PC Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[Roland]

Joel himself mentioned the phrase as well on occasion, so can we stop the pretense?

First of all when was the last occasion you heard Joel say anything?

Second of all, "zombies with guns" was mentioned by faatal occasionally to describe the very first iteration of them so as to curb unrealistic expectations of fans. They never claimed that bandits were being designed to forevermore be zombies with guns.

Third of all, we can all tell by now that if bandits do release initially as "bandits with guns" and then they update them to have more depth you will complain that they have completely overhauled Bandits from scratch for the second time...

 

[Shado47]

 I think you make some assumptions that aren't true:

The hydration system change is anything but a streamlining change. Attaining hydration security is now a much more complex and goal oriented process than it used to be. You are essentially building a water farm and until you are able to get it implemented there is a scarcity of water that forces you to make choices about how you will utilize your water. I encourage you to change your jar recipe to make jars harder to craft and see if that yields the same results as the A21 change to hydration survival.

They develop through iteration and they always have. Maybe you didn't pick up on the pattern until recently but it is how they have done everything since the beginning. Maybe if they would have done all their iterative development behind closed doors so you never witnessed the intermediate versions you would be a lot happier. But they have allowed those wishing to participate in early access to go through the process with them. I've personally been very intrigued by their process. I learned early on not to let myself get too attached to any one version of any particular feature. I think most who are still enjoying the development of this game are of this same mindset.

So what? Why should they listen to masses of people who have never tried it and have only heard incomplete descriptions of it and who are filling in all the gaps of their knowledge with the worst case scenarios that their worried minds can concoct? The game has had some form of learning by reading mechanic since about Alpha 11 and this is the latest iteration of what has already been part of the game.

The purpose of the change was not to simply make it harder to obtain large amounts of water. It was to give murky water more of a presence in the game, to bring glass jar containers into alignment with all other containers in the game, to add a new type of farming to the game, and to make water survival more interesting. Having played the system, in my opinion, the change they went with accomplishes all of these things.

The 600 quality levels and the new system are so completely different from each other that it really shows your lack of understanding of the new system which is fair since you haven't been able to play it. What is not fair is to act like you understand both equally and so can lump them together as the same thing. Even in the 600 point system once you got your stone axe to 600 your fireaxe and steel axe were also automatically 600. The new system is different in that you are going to progress through the quality levels for all tiers of weapons and tools which not only means more crafting but also means no automatic skipping of about 70% of the progression. The depth of crafting the new system adds is completely fresh and not at all in any way the same as what might have been lost when we went to 1-6 quality levels.

Bandits have always been referred to as bandits even during the kickstarter campaign. NPCs were also mentioned and were inclusive of traders and bandits. Followers were considered but ultimately dropped.  Everything I have read and written about bandits is that in their first iteration they will be basic-- like zombies with weapons but that would simply be the very first implementation of them. Now that they have been pushed to A22 they will probably be more sophisticated. But I have never read a single official source that has stated that the dev's intention is to make bandits like zombies with guns and end there.

All I get from this is a condescending "you don't get it" and "oh, anyone from the wider online community who is sceptical must've not played the game before".

Also I never said "bring back the 600 crafting quality levels". The new system sounds good, and it wasn't my criticism at all. Instead what I commented on was the needless change from the 600 qualities to the 6 qualities that simplified the whole thing massively and took alot of depth out of it, just for the devs to now do a 180 again to bring back more complexity into it. Like, its great that it is getting more complex again. Could've just been built as an iteration of the 600 qualities system though, as opposed to the 6 qualities system. Both still were grouped up into 6 main groups. There was a step backwards inbetween that just wasn't necessary.

Nothing has been completely revamped or redone from scratch.

This is just straight up false and you know it.

This I agree with. Building is a lot more simplistic than it used to be. That was definitely a tough decision the devs had to make. Both Joel and Rick enjoy the building aspect of the game and see it as very important. Only they can say why they decided to streamline the building the way they did. They obviously want plenty of shapes to be available (there are many more coming in A21) but for some reason the various upgrade paths weren't as important to them.

