PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17
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I used to, but there's only so many times you can keep resetting your MP server without you and your friends getting a little hacked off with having to redo the buildings/mining tunnels etc, especially if you've made some stunning constructions.
I may log into a SP game for a few hrs to check on the latest update, but we stopped renting our server and wont be playing properly again until the game is finally released (thats if it ever comes out of Alpha).
Haven't tried Alpha 16 on MP server but all of my gaming friends that played the previous versions, all hated getting ready for horde night and finding the horde night a disappointment (that's if they turned up at all). I ended up manually spawning mob after mob to try and make it a bit interesting but it was never as it should be.
If memory serves me correct (Played a load of games since stopped 7d2d), the last version we tried, they had something like 8 zombies a person on horde night (might have that wrong) and it simply didn't feel like a horde at all.
Personally I loved to many of the things that have since been taken out/changed, which is of course often going to happen in an Alpha game.
I wouldn't really say it feels like the same game as when I started playing (A11 or A12 i think).
It sort of feels to me like a not so good sequel
I'm not trying to run the game down, I don't think I've played any other game as long as I played this.
There's just so much that has changed from things I used to love, and I appreciate they are never going to please everybody, and I'm sure many more people prefer the newer things to the older ones I used to enjoy.
I will come back full time when it gets released. But it's beginning to feel like it's one of those games that is continually in Alpha. I remember Madmole releasing a schedule of when it was going onto beta etc, and it was meant to be gold by the end of last year if I remember correctly.
Now no hint of release date, just more talk about alphas.
The danger is, there's so many zombie games now, many people (like my 24 year old son) is sick of them. As soon as he sees survival and zombie in a games description, he thinks "not another one" and moves on.
Many many people have already bought 7d2d, the console release didn't really go all that smoothly (and to be honest many many people PC players at the time said what wold happen) and hasn't got the best of names in the console community (I'm not saying some console players don't love it, I'm simply saying that most aren't even loading it any more)
Graphics are improving almost daily on PC and console games, many consolers complained about the graphics when it was released, of course they don't understand what the games actually achieving, but they are the sort of idiots that make bad reviews of things.
If this game finally gets released, I don't know, lets say Christmas 2019, I can easily imagine many console games slagging it off to friends etc saying "I had that over 3 years ago on my xbox and the graphics were crap the game buggy" etc.
The same for reviewers. Too many people judge things without understanding them, and with a game like this, such idiots could easily spoil a release.
Personally I think they need to forget about adding gyro-copters and super looking motorbikes (I liked the original one, thought it fitted in to the gameworld nicely) , and simply make sure the game is working virtually bug free, the hordes are working as intended and have some sort of AI that makes horde night challenging and interesting, and get the game released.
Then they can concentrate on the rest and release them as paid updates.
I know the overall sales for this game are great, I wonder how the sales last year compared to 3 years ago? I don't know, if they were higher last year (without cheap sales), then so be it. But I know a lot of people that bought this game and only one person that still plays it.
And there's so many other good games coming (not zombie games) that I'm not sure how many would return anyway.
Sure I know many familiar names on this thread that have stuck with it, and I really really hope when it does get released, it will be a huge success. But just like the console players bad mouth games, I've seen ex 7d2d players bad mouth this game on other games or discord etc when someone asks about it, it's always exactly the same response, no matter who gives it, and that goes something like
"It had huge potential when it first came out, but it seems to be one of those games that's forever in Alpha, they take forever between updates, and when one does come along, the core bugs that stop us from enjoying the game play are never fixed."
I just had a look at the latest steam reviews, these are March this year, they aren't mine, but easily could be. Sure these are a couple of negative ones among a lot of good ones, And while the first line of the first quote looks very like what I just typed in the previous paragraph, I typed that before I looked at what people were saying on steam
and I see this threads title now says beta 1, but I also note the date it was changed as April 1st.
So it's either a very poor taste joke to those waiting for the game to be finally finished, or very very poorly thought out date by those in charge.
SittingDuck
New member
I think i will not mi the Letter "" ince you have to improve performance it i neeary to make ome acrifices.
skullpoker
New member
How many people will /wrist when they realize what the date is?
lordcrowler
New member
After 1st april day over they gona set the bar back,but pay attention,the health bar will be a little increase than before this fail prank 
)).
