PC Do game developers owe anything to the people buying their games?

I bought this at Alpha 6 when it looked like Minecraft for $15 or so. I have over 700hrs in this, so I pay like 2 cents an hour for fun... That's a damn good deal if you ask me.

Roughly speaking;

Alpha = not feature complete proof of concept

Beta = feature complete but not polished

people need to remember that when they wonder why it's still in Alpha.

 
They TWICE listened to player feedback, and that was the bearmodel and the burning Z model.


Three times. They listened to the players who asked them to stick to their guns ditching LBD....

Kidding aside, they have modified their design many times due to community feedback. It really is mainly when it involves simplifying and unifying and streamlining that they do not listen to the community of hardcore veterans who would love for every new update to add a new layer of complexity so that the game keeps feeling fresh and challenging for them. 

Then again, every decision they make will appeal to some and be hated by others. The ones who like the decision will feel listened to and the ones who hate the decision will feel ignored. If you've felt ignored for years then it simply means you were on the wrong side of every issue of the last several alphas but it doesn't mean TFP wasn't listening to feedback. Alpha 18 broke all records for concurrent players and then Alpha 19 broke them again. That is some powerful community feedback saying, "We like the direction the game is going"

 
Simple answer: Yes

Complex answer: Yes

Divorcing the unique context of 7DtD's long development cycle and ongoing evolving project nature from this conversation, the strawman of '@%$#baby Gamer entitlement' arose when the botched Mass Effect 3 when IGN and all of their friends in the Games Journalism industry went to bat for Mass Effect 3 and Bioware. You know why? A direct conflict of interest with them, Bioware, and Blizzard to an extent, big shocker. There's many articles covering the myth of 'Gamer entitlement' and a deep dive on the specifics of the incident with many archived sources that people pathologically quote the words of the journalists without knowing the origin and take it all as read.

http://www.reaxxion.com/9160/the-myth-of-gamer-entitlement this is an article from 2015 that touches on the subject.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2012/03/13/mass-effect-3-and-the-pernicious-myth-of-gamer-entitlement/?sh=3eb43a225176 Even Forbes in 2012

http://www.deepfreeze.it/article.php?a=enemy This is the heavily-sourced deep dive on the overall "Gamer Entitlement" incidents, their source, and who was propogating them and why. 

Sure there might be people with unreasonable expectations of projects, but then people will tend to lump them with the people that have been invested in a project or franchise for years and are disappointed with something as being (unjustly) entitled. The Fun Pimps more than the vast majority of dev teams across the wider industry have taken feedback and implemented it positively within their game that I have seen in my 20+ years of actively playing video games. They've listened to people on the forums maybe hundreds if not thousands of times to directly implement said feedback into the game.

I'd like to think that I directly influenced madmole with the implementation and overall functionality of the workbench. At the time when it was put in it had slightly different secondary functionality (You could combine weapon parts and melee weapons in it to increase their gear score when guns were made of individual parts) but overall my suggestion of it being an independent table that crafted items separately from your backpack with also having a purpose of making advanced and in general crafting things faster was directly implemented into the game. 
 

 
Well if you have 100 requests and only 2 are actually fulfilled... I would not say that they listen (numbers are hyperbolic).
That is more like random chance that they wanted to do it anyways.


Its more like 1000s and 1000s of requests (just read the Pimp Dreams forum) many of which are completely contradictory to each other and many others beyond the scope of the game and others still just not technically possible (although the requesters often don't understand that because they think programming what they want is probably simple...). The devs have fulfilled way more than just the two that you mentioned. Its actually hard to take you seriously when you say that the only two items you can think of that the devs did in response to player feedback was the bear model and the lava monster model.

Listening is nice, but I feel like (personal opinion) they do not actually take it into consideration... or at least not for long.
Which means listening becomes pointless, because the result is not changed. I can claim a wall is listening to you, but you wouldn't try to convince it of anything.

I don't think they are OBLIGATED to. But I do think that pushing your vision against the paying supporters is not ideal.
And they have done that time and time again.


How long are they supposed to consider something? What it comes down to is that if they took a year, three years, or even ten years to consider but then decided not to agree with what you want you would still feel they didn't consider long enough. The fact is that you feel that your ideas and your desires for what the game should be are the gospel and anyone who disagrees must not have considered what you said. There is no defense against that kind of hubris. Any time the developers ever do something contrary to what you want the reason will always be that they didn't listen or if they did they didn't consider or if they did then they bad developers for making the wrong choice.

As to pushing their vision against the paying supporters? They are not. They posted their vision for all to see and the supporters paid them to push that vision. They still are pushing that vision and fulfilling all of their promised features and goals and then some. Just because some customers came along during A16 and fell in love with the mechanics of that version and then were disappointed when the developers chose a different mechanic to fulfill the same vision, that doesn't mean that they are pushing against their paying supporters. There are probably many customers who bought the game without ever checking to see what the vision was that they were supporting. That ignorance on their part doesn't mean that the $10 they paid during a Steam sale gives them the entitlement to push a different agenda or dictate what the game should be.

