PC A17 is the easiest alpha for a long time (and the least fun)

[Ghostlight]

I am talking outside of general combat. I used to play A16 on highest difficulty, and I have had to drop it a bit in A17 to get equivalent difficulty because I simply cannot stand the tedium of bullet sponge enemies. Throw 3 killable Ferals at me if you want, no problem, but don't throw 3 slow-moving grunts with a million HP each - that's just super boring.

Anyways, combat aside I am finding A17 the easiest and least challenging alpha to date.

Note: I am currently just under level 100, day 30, gamestage is 180

Let's look why the game is no longer challenging....

1) Player levels up and acquires stuff too fast. Where I am in the game right now (Steel fortress base with multiple layer of electric traps is well under construction, I have the best of all items, all the vehicles etc) would normally not occur till somewhere after day 60 in A16. The game just got "shorter".

2) I can automatically craft everything and anything I want and to (almost) top tier. Currently I can make level 5 things. Gone are the days of slow, gradual progression as you discovered key blueprints, then assembled endless gun parts to achieve gradual progression in your firepower. All gone. The moment you hit the right level, and spend appropriate points, you can have a top tier <anything> guaranteed. GUARENTEED!! I also have enough mods to fill almost all slots in all items, so no point in looting any more. I have only looted half a town in total thus far, so no longer needing to loot AT ALL, is rather depressing.

3) Food is no longer relevant. Once you get past the hurdle of early game, the new stamina mechanics means food is verging on irrelevant. Since you don't have to worry about boosting wellness, any food will do. Not sure why but I currently have 1000+ meat , 30+ Stew and 50+ Bacon and Eggs in my base - without trying. Never happened before. They need to uncouple hunger from Stamina so it isn't crippling for the player to be hungry, and re-instate general hunger loss. They also need to make the harder to craft foods like Stew mean something so that eating a Stew is much better than eating the equivalent calories in Cornbread.

Basically the only good things in A17 is more zombies and better AI, better graphics/performance (for me at least) and new vehicles (which are GREAT I will give them that). Everything else in A17 is a huge step backwards, especially in the areas of the survival aspect, meaningful player progression and satisfaction in said progression, and the need to loot and explore. Those things took a MAJOR HIT in this alpha.

 

[Vomkat]

I don't even understand. First off, Alpha 17 hasn't even been released. Second off, you are playing the experimental alpha, and have decreased the difficulty in order to make it easier. So what are you actually throwing a fit for?

 

[Ghostlight]

I have lowered the difficulty to make it feel like A16 on max difficulty. It's a fair comparison, I think. And the difficulty setting does not help my 2nd and 3rd points.

And this is not a fit, it is a lament.

 

[Scyris]

I have lowered the difficulty to make it feel like A16 on max difficulty. It's a fair comparison, I think. And the difficulty setting does not help my 2nd and 3rd points.
And this is not a fit, it is a lament.

Yeah, I kinda miss the schematics you had to find to learn alot of stuff, it gave a reason for looting. Nevermind the meat, once you get a small corn/potato/mushroom farm going, you have pretty much unlimited veggie stews and have no use for meat anymore if you so choose.

I feel the game was kind of overly simplified. a16's skill system was bascally perfect in my eyes, a17e can be good too they just need to put back the skills that level by doing, and have the assoiated perks be unlocked via levels in that instead of stat gated. Would also be nice if some perks like pack mule could be made level 5 much earlier, as the encumbrance system is one of my most hated parts of a17e, both the inventory and the armor ones. The armor one is just stupid, why do gloves/boots/helms have the same debuff as a much heavier chest or leg armor. This issue is more a balance thing which I am sure will be tuned in time.

 

[Rockspider]

Agreed much easier then ever.

Early game is a just a chore (stamina omg) not difficult just so frustrating!

Just no feeling of achievement to me. I do not care what level weapon or tool I have anymore.