Good try to distract people with this..but i bet some had pic to the bar before this and they will start scream again here like last time ))
)).Good try to distract people with this..but i bet some had pic to the bar before this and they will start scream again here like last time
))
Shado47
New member
Comment is related to Hob's and to A17 so don't move pls. (added this line after typing the whole thing after noticing it got a bit longer than I planned). Out of the shadows I once more come, the silent watcher in the night who only posts every once in a while.
I have to agree with Hob to some extent. He is wrong about a number of things tho. The 7dtd devs are some of the most community-interacting dev's I have followed throughout the last 6 (?) years. While especially madmole was constantly communicating with players, for example the DayZ developers just sat around not listening to their community whatsoever. So after like 6 (?) years of doing that and doing nothing about the fact that DayZ pretty much has no gameplay to offer and so all players just turn on each other, DayZ is practically dead. In 7dtd that is not the case, TFP kept communicating with the players about features and adding player requested stuff, and while some decisions are and were rather dubious (oversimplifying the crafting system, adding the health bars now, getting rid of gun quality difference outside of just 6 main states the guns can have, some more), most did the game really good and always resulted in a better gameplay. I've been playing this since the very first Alpha version and I'll admit that I used a cracked version from Alpha 1 to Alpha 4, loved it so much that I bought it and have bought it for a few friends since as well and recommended it to many others. This game is unlike any other game out there and so is the community. In 7dtd there is so much to do even in MP you don't feel the need to go out and kill players. As long as you don't have a heavily fortified base, you can't even afford to. You need all those 7 days to prepare for the horde night and make sure your base will make the stand, and you need those 7 days to progress in the crafting system, to unlock perks, to grind resources.
And lots of features have been added that were requested by players.
I was the one who first came up with sleeper zombies back in the day when TFP still used to respond to Pimp Dreams threads every now and then. And guess what, the next version ingame while the map was loading, Sleeper zombies were announced on the "Upcoming Features" screen. It has become a core feature of the game, requested by a player and not having been mentioned by anyone on the forums before that thread.
7dtd is a great game with a great community but the way the updates are being released is very inconsistent. You get an update with like 30 big features nowadays, more content being added than AAA games have when they are finished, but its often so unrelated. And then sometimes they'd show stuff that wouldn't be around for years or that would even be dropped. Behemoth. Ziplines. Their first demonstration of zombie gore and chopping off heads and so on was way in the early phase, and that feature hasn't been around in the actual game for all that long.
I hate that I'm saying this because those developers I will mention in a second are just the most incompetent on the planet, but I think in a sense TFP can actually learn from Mojang (ugh I hate them). Mojang have been putting out themed updates for years that focused on a set of features all related to each other. That is what I think TFP should do. An update mostly focused on the zombies themselfes. An update focused mostly on guns. An update focused on the terrain gen. An update that is purely technical and focused on bugfixes and optimization. And they really need to fix the godafwul stuttering of literally everything the player does with his hands in first person. Holding an AK in front of you and it just stutters like crazy, moving it around and it keeps stuttering. Its the single most immersion breaking bug in the game apart from spinning zombies. And by doing these themed updates, they could probably release like one every month instead of just letting us wait 8 months at a time. I love this game, its awesome. I come back to it every version and having played it since the very beginning it has come so far and is still getting more content added to it. But the updates are so extremely inconsistent and unrelated. Its like they are trying to do everything at once but that results in 50% of each update being features redone that are already in the game. How many times have they redone the skill system? 3 times? How many times the world gen? 5 times? They need to stop reinventing the wheel. The gun crafting with the parts and everything right now is perfect. Its not realistic to just forge a gun out of basic materials without deep knowledge on the subject. Nobody could possibly specialize in that and all other aspects of survival at the same time. Putting parts together is something one can realistically learn. I don't like the path they are taking now with simplifying quality levels and gun crafting for the sake of having the gun part slots available for attachments. You could've easily found another way to do that.
Overall I am really looking forward to A17/B1, I think it is gonna be a great update. But this type of update is what loses you players in the long run, since it just seems like you don't have any outlines planned towards the full release of the game whatsoever.
One more thing. For a game with this much awesome content and gameplay and depth to everything I just can't over the fact how badly done the water is. Water is a core element of the game. It splits the landscape and the player needs it to survive. So would it be possible to make it behave like water? Not like some sort of alien goo that hardly moves and can't level itself again after having a block placed somewhere inside it. I can literally just split the water right now like moses with a bunch of wood frames if you give me some hours.
Cheers.
