King of Here and There
Refugee
Hello Survivors!
Instead of just airing my grievances, I’m looking to provide a guide on how to make the game better. The common sentiment among players is that the game’s ‘magic’ has faded away. I’m looking to qualify this statement with examples so improvements can be made.
I’ve accumulated close to 3k hours in this game over the last 10yrs. I’ve spent significant portions of this time on pve and pvp servers and have adored many things about the game over the years. I’ve spoken to many players recently about what players want to see. I of course can’t speak for everyone, but here are the key takeaways:
Jars, Immersion, & Engagement
First off, I’ll address jars. I saw a post by Joel asking about jars on the reddit. I’d like to thank him for taking the time to engage with the community. This kind of engagement from the dev team is what players are looking for. Engagement should be a continuous exercise, not just when an update doesn’t land well, but also before working on big changes. Gauge the community’s interest first to save time, money, and build goodwill.
To answer Joel’s question, the reason players miss jars is twofold.
Then make polluted water turn into purified water in the chem station so its locked further down the progression path. Players don’t want to be presented with a gamified system just to be difficult…you need to justify the challenge with something the player can attribute to immersion and world building.
Loot Tables
Next up, loot tables. Unbind loot stage caps so if you get incredibly lucky early you can find a late-stage piece of gear. Ask any player, there was magic about it. That randomness added to players enjoyment, and many people would build their character around an early find. It made each playthrough different and gives us a small amount of hope behind every box you open in the early game. This hope is gravely missing now. The current system is too predictable, too benign.
The 600-point quality system
I think we can all share in the excitement you feel when you find an upgraded version of your gear. Upgrading from a T1 to T2 weapon provides a dopamine hit, but the game is limiting this to just 5 of these instances per piece of equipment at most. Back when the parts could be swapped out, every little incremental improvement made us feel like we were getting stronger. “This stock is 40 points higher, hell yeah, ill swap it out and now my guns average quality is at 404, so I’ve earned an extra equipment slot!”. After nearly every POI, id see my gears’ quality creep up higher and higher. It felt like we were making progress. The 6-tier system simplifies this way too much. “Oh, great another T2 pistol… guess ill scrap it”. This is part of the magic that’s been lost over the alphas.
It also solves one of the V2’s biggest issues…disappointing loot from early weapon bags and crates. Opening a bag to find nothing but a wooden club and a spear feels terrible and like it wasn’t worth it at all. Nothing in there makes us feel like we are progressing. If it dropped instead even one weapon component, players feel like “okay I may not have a gun yet, but I’m 25% of the way there.” Its progress and pushes us closer to completing our goals which respects our time.
The 600-point system also encourages players to loot well beyond where they do now. Getting T6 (perfect) gear is way to easy, and players lose interest in looting and the game shortly after. Let the completionists grind for the 600 levels and make getting a 600-quality gun unlock a special bonus.
Town Hall
Players want more moments like this to voice their thoughts on the direction of the game and offer suggestions. It’s completely okay to have answers prepared in advance, but interacting with chat is critical for it to be a productive conversation. Much of what was said during the townhall was great and I’m glad some things are being rolled back and changed but more needs to be done. The problem isn’t isolated to the storms update; players have issues with the game in general and most of these issues stem from beloved features being removed over the years. Things that break our sense of immersion should never go live, i.e smoothies and badges. The clothing system should be reinstated, and storms should be reworked to be much more rewarding. The biome progression missions feel incredibly out of place. How are these miscellaneous tasks in any way related to survival? We should be given a note upon entering a new biome instructing us to go loot some relevant POI to obtain a copy of the PPE we need along with the recipe (Hazmat suit at the hospital or military base for instance).
Ambience
The world doesn’t feel as alive as it once did. Streets used to be filled with the undead. Sleepers eating up most of the zombie spawn cap makes the game way less scary. We want to be overwhelmed in cities. Even within POI’s there needs to be more roaming zombies and significantly less pop-up spawns. The current system makes the sneaking system pointless, and if every zombie is a jump scare, we just grow to expect it, and it doesn’t feel novel or frightening.
The night needs to be dark, debilitating so. The night used to be scary. Seeing zombies only by torchlight was genuinely frightening. You’d hear them growl around you but be unable to see them as you’d book it back to base. Bring this back. It makes base building and lights way more important.
Progression
7dtd has seen countless shifts in direction in regards to progression, perks, & crafting recipes. The learn-by-doing system is a memory held fondly by most of the players that remember it. It had its issues, but nothing that can’t be overcome. I’d suggest reinstating the learn-by-doing system alongside the current learn-by-reading system. The learn-by-doing skills can be on their own tab after the other skill attributes.
