PC Another "direction of the game thread" and iam concerned...

[Onarr]

Point is there's very few zombies in your zombie game now. When people complained, they have basically been told it's a work in progress and the change was made in preparation for some encounter system that will make it feel like zombies are everywhere. SO ADD THAT DAMN ENCOUNTER SYSTEM IN THE SAME BUILD YOU NERF ZOMBIE NUMBERS!!!!! Nerfing the zombie count without adding the complimentary system just means we have to play for months with an empty world, no challenge, laughably non-threatening nighttime, and thus boredome.

Good point

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

I am afraid you guys are a bit biased.
When you have an idea, you are usually very invested in it. When it is rejected by a dev a person will feel emotionaly hurt and start seeing the other person in negative light and will be much more critical.

I agree and disagree. People with fragile emotions will get hurt. People with confidence will generally not be hurt by having an idea shot down by the devs. It could also be that some people have this image that there idea is solid gold and so anyone who has anything to say against it is taken as a personal attack. People just need to get thicker skin and stop and think.

If an idea is shot down, well, why? was it bad, if so then why? maybe it does not fit the vision of the game? maybe the idea was not clearly spoken to the dev... millions of reasons why. It is sad, it seems like there is a much bigger portion of the populace that cannot take rejection in this day and age.

This is not saying that healthy people do not have that sting of rejection from time to time because they are indeed proud of an idea. But a strong person will feel a little sting and immediately move on and or think about whats bad about there idea or pitch of said idea and improve it instead of feeling hurt.

Personally in my life, when I get rejected it does not make me view the person doing the rejecting in a nagetive light nor am I critical of them. Its an opportunity to learn and grow.

 

[meganoth]

I find this to be very true and very troubling. It seems like the devs show up to clap back at haters in the most ridiculous, histrionic, no-fact based threads, but if a poster who really cares aboutt he game takes the time to make a carefully detailed thread with constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement it is either ignored entirely or lightly dusted with snarky, sarcastic comments that ignore the substance of the thread or whitewash the issue completely.
This may be the worst "direction of the game" issue for me. It feels like they don't care about thoughful, reasoned feedback and they are only reacting to the loudest, squeakiest, and stupidest wheels.

I think all my feedback is thoughtful, reasonably and 100% correct. I expect you to think the same about your feedback even if your feedback and my feedback directly contradict themselves. And I expect each developer and reader to have his own view as well.

Sometimes other people show me that I was factually wrong even though I had been absolutely sure I was correct. But most often it is just a difference in the basic assumptions we make, leading to different conclusions.

This is most apparent with older alphas. A lot of players have favourites there, for example A12, A15 or A16. None of those were apparently the favourite of the "group mind" of the developers, they were and are looking for something else.

Really, if you think a thoughtful post is all that is needed to be followed you are kidding yourself. I made lots of reasonable suggestions (in my view) and I think about two were actually implemented and most likely that was just coincidence.

And I think my likes and dislikes are largely similar to those of the developers (I generally agree with their direction). How must someone feel who has largely different likes? Ignored? Sure. No surprise there.

 

[meganoth]

That's weird, he didn't catch up with us. The only who could catch up was feral vulture.Maybe the difference that we usually traverse terrain with a lot of obstacles and I noticed that in A18 zombies have hard time navigating terrain in comprasion to A17.

No, talking seriously, a lot of people would really appreciate to disable/reduce sleepers and instead increase a number of zombies roaming streets around POIs. Sleepers are not ready for production the way they are implemented now. You probably know it well yourself, so why don't let us play without them as an option?

Sorry for emotions in previous post.

No, what I mean is, that game currently specifically designed the way this is most efficient playstyle. And it really contrasts to how game played before and many people don't like it.

The problem is not trader himself per se, but how overpowered his rewards are. Why trader provides you with ton of ammo, complete steel tools and weapons of high grade, tons of meds? Why you didn't make so quests reward you with key materials like weapon parts instead of weapon parts, forged steel, concrete, blueprints of forge, workbench, cement mixer and chem station, wrenches? The trader should help bypass certrain chokepoins of player progression, but currently he just makes most of other game content irrelevant.