Glad we're on the same page here. Yeah, my claim is not that everytime they sacrifice depth it is to the game's detriment. Removing the sharpening of stones being required to make a stone axe was definitely a good choice, lol. And there are many more examples like this. But removal of certain biomes, building upgrade paths that suited different playstyles, etc.

I loved the old days when you had to build a plywood frame to pour concrete into and then it had to harden first and then the frame would pop. Or when you had to stack cobblestones into a wire frame level by level and it visually showed in the model. That was fun building with alot of depth and very satisfying. It had a better realism and was less arcadey, and I think the game should've gone on to do more of that, not less.

Shado's gonna hit Roland with the: [pic cut for convenience]
 

Nah I enjoy reading long responses.

 

[Roland]

Shado's gonna hit Roland with the:

That's fine. Kids were taking their finals.

 

[Shado47]

First of all when was the last occasion you heard Joel say anything?

I don't religiously follow here, but I remember long dev streams of Joel discussing the bandits. Does that count?

Second of all, "zombies with guns" was mentioned by faatal occasionally to describe the very first iteration of them so as to curb unrealistic expectations of fans. They never claimed that bandits were being designed to forevermore be zombies with guns.

And I never claimed that either. Could do them properly right away though, don't you think? Instead of doing a super bare bones version first that people get used to, and then changing them around again completely? And then they could still be improved from there, without it completely changing every aspect of them.

Third of all, we can all tell by now that if bandits do release initially as "bandits with guns" and then they update them to have more depth you will complain that they have completely overhauled Bandits from scratch for the second time...

See the hysterical thing here is that I wouldn't mind the Bandits being improved, but you certainly would get that reaction from some people if the initial version is just a low effort "that'll do" version. But I like how you immediately come at me with the "oh, you'd just hate on that change as well" as if I am hating for the sake of hating. I love this game, and every one of my arguments comes with alot of substance and I am backing them up. So stop the condescending tone if you wanna keep up the conversation.

 

[Neminsis]

I rarely find myself in a position where I have to craft glass jars. Making them uncraftable alone would not make hydration harder to come by. As it is right now, glass jars are everywhere. While I'm not the biggest fan of the proposed changes, it is definitely a step in the right direction when it comes to make the survival aspect of this game more challenging.

The operative words there are "As it is right now" but they will also be removing boiled water from the loot table and that will also have an effect. 

This change isn't going to affect my early game much since I'm a habitual Fortitude player that already drinks the murky and eats the sandwiches. It will however limit my late game crafting potential and that's where my only concerns lay.

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

First of all when was the last occasion you heard Joel say anything?

Second of all, "zombies with guns" was mentioned by faatal occasionally to describe the very first iteration of them so as to curb unrealistic expectations of fans. They never claimed that bandits were being designed to forevermore be zombies with guns.

Third of all, we can all tell by now that if bandits do release initially as "bandits with guns" and then they update them to have more depth you will complain that they have completely overhauled Bandits from scratch for the second time...

“Zombies with guns”….

I will take the heat on that because I remember saying something similar early on about bandits. Some posters were stating fantasy scenarios that just didn’t seem possible given current restraints. I wanted to let those people know they shouldn’t expect the greatest AI programming in any game or arguably any program. This expectation will clearly lead to disappointment with bandit even if they function perfectly fine and add fun to the game. 
We cannot expect the Pimps to do something that has never been done in history as a baseline. This isn’t a reasonable expectation.

Ill take the heat on “Zombies with guns” because I may have been the first one to say it on the forums.

 

[Roland]

All I get from this is a condescending "you don't get it" and "oh, anyone from the wider online community who is sceptical must've not played the game before".

Only if you take it as condescending I guess...

Nobody from the community has played A21 and not all information about the changes can be conveyed in text. You MUST play it to understand it. I never said that people who are skeptical probably haven't played the game before. That you are twisting my words to somehow mean that shows that you are not here to find out what's going on, you're here to accuse and attack.

Also I never said "bring back the 600 crafting quality levels". The new system sounds good, and it wasn't my criticism at all. Instead what I commented on was the needless change from the 600 qualities to the 6 qualities that simplified the whole thing massively and took alot of depth out of it, just for the devs to now do a 180 again to bring back more complexity into it. Like, its great that it is getting more complex again. Could've just been built as an iteration of the 600 qualities system though, as opposed to the 6 qualities system. Both still were grouped up into 6 main groups. There was a step backwards inbetween that just wasn't necessary.

