PC Complaints about this game

[Mastermind]

I was about to post this reply in a thread... But since it applies to so many threads in the forum, I thought I'd make a new one...

So... I keep reading complaints about the game in the forum... How it's going down hill and all.  To be honest, I joined pretty late, like 2 weeks before A18, so lets pretend I don't know anything that happened before that.

The way I see things is... This game is trying to do too many things at once.  It's trying to be a Survival/Tower defense(ish)/looter-Shooter/RPG. And if we are being honest, as a :

- Survival, it sucks.

- Tower Defense, it sucks

- Looter-Shooter, it sucks

- RPG, it sucks.

The mix, however, is... dare I say, decent, or at the very least, on a decent path (After all, I have close to 500 hours of gameplay). But then comes all the drama in the forum. Survivalist complaining it's not survival enough, Tower Defensist(?) that complains it's not Tower Defensish(?) enough , the Looter-shooter that complains it's not looter-shootist enough, and the RPGer that complains it's not RPGish enough.

And we also have the random Call of Duty player that've got lost, ended up here and complains it's not just a plain shooter.

Honestly, if I want to play a traditional zombies survival experience, I don't play 7D2D, I go play something like Project Zomboid.  In 7D2D, you could replace zombies by "Possessed", and the game still works for the most part.  You can get infected all you want and still survive.

Personally, I like survival game. And I like survival to be harsh. But would a harsh survival experience be all that beneficial for 7D2D?  I don't think so, for 1 reason : Blood moons.  In most "harsher" survival game, getting very bad injury/debuff means you need to lay low for a few days/weeks. Most of the time in those games, the only thing you need to care about during this time is water/food (Since debuff prevent to do much of anything else), you can spend days/weeks healing your wounds, depending on the pace of the game­. That time is usually spent doing inventory management and "downtime stuff". But in 7D2D, you can't afford those extended downtime because of blood moons. And having insane debufs on a blood moon would potentially mean certain death.  So, in my view, the very existence of blood moons more or less prevents having harsher survival mechanics. I would LOVE to have harsher penalty for death. But from a design stand point, I don't see it working.  I mean, I LOVED the mechanic of drawing your own blood to make medkits. But then I read that people just drew a lot of blood and just suicided to get rid of the debuff (**insert mandatory "That's why we can't have nice thing meme" here**)

And that's not to mention people complaining A19 loot is @%$#ty...  A19 just got "Diablo Style" loot. And Diablo games have been around for nearly 24 years now.  You don't like the formula?  It doesn't suck, you do! (err... I mean, this game might not be for you!). Ok, granted, the map doesn't reset every time you log in like a Diablo game. So I guess there might be 1 or 2 things that might need to be adjusted.  But this game is still is "rating" itself as being "Alpha" after all. Still, I understand the direction they are aiming for for the loot "philosophy". (Somewhat similar to Borderland as well, just not as wildly tiered).

So... at this point, I feel like I lost myself into a rant.  What was the point of this post again?  Oh yeah...  So many forum post complaining about 7D2D sound the same to me as if I was on the Civilization forum reading complaints because it's not a First Person Shooter. Thing is... it never was meant to be one in the first place!

But I guess it's the curse of this whole "early access" thing... Loud people fighting to make a game what it was never meant to be in the first place...

 

[Liesel Weppen]

So... I keep reading complaints about the game in the forum... How it's going down hill and all. 

Complaints are always loud. And complaining people often pretend everything is going down the hill. But it is not that way, just because some people say so.

The mix, however, is... dare I say, decent, or at the very least, on a decent path (After all, I have close to 500 hours of gameplay). But then comes all the drama in the forum. Survivalist complaining it's not survival enough, Tower Defensist(?) that complains it's not Tower Defensish(?) enough , the Looter-shooter that complains it's not looter-shootist enough, and the RPGer that complains it's not RPGish enough.

It's a mix. That's the point. If you look for just an RPG, 7d2d might still be the wrong game for you, even if it has RPG elements.

Personally, I like survival game. And I like survival to be harsh. But would a harsh survival experience be all that beneficial for 7D2D?  I don't think so, for 1 reason : Blood moons.  In most "harsher" survival game, getting very bad injury/debuff means you need to lay low for a few days/weeks. Most of the time in those games, the only thing you need to care about during this time is water/food (Since debuff prevent to do much of anything else), you can spend days/weeks healing your wounds, depending on the pace of the game­.