Looting I used to find fun...day 2 and now I am armed up with high power weapons

Replay value has gone big time for me

 

[Doctor3D]

I am talking outside of general combat. I used to play A16 on highest difficulty, and I have had to drop it a bit in A17 to get equivalent difficulty because I simply cannot stand the tedium of bullet sponge enemies..

I am completely confused by this - I'm only about 20 or 30 levels above you and I find it the opposite. The zombies in A16 were sponges, yet in A17 with the weapon-specific perks maxed out and some mods on your gun - the zombies die WAYYYY faster.

Everything else you said though in regards to the progression - I agree with. I don't think the game is a 'step backwards' though - that's far too harsh. There's some great content and ideas and lots of potential with what they've added. I just think the balance is currently terrible, honestly. I am still having a lot of fun just playing around in it, though.

Definitely no real 'need' to do much in the game. Once you're established - you can craft just about everything with just material all around you. There's very few items in the game that REQUIRE you to actually leave your base.

The game is currently HIGHLY focused purely on combat and tower defense with very little else as far as incentives. The only reason I really even loot in A17 is just to sight-see the new POIs.

My current status in the game is:

I almost never have to eat

Rarely need to drink

Weather never effects me

I never get sick

I rarely get tired

I would never have to loot another POI ever again

I could carry a whole town in my backpack and 4x4 combo - never have to manage inventory.

I own 50 copies of every gun and that's just because I got tired of scrapping them for mechanical parts because I have too much of that too.

Zombies can't kill me

About the only thing I HAVE to actually do is get iron, lead, potassium and coal - which coincidentally that's made very easy by just busting the all-in-one surface boulders. Iron to keep a few thousand steel for base repairs and the other three to for ammo.

You could skip the bone grind for making tape --> repair kits as well as you have multiple copies of all the weapons so when one breaks, just scrap it and grab another from the chest. If you happened to run out - who cares? You can make your own weapons - no big deal.

I love all the potential I see in this experimental- but currently everything is completely out of whack.

 

[Scyris]

Yeah, My char is level 40 or so now, and with a sledge+lv 3 skull crusher perk and 5 str, I 1 shot most normal zombies, with fatties taking 2 head shots. This is on nomad though, which is the default diffculty. I only also have one mod in the sledge, a.. pink dye.. LOL. So I got the neon pink hammer of death in my hands. The diffculty though spikes much earlier, looking at the xmls the max single player gamestage is 480. So it had a massive compression done to it, and this is why you see ferals all over by day 7. in a16 vanilla, you'd not see ferals around much at all till your like lv 80 and on day 40 or 50+. Now we get those at lv 20 or so by day 7.

 

[Kalarro]

How are the zombies sponges? I cant say about later zombies, but with perks zombies die so fast.

Just no feeling of achievement to me. I do not care what level weapon or tool I have anymore.

I totally agree with that. Maybe very late game, when I have 10 mods for each weapon/tool to chose from, I may care about having 3 or 4 mod slots. But why make such a good progression feature the game had useless until that late into the game?

 

[JaxTeller718]

100 percent agreed. Im playing on default difficulty and today will be starting on the next difficulty up but i know it wont change the fact that looting, crafting and overall survival has become a non factor.

There are times when zombies can be difficult, like situations in houses and horde nights but even those are few and far between. THAT i can fix though, add more zeds, increase hp etc.

What truly bothers me is the outright removal and inability to mod back in things like gaining experience for using the weapon of your choice, or having more quality levels to choose from instead of 6.

Now when i go loot and find weapons or tools the scavenging game is just about over. People will try to convince you mods are the way to go but they delusional. You do not need ANY mods to succeed. Weapon damage and power all lies within perks which is just a simple case of going out and farming zombies and levelling. NO degree of difficulty in that aspect. And now they are talking about adding XP BACK to building and mining? Who exactly is this game being developed for?

Food and this new gimped wellness is a joke as well. It's an issue for half a day until you kill your first baby doe which just stands there and offers you free meat. Gardening? Oh we need FOUR potatoes to make a seed? Ok go find a farm poi and grab 50 of them. Corn is everywhere, goldenrod and chrysanthemum is so thick in biomes you have NO need to even bother planting them. And with never having to replant once you're done you're done, much like looting.

