PC A20 Developer Diary Discussions

[MechanicalLens]

Doubtful this will happen. It is more about gamer psychology than tech limitations. 
 

Gamers are more likely to rage quit and never play a game again and give that game a bad review rather than turn the difficulty down to an easier setting where they will have more fun. But gamers WILL turn the difficulty up on a game they find too easy for them and will often brag about the fact that they play at a higher than default difficulty setting whenever the opportunity presents itself. 
 

That’s why default difficulty was changed from Nomad to Adventurer and why default max alive is more likely to move to 4 than it is to 16 if it needs to change at all. 

By this logic then switching the default difficulty to Scavenger and the default number of zombies to 4 would make the most amount of sense, yes.  Perhaps the default zombie speed at night should be set to walk? I'm being honest here (no sarcasm/mockery intended), I can see a conversation between two people where one brags that they have sprinting zombies at nighttime instead of walking ones so that nighttime isn't a cakewalk for them. Would you say the final point would be relevant?

Not taking sides here, just spitballing.

Edit: To add on further, by this logic, why would the lowest possible settings NOT be the default? Just speaking hypothetically here. You said it yourself, and I fully believe you, players very often downgrade below default settings, and consider it an act of shame. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see very few players playing on 4 zombies, walking at night, max alive, etc. Perhaps if those were made the standard settings, it would create a longer path for players to progress through. It might even increase the amount of time they spend playing the game.

 

[Roland]

so I have doubts that people are quitting the game because of the complexity of the default world settings

That’s because the default was lowered a couple of years ago now so the number of complaints about the game being too hard are much more scarce now—you’re correct. But they were plentiful back in the day as well as lots of conversations on the forum suggesting that people turn down the difficulty when they complained that the game was “unfair”. 
 

You can believe what you want but I have the benefit of having seen things both before and after the default difficulty change. 
 

Like I said, people like you will, at an instant, be willing to come here and admit that the game is sooooo easy and you can only get enjoyment by playing insane nightmare 64 max alive 25% loot permadeath. Those who struggle with surviving even at the present settings don’t like to brag about that fact. Instead they call the game “crap” and “poorly balanced” and “unfair”. 
 

the game has ALWAYS had frame rate issues on certain hardware in the past, there were bad reviews about bad performance AND due to difficulty. These days, as you admitted, most bad reviews are about bad frame rates and that is because of a very smart change to the default difficulty that was made. 

 

[Roland]

By this logic then switching the default difficulty to Scavenger and the default number of zombies to 4 would make the most amount of sense, yes.  Perhaps the default zombie speed at night should be set to walk? I'm being honest here (no sarcasm/mockery intended), I can see a conversation between two people where one brags that they have sprinting zombies at nighttime instead of walking ones so that nighttime isn't a cakewalk for them. Would you say the final point would be relevant?

Not taking sides here, just spitballing.

Sure, they could push the default even more towards the casual end of the spectrum but if what they have done so far hits the sweet spot of being seen as a gritty unforgiving and challenging survival game by the larger population and yet it is still approachable by most, then there is no need. 
 

We could make the default Warrior and 16 max alive and jogging speed during the day and we would still get gamers coming around wanting to post, “This game is such a cakewalk...” but for the majority, they would be dying left and right on Day 1 and never put in the time needed to surmount the learning curve. 
 

These days, people will refund the game within their two-hour window if they can’t handle the default difficulty rather than turn down the difficulty and play “baby” mode. 

 

[Guppycur]

Gamers are more likely to rage quit and never play a game again and give that game a bad review rather than turn the difficulty down to an easier setting where they will have more fun.

Yeh, that's why the game's player base back when it was hard was so small and the reviews were so poor.

...oh wait.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Can't wait to trade all my rocks from my mine to this sexy beast

You're about 12 hours too late.

 

[doughphunghus]

These days, people will refund the game within their two-hour window if they can’t handle the default difficulty rather than turn down the difficulty and play “baby” mode. 

Actually... this got me thinking...

