PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Mr. Perfect]

I suspect rushing is a MMORPG player's way of looking at things, where the real content is at the end game and the leveling is a mindless grind you get through as fast as you can.

Not that 7Days is like that, I'd say it's more of a journey-instead-of-the-destination kind of game.

 

[Guppycur]

 I’m glad you are the one who is wrong about this because if students could gain new knowledge simply by repeating and practicing their current knowledge, I would be out of a job. 
 

The type of learn by doing we had in the game had nothing to do with how we have evolved as a species but it did have a lot to do with how some members of the species could become masters of skills they already had. 
 

I acknowledge my post was long but here's the part you may have missed, and I think we agree on.

***

The perfect system IMO would have been LBD where it makes sense (making better quality items), LBR where it makes sense (learning new skills as a baseline for later LBD)

***

Just do it so it makes sense, and it'll succeed. 

 

[mandeglor]

I like alpha 21 and I'm glad to see that it has gone back to the path of alpha 16 in a way, when we desperately searched the bookstores to read recipes. However, I think there is a bit of randomness missing, it's all a bit too linear. When you start the game, you know that you won't be able to achieve anything really good as long as you don't read magazines and level up, because looting depends on this too. I wish there was some small, remote, but real option of finding something good, something that is difficult to happen but can happen. Maybe an abandoned base of a dead (simulated) player with chests and some good loot (maybe steel, concrete, some vehicle, weapons...), something very hidden (underground maybe?) that is hard to find but can happen. Another option could be a crashed plane, perhaps at sea with several boxes of things you might have "ahead of time". In short, a small and remote option, but a real one to have something good ahead of time. You know that it exists and that it is out there, it is a good motivation for the "treasure hunt", it adds an incentive. There would also be the "magical" moment of accidentally finding it... what a great joy that would be.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

I've never understood people playing the game like that.

No one is able to just relax and play the game as an exciting adventure anymore.  hwell:

I do. I temporarily turned off the horde. First because I realized
I was liking just the foraging searching and hunting. Deer come out
at night for me and I needed animal fat. Second because if I constantly
concentrate on having to build fortifications I felt I was missing more of
the actual play through, the root game. Just playing toward a battle royale.

I now go out at night further and further, just before dusk I now pick a poi
sometimes a tall building or large footprint, partially clear it, and make a
temporary refuge. Complete the clear over night, and return to my permanent

base in the morning to prep for the next outing.

The plan is to find each city and set up a remote site, and clear as I go.
The traditional way, seemed a bit rushed. This is relaxed and i can actually
play for four plus hours at a sitting. It all began simply because I want a
beaker.

It is also allowing me to see, what i want to adjust as I progress. Tiers will
go bye bye for me. The only adjustment to damage will be my strength  level,
and weapon mods. Every unlike AI will attack every other. There are two basic factions
living and dead with a sub faction of predator and prey.

The last part i'm working on is the environmental effects on the player. And i still
adjusted the biome altitude map just for visuals. So there is still at least one that
still sees it as a relaxing adventure game.

 

[meganoth]

I like alpha 21 and I'm glad to see that it has gone back to the path of alpha 16 in a way, when we desperately searched the bookstores to read recipes. However, I think there is a bit of randomness missing, it's all a bit too linear. When you start the game, you know that you won't be able to achieve anything really good as long as you don't read magazines and level up, because looting depends on this too. I wish there was some small, remote, but real option of finding something good, something that is difficult to happen but can happen. Maybe an abandoned base of a dead (simulated) player with chests and some good loot (maybe steel, concrete, some vehicle, weapons...), something very hidden (underground maybe?) that is hard to find but can happen. Another option could be a crashed plane, perhaps at sea with several boxes of things you might have "ahead of time". In short, a small and remote option, but a real one to have something good ahead of time. You know that it exists and that it is out there, it is a good motivation for the "treasure hunt", it adds an incentive. There would also be the "magical" moment of accidentally finding it... what a great joy that would be.

Bobs Boars and Carls Corn

Though I agree, there should be 2-3 more of those locations to make player explore. Not with superior loot, but similar to bobs boars with an item that you can't get elsewhere, for example recipes similar to the secret recipe of shamways.

 

[Roland]

I acknowledge my post was long but here's the part you may have missed, and I think we agree on.

***

The perfect system IMO would have been LBD where it makes sense (making better quality items), LBR where it makes sense (learning new skills as a baseline for later LBD)

***

Just do it so it makes sense, and it'll succeed. 

I didn’t miss that part but I was simply responding to the part of your post that was incorrect regarding how knowledge acquisition actually works. 
 

As to your suggestion, I would be fine with a hybrid system of LBR and LBD but not how you organized it. Reading to unlock a recipe and then use LBD with crafting to push the quality tiers up is exactly what was wrong with the game in A15 which is why all forms of “spam crafting” were finally removed for A16 even though LBD was still in force for other skills. 
 