Questing is even disappointing. It seems more a waste of time and effort to be offered a hammer i have 5 of in my chest at home. And it should absolutely NOT be up to modders to make it more in depth.

Im not sure if its new developers on the team pushing this game in the wrong direction but after all these years of being proud to play this game I find myself for the first time being ambivalent towards it. It's a very hard pill to swallow seeing it go from the game I fell in love with in A11 to what we are ending up with.

Jeeps that can be put in your pocket.....

 

[Ghostlight]

I am completely confused by this - I'm only about 20 or 30 levels above you and I find it the opposite. The zombies in A16 were sponges, yet in A17 with the weapon-specific perks maxed out and some mods on your gun - the zombies die WAYYYY faster..

OK I didn't want to mention that as it clouded my main point somewhat. Yes, although I had to drop the difficulty to normal to begin with (after being used to max on A16), I have been gradually increasing it since, and on day 30 with perks, it's a whitewash. I can 2-shot Irradiated Cops with a Sniper rifle.

And I collected enough mods to mod just about everything to the max by day 30. So I have no real reason to loot for mods either. Basically there is zero need for me to leave the base except for on-going basics like gunpowder ingredients, bones and the odd visit to my farm. None of which require looting or exploring. And that is so, so SAD.

 

[Doctor3D]

And I collected enough mods to mod just about everything to the max by day 30. So I have no real reason to loot for mods either. Basically there is zero need for me to leave the base except for on-going basics like gunpowder ingredients, bones and the odd visit to my farm. None of which require looting or exploring. And that is so, so SAD.

I'm right with you. I feel the same.

I was just thinking last night when playing - I found an ammo stash room in a POI that had some shotgun messiah boxes and weapon stashes - and instead of excitement like you're supposed to feel when finding that - I thought something along the lines of "Well, I already have everything should I even break the crates open?"

That's how bad it is - I caught myself thinking that and just sighed...

A big part of the enjoyment in this game is having some sort of goal and plan you're putting together.

1. I want these items first

2. I need to build this here

3. I need this material to do so.

4. I need more medical supplies

5. I need to improve my weapon

6. I need more ammo before horde night

7. I wish I could find that Magnum part.

etc, etc

Then you attain those goals through exploration. But a lot of that is just gone REALLY fast in A17.

 

[Guest]

So, how would you improve the late game without adding more grind and tediousness to the early and mid game?

 

[Scyris]

100 percent agreed. Im playing on default difficulty and today will be starting on the next difficulty up but i know it wont change the fact that looting, crafting and overall survival has become a non factor.
There are times when zombies can be difficult, like situations in houses and horde nights but even those are few and far between. THAT i can fix though, add more zeds, increase hp etc.

What truly bothers me is the outright removal and inability to mod back in things like gaining experience for using the weapon of your choice, or having more quality levels to choose from instead of 6.

Now when i go loot and find weapons or tools the scavenging game is just about over. People will try to convince you mods are the way to go but they delusional. You do not need ANY mods to succeed. Weapon damage and power all lies within perks which is just a simple case of going out and farming zombies and levelling. NO degree of difficulty in that aspect. And now they are talking about adding XP BACK to building and mining? Who exactly is this game being developed for?

Food and this new gimped wellness is a joke as well. It's an issue for half a day until you kill your first baby doe which just stands there and offers you free meat. Gardening? Oh we need FOUR potatoes to make a seed? Ok go find a farm poi and grab 50 of them. Corn is everywhere, goldenrod and chrysanthemum is so thick in biomes you have NO need to even bother planting them. And with never having to replant once you're done you're done, much like looting.

Questing is even disappointing. It seems more a waste of time and effort to be offered a hammer i have 5 of in my chest at home. And it should absolutely NOT be up to modders to make it more in depth.