I agree with your last paragraph. Quest rewards should be smaller, more varied, include more crafting ingredients instead of finished products. May I suggest posting this paragraph in the balance thread. Even if you get a "no problem there" remark from MM first that feedback might be picked up when they rebalance the trader.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

I think all my feedback is thoughtful, reasonably and 100% correct. I expect you to think the same about your feedback even if your feedback and my feedback directly contradict themselves. And I expect each developer and reader to have his own view as well.
Sometimes other people show me that I was factually wrong even though I had been absolutely sure I was correct. But most often it is just a difference in the basic assumptions we make, leading to different conclusions.

This is most apparent with older alphas. A lot of players have favourites there, for example A12, A15 or A16. None of those were apparently the favourite of the "group mind" of the developers, they were and are looking for something else.

Really, if you think a thoughtful post is all that is needed to be followed you are kidding yourself. I made lots of reasonable suggestions (in my view) and I think about two were actually implemented and most likely that was just coincidence.

And I think my likes and dislikes are largely similar to those of the developers (I generally agree with their direction). How must someone feel who has largely different likes? Ignored? Sure. No surprise there.

You are a perfect example of what i was talking about above. You are the confident type person. I like how you view this, well said sir!

 

[Roland]

Most of my suggestions are rejected as well and there have been times I’ve suggested them on the dev chat and gotten some support from members of the team but then it was ultimately shot down by one of the lead programmers.

I dabbled a bit in boardgame design about a decade ago and felt I had a great idea and of course all my friends and family agreed when they played it. But when I contacted a few publishers they rejected my submission. Shortly after, I went to a gaming convention and had an opportunity to talk to someone in the industry and he told me that most game companies have 2-3 years worth of ideas they already have in queue to develop and release so they never need or particularly want new ideas.

He said to break into the industry I would need to self publish possibly via crowd funding.

The same is true of this game. The devs have already decided on the ideas they want to choose and they really aren’t in the market for new ideas. Most things people suggest have already been discussed and either rejected or given a priority of when to implement.

If you really want your suggestion to come to be you either need to finance your own game or mod this one. I felt very strongly about going to a design that bypassed xp and made player progression dependent upon time survived. My suggestion was rejected. Now I have a mod for it and it makes for an interesting alternative feel for the game. I love that there are no xp rewards causing players to do things. All you need to do is survive for a full day and then you get a skillpoint no matter what you did.

The point is I didn’t cry about insensitive devs. I got to work and learned how to create modlets and asked for help and now my suggestion is a reality for anyone who cares to try it.

 

[Ac75]

This cannot be denied. Melee has been terrible since A17. I got used to it, but it's still terrible.

Agreed. You "get used to it"

Best thing I ever did was start up A16 with War of the Walkers and I'm having an amaze-balls time. Simply amazing.

- - - Updated - - -

This week I will introduce a friend to 7d2d, and Im worried about what he will say when he tries to hit stuff. And I have no problem doing it right, once you get used to it its easy, it just.... doesnt feel right.

Its utterly shocking when you go back to A16.

All the "rag-dolling" they added, and now got those who will repeat it calling it "they added glancing blows!...", all those were there in A16 already, and done better.

In any game design course for college, there's no way you could introduce the hit collision detection in A16 and then A17 and 18 and not have it be glaringly obvious how bad the idea to change it was. What was done to the melee was really, really bad.

 

[Ac75]

I'll have to check that out, My by far biggest gripe with A16 is the borked sleepers, know if that's been touched on in the mod?

I swear, it appears the mod creator was somehow able to drastically lower "Cheese Spawns" = When you clear a place and they pop up behind you. It does seem he was able to nearly eliminate that and he also made stealth actually work and be reliable = If you're crouched, great chance you wont wake them.

The custom POIs alone with blow your mind in War of the Walkers. They're very well crafted, have better hidden secrets with VERY WORTHWHILE secret loot stashes and arent designed like the A17 and A18 POIS with cheesy jumpscares.

 

[Ac75]

They also listened to the bad/unskilled players. Players who were speccing entirely into non-combat skills then getting owned in POIs and crying they were too hard for example. Just look at the nerf to POI zombies. POIs are a joke now, and hardly any threat whatsoever until your GS hits a ridiculous value. On top of that they added Junk Turrets, my God, the most comically OP item I've seen ever as far as clearing POIs goes. Might as well have removed all zombies from indoors and just open a straight path to the loot room.