LBD would be great for improving skill in using items which is what the current point system handles. So the LBR would need to remain intact as it is for crafting recipes including the quality tiers. The point spending system of getting better at skills is the only thing that would be replaced by LBD. 
 

The thing is that in my opinion the point spending system is also fun and enjoyable and perfectly adequate so it doesn’t really need to be replaced. It can be played in a way that feels like you’re progressing in an organic and natural manner and still gives the freedom of not having to grind in those categories you don’t really enjoy but want to improve in. 
 

If they changed the skill point spending part of the game back to LBD and kept the crafting progression as it is now by looting magazines, I would be fine with that but— I’m also fine with the current system. They both represent skill mastery but just in a different manner and they both can be abused in different ways. 
 

The original post I was responding to claimed that the current system of reading to learn how to craft new recipes is nonsensical because it isn’t how people learn. I simply demonstrated that we learn new knowledge easiest by having a teacher of some form—in this case magazines and that in most cases we don’t learn something new by practicing something we already know.
 

We hone acquired skills through practice which can be represented by either the LBD or point-spending systems. Even if LBD was to be ultimately chosen over point-spending it would STILL be a good idea to keep the quality tiers as “new recipes” rather than as “improved skills” since spam crafting was really bad for gameplay. 

 

[Guppycur]

No, what was wrong with "spam crafting" was being able to unlock steel because you spammed stone axes.

With regards to how "knowledge acquisition really works", I'm correct about that as well, but I can see why you as an academic, believe knowledge can only be acquired by being taught.  That's simply not the case however.  In the real world, people learn things by trial and error as well, and frankly they learn more that way than from books.

Doing x works, doing y doesn't, so we do x.  Maybe rust buddies continue to do y, but thankfully they aren't the majority.

Hell, look at animals.  Eat the brightly colored frog, get sick.  That's not taught by a book.  Chasing a porcupine is a bad idea.  Also not in a book.  Humans are the same, we're just more sophisticated about it.  Sure, we *can* acquire knowledge from books but we only get good at something by doing it.  Go watch a drywall video and patch your first hole, lemme know how well you do compared to a drywall guy.

Look at the evolution of a pistol.  Going from musket to today's semi auto, they're two completely different technologies but rooted in the same idea.  That technology developed over time from doing, not reading, and as I mentioned in my op we simply accelerate that for game purposes.  

...also, good morning.  You up early or late?

 

[meganoth]

Go watch a drywall video

You wouldn't even know what a drywall is without learning it from your peers.

Going from musket to today's semi auto

But that wasn't one person who crafted a musket a hundred times to learn how to build semi autos. Each generation learned weapon crafting knowledge from previous generations (through teachers and books) and from that base knowledge sprang new ideas, improvements and innovations.  Do you know the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants"? Every scientist will tell you that his innovation would have been impossible without the work of all his predecessors which he learned from teachers or books

 

[Guppycur]

You wouldn't even know what a drywall is without learning it from your peers.

But that wasn't one person who crafted a musket a hundred times to learn how to build semi autos. Each generation learned weapon crafting knowledge from previous generations (through teachers and books) and from that base knowledge sprang new ideas, improvements and innovations.  Do you know the phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants"? Every scientist will tell you that his innovation would have been impossible without the work of all his predecessors which he learned from teachers or books

You think drywall magically appeared into the universe?

Also, get out of the box; this is still a game and things have to be accelerated.  It'd be a pretty boring game if it took 100 years for an innovation.  

And again, for game purposes, lbr is fine to learn the skill, lbd is how you get better at it.  

... we're all saying the same thing here, but some of y'all are so dead set against the phrase "learn by doing" you are dismissing it without even thinking. 

 

[meganoth]

Eat the brightly colored frog, get sick.  That's not taught by a book.

Strange. I got the knowledge to not eat brightly colored frogs or some specific mushrooms like a death cap from books. Note the guy who learned that death cap is poisonous likely didn't survive and could not learn from that knowledge. Only his surviving friends could and likely gave that knowledge to the young, first mouth to mouth, later through books.

 

[Jost Amman]

I do. I temporarily turned off the horde.

Maybe you misunderstood my comment, or I wasn't clear.

No, what was wrong with "spam crafting" was being able to unlock steel because you spammed stone axes.

Sorry, but I think you missed the point there. Spam-crafting is wrong in itself as a way of playing.

I know, I know... now everyone will start to say: "why don't you mind your own business and let us play the way we want?" Fair enough, but am I free to at least say that LBD in most cases traps the mind of most weak players into a negative OCD loop, where he/she forgets to actually play the game and focuses mainly/only on raising levels?