The following activities should be governed by learn-by-doing: looting, cardio, mining, scavenging, harvesting, farming, weapons, medicine and bartering. The more you do these things, the better you get at them. The learn by reading system can govern most of the other unlocks including crafting recipes and perks. This way you can’t abuse the craft 100 clubs in one-night strategies.
Zombie AI
Players want some randomness and unpredictability in the zombies. In A16 for instance, the pathing was haphazard and chaotic. It felt like the zombies would mull around and get distracted. The unpredictable nature of them added to the horror. You didn’t know when they would attack next. This also ties into a common complaint about the ‘structural engineering’ zombies. Players want the zombies to be effective, yet inefficient.
Base Construction
Base building with quality materials is very punishing when a block is misplaced. Players should do significantly more damage to blocks with mining tools within their own land claim. To prevent players abusing land claims in POIs, make the recipe to craft a LCB more expensive again.
Players also miss having more variety in materials, i.e reinforced concrete and stainless steel. Wet concrete also had a tangible impact on how players approached building. If you waited until the middle of day 7 to do your building, you ran the risk of them not being dried by nightfall. This is yet another realistic feature that was stripped away.
Players often struggle to make visually appealing landscapes with the diamond shaped grass & road voxel blocks. The edges of these blocks when adjacent to a full block have gaps along the side. We should be able to craft grass blocks with 90-degree edges.
Additional Features & Game Options
I’ll just rapid fire these out… More realistic zombie models. Option to disable feral and rad variants for a more grounded experience. Option to disable traders. Option to disable trader quests. Add back clothing, smell, and food that spoils if not refrigerated or canned. More vehicles, ideally one that can be entered into like a moving truck or rv that could act as a mobile base. Add animal husbandry. More mods, attachments & gun varieties. More inventory space. Clothing that’s visible on the character model including the new respirator etc.
Thank you to everyone who read through all of this. How would you bring the magic back?
King
Instead of just airing my grievances, I’m looking to provide a guide on how to make the game better. The common sentiment among players is that the game’s ‘magic’ has faded away. I’m looking to qualify this statement with examples so improvements can be made.
I’ve accumulated close to 3k hours in this game over the last 10yrs. I’ve spent significant portions of this time on pve and pvp servers and have adored many things about the game over the years. I’ve spoken to many players recently about what players want to see. I of course can’t speak for everyone, but here are the key takeaways:
Jars, Immersion, & Engagement
First off, I’ll address jars. I saw a post by Joel asking about jars on the reddit. I’d like to thank him for taking the time to engage with the community. This kind of engagement from the dev team is what players are looking for. Engagement should be a continuous exercise, not just when an update doesn’t land well, but also before working on big changes. Gauge the community’s interest first to save time, money, and build goodwill.
To answer Joel’s question, the reason players miss jars is twofold.
- Players hate having something they’ve grow accustomed to get stripped away. The issue does not lie solely with the removal of jars, but with many other system changes over the years, i.e. the removal of many building materials, gun varieties, mods, clothing, progression systems, etc. Jars are simply the latest offender. A large portion of the player discontentment lies in the continuous overhauls of systems. We want to see incremental improvements, not drastic overhauls of beloved systems that have worked for years.
- The removal of jars fundamentally breaks our sense of immersion. And no, the issue isn’t “where did the jar go? did I eat it?" The issue is it’s not terribly hard to imagine one’s self to go out and boil some river water. Why would I as a survivor pass up on this obvious opportunity? Removing this feature, feels so counterintuitive and strips away our immersion, but thankfully there is an easy fix.
Then make polluted water turn into purified water in the chem station so its locked further down the progression path. Players don’t want to be presented with a gamified system just to be difficult…you need to justify the challenge with something the player can attribute to immersion and world building.
Loot Tables
Next up, loot tables. Unbind loot stage caps so if you get incredibly lucky early you can find a late-stage piece of gear. Ask any player, there was magic about it. That randomness added to players enjoyment, and many people would build their character around an early find. It made each playthrough different and gives us a small amount of hope behind every box you open in the early game. This hope is gravely missing now. The current system is too predictable, too benign.
The 600-point quality system
I think we can all share in the excitement you feel when you find an upgraded version of your gear. Upgrading from a T1 to T2 weapon provides a dopamine hit, but the game is limiting this to just 5 of these instances per piece of equipment at most. Back when the parts could be swapped out, every little incremental improvement made us feel like we were getting stronger. “This stock is 40 points higher, hell yeah, ill swap it out and now my guns average quality is at 404, so I’ve earned an extra equipment slot!”. After nearly every POI, id see my gears’ quality creep up higher and higher. It felt like we were making progress. The 6-tier system simplifies this way too much. “Oh, great another T2 pistol… guess ill scrap it”. This is part of the magic that’s been lost over the alphas.
