PC A deep appreciation that the pimps aren't afraid to scrap and rebuild a game system

Huh....your description seems more like 17.0 and 17.1. It seems much less pronounced in 17.4 but maybe you feel they didn’t go far enough in having random zombies abandon pathways instead of all of them following the same one.
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I gave up because of the overly clever AI in 17.2 when I realised the z's were making real time decisions of which block to all smack on while I was putting up barb wire inside my base, that they shouldn't have been able to see, or want to avoid. I've been keeping an eye on the forum and reading patch notes, and as far as I can see, it hasn't been addressed. I hope I'm wrong.

 
We're doing a mostly vanilla a17.4 run for the first time, but we are only on day 3 or so... but it feels better than the vanilla 17.1 we did, that's for sure. Could be the custom map.

Anyway, I doubt we are going to build a base, there are simply too many poi options to work with...

My point? 17.4 does play better than what I remember of 17.1.

 
I am glad TFP decided to put time and effort on features they deem worthy of their time. It would be far less good if they went with what the players wanted, drenching themselves in guilt and forcing themselves to make a game they are not really into. They would quickly lose their motivation and stop working on this game, trying again with a new one.
7DTD would be another abandoned product, because there were too many problems, the vision strayed too far away from what was created and/or people felt hopeless for making any good improvements.

Don't get me wrong, i don't like some of the changes, but i am patient enough to see where all of this goes to. We have a dedicated Dev team and that's a good sign for the future.
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Id like to point out that many games have listened to fans and become incredibly succesful from it. You can take onboard Ideas that FTP and the Consumers agree with and then roll with it. The issue lies in the sentance, they arent. I mean from A16 to A17, the sheer amount of dislikes and brigades were mainly caused by poor choices and lack of community engagement. They de-railed themselves from their original product.

Its more soul crushing to hear your fans scream "we dont want it" than to have a game no one likes.

 
Could you give some examples that aren't sequels or redesigns of an existing IP?
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Original World of Warcraft was a little over 4 years from start to release in Nov 2004. Of those 4 years, about 2 years of it was friends & family alpha, closed beta, and open beta.

 
Original World of Warcraft was a little over 4 years from start to release in Nov 2004. Of those 4 years, about 2 years of it was friends & family alpha, closed beta, and open beta.
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/cough Brad McQuaid /cough.

-Morloc

 
I hope there’s going to be a lot more randomness for the zombies soon

Eg

Goto a building/house, you just know where they are going to be/spawn so it’s easy to plan your entry and exit

Streets are empty, hardly any roaming, just the odd walking about

Might get a couple of dogs now and then

I used to love the old Perishton you would know that when you went there, they would be coming for you, you would have to always check your back

Now at the moment the worlds just seems emptyish

 
Original World of Warcraft was a little over 4 years from start to release in Nov 2004. Of those 4 years, about 2 years of it was friends & family alpha, closed beta, and open beta.
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...built off of Warcraft III.

 
/cough Brad McQuaid /cough.


-Morloc
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Everquest was about the same time frame as I recall. I came on late to that development cycle but I don't think it was longer than 5 years. Tanaris was the forever in development project at SOE/Verant until it was finally canceled. Prior to that, UO got out kinda quick but the bugs certainly showed it was a rushed project.

...built off of Warcraft III.
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The only thing that WoW took from Warcraft I-III/Frozen Throne was story. Every asset, engine, and tool (aside from like Maya and 3D Studio Max) was created specifically for WoW including the proprietary editor. Combat, level design, content flow, progression systems... all of that was done from scratch with multiple iterations.

Everquest II was about 4 years as well and was in the same category. It took nothing from EQ as it was a brand new engine, setting, and asset pipeline. Classes mostly kept their names but that was about it. Combat along with every other progression system was completely redesigned.

However, the snide remarks indicating that it has to be an "original game" or "original IP" is a fallacy since 7d2d is a mix mash of several great games that came before it like say... um... Minecraft. Unless you are talking about pong or space invaders, just about every game is going to be derivative of the long list that came before them.

 
Original World of Warcraft was a little over 4 years from start to release in Nov 2004. Of those 4 years, about 2 years of it was friends & family alpha, closed beta, and open beta.
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It had a development team of 50-60 so about double the workforce. It also used assets and graphical elements of Warcraft 3.

If TFP did something comparable and just used the assets and graphical elements from the Unity store instead of replacing them and creating their own that would have shaved a lot of time off.

But is 4-5 years the rule or the exception? World of Warcraft is an evolving game so you could argue that it’s development has continued for many years. In fact, can you even just purchase the base game from 2004? Aren’t all but the newest expansion automatically integrated into the base game now?

 
Roland covered it well, and really brought it home with the dlc comments.

...so just pretend the game has been out since A-x (pick one) and the remaining alphas are free dlc.

 
Ok guys, I've got something.