If you want hard POIS, my friend, many of the POIS in War of the Walkers are stuffed with Custom Zeds, like Glowy Head Business guys.

There's a Department Store POI in WOTW that has more gun safes that I've ever seen in one place, with a couple behind bulletproof glass, and going in that place is GNARLY! It seems the mod maker really stuffed key, high loot POIs with real high level Zeds.

I can't even do most of the POIs in WOTW alone.

 

[Ac75]

Why did you wait? A18 is zero threat at night. Just go about your normal business.

When I played A18 for like 30-40 hours, enough to form a solid opinion on it, I still had the A16 Fear of Night in me.

Naaaa....nothing out there. Hell, there's barely ever anything walking around in the day, let alone the night now.

I hear what youre saying = They listened to the crappy players too. "There's too many walkers in town....waaaa"...

Now theres none walking around! Again, War of the Walkers kicks ass in this regard. Tons of zeds on foot, everywhere and mobile mobs can be from 30 to 80 zeds and the mob types are frightening.

You do not wanna come around a corner and see a 40 Football Player horde streaking straight towards you*....

*I only aggro'd the first one or two but was lucky to move quick enough away

 

[Ac75]

It's not difficult if you want to mod A16 with War of the Walkers.

You just DL the mod, unzip it, and put all the stuff that gets unzipped into your 7 Days folder, and Overwrite/Merge/Yes when it asks you to, and then you launch the game with the 7 Days EXE in you main folder you just put all that stuff into.

I'm not even a mod-guy and I figured it out.

I went ahead and did it after trying both A17 and A18 rather extensively and I'm having the best SP game, not just 7 Days, I mean a Single Player game in general, that I've had in a very long time.

I know I'm a broken record. Yes im tiny-percentage-promoting it cuz I need a buddy, haha = But no, In the 1000 hours I have with 7 Days, getting WOTW 5.3 was the best thing I ever did.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I wonder what governs the sleepers 'sleepyness'. Sometimes they wake up when a fly farts at the frontdoor, other zombies don't wake up even after bashing down the closetdoor right in front of them with a club and shining a torch in their face The scene from Hot-Shots Part Deux where they try to get the keys comes to mind

Load up some POIs in the prefab editor. You will see that every sleeper spawn has hearing settings. The ones that wake up when a fly farts are probably set to 100% hearing or something close. From what I have seen, most POI designers don’t even tweak these settings. It’s either full or set really low for the closet zombies.

 

[-Holo-]

Load up some POIs in the prefab editor. You will see that every sleeper spawn has hearing settings. The ones that wake up when a fly farts are probably set to 100% hearing or something close. From what I have seen, most POI designers don’t even tweak these settings. It’s either full or set really low for the closet zombies.

Ugh, That explains alot. We went in a house yesterday, me with double-barreled shotgun firing off a bunch of rounds in the livingroom, and a couple of zombies sleeping tight in the next room. (Although I have a friend that could probably do that too hmm)

Had this been A15, zombies from the whole block would come after us

 

[-Holo-]

Most of my suggestions are rejected as well and there have been times I’ve suggested them on the dev chat and gotten some support from members of the team but then it was ultimately shot down by one of the lead programmers.
I dabbled a bit in boardgame design about a decade ago and felt I had a great idea and of course all my friends and family agreed when they played it. But when I contacted a few publishers they rejected my submission. Shortly after, I went to a gaming convention and had an opportunity to talk to someone in the industry and he told me that most game companies have 2-3 years worth of ideas they already have in queue to develop and release so they never need or particularly want new ideas.

He said to break into the industry I would need to self publish possibly via crowd funding.

The same is true of this game. The devs have already decided on the ideas they want to choose and they really aren’t in the market for new ideas. Most things people suggest have already been discussed and either rejected or given a priority of when to implement.

If you really want your suggestion to come to be you either need to finance your own game or mod this one. I felt very strongly about going to a design that bypassed xp and made player progression dependent upon time survived. My suggestion was rejected. Now I have a mod for it and it makes for an interesting alternative feel for the game. I love that there are no xp rewards causing players to do things. All you need to do is survive for a full day and then you get a skillpoint no matter what you did.

