We were discussing the vanilla game not having any replay value because of the game design. You can't just throw mods into that argument, especially when pcs are 2% of that audience and only a small % of them installed mods.
Edit, even if we were, I'd have never installed any Fallout or Skyrim mods if the base game wasn't awesome to begin with.
I don't use mods at all in Skyrim or Fallout. Not yet anyway. Many people don't mod at all. I do have a select few mods that I play with from time to time, but I also mostly play vanilla 7DTD. The game changes so much each release that provides enough replayability for me to not need mods currently.
I know you guys are eventually going to want to shelve the project and move onto other things, but a few things COULD help extend the life of 7 Days To Die.
Regular releases of paid content updates would be a big one. I know Cities Skylines does a ton of this, and I've gotten suckered somehow into buying quite a few of them (I think I may have picked up some of them on the Humble Monthly Bundle or maybe a Humble Bundle). An example of this would be a modern texture pack that adds new paint textures with untainted paint (as opposed to the old, worn paint in houses int the game right now) for players to decorate their base with.
I also think you guys could make some dough by rewriting the network code to be more client/server based (to prevent cheating and allow for certain optimizations not possible with the current net code) and renting out servers similar to Minecraft Realms. Allow users to buy 'day packs' of 30 days, and let them shut the server down when it's not in use to save days. This actually could generate more revenue than a monthly fee because it's easy to tempt someone to buy something one-off vs coaxing them to pay a monthly fee. For example, I have a group of friends I game with on Friday night. If I could have the 7DTD server up Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I know it will last 10 weekends. However, what actually ends up happening is that during the week sometimes I may hop on, so I may start it up for that day and hop on to do some base work before horde night. It's a player friendly approach to renting monthly game servers. Best of all you can rent it for a different price based on player count. Minecraft Realms charges $3.99 for 2 players or $7.99 for 2-10 players I believe. One obvious problem that would need to be solved are the mods, but a simple web interface to upload them would be easy to make. Doing this does not necessarily mean you have to take the server away either. You can still let people host their own server, but your servers would be specifically set up and optimized for the best gameplay. In addition, your servers would have a dedicated interface in game that makes purchasing, creating, and controlling the server dead simple.
Overall, if 7DTD development eventually comes to an end, I'll understand, but I will be deeply saddened. I have so many hours in the game it is ridiculous. Who knew that 7 Days To Die was going to be this great? When this game started years ago, I bought it day one, and I think that I've gotten WAY more than my money's worth compared to any other game I own. It really is fantastic and I personally thank you guys for sticking to it for as long as you have.