Im not sure if its new developers on the team pushing this game in the wrong direction but after all these years of being proud to play this game I find myself for the first time being ambivalent towards it. It's a very hard pill to swallow seeing it go from the game I fell in love with in A11 to what we are ending up with.

Jeeps that can be put in your pocket.....

It seems to have gone from more of a survival game, to more rpg slanted. Giving zombies more health won't really add challenge though, it just makes it more of a grind to kill them. At least for normal ones, ferals that always run with more health would prove more of a challenge.

 

[Scyris]

So, how would you improve the late game without adding more grind and tediousness to the early and mid game?

Thats the problem, a17 currently has no endgame of any sort, it just bascally has a early game, and maybe a tiny bit of a middle game. I personally believe we need some better enemies then the same carbon copy zombies, or the same carbon copy zombies but they can run all the time now (aka ferals). Radiated zombies aren't really a big deal in a17e either, if you can one shot the normal zombie, you can one shot the radiated version as well, at most it'll take 1 extra hit. Like I get pretty bored in 7dtd once I get established, and in a17e, this happens much faster than in a16 I find.

 

[RestInPieces]

1) Player levels up and acquires stuff too fast. Where I am in the game right now (Steel fortress base with multiple layer of electric traps is well under construction, I have the best of all items, all the vehicles etc) would normally not occur till somewhere after day 60 in A16. The game just got "shorter".

The idea was to make the game longer actually. In A16 it was even possible to produce steel on day 1. As for "end-game items" in general, from my experience, items/weapons are overabundant in POIs and it's easy to get most early enough by a trader. So yes these things may not be properly balanced yet - afaik they are working on them.

2) I can automatically craft everything and anything I want and to (almost) top tier. Currently I can make level 5 things. Gone are the days of slow, gradual progression as you discovered key blueprints, then assembled endless gun parts to achieve gradual progression in your firepower. All gone. The moment you hit the right level, and spend appropriate points, you can have a top tier <anything> guaranteed. GUARENTEED!! I also have enough mods to fill almost all slots in all items, so no point in looting any more. I have only looted half a town in total thus far, so no longer needing to loot AT ALL, is rather depressing.

Recipes shouldn't be dependent on level in the first place imo. It causes a mountain of problems. They could be softly gated by exploration or exploration + attribute/level. And as said above loot lists are all over the place, so patience on that front.

3) Food is no longer relevant. Once you get past the hurdle of early game, the new stamina mechanics means food is verging on irrelevant. Since you don't have to worry about boosting wellness, any food will do. Not sure why but I currently have 1000+ meat , 30+ Stew and 50+ Bacon and Eggs in my base - without trying. Never happened before. They need to uncouple hunger from Stamina so it isn't crippling for the player to be hungry, and re-instate general hunger loss. They also need to make the harder to craft foods like Stew mean something so that eating a Stew is much better than eating the equivalent calories in Cornbread.

You are saying that they need to uncouple hunger from stamina so that it isn't crippling for the player to be hungry and then you say that food it no longer relevant - sounds legit. Food was truly irrelevant in A16-. Everyone I've seen in-game used death as a status reset/teleport. Maybe you were one of the exceptions but there was no real objective reason to care about wellness. But the reason food still becomes eventually irrelevant (and you are correct on that) is that there is no spoilage and it is easy to just hoard insane amounts of food.

 

[Ghostlight]

I was just thinking last night when playing - I found an ammo stash room in a POI that had some shotgun messiah boxes and weapon stashes - and instead of excitement like you're supposed to feel when finding that - I thought something along the lines of "Well, I already have everything should I even break the crates open?"
That's how bad it is - I caught myself thinking that and just sighed...

Even gun safes, the "big finds" in A16, are like....nah....takes too long to crack open....and has nothing I need

Or how about.....Will I gather all my Dukes and sellable crap and do a run round all the traders today? Nah....no point, all I will end up buying is gunpowder and glue.

 

[Doctor3D]

So, how would you improve the late game without adding more grind and tediousness to the early and mid game?