So you prefer the survival aspect, and that's why you want to push it further, right? But it is a MIX. If you want hardcore survival, 7d2d is the wrong game for you.

But in this case, there is a solution already built-in: Simply turn off bloodmoons.

For addtional harder survival: Set loot to 50%, loot respawn to never, zombie strength to 200%, ... and that are just base settings the game allows you to vary.

You can even make it better suit your preferences with using mods.

I also often turn off bloodmoon, because i don't like tower defense that much. I also sometimes lower the difficulty because i want to focus on building. I use a mod that makes you lvl12 instant after the starter quest, because the stone age is too boring for me. So i skip it, right to the point where i can find iron stuff.

But I guess it's the curse of this whole "early access" thing... Loud people fighting to make a game what it was never meant to be in the first place...

Everything that does "active development with the community". Other early access titles have a fixed plan they just follow. But 7d2d is actually more like experimenting what works and what not, trying if solutions do work or maybe not and so on.

There are also backers complaining that the game becomes more and more what it was NOT meant to be.... they perhaps even are right, from what they expected. But even if it does, this changes will attract other people, that probably disliked what it was meant to be previously.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

You are right with the bloodmoons. Or were for older versions. Now the first bloodmoons end super early, even in a group of 4 at day 28, it was over at 01:00 am. Not really hard to be prepared for and in SP it´s even easier because you don´t have the higher gamestage as you have in a group. I think my day 35 bloodmoon in SP ended right after midnight.

And when they finally start to last all night, you usually have enough of everything so you basically only need to repair your base. Getting ressources is easy because we play in an empty world. If you use the iron pickaxe you can mine 2 days straight without beeing interrupted. WIth skills in mining this is more than enough.

It´s has gotten so easy these days that we can play with new people on survivalist. People who said, they don´t like fighting in games but were still interested.

 

[Diragor]

You are right with the bloodmoons. Or were for older versions. Now the first bloodmoons end super early, even in a group of 4 at day 28, it was over at 01:00 am. Not really hard to be prepared for and in SP it´s even easier because you don´t have the higher gamestage as you have in a group. I think my day 35 bloodmoon in SP ended right after midnight.

And when they finally start to last all night, you usually have enough of everything so you basically only need to repair your base. Getting ressources is easy because we play in an empty world. If you use the iron pickaxe you can mine 2 days straight without beeing interrupted. WIth skills in mining this is more than enough.

It´s has gotten so easy these days that we can play with new people on survivalist. People who said, they don´t like fighting in games but were still interested.

Got the same problem... I got over 1300 h in this game and after a while I finally got my friends to play a19 with me. but they got bored extremely fast cause it was damn easy. the Bloodmoons are way too easy you can just use 1 electric fence ( you can get that pretty fast) and a stone sledge and you're fine. no dmg on the base and it's over after a short time.. they should change that cause it's why I quit too after around 200 hours... Alpha 18 kept me way longer. the nights there were so much harder

 

[Mastermind]

So you prefer the survival aspect, and that's why you want to push it further, right?

 You, sir, failed to understand, and missed the point of, my post.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

 You, sir, failed to understand, and missed the point of, my post.

Then you, sir, probably should formulate what you want to tell more clear.

Instead of writing in your own post that you yourself had forgotten what your point was.

What was the point of this post again?  Oh yeah... 

And by the way, i understood that your post was just a complaint about complaints. But that is something, you, sir, may have missed in my answer.

 

[Kandrathe]

I don't go to Ariana Grande concert expecting to hear Rammstein.  I would be pretty embarrassed if I spent 1300 hours listening to Ariana Grande looking for the metal riffs.

 

[Gazz]

I think you're looking for Rammstein Veneziano.

 

[RipClaw]

Alpha 18 kept me way longer. the nights there were so much harder

The difference between A18 and A19 is that in A19 of the gamestage on higher difficulty settings does not increase as much and in multiplayer you also have a lower group gamestage.

The composition of the horde is pretty much the same.