I've seen younger (e.g under 18) kids try to play games I recommend to them and  I’ve seen them give up immediately when things turn out they are not OP immediately. Of course, these are family/relatives, and I’m trying to keep them from being bored, and I’m the older person, and these are not “gamer” kids.... but yeah, I think the basic phone games taught them that that’s all games are, and they never get immersed or spend time on anything that takes up any time. Games are for 5 min distractions, not days of playing the same game.  It is likely also because of the huge game variety these days, everyone just jumps around barely playing anything (“li have 1 hour to burn, let’s try 7d2d!... man, that was boring nothing happened. How about rocket league!”) and rarely “gets pulled in” to a game they personally love. Yeah, not everyone likes every game type, or has time, etc. ...

anyway, this reminded me of Diablo 3? Where when you start out, you can see this “locked” massive progression tree of “this makes the game harder”. It’s not like 3 levels, it’s like 10+... and it keeps going!  Maybe, instead of having “nomad” and “adventurer” and the few obvious difficulty settings, the “default” is actually the easiest/lowest,  And then add more default difficulty settings.  Maybe 6-8 total?  
 

this would make the “first time player” (more importantly, the “non or super casual gamer”) feel like they are not going to have to set it to “boring baby mode” to play/learn (and might just walk away without trying) as the default will actually be a super low difficulty bar, and everyone can see “there’s a lot of levels to ramp this up to”, so maybe experienced players will immediately sett it off of the low default, and pick “something in the middle, as I am already a master player”  but also won’t easily be able to jack it up to “insane” when they start playing because it will literally be insane, vs now it seems a lot of streamers can play this mode. I think “insane” should almost be unplayable unless you learn to run and hide a lot, fighting 1 zed at a time.

 

[mstdv inc]

That’s because the default was lowered a couple of years ago now so the number of complaints about the game being too hard are much more scarce now—you’re correct. But they were plentiful back in the day as well as lots of conversations on the forum suggesting that people turn down the difficulty when they complained that the game was “unfair”.
 

You can believe what you want but I have the benefit of having seen things both before and after the default difficulty change.
 

Like I said, people like you will, at an instant, be willing to come here and admit that the game is sooooo easy and you can only get enjoyment by playing insane nightmare 64 max alive 25% loot permadeath. Those who struggle with surviving even at the present settings don’t like to brag about that fact. Instead they call the game “crap” and “poorly balanced” and “unfair”.
 

the game has ALWAYS had frame rate issues on certain hardware in the past, there were bad reviews about bad performance AND due to difficulty. These days, as you admitted, most bad reviews are about bad frame rates and that is because of a very smart change to the default difficulty that was made.

Considering that I came to the game together with the release of A18. 2 and this was my first game with the crafting mechanics, I spent the first 50 hours trying to understand how and what works.I started over 6 or 7 times because the zombies destroyed my wooden box over and over again along with all the resources.

As a beginner at the beginning of the game, I was not explained that you can survive in ready-made buildings,and build your own (I thought that this is mandatory).
I was not told what resources are valuable,that there is a knife that can be used to cut up the remains of people and animals,that there is a wrench that can be used to extract mechanical parts and electrics.
I was not told about the upgrade of the block further than the tree.
I was seriously demolishing a cobblestone wall,putting steel frames in its place, and pouring them into concrete.
And I made a lot of mistakes before I lived through 10 blood moons.
I have 600+ hours in the game, but Insane and 64 zombies are still a lot for me, hardcore players are not so much, they just scream louder

Each of the five trader has many unused buildings on their territory.Perhaps it makes sense to use them for advanced training in the mechanics of the game.
And the training itself could be added as an item in the dialogue with the trader.

upd
And in fact, in the beginning, I was so involved in the game that I didn't pay attention to the FPS

 

[Roland]

Yeh, that's why the game's player base back when it was hard was so small and the reviews were so poor.

...oh wait.

