Define your idea of Survival in This game...

4sheetzngeegles

4sheetzngeegles

Hunter
Reading a recent post regarding the ambiguity of what players consider survival inspired this post.
So I was curious, how you would define your desired survival "In this game". and what changes
you would like.

Struggle, spontaneous catastrophic events, failure, fear.
 
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4sheetzngeegles said:
how you would define survival "In this game".
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In this game? An arcade lookalike, a decoration on the quest loop.

Optimally, "for" this game? Get yourself fed so you Can go do a quest. Might take a while of hunting, farming, boiling lake water to settle into a stable enough moment to go for a quest. You do a quest, and you're now set back in your basic needs enough to be maintaining for a while. A quest Tier is completed by doing 2 quests in the same time it now takes 10, the other 8 are spent on prepping for the quest.

The survival is tied to the world, the vendor doesn't offer a free out for most of your worries, you interact with the world to keep yourself going. Questing is the reward for doing that well.

I could start imagining details, but I already got me depressed.
 
Surivial elements generally learn towards game elements that focus around trying to progress with limited resources and consequences for failing to meet health/mental requirements.

So in this game generally food and water should be somewhat scarce and temperatures should need to be managed. Sickness such as dysentery, heat exhaustion and the common cold should be maladies associated with not meeting requirements to stay properly insulated or ventilated.

I think hunting wildlife should be more prevalent early game almost necessitating it until higher tier POIs offer more sealed food.

The other half of the equation is zombie survival such as needing remedies when bitten and trying to stay alive.
 
Without context the answer is not very valuable. Veterans with thousands(!) of hours gameplay who know every bit of meta of the game will give you not the same answer as a newbie who is already struggling with the "easy" 2.0 version.

Imagine, i have almost 9900 hours in this game and survival is the least important thing for me. More of an annoyance actually. But i keep myself fed and hydrated, make sure i can access all biomes and just play my build explore and kill zombies game.
 
I think it's ok to take inspiration from other games like The Long Dark, Green Hell, etc. Doesn't have to be exact, but some do survival nicely.

If the idea is to ensure that the player "never feels safe", how do you achieve that naturally during gameplay and not in some artificial way? Elemental damage to a player's base requiring regular maintenance? Bringing back features like smell? Designing true nightmare like POIs that make you think twice before entering?
 
Survival for me is figuring out different ways to overcome the hurdles the game throws at you.
The best games have different possible solutions for the same problem.

The fun in survival games is the sense of achievement you get when you no longer suffer because of something you struggled to have before. In the case of 7D2D that's of course the most obvious things: nourishment (food and water), security (shelter and weapons) and knowledge (expanding your knowledge with skills, perks and exploration, means better chances at survival).

I miss the days when the temperature system was working. It wasn't perfect, but hunting for the right clothing to survive extreme cold or hot weather, was fun for me (in its own way).
 
For me, survival means resource management. Resources can be food & water, medicine, weapons & ammo, tools, vehicles.... whatever. All these things should have to be managed meaning you have to decide when to expend them, when to horde them, and when to replenish them.
 
YourMirror said:
Without context the answer is not very valuable.
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This isn't for the pimps or a poll it's more for me. To see what people define their personal
desire, and their individual impression of what survival means for them. I take notes, and try
to mod different aspects, that I may not have thought of.

Examples: of what I have learned from the posts so far:
Early struggle for the baser resources, a feeling of progressive relief going forward without having an instant
overabundance make it feel more like an achievement, leaning more on the environment in a more interactive way,
having multiple optional ways to achieve the same goal but having them equal in result, contamination and freshness combined
with resources no 100% guarantee, entity ailments more prevalent, use expanded view and use or try to replicate what is successful
in other medium, more foreboding poi configuration, being given or emulating natural obstacles to be overcome, a stronger
feeling of risk and reward, a balance between learned and unlearned mechanics to cover a broader scope, natural or implied natura
feelings for a contiguous flow, both positive and negative, and freedom to choose, A mixture of choices because of a limitation of
necessary resources and easily expendable resources.


This is what I got just from the above.
 
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I think in terms of water, food, temperature, wetness, shelter, energy/stamina, and distance from civilization.

An (optional) prolonged start where you were started a long way from civilization with no supplies represents a survival start. Starting within a few kilometers of a settlement is not survival because the remnants of civilization will provide shelter, tools, and resources. So, for a survival start, I think you have to cross a wilderness map to get to the main map. For a non-survival start, you start on the main map as you do today. The survival start's map is a desert that doesn't have water. You might be able to hunt rabbits for food. The survival start's map doesn't have any POIs, just rough terrain. The goal is to get off the survival map. This may not be popular because it is a walking simulator, but it is a survival start and I think it mimics a classic A16 start.

Once you reach the main map (built as RWG makes them today) then you're likely hurting and I think the game's current food/water work. Starting in the Forest will leave temperature out of it and while rain might make you wet, since the temperature isn't extreme you're okay.

I think you should never escape the possibility of dysentery. Murky water would have a greater chance. Boiled water would still have a (smaller) chance. The teas would have a tiny chance. The helmet filter mod would reduce the chance. And, when you get it, Chrys Tea only partially clears it. The only way to eliminate dysentery would be to take Iron Gut. You can put the eventual progression into bloody dysentery in and lead to death if you want.

Temperature fits into the desert and snow biomes. Put some variation of the A16 extreme effect into play, but they don't have to be quick onset things. Heat Stroke and eventual death to Heat Stroke are okay. I forget what the snow versions are. When a storm is happening, make those nasty temperature things onset quicker. Wetness can cool in the desert, but should really hurt in the snow.

