PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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Adam the Waster said:
it would be nice if it could return. i mean to repair a m60, a high grade army weapon. all you need is 1 tap and 1 iron... why not parts.... it makes sense. plus it will give more uses for the parts. (im going to make a pimp dream post on this)
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Well, you know that "dumbing down of the game" us vets are always complaining about?

...so yeh, it's not coming back.  The same arguments being made about food were made about gun parts.

 
7 Days to Die is not The Forest.

Edit: Also, I don't believe a multiplayer design should be reworked for the sake of a solo experience. Your playstyle isn't the same as mine and neither is what you want out of the game the same as what I want. The devs are working to bring a lot of new and, in my opinion, exciting content. Why nitpick about something claimed to be trivial? If it's trivial, why worry about it at all?

 
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madmole said:
The horde is coming. You still have to take some time out of your day to eat/loot. I run out of food if I get OCD building/mining for too long so it does force you out of your mole hole.
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I agree with this approach heavily. I play near exclusively survival and base builder games, and food mechanics just aren't fun in any of them besides *maybe* Rimworld, and even then, meh. They aren't the reason I'm playing the game, and shouldn't really be important past the first few days.

The draw of this game is the unique digging system and the zombies, I love 7 Days to Die because I love digging into a mountain and trying to fortify it against a horde of zombies, not because I have to eat 12.9 cans of chili and cat food a day to make the hunger system stop harassing me.

I don't think hunger should be removed or anything, but I am fine with it just being an early game problem that you evolve past to learn of the *real* problems mid and late game, like vultures bleeding you 9 times in a row while you furiously whiff melee attacks on them while cursing their birth

 
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Discount Hero said:
7 Days to Die is not The Forest.
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It's not fallout or skyrim either, yet here we are. <shrug>

Anyway, overall the game is still my favorite, so thanks MM for that, I know I always come across as debbie downer, but I do still love this friggin' game, despite your best efforts to make me hate it. 😉

 
Discount Hero said:
7 Days to Die is not The Forest.
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Well, I certainly can't argue with that. 

 
The Forest serves as an example of a balanced hunger and thirst system, though. Something 7dtd doesn't really have.

Guppycur said:
Anyway, overall the game is still my favorite, so thanks MM for that, I know I always come across as debbie downer, but I do still love this friggin' game, despite your best efforts to make me hate it. 😉
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I guess the fact that we so passionately debate over these things proves that we care about the game.

 
Xtrakicking said:
Well, I certainly can't argue with that. 

 
The Forest serves as an example of a balanced hunger and thirst system, though. Something 7dtd doesn't really have.

I guess the fact that we so passionately debate over these things proves that we care about the game.
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Great person I know recently told me this about the game:

"I love the game anyways, but goddamn."

...that sums it up pretty well IMO.

 
madmole said:
So just delete it because we're not doing an overly complicated clunky survival simulation? Yeah lets make players get all their macros otherwise suffer vitamin deficiencies, that is so cool 😛 Food was always meant to be an easy milestone for a new player to get past. You have to give new players some victories to get them into the game. The horde is coming. You still have to take some time out of your day to eat/loot. I run out of food if I get OCD building/mining for too long so it does force you out of your mole hole.
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By that logic, might as well just remove Heat, Cold, getting Wet, meaning anything as well. Just go all in on Tower Defense and FPS and drop anything on the "survival" aspect, other than don't let the infected people and bandits kill you.

 
I don't think it's much different than setting up in any other game. Eventually, all of your systems will begin to feedback into themselves be it food, oxygen, water, crafting, and so on. I see something like not worrying about food or any other basic need within 7 Days as milestones. Yes, you should worry about food for the first week or two in game especially since it ties in heavily to your health and water to stamina. It makes the early game more interesting being unarmored, low on med supplies, and only having a can of peas. Do you risk going into a house for food and loot or do you start looking for eggs?

I have a feeling that if spoilage were added, it would only be a matter of time before preserving your food becomes more of an annoyance than an urgency. Besides, the meta could just shift to whatever the longest lasting food is (introducing BUFF Jerky! max your gains and macros with 300g of protein to wreck zed faces!).

I ain't saying anyone is wrong, but it just appears that by day 40 or so it wouldn't really add much else to the gameplay. A similar argument could be made about bullets. Until the soft nerf to Duke coin smelting (I haven't revisited since then), it was crazy easy to churn out thousands of 7.62 rounds in one or two in game day by, if I remember right, day 40-50. I'd like to see more interesting foods that maybe have some buffs to them, which could be what the super recipes are.

Kinda went on a thing there, sorry. I've been lurking since about when A19 got announced and haven't said anything.

But for the sake of having fun with speculation, I ask y'all a question (or three). If you were to have spoilage in your survival(ish) game, would you also include pests? Don't leave food on the workbench INT guy, that's how we get ants. If we worry about worms getting in our corn, do we gotta build mosquito nets for the base? The windows are busted out, dammit, and the Bob the Builder player made an open concept castle wall with a basement for crafting.