If you want the old hordes back then you just have to change the value for difficultyBonus in the file gamestages.xml

Currently it is set to 1.2. The values in A18 were:

Scavenger 1.0
Adventurer 1.2
Nomad 1.5
Warrior 1.7
survivor 2.0
Insane 2.5

For multiplayer you only have to change the value diminishingReturns from 0.5 to 0.2 to have the old group gamestage back.

EDIT: I took a second glance at gamestages.xml and saw that the calculation method for the group gamestage was changed as well. But unfortunately you can not change that back. So changing the diminishingReturns group gamestage value does not work as I thought it would. It is best to leave the value at 0.5.

 

[Kandrathe]

But... if you really want tougher zombies there is plenty to tweak in EntityClasses.xml. You could easily ramp up the base zombie class to be ultra hardy, super fast, can climb walls, dig faster and leap 50 feet...  that sounds pretty terrifying. 

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

But... if you really want tougher zombies there is plenty to tweak in EntityClasses.xml. You could easily ramp up the base zombie class to be ultra hardy, super fast, can climb walls, dig faster and leap 50 feet...  that sounds pretty terrifying. 

It would be enough if the world wasn´t basically empty outside POI´s and when hordenights don´t stop way too early for the first few weeks. 

Can´t hear the performance argument anymore from TFP. Nearly no zombies outside but those have shiny clothes. Like how the F are the shoes of the businessman shiny, looking at his overall appearance? And why is a suit made out of fabric shiny?

 

[Diragor]

Alpha 18 kept me way longer. the nights there were so much harder

The difference between A18 and A19 is that in A19 of the gamestage on higher difficulty settings does not increase as much and in multiplayer you also have a lower group gamestage.

The composition of the horde is pretty much the same.

Well for me there are more reasons why I feel its different. The traps are way stronger than before. In a18 the electric fence was crap it never really stopped them but now in a19 they are all trapped in them while you can shoot the heads^^ and I play on max difficulty so there isn't more to make bloodmoon any harder and I barely use any traps. Just some fences, darts and blades in a 3 block long kill corridor so it's short^^ and still never got dmg on the doors thay I keep open to loot the bags while shooting heads easily. a18 felt harder.

 

[meganoth]

It would be enough if the world wasn´t basically empty outside POI´s and when hordenights don´t stop way too early for the first few weeks. 

Can´t hear the performance argument anymore from TFP. Nearly no zombies outside but those have shiny clothes. Like how the F are the shoes of the businessman shiny, looking at his overall appearance? And why is a suit made out of fabric shiny?

Then hear the performance argument from me : Shiny shoes stress the graphics card, more zombies the CPU.

I think TFP still hopes to get more zombies through 1) their own zombie spawn code (I think Fataal mentioned it or it is in the A20 feature list) 2) other optimizations 3) the event system.

Also it is absolutely safe to say there will be a zombie slider or a very popular rather trivial steam workshop mod for increasing zombie numbers because the range of minimum to average PC is huge by now. And yes, whether it is an option or a mod is irrelevant, it is a solution.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Mods. Again. The solution for everything. You need mods to craft a normal looking door. To get more diversity in usable colours. To have blocks that you can see in game but not craft or buy. To get more zombies. And so on and so on. All those things should be a given tbh.

And when you complain on here that all these mods don´t work properly together we will get a snarky answer that this is our own fault for using mods.

Also no one will judge this game by how it runs with mods. If this is a sucess or not is dependent on how vanilla runs.

 

[meganoth]

I knew I just needed to mention mods... .

It wasn't the only remedy I talked about. I play vanilla without a single mod by the way.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Yeah i know, you mentioned GPU power aswell. They do bother to give us shiny zombies, that don´t fit the setting at all. (How the F can shoes be that shiny in this situation?) But caring about a not empty world would be a much more needed priority.

But ok go on. Let´em make a game that needs mods to really give you the experience of a zombie apocalypse. Pretty sure it will be game of the year that way....

 

[Kandrathe]

Yeah i know, you mentioned GPU power aswell. They do bother to give us shiny zombies, that don´t fit the setting at all. (How the F can shoes be that shiny in this situation?) But caring about a not empty world would be a much more needed priority.

But ok go on. Let´em make a game that needs mods to really give you the experience of a zombie apocalypse. Pretty sure it will be game of the year that way....

It would be enough if the world wasn´t basically empty outside POI´s and when hordenights don´t stop way too early for the first few weeks. 