For the wasteland, let the temperature swing from desert heat through snow cold, but also add an element of unspecified toxicity. That is, don't commit to it being radiation. You can have the desert storms, snow storms (without accumulation), or a toxic storm. I don't know what a toxic storm should do. If you want to get nasty, have it slowly decrease your max health and stamina. Maybe shelter doesn't stop a toxic storm.

Yeh, I don't have any hopes of being close to what gets done. :)
 
zztong said:
I think you should never escape the possibility of dysentery. Murky water would have a greater chance. Boiled water would still have a (smaller) chance. The teas would have a tiny chance. The helmet filter mod would reduce the chance. And, when you get it, Chrys Tea only partially clears it. The only way to eliminate dysentery would be to take Iron Gut. You can put the eventual progression into bloody dysentery in and lead to death if you want.
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For an optional game setting, I could see that, for folks that wanted it, but in no way would I want something like that added into my personal gaming time.

For me, survival in this game would mean having my land claim impervious to attack, invasion or damage by the zombies, and personally being immune to the zombie bug.

This would require that I can develop a 'cure' for the zombie bug, and produce/deliver it to may land claim(s), such that, I have enough of it, and can can sustainably keep up production of sufficient quantities, along with an efficient delivery system, that 'zombies' entering my land claim just drop dead.

Development of such a notional cure should involve finding and taking/holding one or more research facilities, in each and every Biome, and using the specialized equipment found nowhere else but these PoI, to unlock my characters ability to make research stations for my own base, so I can begin experimentation along many paths, most of which will just be dead ends, until I finally discover enough 'parts' of the cure, to then put it all together, and then I need to experiment with how to deliver this 'cure' to my whole land claim.

So, for me, survival = victory = end of the zombies.
 
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For me, survival is resource management and overcoming obstacles, such as hunger, thirst, temperature in harder biomes, so on and so forth. Grind is also synonymous with survival, in my opinion at least. 7 Days To Die, for better or for worse, has morphed into an experience where survival is a lightly tacked on honorific footnote instead of the cornerstone feature it once was, and is nowadays only mildly more complicated than Minecraft's. (At least we have to drink in this game.) This game has a little bit of almost everything (obviously hyperbole), which you could argue makes it a jack of all trades, master of none, base building and defense aside, perhaps.
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In my experience personally, survival in this game technically ends on almost all to all fronts after the first week or two. After that, it becomes a superhero action movie.
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I find it ironic when people complain about the primitive age, because if they happen to be A16 enthusiasts, it imo is the last gasp of survival in this game we have left.
 
@WarMongerian
Everything I am looking at is with option-ability. Like a survival checklist menu, so it can
be customized to taste or desire. I reflects what @YourMirror posted, depending on player
experience level thoughts will differ. Its like we were all sitting around a table, I asked a
question and each person shared round robin style. When you post I am listening to you, when
someone else posts i'm listening to them.

Options, base security, and a possible objective to create an antidote "a multi faceted quest",
add A recipe for the Z Virus antidote, once achieved land claim area instantly kills the undead.
Custom POI's to support quest, but must be existing pois to include consoles, Z final solution
should not be 100% guarantee, need to add research objectives, Tie into intellect. Delivery system.
 
@Dark Sun
Early survival extended throughout the full game play, possibly base some progression
on Days survived without death + specific sub-activities achieved tied into the attributes
and some abilities being raised at the rate of personal progression. Similar to LBD but
without the spam craft and incurring ability penalties, the same as adding removing the
perception armor mod. So the game, and game difficulty increases at the same rate as
the player.
 
For me, at least, this game has lost every thing that could tie it to "survival" a while ago... if you exclude getting ripped apart by zombies. Food and hydration become irrelevant after a few days, element survival is just a memory and character progression has lost it's charm for me when they ditched LBD and focused on cramming books into your brain. Sure, people aren't spam crafting things, now they are spam reading stuff... big and significant difference :rolleyes:

Progression was much slower before and you could enjoy your run for much longer exploring the world to loot and find things you need (minibikes for dumb■■■■s anyone?). Now the game feels like it's on rails. You do A to go to B, then do C to get to D. Rinse and repeat. Don't know what to say really, all I know is that every next iteration of the game takes more from the original idea and turns it into a generic zombie shooter game with a sparse sprinkle of survival thrown in.
 
To me, survival means starting with nothing and becoming self-sufficient. In this game, that means gathering resources, building a base, farming, and crafting items. These elements are still present in the game, but they have been streamlined, and you don't spend as much time on them as you used to.
 
Forgive me if some of the things sound odd. I am using the thoughts for ideas, and this is my notepad,
because I lose text on my computer a lot. And foe me out of sight becomes out of mind, until I accidentally
come across it.

Elemental survival, more environmental interactivity "living biome" , Lbd and books following same path need
interactive balance to extend long play but must not feel arbitrary or artificial. No hand outs just a hand or a direction
Let player have option to discover their own path, inspired and inspiring exploration not directed or directing. Objectives
and quests inclusion. Learning through questing and activity = extended game play with rewarding feeling for each
accomplishment. Instead of LBD, figure LBA learn by accomplishment more involving.

Clean slate protocol option, rewarding feeling for simplest to most difficult achievement. Linear progression
change to individual player activity progression. Less physical pointers Spoiler button.
 
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