I never said you wanted to bring it back though it looks like now you do want it brought back. I said that removing the 600 levels to simplify and then making the crafting changes in A21 to make it more complex are not just inverses of each other. One doesn't simply undo the other. We couldn't have kept the 600 levels and gotten the same result that A21 accomplishes. Could 600 levels and the new A21 system work together? Probably-- except the developers decided they didn't want 600 levels.

This is just straight up false and you know it.

I invited you to give me an example of a totally revamped from scratch feature and I would show you how it went through iterations and evolved from former versions of itself rather than being recreated from scratch. All you can say to that is that I'm lying and I know it.

Who is avoiding the issue? I'm ready for your example of complete redo from scratch. Go. If not then I say you're just a troll and you know it.

 

[Shado47]

The operative words there are "As it is right now" but they will also be removing boiled water from the loot table and that will also have an effect. 

This change isn't going to affect my early game much since I'm a habitual Fortitude player that already drinks the murky and eats the sandwiches. It will however limit my late game crafting potential and that's where my only concerns lay.

I hope they'll balance it out by making mineral water a bit more common perhaps.

Idk, the changes don't seem to be particularly well designed. Sacrificing depth to artificially make the game harder, while simultaneously making looting more annoying, removing items from loot tables to make those even more shallow, and so on?

How about making glass jars not stack, just like metal cans? How about making them require a mold to craft or something? I mean if they really wanna force players to have dysentery more and to be on lower HP all the time, surely there must be less annoying ways to do it?

We cannot expect the Pimps to do something that has never been done in history as a baseline. This isn’t a reasonable expectation.

"Never been done before" is a strong statement when many role playing games exist, including more survival oriented ones. It is absolutely possible to do a deep faction system where you can gain favor with different factions through different interactions with them, and have the NPCs act towards you accordingly.

If this is the plan for 7dtd, as it was stated a long time ago to be (with NPCs having schedules and the player being able to get either on their good side or their bad side), then I don't entirely understand why they'd first only put "zombies with guns" into the game as opposed to dedicating an update to do it properly right away. Like yeah, maybe it'll take a year. So what? This is 7dtd. After it didn't go Gold 5 years ago, it really stopped mattering when it actually ends up going Gold.

The trickier question is whether or not the engine supports implementing something like that, as well as the random gen nature of most of the gameplay taking place. But I think it can be done in Unity, I seem to remember some other Unity games with decent NPC systems.

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

I hope they'll balance it out by making mineral water a bit more common perhaps.

Idk, the changes don't seem to be particularly well designed. Sacrificing depth to artificially make the game harder, while simultaneously making looting more annoying, removing items from loot tables to make those even more shallow, and so on?

How about making glass jars not stack, just like metal cans? How about making them require a mold to craft or something? I mean if they really wanna force players to have dysentery more and to be on lower HP all the time, surely there must be less annoying ways to do it?

I look at the water change differently. The way the game plays now water is only relevant the first or second day. Once you have a cook pot and possibly a forge you are set forever. The way the game currently works there is little reason to have water because after a small amount of playtime you are literally swimming in water jars plus all the damn clutter they cause.

I like the proposed water changes.

 

[Shado47]

I look at the water change differently. The way the game plays now water is only relevant the first or second day. Once you have a cook pot and possibly a forge you are set forever. The way the game currently works there is little reason to have water because after a small amount of playtime you are literally swimming in water jars plus all the damn clutter they cause.

I like the proposed water changes.

Fair enough, right now it is suboptimal and hardly playing a role. I just disagree about the solution to that.

 

[Roland]

I don't religiously follow here, but I remember long dev streams of Joel discussing the bandits. Does that count?

So that was over a year ago ( the last one) and so I'm thinking your memory is probably fuzzy if you think that Joel was saying that the goal was to hopefully have bandits that would simply be "Zombies with guns". More likely he said that they don't want the zombies to be that way. In fact I know that is what he said.