PS: That opinion is based off my experiences from my 884 hours on steam in 7dtd, and that is without the time I spent playing the first 4 alphas on cracked clients (as described above).
I have to agree with Hob to some extent. He is wrong about a number of things tho. The 7dtd devs are some of the most community-interacting dev's I have followed throughout the last 6 (?) years. While especially madmole was constantly communicating with players, for example the DayZ developers just sat around not listening to their community whatsoever. So after like 6 (?) years of doing that and doing nothing about the fact that DayZ pretty much has no gameplay to offer and so all players just turn on each other, DayZ is practically dead. In 7dtd that is not the case, TFP kept communicating with the players about features and adding player requested stuff, and while some decisions are and were rather dubious (oversimplifying the crafting system, adding the health bars now, getting rid of gun quality difference outside of just 6 main states the guns can have, some more), most did the game really good and always resulted in a better gameplay. I've been playing this since the very first Alpha version and I'll admit that I used a cracked version from Alpha 1 to Alpha 4, loved it so much that I bought it and have bought it for a few friends since as well and recommended it to many others. This game is unlike any other game out there and so is the community. In 7dtd there is so much to do even in MP you don't feel the need to go out and kill players. As long as you don't have a heavily fortified base, you can't even afford to. You need all those 7 days to prepare for the horde night and make sure your base will make the stand, and you need those 7 days to progress in the crafting system, to unlock perks, to grind resources.
And lots of features have been added that were requested by players.
I was the one who first came up with sleeper zombies back in the day when TFP still used to respond to Pimp Dreams threads every now and then. And guess what, the next version ingame while the map was loading, Sleeper zombies were announced on the "Upcoming Features" screen. It has become a core feature of the game, requested by a player and not having been mentioned by anyone on the forums before that thread.
7dtd is a great game with a great community but the way the updates are being released is very inconsistent. You get an update with like 30 big features nowadays, more content being added than AAA games have when they are finished, but its often so unrelated. And then sometimes they'd show stuff that wouldn't be around for years or that would even be dropped. Behemoth. Ziplines. Their first demonstration of zombie gore and chopping off heads and so on was way in the early phase, and that feature hasn't been around in the actual game for all that long.
I hate that I'm saying this because those developers I will mention in a second are just the most incompetent on the planet, but I think in a sense TFP can actually learn from Mojang (ugh I hate them). Mojang have been putting out themed updates for years that focused on a set of features all related to each other. That is what I think TFP should do. An update mostly focused on the zombies themselfes. An update focused mostly on guns. An update focused on the terrain gen. An update that is purely technical and focused on bugfixes and optimization. And they really need to fix the godafwul stuttering of literally everything the player does with his hands in first person. Holding an AK in front of you and it just stutters like crazy, moving it around and it keeps stuttering. Its the single most immersion breaking bug in the game apart from spinning zombies. And by doing these themed updates, they could probably release like one every month instead of just letting us wait 8 months at a time. I love this game, its awesome. I come back to it every version and having played it since the very beginning it has come so far and is still getting more content added to it. But the updates are so extremely inconsistent and unrelated. Its like they are trying to do everything at once but that results in 50% of each update being features redone that are already in the game. How many times have they redone the skill system? 3 times? How many times the world gen? 5 times? They need to stop reinventing the wheel. The gun crafting with the parts and everything right now is perfect. Its not realistic to just forge a gun out of basic materials without deep knowledge on the subject. Nobody could possibly specialize in that and all other aspects of survival at the same time. Putting parts together is something one can realistically learn. I don't like the path they are taking now with simplifying quality levels and gun crafting for the sake of having the gun part slots available for attachments. You could've easily found another way to do that.
Overall I am really looking forward to A17/B1, I think it is gonna be a great update. But this type of update is what loses you players in the long run, since it just seems like you don't have any outlines planned towards the full release of the game whatsoever.
One more thing. For a game with this much awesome content and gameplay and depth to everything I just can't over the fact how badly done the water is. Water is a core element of the game. It splits the landscape and the player needs it to survive. So would it be possible to make it behave like water? Not like some sort of alien goo that hardly moves and can't level itself again after having a block placed somewhere inside it. I can literally just split the water right now like moses with a bunch of wood frames if you give me some hours.
Cheers.
PS: That opinion is based off my experiences from my 884 hours on steam in 7dtd, and that is without the time I spent playing the first 4 alphas on cracked clients (as described above).
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