But...the game's player base WAS small and as a fledgling game the number of reviews were also small. As the game gained notoriety and the player base grew then a larger population of reviews came in and there were a much more significant number of poor reviews based on the learning curve of the game. You always say you understand why the developers make decisions to turn this game more mainstream and approachable even though you dislike the changes and would like for it to keep it's unique and complex processes and unforgiving survival mechanics because it makes for a more interesting game. I agree that the complexity and unforgiving difficulty make for a more interesting game. I also believe that such a game will always remain niche.

Sure, those of us who were here at and near the beginning and are still here playing, figured out the mechanics and stuck with the game even though we died a lot at first. But that doesn't make us typical players. Typical players die several times and then call the game stupid and uninstall it-- or even worse...refund if that option is still available. So if you make a lower difficulty the new default but keep the old default as a higher setting then you are including a lot more people and those who like it tougher can turn it up and feel better about themselves.

 

[Matt115]

A little bit offtop  but bandit camps coulde be good idea : small ones : just  small barricade bulding 2-3 archers (or blunderbuss) and 1 heavy bandit , medium takeover trader camp  4-5 archers 1-2 low tier gunners ( huting rilfe and pistols) , 2 -3 meeles and purple tier stuff chief( steel armor with shotgun or smg). Big camp could be military base : 4-5 gunners with smg or shotguns , 4 meeles with heavy steel sledgehammers , 1-2 with military snaiper rifle and boss with m60 or rpg. This  places could be part of quest or just POI but with reward chest  with rarity like : small camp - wood chest  with  low tier guns tools etc ,  medium - 2 wood  chest and 1 iron with medium tier items   , big with 5  wood chest 2 iron and 1 miltary with top tier stuff. what do you thinking about it? 

 

[Gazz]

It has become pretty common to call the easiest difficulty "Story Mode" but unfortunately we can't really do that due to the absence of a story. =P

 

[Blake_]

Don't sweat over performance, event-handling done right is very very cheap. You have the drying events in a list sorted by time (sort is done by a fast insertion sort) and each tick just check the first entry whether it is due.

It sure is a non issue for performance. Not having wet concrete will still be cheaper. there's two fronts here:

1- The timer/tick drying stuff that you just said.

2- The texture switching.

The impact is low though. It's noticeable on rigs like mine and depends on the quantity of blocks involved. If you have 100+ of blocks on a timer very close together upgraded by that one-hit driver then a 2-5 fps is normal on my system.

Yeh, that's why the game's player base back when it was hard was so small and the reviews were so poor.

...oh wait.

Anything you say will be true. I can say the contrary and it will also be true. Why? because there are tens of thousands of reviews to pick from. So go play Subsistence, It's everything you ever wanted, a second life with hard threats, lots of convoluted recipes and infinite grinding. Hopefully you can mod in a way to insta-die on spawn. You may call it "Fantasy bloody playground with wands".

 

[meganoth]

It has become pretty common to call the easiest difficulty "Story Mode" but unfortunately we can't really do that due to the absence of a story. =P

The story is in the Journal. You just need to read it.

...oh wait.

 

[Tharkon]

Are there any plans on making Super Corn useful in A20? I noticed a commented out section for a Corn Meal recipe.

I am asking because I am thinking about modding the game to make it useful but if it is included in A20 I might just wait for that instead.

 

[beerfly]

The pipe shotgun looks pretty junky and definitely like it was jury-rigged together. Functionally it is the same as the blunderbuss but uses up shotgun ammo. There’s lots of shotgun ammo to be found...

Sounds awesome, wish they had a chance to misfire or something. Nevermind, I know this has been talked about and answer was no.

Hope you have a good game play story to tease us a bit, when the game state allows it in the future. 

 

[pregnable]

It has become pretty common to call the easiest difficulty "Story Mode" but unfortunately we can't really do that due to the absence of a story. =P

When you said that, the image of turning the games story mode into a dating sim, where you date the traders, popped into my head. 

I can see the player base romancing trader Rekt now, with a popup dialog box, with an anime bishounen version of him winking at you. 