Can´t hear the performance argument anymore from TFP. Nearly no zombies outside but those have shiny clothes. Like how the F are the shoes of the businessman shiny, looking at his overall appearance? And why is a suit made out of fabric shiny?

This morning, out of the blue... This guy walked across the bottom of the lake to eat my brains when I went to get water.  He was all wet, clean and shiny...

  

If you watch the console you can see zombies and animals spawning into the world around you.  They are not usually very visible, are 50+ meters away and have a 270/360 chance to wander off away from you.  My random entity spawning is set to eight per player.  But, you can pretty easily control entity groups consistency and the number of entities that spawn into your world.  I've increased the quantity of wildlife, because my wife loves to hunt.  I keep reminding her this isn't supposed to be "Call of the Wild", we've got a blood moon coming.  But, she cooks up a mean stew.  I appreciate the flexibility to be able to alter a game to my tastes.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

 I know there is zombies spawning. Doesn´t matter tough, if i don´t see them. We need more of them. I am not complaining about animals, tough it is not nearly many enough when coming from a realistic standpoint, but the balance is needed here, that´s fine.

I do complain only about the lack of zombies. I discovered a small town, checked out what buildings it has. Not a single zombie was outside. Not one. That is a joke. 

Ofc you do see some outside here and there. But that´s way too less zombies. The world feels empty. Recently harvested one of those big rocks near my base. Didn´t get interrupted once.

Having to mod in more zombies in a game about the zombie apocalypse? Really? This is what is seen as normal? Meh.

 

[Kandrathe]

 I know there is zombies spawning. Doesn´t matter tough, if i don´t see them. We need more of them. I am not complaining about animals, tough it is not nearly many enough when coming from a realistic standpoint, but the balance is needed here, that´s fine.

I do complain only about the lack of zombies. I discovered a small town, checked out what buildings it has. Not a single zombie was outside. Not one. That is a joke. 

Ofc you do see some outside here and there. But that´s way too less zombies. The world feels empty. Recently harvested one of those big rocks near my base. Didn´t get interrupted once.

Having to mod in more zombies in a game about the zombie apocalypse? Really? This is what is seen as normal? Meh.

We probably have different life experiences.  I grew up in a rural area and there are times depending on the season, or time of day you will see no living thing.  Many a day in November deer hunting, even on a warmer day, you may only encounter squirrels.  In the small town 10 miles from our farm, the population was less than 50.  On a weekend, or holiday I would ride there on horseback, or bike and hardly ever see anyone, even at the store when I wanted to get change to buy a soda.

Then also the 7D2D reality is post apocalypse, which I would guess resulted in over 90% population loss.   But still, there are times when I am trying to get something done in my game when I get "bothered" by random zombies all the time.  My map has a grid of broken freeways, so when I gather enough resources I go off to repair missing spans, and add on/off ramps to convenient areas.

And... I'm not exactly certain how the "heat" mechanic works on spawning scouts, but I believe lots of candles, torches, burning barrels, forges, campfires, etc. result in more scout spawns, which result in many waves of spawns. 

 

[Solomon]

- Survival, it sucks.

- Tower Defense, it sucks

- Looter-Shooter, it sucks

- RPG, it sucks.

The main point we should argue is why these individually suck IN THIS GAME.

I get that its a mixture but that shouldnt mean that any of these should suck. For example the RPG feeling mainly comes from perks and dungeon style POI's and the upcoming clothes system teaser, the game in this sense is only rpgish at best thought it only needs continous effort to rpg elements to steer the game deeper into it.

Tower defense sucks because the "intelligent" zombie design made it appear, its not natural for the game. The early zombies just blindly swarmed the player meaning you used the traditional wall systems and some crafty underwater/underground bases but ever since the devs created this structural engineer AI system we were hamfisted into 2 playstyles: Tower defense style AI cheese or Bunker bases with the latter one being inferior due to the high repair costs.

Also thanks to the TD AI, we have an uprise of questionable base designs what couldnt function well when the zeds would just blindly come at you.

Looter-Shooter still needs balancing, thats it.

Survival, well thats an interesting question. You practically only need food and water, thats enough to turn a game into a survival but our problem is mainly that the last version of the game made tool usage consume water and food greatly soo to a tipping point where its seems both absurd how much food you need and at the same time too easy to get enough.