That's, in my opinion, why LBD should be avoided to the maximum extent possible.

Unless you find a way to avoid artificial repetition to become the best thing to do to level up...

Note the guy who learned that death cap is poisonous likely didn't survive and could not learn from that knowledge.

But his friends did... it's called "Learn By Watching Others Die", or LBWOD.  :heh:

It's the new frontier, I'm telling you!  :nod:

 

[meganoth]

You think drywall magically appeared into the universe?

No, someone invented it and departed that knowledge through books. Is it more believable that that lonely adventurer you play in the game learned his knowledge to build a drone from some books or that he invented practically 200 years of innovation all by himself in a few years?

Also, get out of the box; this is still a game and things have to be accelerated.  It'd be a pretty boring game if it took 100 years for an innovation. 

You were starting the argument that LBD would be more realistic. But it isn't, it is much easier to believe that the lone survivor in this game uses knowledge of the lost civilization than inventing all knowledge again by crafting and improving something a hundred times. The latter is frankly ridiculous. Nasa didn't build a moon rocket by starting with building stone axes, they started with all the knowledge from previous scientists they read in books and built up on that.

And again, for game purposes, lbr is fine to learn the skill, lbd is how you get better at it.  

I didn't dispute or even comment on that. And I agree, it can be done that way.

 

[beerfly]

Many systems in 7 days to die have seen good and bad, have been improved or left away, but LBD and LBR, these two being together deserve a try. with proper balance and no spam crafting. 

 

[Guppycur]

I didn't dispute or even comment on that. And I agree, it can be done that way.

It's what I've said from the very beginning, but you chose to cherry pick bits to argue against, because koolaid. 

 

[meganoth]

It's what I've said from the very beginning, but you chose to cherry pick bits to argue against, because koolaid. 

You are correct, but see it this way. If I said that Australia and New Zeeland are continents, wouldn't it be sensible to correct me on the wrong part even though the other part was correct?

 

[Guppycur]

You are correct, but see it this way. If I said that Australia and New Zeeland are continents, wouldn't it be sensible to correct me on the wrong part even though the other part was correct?

...I guess you haven't heard...

 

[meganoth]

...I guess you haven't heard...

You mean about Pluto being no planet? Yes, what a shame

 

[meilodasreh]

lbr is fine to learn the skill, lbd is how you get better at it.

cool idea,

a "mixed" system where you get better with lbd up to a certain threshold, and then you have to find some written knowledgebase to get to the next level.

lbd could also be devided into crafting and also time of real usage, to prevent "spam crafting lbd".

I'd take it.

Damn one day I have to start learning how to make my own mods.

...but how would I start?

Reading a book about coding first, or just start typing totally uneducated nonsense into the .xmls and see if I get it to run? 

 

[Guppycur]

cool idea,

a "mixed" system where you get better with lbd up to a certain threshold, and then you have to find some written knowledgebase to get to the next level.

lbd could also be devided into crafting and also time of real usage, to prevent "spam crafting lbd".

I'd take it.

Damn one day I have to start learning how to make my own mods.

...but how would I start?

Reading a book about coding first, or just start typing totally uneducated nonsense into the .xmls and see if I get it to run? 

Ask any of the very skilled old school modders.  We all typed totally uneducated nonsense into the XMLs.

Learn by Breaking. 

 

[Uncle Al]

A major issue with LBD systems is you have to do lots of what you don't like doing in order to avoid doing it. I find digging and tunnelling boring in 7DTD, but I like doing extensive construction, often with foundations. That means I inevitably end up putting some points in Miner 69er every playthrough. I trade time killing zombies for time I don't have to spend digging, basically. If I had to spend time digging in order to cut down time spent digging I'd be a lot less happy.

LBD for crafting has inevitable issues, even if you avoid the error of the past of not tiering advancement. Even if you can't learn steel crafting by knapping enough flint, the actual process of advancement is pretty dull. Crafting a bunch of stuff is not an engaging process. You're watching a timer tick down.

Now if crafting was destined to be something like what Everquest 2 aimed for, then great. Sadly I'd say EQ2 failed, but their design intent was to make time spent crafting as challenging and engaging as combat. It's basically a minigame of balancing some parameters and dealing with events as they occur, with some events giving risk reward options of gambling for a potential outstanding result at the risk of ruining your craft.  It's not great in EQ2, but what they were trying to do is laudable. A crafting system like that might make LBD at least fun, although it runs into the problem above: People who hate the minigame don't have a method to avoid having to do it if the only way to skill up is by doing the thing you hate.

I'm fairly certain a crafting revamp of that degree is not on the cards for 7DTD.

I guess this whole discussion is a bit off piste, as there has been a 'never going back to LBD' proclamation by the devs, but I think it's worthwhile exploring what makes a good advancement system, generally.