PC Catering to New Players hurts Replayability for Experienced Players
- Thread starter stallionsden
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Kubikus
New member
If you need a reason why I know it, I can just make one up. Very easy. Someone told me. So, that's why I know it. And - which is the point - if I knew, I would go there. In game I know it because the house is not unknown. The game's devs know that as soon as I have played the game once, the house is not unknown anymore. So they should consider that and make sure it's not 100% forseeable where treasure rooms are. It's even relatively simple, you can randomize loot containers. All the crates already are random, they can be food, guns, tools or meds. They also could be trashbags. It's easy to remove the treasure rooms.
If you knew that Zombies behave a certain way, for example get stuck in a loop when you build a simple staircase, you would build a simple staircase. You would, just like I do in game, make sure that you don't die when the staircase fails, but you would build the simple structure to outwit the zombies. And so I do, and it's enough.
The bottom line is that if you knew a simple solution to a problem, you would use the solution. It is unsatisfying when the game is only a challenge and enjoyable when I pretend not to know the solution.
You already agree there is too much loot. Let's move on to the AI. Do you think an AI that is less forseeable would be better th an what we have now?
That would be much better, but going through a POI is no problem either, bee lining to the treasure room is just "even faster". Only spreading loot all over the POI means we would still have great loot all over the place (aka in too many POIs). There simply is too much such loot.
Unfortunately, they sorta navigated themselves into a bit of a corner with the sleeper concept. If you go through a house with 20 sleepers, it's a risk and has a cost, particularly when you cannot rely on cheap weapons like melee anymore, because you have feral or radiated zombz. So if you go through a house and take a risk and expend resources and get no reward, you have a point calling that unsatisfying. I'm not 100% sure about it, might be interesting, but you'd have at least a point. Would the number of sleepers indicate that a POI has good loot, again we have the issue of people knowing where the good loot is. I would certainly find myself going from POI to POI and then only loot those that indicate themselves as rich in loot.
Therefor, I say, the general concept of having sleepers all over the place is a mistake. The majority of zombies should be outside, and should be spawned by and around houses, so it is a problem to go into towns and cities, and you'd have to get rid of zombies before you can get into houses (like it was the case before being replaced with sleepers). Or lure them away first, for example with noise producing devices to draw them to a certain location. Like "in the movies".
Inside houses, a very few sleepers should appear, and these should be designed to give the player a fright. You shouldn't just know that in the next room there are 5 construction workers and on the roof is a radiated cop and so on. Sneaky sleepers should jump out of walls, fall out of ceilings and provide jump scares. Which, though, they only can if you cannot be sure they are there. They need to be relatively rare and random, so even in the same house you cannot be sure. It would already be enough if you would encounter one such sleeper in, say, five houses.
Only on top of that and regulated by quests, that are either triggered by random POIs themselves and/or given by the trader, houses full of sleepers should be a thing, because yes, it is fun too to clear a building of zombies, and only once done, one should receive an appropriate reward. Since you could get them from traders, you still could clear houses full of sleepers all day long, if that's what you enjoy. The "just find the box that is conveniently marked on your compass"-quests need to go completly, I had lvl 5 quests of this type where I found that box within literally a minute. Too easy, needs to go.
Like I said, going through houses on day 1 is no challenge for experienced video game players. I don't even need to know 7dtd, if I have good aim and understood how the basic weapons work, I can kill the day 1 trashmobs. And once I (me personally) have a pistol, I have good reason to go through houses and kill em all anyways, to begin with, because I enjoy it, but also because of the xp-reward.
The problem did not exist before loot rooms, because then you had to be lucky to find a shop to begin with. Shops were rare. And before they removed that, shops would spawn zombies outside, so when you approached a shop, 10 - 20 zombies would appear to protect it. It was a great system, that was changed for the worse.
Sure. But zombies were given intelligence, meaning, they do no longer just come for the player in a straight line, you know, like zombies, but understand what obstacles and traps are. And that is what the player can outsmart and use as an advantage. Obviously, right? Zombies should have no intelligence that leads to a certain behaviour that the player can outsmart with as little effort as currently. In my opinion, zombies should behave like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead or The Walking Dead. They should be attracted by noise, smell, light and movement - and that's it. The danger comes from the numbers and that you don't know where they are and come from and where they attack. That you have to protect a base in all directions. Now you just leave an open gate. Or build a staircase with a kill corridor. Boring.
How is the game not the system? Would I want to not play the system, I would still have play the system, because I would have to ignore the system very specifically. For example do I know that zombies will go through any opening. So I leave no opening. Then I know that zombies go for the weakest spot, so I have to make sure there is no weakest spot. And then I would grind for materials and spend time building defenses, knowing that I don't actually need all that. If I can afford "all that" to begin with, because the game is (probably) balanced so that you can't have enough traps to protect a not-tiny base from all sides.
Overall, the much better solution is that the devs change the ai to something less forseeable.