It also solves one of the V2’s biggest issues…disappointing loot from early weapon bags and crates. Opening a bag to find nothing but a wooden club and a spear feels terrible and like it wasn’t worth it at all. Nothing in there makes us feel like we are progressing. If it dropped instead even one weapon component, players feel like “okay I may not have a gun yet, but I’m 25% of the way there.” Its progress and pushes us closer to completing our goals which respects our time.
The 600-point system also encourages players to loot well beyond where they do now. Getting T6 (perfect) gear is way to easy, and players lose interest in looting and the game shortly after. Let the completionists grind for the 600 levels and make getting a 600-quality gun unlock a special bonus.
Town Hall
Players want more moments like this to voice their thoughts on the direction of the game and offer suggestions. It’s completely okay to have answers prepared in advance, but interacting with chat is critical for it to be a productive conversation. Much of what was said during the townhall was great and I’m glad some things are being rolled back and changed but more needs to be done. The problem isn’t isolated to the storms update; players have issues with the game in general and most of these issues stem from beloved features being removed over the years. Things that break our sense of immersion should never go live, i.e smoothies and badges. The clothing system should be reinstated, and storms should be reworked to be much more rewarding. The biome progression missions feel incredibly out of place. How are these miscellaneous tasks in any way related to survival? We should be given a note upon entering a new biome instructing us to go loot some relevant POI to obtain a copy of the PPE we need along with the recipe (Hazmat suit at the hospital or military base for instance).
Ambience
The world doesn’t feel as alive as it once did. Streets used to be filled with the undead. Sleepers eating up most of the zombie spawn cap makes the game way less scary. We want to be overwhelmed in cities. Even within POI’s there needs to be more roaming zombies and significantly less pop-up spawns. The current system makes the sneaking system pointless, and if every zombie is a jump scare, we just grow to expect it, and it doesn’t feel novel or frightening.
The night needs to be dark, debilitating so. The night used to be scary. Seeing zombies only by torchlight was genuinely frightening. You’d hear them growl around you but be unable to see them as you’d book it back to base. Bring this back. It makes base building and lights way more important.
Progression
7dtd has seen countless shifts in direction in regards to progression, perks, & crafting recipes. The learn-by-doing system is a memory held fondly by most of the players that remember it. It had its issues, but nothing that can’t be overcome. I’d suggest reinstating the learn-by-doing system alongside the current learn-by-reading system. The learn-by-doing skills can be on their own tab after the other skill attributes.
The following activities should be governed by learn-by-doing: looting, cardio, mining, scavenging, harvesting, farming, weapons, medicine and bartering. The more you do these things, the better you get at them. The learn by reading system can govern most of the other unlocks including crafting recipes and perks. This way you can’t abuse the craft 100 clubs in one-night strategies.
Zombie AI
Players want some randomness and unpredictability in the zombies. In A16 for instance, the pathing was haphazard and chaotic. It felt like the zombies would mull around and get distracted. The unpredictable nature of them added to the horror. You didn’t know when they would attack next. This also ties into a common complaint about the ‘structural engineering’ zombies. Players want the zombies to be effective, yet inefficient.
Base Construction
Base building with quality materials is very punishing when a block is misplaced. Players should do significantly more damage to blocks with mining tools within their own land claim. To prevent players abusing land claims in POIs, make the recipe to craft a LCB more expensive again.
Players also miss having more variety in materials, i.e reinforced concrete and stainless steel. Wet concrete also had a tangible impact on how players approached building. If you waited until the middle of day 7 to do your building, you ran the risk of them not being dried by nightfall. This is yet another realistic feature that was stripped away.
Players often struggle to make visually appealing landscapes with the diamond shaped grass & road voxel blocks. The edges of these blocks when adjacent to a full block have gaps along the side. We should be able to craft grass blocks with 90-degree edges.
Additional Features & Game Options
I’ll just rapid fire these out… More realistic zombie models. Option to disable feral and rad variants for a more grounded experience. Option to disable traders. Option to disable trader quests. Add back clothing, smell, and food that spoils if not refrigerated or canned. More vehicles, ideally one that can be entered into like a moving truck or rv that could act as a mobile base. Add animal husbandry. More mods, attachments & gun varieties. More inventory space. Clothing that’s visible on the character model including the new respirator etc.
Thank you to everyone who read through all of this. How would you bring the magic back?
King