And I never claimed that either. Could do them properly right away though, don't you think? Instead of doing a super bare bones version first that people get used to, and then changing them around again completely? And then they could still be improved from there, without it completely changing every aspect of them.

They could do them properly. But you already made a snide remark that "They aren't even here yet" So they can do all their bandit work behind closed doors and all their iterating where you can't see any of it and simply reveal bandits when they are ready to release at 1.0 or they can follow the Early Access model of making indev features available to everyone to try out as they develop and have them go through several changes where someone might possibly fall in love with an early version that isn't intended to remain and then get mad.

I hope they go with the Early Access model. Early Access isn't for everyone though.

See the hysterical thing here is that I wouldn't mind the Bandits being improved, but you certainly would get that reaction from some people if the initial version is just a low effort "that'll do" version. But I like how you immediately come at me with the "oh, you'd just hate on that change as well" as if I am hating for the sake of hating. I love this game, and every one of my arguments comes with alot of substance and I am backing them up. So stop the condescending tone if you wanna keep up the conversation.

I don't think you are hating for the sake of hating. I think what you hate is playing a game that is still in development. You love playing a game that is all done and finished and not slated for changes. Putting out initial "that'll do" versions of features into an alpha build is exactly what is supposed to happen. If you don't like the process then just wait for the game to be finished. I guarantee that anyone who plays the game for the very first time on the day it releases as 1.0 will not feel any of the grief, or loss, or anger over what the game used to be like. They won't know. They'll simply enjoy it for what it is in its final version.

 

[meganoth]

I mean this is hardly an argument. And alot of cover in the world is 2 blocks high anyways, so it does not make a difference. They have been oftentimes described as zombies with guns, Joel himself mentioned the phrase as well on occasion, so can we stop the pretense?

What pretense? What else should bandits be in this game? What do bandits with guns do in other open world games? I'd say hiding behind cover and shooting at you.

So Joel has humor and frankly says that bandits will not be the super feature that transforms the game into something completely new (which it shouldn't, this is still a zombie game). 3 years ago some forum users who were missing their "endgame" were so hyped they thought bandits would heal all their grievances with the game.

It makes sense to downplay that hype because players with no sense of the complexity of programming and especially AI programming were dreaming of camps of bandits and bandit groups that actually work together and attack your base intelligently as a group. Sorry, but it was clear even then that TFP could not make this happen with their small team.

Maybe once factions become a thing, the bandits will be overhauled and merged into that, so you can be on good terms with the factions and there'll be more depth to them.

But thats not how they're currently described.

As usual they don't tell us anything about features planned but not in the game. So you won't even find official infos about bandits going into cover. It doesn't make sense to complain about bandits already when nobody knows how they will enhance the game (or not).

No because I am not lifting my complaint off the steam forums. I have been a member of this particular Forum since 2013, I have played the game since the super early Alphas, I have seen more systems reworked in that time than new systems being added. And not just a slight overhang on one front. The vast majority of game updates have reinvented systems.

You were making that complaint about the water change. I haven't been with the game that early so you could be so nice to tell me the alpha where water was scarce (to show it was already fixed and they unfixed it to fix it now). Or were there were no water containers (to show it was reinvented). Bring some facts to the table.

For other games, when a system is spotted that needs redesign, usually on the drawing board it gets iterated a bunch until the right alternative is found. For 7 Days To Die, it gets iterated on many times update to update (presumably) without any drawing board. Like, the skill tree variants could've all been drafted years ago and the best one been picked and then perfected. Instead, we're once again getting a reinvented version that is already highly controversial before it even comes out.

Possibly they are not very good at picking the best version immediately. I have the impression many game developers have the same problems as some (even famous ones) bring out a game once in a while that simply doesn't work well and is misconstructed. Maybe the drawing board isn't always the perfect solution for this problem. Maybe at least not for all developers.

And also... maybe if you hear a complaint "all the time" on steam it shouldn't be ignored completely? Maybe at the end of the day, the customers might actually have a point? Responding to customer feedback with "oh, you just don't get it" seems awfully condescending.