I call it roleplaying because I have to pretend being someone I am not: Someone who does not know how zombies behave. And I was very happy with many alphas and played several thousand hours, so your thought about my mindset is false.
And I think most of the problems, if not all, are related to bad design changes. The "but it's alpha"-angle works to a degree. If things change for the better, I'll be happy and happy to admit it. But now I judge what I see now, and providing feedback, well, should be appreciated by the devs.
Kubikus
New member
If I am not mistaken, "catering to X" means doing something with the conscious intention to service X. Making the game easier with the conscious intention to make the game easier for new players equals "catering to new players". And it is obviously motivated by the desire to sell more copies.
What equals "catering to old timers"? Making the game harder with the conscious decision to provide old timers with a new challenge.
Now who is asking for that? Maybe some are, I haven't seen it, link please - all I see is ppl asking the devs not to disservice old timers by making the game too easy because they want to cater to new players. And that is a very different situation than "well, we're not going to make changes just so that the people who are bored after 1000 hours are challenged again", and I dare to suspect that the actual situation is twisted into the very different one so that the actual situation can be ignored conveniently. Because if we do not ignore the actual situation, we kinda have to explain why it's allright to walk all over the old timers, to whom, does it not?, the company owes it's success in the first place.
And of course, yes, if anything that's a dead horse, we all now that it's never "all". Not "all" old timers are unhappy, not "all" new players want it easy. Needless to say, really, such common knowledge, that one does not even have to make any effort to point that out overly precisely.
That's really very nice of you. Right?
RestInPieces
New member
They will have to prove the obvious, in other words.
As for whether it's difficult or not, I have no idea what kind of internal tools do they have and how they populate the world with prefabs, but in practice there are many different easy ways to randomize them.
Might feel like I am talking shenanigans but I want to be brief:
A randomized tiled floor with tiles having a specific pattern < A handcrafted tiled floor with tiles having a specific pattern < A randomized tiled floor with tiles having a randomized pattern. That's what he is saying.
Personally, many of TFP's design decisions and priorities completely baffle me, like in the case of their 17.0 rpg elements iteration, or in the case of how they ended up using sleepers. But, oh well, can you do.
Roland
Community Moderator
I would ask, what equals "disservice to old timers" or "walk all over the old timers"? Does intention have anything to do it? So if TFP is making changes that they feel make the game better from their perspective but there is no ill intent towards anyone who has 1000s of hours would that be just an innocent "here's hoping old timers understand and still support us" or a more diabolical "lets walk all over them"?
Is the standard simply "if I feel walked on then I was walked on"?
As you pointed out nobody is saying ALL old timers feel spurned. So if it isn't a universal feeling of being screwed over then is it really real that anyone is actually being walked on?
Madmole has said a number of times that there will be some simplification particularly in the early game to make playing more intuitive and easy to understand but that he wants to add more complexity to mid and late game.
Sure, we are the ones who supported TFP while they were starting out and we have a reward in that we can remember the game how it once was. People starting in A18 can never get that. Sure they can go back but they won't appreciate Alpha 10 as the best version yet like we did when all we knew was Alpha 9. We can joke about all the broken legs in Alpha 11 and procedural caves that newbies will never have in their game. Would it be nice to have procedural caves now? Absolutely. But is TFP's decision to not include them born out of wanting to stick it to old timers who remember playing with procedural caves or is it purely because of technical limitations? What if the truth is that TFP couldn't figure out how to do caves well enough for the standard of quality they require in their game but someone feels personally offended that TFP was walking on them by cutting procedural caves and most of the people in his circle also felt abandoned because they loved procedural caves so much. Did TFP walk all over them by cutting procedural caves?
The Alpha disclaimer warns that a game in development may change into something you no longer are interested in playing. That is the risk of buying into early access. Can recent changes to increase the accessibility of the game really be defined as walking over early supporters when some of those supporters feel the game has never been better, some feel it's changed for the worse but is still fun, some don't care for it unless they use mods, and some won't ever play it again no matter what? There is such a wide spectrum of responses to the development process and all of us were warned when we pledged our money that the game could change into something we personally don't like.
I think we all agree on the fact that the game is being made to be more accessible to a wider audience. Some feel personally affronted by that and others don't. How much responsibility for being offended does the offended party bear in feeling offended?
When someone offends me and then I find out there was no mean intent and it wasn't an attack the offended feelings bleed out of me almost instantly. Is it enough to know that TFP isn't intentionally attacking anyone by making these changes?
KeiraR
New member
I haven't read the whole thing but I just want to say this.
That feeling when you either found a forge house on day one or the book...
Or was brave and crazy enough to go into the hub city looking for tools/books/guns.
The minibike book in a trashcan... hallelujah
When I go into a house now I think, yeah, those cabinets sure have been opened and closed a lot since they were new when I came into this building in A11. ;P But hey, just follow the lights, who needs cabinets with surprises when you know where the good stuff is, right?