I believe the entire community supports you on this new vision of 7 Dates to Die. 

 

[Roland]

When you said that, the image of turning the games story mode into a dating sim, where you date the traders, popped into my head. 

I can see the player base romancing trader Rekt now, with a popup dialog box, with an anime bishounen version of him winking at you. 

I believe the entire community supports you on this new vision of 7 Dates to Die. 

 

[MechanicalLens]

Are there any plans on making Super Corn useful in A20? I noticed a commented out section for a Corn Meal recipe.

I am asking because I am thinking about modding the game to make it useful but if it is included in A20 I might just wait for that instead.

Recently I cooked up 7,000 glue from super corn. I'd say that's useful enough.  

 

[Guppycur]

But...the game's player base WAS small and as a fledgling game the number of reviews were also small. As the game gained notoriety and the player base grew then a larger population of reviews came in and there were a much more significant number of poor reviews based on the learning curve of the game. You always say you understand why the developers make decisions to turn this game more mainstream and approachable even though you dislike the changes and would like for it to keep it's unique and complex processes and unforgiving survival mechanics because it makes for a more interesting game. I agree that the complexity and unforgiving difficulty make for a more interesting game. I also believe that such a game will always remain niche.

Sure, those of us who were here at and near the beginning and are still here playing, figured out the mechanics and stuck with the game even though we died a lot at first. But that doesn't make us typical players. Typical players die several times and then call the game stupid and uninstall it-- or even worse...refund if that option is still available. So if you make a lower difficulty the new default but keep the old default as a higher setting then you are including a lot more people and those who like it tougher can turn it up and feel better about themselves.

This could be more of a failing of the tutorials than of the "hard" game mechanics.  Yes I get the business decision to cater to casuals and consolers, but don't conflate that with the success of the game when it came out.

We will never know what drove the success, or what "could have been"... Sure it's understandable to go with mainstream thinking and keep the game casual and at 25 hours, and it's easy to say the sales climb is a result of the destruction of difficulty, but it's equally easy to say the climb could have been higher if the game was left complex and the rust buddy analysis ignored. (Shrug)

At any rate, it's moot.  The player base has certainly shifted though...

But, question... 

The game grew successful despite it not having a tutorial for x years and despite it not initially being written with that sweet console money in mind.  

Why do you think that is?  What did drive its initial success?

Me, I think it captured the hard core audience that's capable of thought and who doesn't need instant gratification, then lost *that* audience then captured the casuals.

Was that the plan?  Dunno.  Seemed to work though.

But then how do you attribute Valheim's success?  It has the complexity 7 days lost, and the grind 7 days removed...

Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling.  I did just wake from a glorious nap.  At 11pm.

 

[Ringkeeper]

But then how do you attribute Valheim's success?  It has the complexity 7 days lost, and the grind 7 days removed...

Exactly that's why... it is simple enough that the lowest potato understands it and survives the crucial first 2h ... the grind comes later  

Depending how low you set the start, you attract more or less people. All depends how much of the cake you as developer want to sacrifice for your vision of the game. Worse on big companies, as they have to please the shareholders.

And you can't compare early 7DTD audience with Valheim audience... in-between are 10 years with hundreds of other similar games (afaik 7DTD was one of the first ones after Minecraft that had not only building or?) so people are kinda feed with that kind of games.

Also the gamer that started 7DTD where in a age range that still knew old games where "lol you play bad, you are dead" was the standard. I still think Dark Souls 3 was only that successful because it got hyped like crazy, looking that the first part was sold only a fraction of it....

In my opinion, 7DTD is at the moment (Alpha 19) kinda balanced between "i just want to relax my 40+ year old ass" and "i want to have a hard time"... you can choose with mods your own playstyle (jep, mods are important^^)

 

[MechanicalLens]

I really appreciate all that stuff, but...well...with my potato rig any possible future "4K-turbo-rendering-version" of Joel will - in any case -just look like this:

View attachment 19569

so thanks for nothing 

Consider it another form of art. Take Terraria as a reference.