 
I was perfectly happy with the vomit mechanic. That being said, the current system in A19 works well. Living on the unperked recipes and canned food is a PITA because you are always maintaining your hunger. As soon as you have some recipes you can cook that give significant boosts to fullness the hunger maintenance relaxes a lot.

With dysentery and health hits for eating bad food vitamins still have a purpose and painkillers can also be used to get the health back-- but this is not a sustainable strategy unless you like constantly eating.

I would like the vomit mechanic brought back in A20 but just not so severe that it empties your stomach completely. Maybe...it drops your food bar max by 30 points while the sickness debuff is active and by drinking tea and eating vitamins you can reduce the sickness debuff time much like the infection time is reduced by antibiotics.

 
Regarding the "food discussions" I'll try to make my argument concise.  Sorry if it sounds a bit stuffy :) . I personally think food is to plentiful in the game and have rarely needed it ( like "i'm going to die of starvation/thirst"). I'm also more of a "grab every possible thing from everywhere" looter when I play, so that may be why.

It seems that there are these camps:

1. TFP's balance for the ***vanilla*** game.

2. People who don't want to care much about food/water (wanting it easier to get/use)

3. People who want to care about very much food/water (wanting it harder to get/use. Making it a survival necessity)

You could argue that these distinctions also exist for a lot of metrics like zombie count/aggressiveness, blood moons, ammunition, crafting, etc. as I've seen a lot of push/pull between "survival realism" and "fun game to play", where the main issue seems to be what "fun" means to each person.

Given:

- TFP can do whatever TFP wants/needs to do to accomplish their vision (because they have metrics on their side to know how well it works for selling/improving the game/etc.)

- There are a lot of "farming" and other food related mods already made.  Making food more plentiful/more powerful/etc.

- My belief (a terrible "given") that most/many people on these forums are not just passive players and spend quite a bit of time on the game (relative to passive players), so the are likely not playing vanilla settings anymore and wanting to push the game to an extreme for their "fun" settings.

It seems like:

#1 Is going to move along as-needed (forum members supported vision(s) or not ;) I'm sure they value our input, but can't be everything to everyone!)

#2. Has quite a bit of options already to increase food/farming/crafting of the food so its plentiful.  Or adding perks or increasing loot via vanilla game settings.  As long as they want to (or can, if you're on PC) add mods.

#3 is missing out of some good options today, even if using mods. There are a few mods (like overhaul mods that make the game harder) that make food more "necessary" but not many I know of.  Given #1, the game is unlikely to get "harder" concerning food/water needs.

Therefore:

It looks like the community needs to come up with a good mod[let] to revamp the food system to make it harder for those wanting that specific challenge.

Also: Ya, I know the "then just make it yourself!" is a good valid reply.  Maybe I will ;)   But I'm not that great at modding.   I'm just pointing out that this seems to the be best viable solution vs trying to change the TFPs current vision on how food works by default as it seems its already settled. I see a lot of mods that make the game easier, but there aren't a lot that make it harder (and this seems to apply specifically around food)

 
I feel like the wildcard here is going to be the ISS. It sounds like it will be pretty in depth, I just wonder if the food/water aspect will be included in that or not. Really excited to see how some of the stuff plays out. I guess I'll have to reserve judgement until then.
 

 
Roland said:
pfft....I could announce the A19 Pre-release Stream Event and get 30+ turds in no time. 
 

I could follow that up saying that the streamers get to play first because they DESERVE it more and easily cruise past 100 turds....

(maybe even a couple of death threats)😉
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Aldranon said:
If food is just an easy win for new players as Madmole said, then stop spending any more time on it.

Instead, work on:

-A backstory, or various backstories with different player starting attributes and gear and even a starting player POI for easy mode;

-Better AI for zombies and bandits when they come (think something like the Fallout series);

-AND bazillions of guns as the game is mostly a shooter.
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I didn't say it would be an easy win. The current setup was randomly hosing players new and old. We still need balancing and hopefully by A20 we can have a food abundance slider so people who like starving can. But yes the general line of thinking is why do we waste time on this because nobody cares about food, they want bandits and a main quest. Modders can do whatever for the hardcore people who want a more complicated food survival. Joe blow new guy doesn't need to be overwhelmed with day one food simulation.

 

 
Tin said:
By that logic, might as well just remove Heat, Cold, getting Wet, meaning anything as well. Just go all in on Tower Defense and FPS and drop anything on the "survival" aspect, other than don't let the infected people and bandits kill you.
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I don't think you guys understand, that hunger is a tier 1 problem. Survival in the desert will be a tier 2 problem. Survival in the snow will be a tier 3 problem. Survival in the wasteland will be a tier 4 problem. We've properly made food a teir 1 problem that can evolve into  assisting in the higher tiers. A player should not be given a tier 4 problem on day 1. To be clear weather survival is still a complete joke but will get harder in A20.

 
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