out for them, but those precedents....
 
DLC's and MTX are worth whatever people are willing to pay for it. I spent 130$ on a turtle mtx in the game Path of Exile, yet have not purchased a 7dtd mtx skin yet. I'm not saying i would purchase a 130$ armor skin for 7dtd but if i see an armor set or mtx i liked you better believe i'm buying it.

If in the future TFP released a paid expansion pack i would buy it without a second thought, 5000 hours in this game is more than worth the money for another 5000 in my opinion.
I agree with this, at least for stuff that is purely cosmetic (is 100% tailored to appease people that want their in-game characters to look pretty, or a specific way). If a company charged $10,000 per skin, and someone's willing to pay for it, that's fine with me. I'll think they're suckers and will never be able to relate to that desire, but I can't fault a company for allowing people to throw money at them.
 
That's what I don't get about the armor overhaul. Joel said in one of the devs streams that he hates dress up mechanics where you have to micromanage your armor and that he tried it in Ark and didn't like it.

And they've also said they hate inventory clutter.

And yet? The armor system is as inventory cluttering as it gets AND it requires constant micromanagement of clothing.
And u will never get it because their actions cannot be explained by logic or common sence 🤷‍♂️
 
The Huenink brothers have a gangster business🤬🤬🤬.
It feels like zombies don't care, we want a balanced survival game with a map that has more elevation relief, more diverse biomes like the monsters. Soon we will have to pay for paid DLCs and microtransactions, everything we didn't want for the game.
The game sound is horrible, the game is painful to play, we are all looking for a game that will replace this betrayal of selling to a gangster publisher.
The contempt of the Hueninks🤡🤡💩💩. In 13 years, they have been unable to balance the game. Unity is an old, completely outdated and ugly graphics engine.
The zombie behavior is very annoying, they hit you without you being able to dodge, it's been very poorly done lately. Everything is unbalanced, the game is broken and has become disgusting.
Fun Pimps 👺👺are unable to make a good game.
Despite their experience, they still fail to make the Blood Moons that nobody wanted; FUN PIMPS LOOSE🤡🤡🤡🤡💩💩.
Dude. Get a life.
 
Bloated budgets, ever more ridiculous development cycles and the pressure/demand to produce the next "blockbuster" might have something to do with that. ;) Seems to me, triple A wants to be Hollywood. In fact, it's hard to tell anymore whether you're actually getting a video game or a glorified far-less-than-interactive movie if you buy (actually, lease) a triple A game these days.

However, I'm looking at these trends from the perspective of the broader global (lack of) economy. The games industry doesn't exist in isolation from it. Tim Cain, for one, has noted that the industry appears to be bifurcating between triple A and independent with double A squeezed in the middle, when not squeezed out. Honestly reminds of the squeezing out of the middle class in America and abroad.

Deregulation, the lack of a wall (the repealed Glass–Steagall legislation in the States) between commercial and investment banking and the entry of private equity into every industry in existence has driven the incessant mergers and acquisitions (as though antitrust laws don't even exist) of all industries, including the games industry, and they're all still in the grip of the "too big to fail" mentality. The games industry couldn't offload its losses on the public as other industries have, e.g. after the 2008 financial crash in which taxpayers were left holding the bag for quite a few major corporations. So, it's found another way and that way is "ongoing monetization strategies," as I see it.

I don't see a connection between the financial crash or crash safety concerns and ongoing monetization strategies. Those monetization strategies came about through behavioural research of the players. The term "whale" is as old as Las Vegas casinos, applying it to gamers didn't need much research.
It was inevitable that at least a few unscrupulous AAA companies would shed any resemblance of ethics and try any manipulation scheme their analysts would propose. Not for fear of folding but simply because it would get increased revenue. Many other companies may have had more qualms but also had to cope with the sale price of games not going upwards while costs increased.

In my lifetime, I've seen a shift from a product to service economy and physical to digital distribution of pretty much everything intangible. I've also watched the privatization of everything as well the enclosure of the commons and the hollowing out of local communities unfold. It's all connected.

That's why I get the gloomies when indies bite the dust. They're not isolated from all that rot.

No, but indies have the best of all times now. With affordable graphics engines on the market, distribution fully handled by online shops and lots of gamers willing to accept any game that is fun regardless of graphics, even a single developer can create a game and sell millions of copies. Binding of Isaac, Balatro, Stardew Valley, West of Loathing. 30 years ago nobody would have bought them and even if, they would have needed to sell their soul to a publisher to get into physical distribution

Bigger indie developers like TFP may be able to use EA for funding, if not, they can publish without a dedicated publisher (formerly impossible) or hire a publisher instead of the other way round.

Inevitably for one excellent indie game 20 mediocre games get produced that at max sell enough to recoup the costs. This is almost a law of nature that neither AAA shops nor indies can escape from though.

They have to deal with it as best they can and all too often simply can't keep it up because they generally can't compete with the behemoths, their power and veritably unlimited pockets. TFP was to me little different than the family-owned business down the street until this announcement, and family-owned businesses are fast going extinct while utterly unaware, unconscious and conscienceless behemoths (and algorithms) take their place in our lives, not necessarily because we want them to, but because of a worldview and paradigm that has long outlived its shelf life, imo. Most people think of it as "just the way things are" and "there is no alternative." I don't.

TFP was going in the right direction with crowd-sourced capital; a reliance on sales and physical merchandise to stay in business and fund further development of 7 Days, etc. and so on. What changed? I have no idea and it's none of my business, but suspect a slowdown over the years in sales and perhaps some recent losses may have played a part.

I suspect their fast expansion to a second studio and parallel continued development with 7d2d was too much. Or it simply was what the owners intented eventually to happen anyway (i.e. either sell or grow further).

As I said to faatal, I hope the acquisition works out for them, but those precedents....

Yes, in the long run TFP will probably lose its identity. Then, to make it obvious they could buy the name "bioware" :p
 
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