Damn it, got carried away again, but please bear with me :'(
Not at all. I've been a Food Spoilage Warrior since forever...
I do remember that, but the Union of Immersion Warriors of 7DTD ™ thought you had abandoned our holy cause in the last couple of years! Seriously though, I do hope that it is included in their plans for the base game. It would make much of the content more relevant - canned food would be invaluable in early/mid game because of large expiration times, farming and hunting would become more important through mid/end-game, electricity would offer an important QOL upgrade by extending the expiration time and so on.
I think I get what you are wanting....
Yes. You often see people asking for more content, more end-game goals etc. I am not saying that these activities will solve that problem, but I am saying that the game already has plenty of content that can be used more prudently because atm there is a lot of content that is used a couple of times in the game and then gets forgotten, becomes something repetitive, or used so rarely that there is little point to it.
I do not advocate for repetitive activities, I want some activities to be tied more deeply to scavenging/exploring and I believe that tech/character progression should progressively improve QOL for many of these activities.
The water filtration example, which may not be a good one but describes what I am saying:
1) Initially the player tries to get by.
2) A pot can be found early in the game so that the player can boil it and avoid getting the a-nus icon debuff. That's great so far. Since that point, the player has to fill bottles and boil them in a bonfire for the rest of the game.
3) Another layer could allow the player to use a device with electricity, by skipping boiling (or even skipping filling bottles with a device that can e.g. automatically collect rain water and filter it) and producing perfectly pure water that can be a little more advantageous. The player would have to change filters every 1-2 weeks by scavenging and finding rarer materials.
Do not take this example as an "idea thing". I am just trying to convey that I do not necessarily want a more hardcore or repetitive approach,
but an approach that creates the sense of progression with "tech" tied to survival by giving extra QOL and actually makes activities less repetitive by pushing the player towards exploring/scavenging.
In short - repetitive activities do not equal better use of content, but tying them to exploring/scavenging while also improving QOL, does and at the same time feels like meaningful progression.
This is great to hear. I wouldn't want for the more extreme biomes to be strictly "gated", but to require some preparation beforehand. The yuka-filled desert is a good example to demonstrate how some things in the game work against others. Also, temperature changes with gear and being next to a bonfire should be a little more interactive, so that a combination of both is needed. Not saying they should make the player light a bonfire every 2 minutes - the opposite, but for example, having a bonfire lit at night while wearing heavy clothing could allow the player to go through the next of the day without even needing to warm up - having a "heat safe-reserve" kind of how humidity works in the Long Dark, but seamlessly, without the player having to micromanage anything or check any meter.
This part of the game is...
These are also great to hear! I do hope that it's not a bug, because reseting your status with death is like bread and butter from what I've experienced in MP at the moment and I wouldn't expect anything different considering how the system works. And it may sound strange to hear and at first glance the death status reset feels player-friendly, but this makes status effects feel even more annoying than having to treat them or preventing/preparing for them, because when having to treat them players engage in actual game mechanics, while having to, for example, go to your hideout and use glass shards, in order to die, return to the base and so on, it ends up being "the tedius thing you have to do when contracting a disease".
Zombie loot has been cut....
It's true that zombie loot contributed to the problem I was talking about. It's the same psychological mechanism with the above - the average player will complain as a knee-jerk reaction because he knows he will get less loot right outside his door. Long term though, chances are that the same player will end up being happier with not having to click on each zombie or having to explore more, alleviating his "need for extra content" a little. Plus I hope that exploring with the new POIs will be made more diverse. The zombie loot change is a good change indeed.
I'm not saying MC surviva...
Actually, I partially agree with Silveria - that this level of micromanaging (even if I do enjoy it) is not for everyone. But I believe that depending on the way you introduce a mechanic to the game, it can feel like annoying micromanaging or it can alternatively feel like seamless, simple, planning ahead. I really do not wish for this game to become a micromanaging nightmare for the extra reason that, in contrary with PZ, it's an action game in which micromanaging does not fit.
For example, I hated looking at my character sheet to check temperature levels and so on - if it was up to me, it would be very much worth to streamline them and add a non-intrusive but clear visual effect, or a non-numerical graphical UI element that lets the player know his state instantly and efforlessly. Or as another example, crafting requires more micromanaging that it really has to. I can't blame anyone who worries about extra micromanaging considering the current level of it.
I don't doubt that there will be some players that may consider having to plan even for the slightest survival need, a chore. But the reason you replied in this thread initially was practically the same, but for the tower defense part of the game. Micromanaging in an action game particularly, sucks, but what I am saying barely needs any as long as the game intuitively lets the player experience clear cause and effect. For example, a streamlined spoilage system would quickly not be seen as micromanagement, but as a natural part of the game, as soon as the player experiences it and learns to plan accordingly. And it's less about being hardcore and more about putting already existing and rich content to better use so that more of it gets exploited.
Finally, as I said in the previous thread, I am all for accessibility and I do understand a developer's point of view on it, but inexperience is only a short transitional state that is not worth sacrificing gameplay for. A smoother curve can also alleviate new player concerns while keeping mid/end game more engaging. Target audiences is also definitely a real thing and tastes can be vastly different, but in the end, humans and how their brains work is not that different. I am not claiming that I know how they do, I am just saying that not everything has to be taken at face value and that sometimes it is worth exploring any underlying reasons.