I can (mostly) distinguish rants from reasoned discourse and the ones that come to mind were rants. I especially look down on rants about "there was no reason to bla bla" when I had heard about a few reasons on this forum and often could think of a few myself.

Oh, and I can look down on them as I am not part of TFP and the ranting posters are not my customers.

 

[Shado47]

So that was over a year ago ( the last one) and so I'm thinking your memory is probably fuzzy if you think that Joel was saying that the goal was to hopefully have bandits that would simply be "Zombies with guns".

I like how you accuse me of putting words in my mouth and then you do the exact same thing, when I have basically paraphrased the old plan from the dev streams of the more complex NPCs they were meant to be from the announcements back then. But if you seriously want to tell me that no dev ever mentioned that they'd just implement them as "zombies with guns" early on (and that is also a boiled down version of their statements), then I don't know what to say.

And I don't appreciate your remarks of "Early Access isn't for everyone though".

This game has not followed a conventional Early Access path at all. It has been milking the Early Access tag on steam for almost a decade. I don't know what you think you know about game development, but the development of this game has been highly unusual. Instead of it following a clear direction, the whole entire thing has been a construction site for like 9 years.

Again, I love the game, I have had great fun playing many different versions of it, for almost 2000 hours. But as you already admitted, not every change is always for the better. I fail to think of any other game that has redone its systems this often.

And you asked me for an example of a system that has been redone from scratch?

How about the Crafting System. It used to be a 5x5 grid and was completely changed.

Maybe it is not technically "from scratch" since some recipe amounts and some backend code might have been carried over, but in that case consider my initial claim to be "exaggeration to get the point across".

As usual they don't tell us anything about features planned but not in the game. So you won't even find official infos about bandits going into cover. It doesn't make sense to complain about bandits already when nobody knows how they will enhance the game (or not).

When have I complained about bandits?

 

[Doomofman]

 

[Shado47]

You were making that complaint about the water change. I haven't been with the game that early so you could be so nice to tell me the alpha where water was scarce (to show it was already fixed and they unfixed it to fix it now). Or were there were no water containers (to show it was reinvented). Bring some facts to the table.

Oh look, more words put in my mouth and other things I wrote ignored, when I already explained my views on the water thing in detail. What a surprise.

I can (mostly) distinguish rants from reasoned discourse and the ones that come to mind were rants. I especially look down on rants about "there was no reason to bla bla" when I had heard about a few reasons on this forum and often could think of a few myself.

Oh, and I can look down on them as I am not part of TFP and the ranting posters are not my customers.

I mean fair enough if you were talking about rants. I wasn't. I see lots of fair criticism all over the place, and it just gets shrugged off. And before anyone accuses me of only looking at Twitter criticism: I check Twitter like once per month, none of my opinions are lifted from there.

 

[Neminsis]

I hope they'll balance it out by making mineral water a bit more common perhaps.

It will just make the water purifier mod a more highly prized find and by the time you're up to finding mineral water in loot or getting the recipe you'll be well past any hydration issues. The real issue is that it limits your ability to produce enough water to handle a lot of glue dependent items in late game.
 

Idk, the changes don't seem to be particularly well designed.

I can't really agree here because it does in fact make gameplay more complex and it's something they're sure to iterate on later.  
 

How about making glass jars not stack, just like metal cans?

All of these suggestions have been made and talked about, even going as far as working out the average number of game days that hydration will even be an issue. It's about 3 game days btw. that's it, while adding a new station and a continuing goal of expanding water production. Not enough for my needs but still it's not removing depth. 

What you seem to be describing when you're talking about depth is more about just more items whether or not they add to gameplay complexity...

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

I hope they'll balance it out by making mineral water a bit more common perhaps.

Idk, the changes don't seem to be particularly well designed. Sacrificing depth to artificially make the game harder, while simultaneously making looting more annoying, removing items from loot tables to make those even more shallow, and so on?

How about making glass jars not stack, just like metal cans? How about making them require a mold to craft or something? I mean if they really wanna force players to have dysentery more and to be on lower HP all the time, surely there must be less annoying ways to do it?