For me it has never been the same after the forge book got scrapped because people complained they couldn't find one fast enough. Then look harder or find a forge house but nope, no more book. But then people got the forge too soon and it was too easy. We'll put it behind a skillpoint wall. But now I need to lvl to unlock it. So now we are here.
Use the forge fluke...
This just my opinion and I think what the OP meant.
That feeling when you either found a forge house on day one or the book...
Or was brave and crazy enough to go into the hub city looking for tools/books/guns.
The minibike book in a trashcan... hallelujah
When I go into a house now I think, yeah, those cabinets sure have been opened and closed a lot since they were new when I came into this building in A11. ;P But hey, just follow the lights, who needs cabinets with surprises when you know where the good stuff is, right?
For me it has never been the same after the forge book got scrapped because people complained they couldn't find one fast enough. Then look harder or find a forge house but nope, no more book. But then people got the forge too soon and it was too easy. We'll put it behind a skillpoint wall. But now I need to lvl to unlock it. So now we are here.
Use the forge fluke...
This just my opinion and I think what the OP meant.
stallionsden
Tester
So tfp are outsourcing something to do with the game cant recall mm said. But can they not out source the randomisation of dungeon pois as well thus giving them more time to work on other stuff thus gicing the game an i credible jump again. Since they dont want to do it or dont think the dungeon pois wpuld benefit. I think this thread proves it will enhance the game if done correctly. As well even those who disagree with the game being boring etc agreed the dungeon poi randomising would be great. Again i say all those that agreed with randomising.
Modders could even do it i guess but then the game have to be modded and thus some people wont play modded
Guppycur
Well-known member
It's definitely an entirely different game than when "we" first started. The mo has been to instead of fixing problems in the alpha, replace it with something else that has flaws to be replaced the next alpha.
Now from the tfp perspective, as I've always said, business is business, but mm has stated (and recanted, then restated, then repeat the cycle) that the goal is 25 hours, give or take.
That's what gets them the most business, fine. What it doesn't get them is replayability, which is what "we" used to have in prior alphas.
That is what's different about the game and why "us" old players feel slighted.
This most definitely is not the game we originally bought, and pointing out the Eula for early access is insulting, because it's a clear cop out.
Hope that helps you understand, even if you vehemently disagree.
Oh, and "this is the best alpha yet, we are finally getting what we envisioned" only to have that alpha trash talked the very NEXT alpha, doesn't help.
Now from the tfp perspective, as I've always said, business is business, but mm has stated (and recanted, then restated, then repeat the cycle) that the goal is 25 hours, give or take.
That's what gets them the most business, fine. What it doesn't get them is replayability, which is what "we" used to have in prior alphas.
That is what's different about the game and why "us" old players feel slighted.
This most definitely is not the game we originally bought, and pointing out the Eula for early access is insulting, because it's a clear cop out.
Hope that helps you understand, even if you vehemently disagree.
Oh, and "this is the best alpha yet, we are finally getting what we envisioned" only to have that alpha trash talked the very NEXT alpha, doesn't help.
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KeiraR
New member
Yes I know, I think I found one in the first forge I looked in. You can also spend SP to get it.
This kind of supports it being easy now then doesn't it? =)
Edit: I think it's a bit overkill with all the mods, recipes, parts. I stopped playing for a while and it's sort of overwhelming. Less is more isn't a saying for nothing.
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I've said this for a long time.
Development was influenced by people who, since the game was in Alpha so long for one thing, had already played the game for 1000's of hours and had figured out ways to exploit the game. I've said it time and again, because it's what happened.
"All you gotta do is spam craft 100 axes!"
Who did that? You?! I've played for 1000 hours in A16 and never went out of my way to exploit the game. People who exploit the game, and every game will have ways to exploit it, were listened to a bit too much by the devs, in my opinion.
We saw drastic changes because of that. I do not agree with that way of developing a game. There will always be people who will find glitches and ways to exploit a games systems = it never means everyone is doing that.
Another reason I still think A16 is the best version so far. It just needed a little tweaking, not an overhaul.
Development was influenced by people who, since the game was in Alpha so long for one thing, had already played the game for 1000's of hours and had figured out ways to exploit the game. I've said it time and again, because it's what happened.
"All you gotta do is spam craft 100 axes!"
Who did that? You?! I've played for 1000 hours in A16 and never went out of my way to exploit the game. People who exploit the game, and every game will have ways to exploit it, were listened to a bit too much by the devs, in my opinion.
We saw drastic changes because of that. I do not agree with that way of developing a game. There will always be people who will find glitches and ways to exploit a games systems = it never means everyone is doing that.
Another reason I still think A16 is the best version so far. It just needed a little tweaking, not an overhaul.
stallionsden
Tester
deleted
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KhaineGB
Well-known member
I've been saying this as well. A16 just needed RWG tweaking (due to the massive lakes) and the zombie AI tweaking (stop them spinning in circles).
Other than that, it was REALLY good. It didn't need the full overhaul that it got.
Though I do appreciate all the new modding options we got.