The point is I didn’t cry about insensitive devs. I got to work and learned how to create modlets and asked for help and now my suggestion is a reality for anyone who cares to try it.

I just wish the features we are missing -could- be modded back. Then this whole debacle with the game changing it's style would be moot.

(Some of the extremely talented modders could maybe hack the dll's a bit for it, but that's a league of it's own)

Do you happen to know what kind of modsupport they have planned for gold? If it's 'just' xml like now or stronger modtools to alter the .dll's and core files?

 

[Ac75]

I just wish the features we are missing -could- be modded back. Then this whole debacle with the game changing it's style would be moot.(Some of the extremely talented modders could maybe hack the dll's a bit for it, but that's a league of it's own)

Do you happen to know what kind of modsupport they have planned for gold? If it's 'just' xml like now or stronger modtools to alter the .dll's and core files?

What one person was able to do with War of the Walkers was incredibly impressive. Pretty sure it was all one guy.

 

[-Holo-]

What one person was able to do with War of the Walkers was incredibly impressive. Pretty sure it was all one guy.

Gonna try to take a look at it this weekend hopefully, promised my group I'd gut the xml of A18 and remove and rewrite a bunch of stuffs to make it back into a survival game (if possible )

It's always tricky to 'downgrade' alphas for me, since there is after all a bunch of tech that I enjoy and would still like to have that each alpha has brought.

While Playing A15, although having a blast, It's always that feeling of missing the new POI's and new Zombies, Power and Paint, Etc.

A16 I think probably could be a somewhat sweetspot, even though I'd miss the mod system and A18's Occlusion which were great.

And the modlet system is also hard to turn back on.

I'm currently waiting in anticipation of Darkness Falls for Alpha 18, we ran it on A17 and that really saved that version and made it quite enjoyable again.

 

[Ghostlight]

I agree and disagree. People with fragile emotions will get hurt. People with confidence will generally not be hurt by having an idea shot down by the devs. It could also be that some people have this image that there idea is solid gold and so anyone who has anything to say against it is taken as a personal attack. People just need to get thicker skin and stop and think.

There is also a big difference between their response to an idea and their response to a criticism. I think we are talking about the latter.

 

[Ghostlight]

The same is true of this game. The devs have already decided on the ideas they want to choose and they really aren’t in the market for new ideas. Most things people suggest have already been discussed and either rejected or given a priority of when to implement.

In that case it is rather maddening that the ideas they have decided on for the most part are non-original and appear already in tons of other games. Ideas which would be considered bland and generic by old-timers to this game. Perk system comes to mind as a prime example. With each passing alpha it gets closer and closer to same old crap seen in every RPG ever: kill enemies to gain XP to level up to gain points to spend on any talent you like. Snoooze.

 

[Ghostlight]

It's not difficult if you want to mod A16 with War of the Walkers.
You just DL the mod, unzip it, and put all the stuff that gets unzipped into your 7 Days folder, and Overwrite/Merge/Yes when it asks you to, and then you launch the game with the 7 Days EXE in you main folder you just put all that stuff into.

I am very tempted by this. A16 was by the best alpha for me. I never had weird respawns in cleared rooms that many complained about and that alpha was the sublime high poit in the mechanics department. Just so I'm clear on how to do this....I'd have to set the game to A16.4 and install that first, as normal, through Steam, and only then drop the unzipped mod files on top, right?

This would also mean I'd lose the ability to play A18 though, right?

 

[-Holo-]

I am very tempted by this. A16 was by the best alpha for me. I never had weird respawns in cleared rooms that many complained about and that alpha was the sublime high poit in the mechanics department. Just so I'm clear on how to do this....I'd have to set the game to A16.4 and install that first, as normal, through Steam, and only then drop the unzipped mod files on top, right?
This would also mean I'd lose the ability to play A18 though, right?

You can probably install 16.4 with steam, copy that 7days to die folder and rename it to something else, and then install A18 back.

probably need go to under your username/appdata/local folder (i think) and rename the 7 days to die folder there to keep them separated.

I have A14 7 Days to die, A15 7 Days to die, A5 7 days to die etc folders there and just rename them when I want to change version to play.

The mod launcher might be able to do all that for you though. never used it