"Never been done before" is a strong statement when many role playing games exist, including more survival oriented ones. It is absolutely possible to do a deep faction system where you can gain favor with different factions through different interactions with them, and have the NPCs act towards you accordingly.

If this is the plan for 7dtd, as it was stated a long time ago to be (with NPCs having schedules and the player being able to get either on their good side or their bad side), then I don't entirely understand why they'd first only put "zombies with guns" into the game as opposed to dedicating an update to do it properly right away. Like yeah, maybe it'll take a year. So what? This is 7dtd. After it didn't go Gold 5 years ago, it really stopped mattering when it actually ends up going Gold.

The trickier question is whether or not the engine supports implementing something like that, as well as the random gen nature of most of the gameplay taking place. But I think it can be done in Unity, I seem to remember some other Unity games with decent NPC systems.

Dude you don’t understand. People were saying things like Will bandits:

create new towns or settlement

can I befriend a bandit/can that bandit fall in love with me

will bandits setup traps (then some completely unrealistic traps based upon terrain or time or something a game AI will not be able to do)

Can I live in the bandit town as a crafter and help the bandits build better houses

and so on and so on.

Game AI is pretty stiff in every game. No chance the Pimps are going to build an AI that will pass the Turing test using Unity which can barely handle 20 zombies on the screen at one time.

 

[Javabean867]

Players have been complaining about it in the past, they weren't complaining about jars specifically; but I recall a lot of posts about how survivability in the base game was too easy.  Water in A20 is trivial.  I never had a hard choice about water in the game, never had to drink murky water.  The only "hard" choice I had was whether I should venture out night to the water source nearby to fill a stack of jars to craft glue for items I didn't need that very minute.

I had 1 playthrough where I got the water filter mod, and jept a stack of murky water on me, because it holds so much water lol.

 

[Matt115]

Sex Rex is not being removed.  TFP is just incorporating the perk's bonuses into the other perks because their data showed that non-strength players were perking into it to get its benefits for tools and the other melee weapons.  The only difference was that non-strength players were paying a premium cost for that perk compared to the strength players.  It's an easy way to reduce the gulf between strength and non-strength players (in terms of stamina use at least) while addressing a suggestion that has been made many times in the past.

Stamina regeneration boosting items like coffee are temporary buffs while perking into Sex Rex (or in A21, any melee weapon perk) is a permanent buff.   Master Chef (in it's current iteration, will likely be changed for A21) only decreases cooking times, unlock recipes, and reduces ingredients for certain foods, it does not influence those items.  As Uncle Al has already stated, Sex Rex =/= Advanced Engineering =/= Master Chef.

wait a sec: 

Perk Rebalancing

• Sexual T-Rex removed. Stamina improvement now incorporated into the separate perks for each relevant weapon
  

this from 1 page of this topic.  As you see - it's removed.

Temporary ofc - but you can have a lot of them pretty easy - but for most time you don't have to "waste" coffe - if you drive to somewhere by minibike you don't need stamina

Players have been complaining about it in the past, they weren't complaining about jars specifically; but I recall a lot of posts about how survivability in the base game was too easy.  Water in A20 is trivial.  I never had a hard choice about water in the game, never had to drink murky water.  The only "hard" choice I had was whether I should venture out night to the water source nearby to fill a stack of jars to craft glue for items I didn't need that very minute.

I don't rember anything this except guys who wanted to make something in 3d project zomboid.

7DTD is trivial... BFT and you will never have to drink murky water in A21. trust me - just check channels like this shorty after released of 21 - there will be a lot of tutorials like " how to have a lot of water during 1 day!" : 

 

[Shado47]

Dude you don’t understand. People were saying things like Will bandits:

create new towns or settlement

can I befriend a bandit/can that bandit fall in love with me

will bandits setup traps (then some completely unrealistic traps based upon terrain or time or something a game AI will not be able to do)

Can I live in the bandit town as a crafter and help the bandits build better houses

and so on and so on.

Game AI is pretty stiff in every game. No chance the Pimps are going to build an AI that will pass the Turing test using Unity which can barely handle 20 zombies on the screen at one time.

Again, nothing I am talking about myself hasn't been done in Unity before or discussed as planned for the future by the devs before.