These are procedurally generated games. No Mans Sky finished quite quickly, but you can’t build as much, and can’t dig as deep. It’s a large universe but there’s less parts driving it’s creativity.
7 days is a passion project. Made by gamers for gamers. Unless you have a few million dollars you can donate, I wouldn’t expect development to go any faster.
These procedurally generated and entire destructible environments are uncharted waters in gaming development. The amount of power it takes to run these games is phenomenal, and it’s surprising the developers have done as well as they have.
No Man's Sky might not the best choice for comparison because what they have done is miles ahead of what 7D2D has done in terms of updates. Also I would argue that most games are made by gamers. You think people go into development for the money or great hours? Voxel technology isn't young either and it's been done before. That being said optimization can be difficult for sure.
Coders just a handful I think. A lot more artists. If you start the game, there is an actual list in the credits
Sorry, I like the skill system. So I would assume this must be a subjective dislike in your case
More kinds of cars would be just graphical bling with no game-play use. I am not interested in that.
I think it is important to realize that there were quite few people working on the game for a long time so it's natural that it would have a slow start for sure.
I think he is referring to the continually changing and reversion of the leveling system such as learn by looting, or at least it's how I understood it. Perhaps I am wrong. I agree that the developers spend too much time changing their mind on things. For most jobs you have people in charge to direct momentum of a project to reach a conclusion otherwise you get Star Citizen where each new idea takes you two steps backwards. I can understand perfecting a system, but there is also limits on how efficient you are with your development time.
I think extra car skins is akin to updating the graphics or new zombie skins, much needed. But that is just my preference and can easily understand people preferring substance.
Whether the loot is on the roof, underground or in the middle of the building, you can always dig/pole up/break walls to it and avoid 95%+ of the POI. In a fully destroyable world, it is impossible to prevent cheesing the POI. The problem here is you and your family are deciding to cheese.
I don't think it would be difficult to assign random loot locations as super spawns to encapsulate loot caches we currently have which to me are not immersive and make little sense. Or you could make it like other games would have it. Bookshelves have books, gun safes have guns, etc and just update POIs to have a few random spawn areas. So basically you would have a blank space within a house and in that space the game selects from several objects or loot containers to inject into that space. Whether it be a clock or a safe or a bookshelf. You wouldn't need to do it for all the loot, but it could be done in 2-3 locations spread throughout said house. It would be less predictable due to the sheer number of POIs and loot combinations.
It is a limitation on what the devs want to devote their work to. What you want, and what I want too honestly, requires a ton of work, testing and overall it would not actually increase the content of the game itself. The majority of players are unlikely to even get familiar enough with the POI's to run to the loot rooms each time. Particularly when the game finally releases as the number of POIs increase every alpha.
I think a good idea would have been to have POIs designed like legos. They would have a a set number of pieces that would randomly be slotted where they go essentially allowing multiple configurations. Mind you, I am talking about pieces specific to that POI, not carbon copy pieces that would make the world pretty bland. As there is already a proper 'rout' through the most POI, it really would not be difficult to do something like that. The major issue is that you would, at a minimum, need to triple the number of buildings that the devs would have had to create.
Of note, they actually did something like this in the cities to get the downtown effect. It really is the same idea just done at a different level. The trade off for something like this is always dev time vs added content. It would take a lot of work to add something that may not even be experienced by all players.
I agree that the majority of players probably won't remember all of the main loot rooms outside of some larger and more unique POIs.
What you are suggesting can be done without having multiple POIs by using dynamics objects. Other games do this already.
It can still be a post-release addition. Not everything has to be done immediately. But I think it is better than re-inventing the wheel (loot system) several times over.
10 years is too long, I don't care what game it is.
Who thought it was a good idea to put all the good loot on the top of buildings?
Still no viable skill system after 10 years?
One kind of car on the road in 10 different colors after 10 years?
5 pieces of meat to make one steak for 10 food? No fishing?
Sleeper zombies that are almost no challenge?
Water that acts like Jello?
Have to take my time from the game to edit POIs to take the loot off the roof and put it in the building where there is some challenge other than building a ladder or jumping on box after box, these things should have been addressed long ago.
10 Years is a long time for sure, that being said the crew they have now is likely not the crew they started with. A skeleton crew likely was the majority of it early on.
Loot on top of buildings is indeed stupid to a degree
I agree, they still can't
find agree on a working loot system
The cars have been getting updates which is nice
I don't think it's a big issue to have 5 pieces of meat to make 1 steak. Would you rather that or simply get meat less? A lot of balancing changes to survivial would have to be done to accomodate that which would push the game further into development which I would imagine is bad for you.
I don't think fishing is a deal breaker for most. It would be nice and immersive but not a huge issue for me anyway
I have always agreed that simple sleeper zombies are a bad design choice. There should most definately be pathing zombies or tethered-zombies that can roam within a specific POI. It would require pathing updates but other games do this just fine so I can understand why you think the AI should get some work. Sadly the developers keep patching AI to get around players avoiding them rather than making them a challenge in POIs without using sheer numbers.
The water does suck. Even on generation it sucks. Thankfully it should be changes in the new update.
I too made a massive change to POIs by adjusting loot spawns in all of the POIs on two separate occasions. A lot of work for sure.