Add more late game content. Make the grind and tediousness less at the beginning - so that it's an enjoyable pace for a majority. Make the mid-to-late game to where you're not as OP and where there is still a need to resupply yourself with various loot in the world.

Make the wasteland EXTREMELY dangerous where it's nearly impossible for a Day 1 character to even explore it without getting himself

destroyed. Put some highly valuable and rare loot there.

Make high quality firearms far less easy to come by.

Reduce the quantity of complete items that you can craft out of thin air and\or reduce the ease of doing so. I was looking at the craft list and it seems just about every single item in the game is now craftable. That might sound awesome on paper - but when you can make everything - you don't have to explore. Most of the recipes just require basic materials that aren't even in the POIs.

If you want everything to be craftable - well make some of the recipe items in more dangerous places and make them rarer. It shouldn't be so easy to just craft an Ak47. It's a fun idea - sure - but it ruins progression and balance.

Farming shouldn't be so easy. Crops could get sick or destroyed more easily. You need to protect it.

Mining should be more necessary. You don't even need to mine in A17. Never need to. You can get everything to build a solid base and plenty of ammo on the surface.

Gasoline should be MUCH more rare and a highly valued commodity. Crafting gasoline should be a much more involved process. I liked where they were going with the Bio-Fuel they took away. I used to make oil bases in the desert where I'd bring tons of bio-fuel to the desert and then go down and mine for shale and had a little mini-oil factory - it was a lot of fun..

There's lots of things - I could literally go on all night. You might not agree with them or like them. But, those types of things would make the game better for me, at least.

 

[Ghostlight]

So, how would you improve the late game without adding more grind and tediousness to the early and mid game?

You need something worth searching and looting for basically. Used to be blueprints and gun parts. No it's....nothing. Maybe design the mods to have 6 levels and make the higher level ones very very rare?

 

[JaxTeller718]

A good start would be controversial. Remove the basic mats needed for certain things from being craftable.

NO craftable mods over T1, remove things like duct tape, springs, mech parts from being craftable. It will promote more scavenging and adventuring because you NEED those items. Gun parts can be brought back in a limited way to fit the new system so that they buff stats and are important. Perks need a nerf a bit so they are not the only way to increase power.

 

[Ghostlight]

The idea was to make the game longer actually. In A16 it was even possible to produce steel on day 1.

No it wasn't. Steel was gated behind a level (I forget which) in A16 just like Chem Stations. Was it Toolsmithing 6 or something? Level 40?

Edit: googled it, level 40 I was right (https://7daystodie.gamepedia.com/Steel_Smithing_(Perk)). So just how exactly did you hit level 40 on day 1?

You are saying that they need to uncouple hunger from stamina so that it isn't crippling for the player to be hungry and then you say that food it no longer relevant - sounds legit.

Let me be clearer. Food TYPE has become irrelevant. Meat Stew used to be a big deal because it was so much better than any equivalent amount of lesser food (Wellness). Now anything will do the job.

And when I meant uncoupling food from Stamina I meant so that they could put general hunger loss back in without totally killing the early game (when food is scarce). Once you have the perks to counter max Stamina loss, you barely need to eat AT ALL in A17.

Food was truly irrelevant in A16-. Everyone I've seen in-game used death as a status reset/teleport. Maybe you were one of the exceptions but there was no real objective reason to care about wellness.

I guess I was an exception. The loss of 10 max HP and Stamina (when your max was 200 without perks) I considered a big deal, given it took multiple days to recover that, assuming you didn't die again and lose another 10. Meat Stew was special because of its efficiency in restoring that lost Wellness.

In A17, death as a convenience really is an option now as the debuff you get is irrelevant late game and lasts only 30 mins. Losing 10 max HP and Stamina and taking 3+ in-game days to recover it was a much bigger setback.

I am seeing a pattern with A17. May of its mechanics (Stamina, Hunger, Death Debuff etc) are extremely crippling early game and remove all the fun, yet soon become completely irrelevant late game.