I just need to wear my anti-mod gillie mantle first so give me a sec..........

Ok, I'm done. Now, you know which game also wasn't afraid to scrap and rebuild constantly?

This massive success of a title called Duke Nukem Forever.

But is 4-5 years the rule or the exception? World of Warcraft is an evolving game so you could argue that it’s development has continued for many years. In fact, can you even just purchase the base game from 2004? Aren’t all but the newest expansion automatically integrated into the base game now?
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Wow(as in expression)!

Its almost as if its actually possible to release a game and add massive, game changing content, change progression systems, change landscape, visuals, balance without wiping servers! (and yeah, wow had also some hilarious bugs when expansions were introduced)

 
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The only thing that's pissed me off recently was the devs in the a18 diary saying it will come by the end of Q2 2019 come hell or high water, if a feature isn't ready they would drop it and publish the update. Then when I looked towards the end of june they had edited that out of their post,

So unfortunately I will never take them on their word again seeing as they can just edit it out and retract statements.

 
The only thing that's pissed me off recently was the devs in the a18 diary saying it will come by the end of Q2 2019 come hell or high water, if a feature isn't ready they would drop it and publish the update. Then when I looked towards the end of june they had edited that out of their post,
So unfortunately I will never take them on their word again seeing as they can just edit it out and retract statements.
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Yeh at this point I think even TFP knows it's a running joke that they should 1) never give dates because 2) they never, EVER, make them.

 
The only thing that's pissed me off recently was the devs in the a18 diary saying it will come by the end of Q2 2019 come hell or high water, if a feature isn't ready they would drop it and publish the update. Then when I looked towards the end of june they had edited that out of their post,
So unfortunately I will never take them on their word again seeing as they can just edit it out and retract statements.
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'member the promise just after initial A17 release about releasing new alpha(not update, new alpha) every 3-4 months with lower content amount, because the features are now all done and they are happy with them and will switch focus from scrapping and building features to optimization and stuff? I 'member.

I guess old habits(release new alpha once a year) die hard.

 
Roland covered it well, and really brought it home with the dlc comments.
...so just pretend the game has been out since A-x (pick one) and the remaining alphas are free dlc.
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But what about the killer argument in this community: "you're not playing this game, you're testing it" if someone dares to complain about something? Is it now: "don't complain about that free DLCs" ;)

 
Roland covered it well, and really brought it home with the dlc comments.
...so just pretend the game has been out since A-x (pick one) and the remaining alphas are free dlc.
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How many games do you have in your library that force you to nuke your save file with each content DLC, free or not?

I don't remember having my Warframe account wiped clean, because they added more story missions, weapons and reworked completely melee combat.

 
However, the snide remarks indicating that it has to be an "original game" or "original IP" is a fallacy since 7d2d is a mix mash of several great games that came before it like say... um... Minecraft. Unless you are talking about pong or space invaders, just about every game is going to be derivative of the long list that came before them.
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There is a difference between making a clone of a well-understood game/genre and making a genre-mix with sometimes contradicting design-goals. I don't think there is any game you could point to and just say "what works for that game, works for 7d2d".

7d2d alphas are definitely not similar to DLCs, it would break the development model if everyone would look at it as a game in extended service. And it definitely is on the rather longer side of development. For some who don't like where the game is going (and I would say A18 will definitely give a definite glimpse of what the game will be in the end) they could argue that stopping earlier would have been good for the game. Everyone else will appreciate all the features that 7d2d will have in the end BECAUSE it is this long in development.

Fact is, no other game at the moment is comparable to 7d2d in its self-made niche. If I lose interest in this game tomorrow there will be no other game that can fill the void. Neither Minecraft nor Ark nor Dying Light has the potential to get me to invest hundreds of hours. But that's me, your mileage may vary. What do I care that Dying Light was made in x<7 years? If it had been made in 2 days with unwavering strength of purpose I still would not put hundreds of hours into it.

 
Not all games are created equal.

Not all designers are created equal.

Not all programmers are created equal.

So this time frame people want to apply is BS.

Another thing people are glossing over is:

TFP were not at this size from the start. It took them time to grow into the current amount of people they have.

So, for every new person they add to the team, means someone (or many someones), is training that person and showing them the ropes of the job they need to do. Training slows crap down..

People have also left. People leaving slows crap down, because now they need someone to fill those shoes, and that new person needs training.

 
But what about the killer argument in this community: "you're not playing this game, you're testing it" if someone dares to complain about something? Is it now: "don't complain about that free DLCs" ;)
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Whichever argument wins at that time. :)

 
It has been a long process. Has it been too long? In my opinion, it will only have been too long if nobody returns to play the final version once it releases.

If most of the people who have moved on because of how long it has taken come back and try it again and get hooked again then it really doesn’t matter.

And this game is strong in the force that sucks people back in after time away.

 
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