TFP has been open about their vision for the game. Some of you thought that LBD was the vision and the game but you were mistaken. It was simply one way to accomplish their vision of player progression and they chose a different way to do that. When those community members gave their feedback that they were against it, TFP chose not to agree. They listened, considered, and made their choice-- and now the game is more popular than it ever was in A16.

A17 was just the most major one, because it basicially changed the genre, was released WAY too early to be sold in the wintersales and made modding a lot harder to do. It was an all in one FU to the community.


A17 did not change the genre. The game's genre has always been what it still is. The genre descriptor on the Steam store page has remained the same throughout its development and there is no need of a change to its wording because there has been no change to the genre. It has been and will always be an open world zombie survival game with elements of tower defense and roleplaying.  It is Minecraft meets Fallout meets The Walking Dead. That was the elevator pitch for the game back in the beginning and I see nothing 8 years later to change that.

That whole bit about A17 being released to coincide with the Winter Sale is just a bunch of hooey. A17 released to experimental on November 19 more than a month before the winter sales after being in development for over a year and a half. There was nothing rushed about it. Alpha 17 went from experimental to stable in little over a month. Alpha 18 went from experimental to stable in a little less than a month. Alpha 19 went from experimental to stable in about a month and a half. There was nothing out of the ordinary about A17's release schedule.

A17 was the beginning of xpath and modlets which hugely simplified and streamlined modding. One dev from the TFP team in particular worked together with modders to make that happen. Maybe you mean something different about the difficulty of modding but you'll have to explain further than just the one liner you threw out there which by any measure is just a flat out inaccuracy when you consider how modding blossomed thanks to changes that came with A17. Heck....even I made a pretty nifty modlet pack because xpath made it manageable and accessible to someone like me who had never modded before.

There is no doubt that a lot of people were unhappy with the changes that A17 brought. Those people were very loud and persistent in voicing their desire for TFP to abandon what they'd changed and go back to the way things were. TFP listened but did not agree with doing that. I think you are letting your disappointment in the A16/A17 changeover and TFP's insistence on sticking to their changes color your view. I feel for you. I wish you weren't so disenchanted and disappointed. But I also don't think your experience defines the reality of how they interact and listen to the community in many cases and I certainly can't stand by as you attempt to rewrite history with some blatant inaccuracies.

I would still appreciate it if they gave in once or twice.


lol...I have lost count of the number of threads and posts by angry players who are angry precisely because they believe that TFP gave in to the demands of other players. I do know it was way more than once or twice. I guess what you mean is that you wish they gave in to YOU once or twice. Maybe what you want just isn't in the cards for this game-- or at least the vanilla version. But TFP has most certainly been listening to feedback and implementing it as it pleases them.

 
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Three times. They listened to the players who asked them to stick to their guns ditching LBD....


Still glad they did ditch it. It was poorly executed. The things you had to do if you didn´t want to fall behind in a group where simply stupid. Like running around the campfire in the first nights while crafting stone axes. Or sitting in the forge menu watching anvils beeing made. Meh. Don´t miss that at all.

 
honestly this topic is not about 7dtd and TFP  only right? so yeah they own. In short = cyberpunk was mess. tons of bugs. So a lot of people demend a refund and they get them even if they bough in shops. Even polish governament administration decided to take care about this situation. More? 

A lot of devs who make a "trap"games on steam was banned.

And honestly players have a lot of tools to "spank" devs when they not deliver on promises - negative reviews on steam,  create memes, makes video about this on yt etc. this can discourage people to buy this game.

Bad opinions = stock drop. So yeah we have some solutions on this.

What about 7dtd and TFP ? idk honestly people complain about small number of updates. So maybe "small but offten"  will be good solution like : after 2 weeks we get update with junk guns and drones  only+ fixes . after that  2 weeks after - hd zombies after another 2 weeks news quest etc 

 
I would say a recent example of the devs listening could be the focus on RWG in A20. Lots and lots of players critizised the vanilla RWG, wanted dense cities back and pointed to a popular mod as having a lot more features. I remember Madmole inquiring about this mod once and then, months later, A20's main focus was announced to be a substantial RWG upgrade.

My guess is that RWG seemed generally good enough for them internally, i.e. they would have been content with Kinnjaju just working on it beside his other task until release. But when they noticed so many players were not content with it and they themselves had the idea of needing biome-specific difficulty settings they decided to devote a whole alpha to RWG.

 
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I would say a recent example of the devs listening could be the focus on RWG in A20. Lots and lots of players critizised the vanilla RWG, wanted dense cities back and pointed to a popular mod as having a lot more features. I remember Madmole inquiring about this mod once and then, months later, A20's main focus was announced to be a substantial RWG upgrade.

My guess is that RWG seemed generally good enough for them internally, i.e. they would have been content with Kinnjaju just working on it beside his other task until release. But when they noticed so many players were not content with it and they themselves had the idea of needing biome-specific difficulty settings they decided to devote a whole alpha to RWG.
i don't undestand people. they rly don't know everything what RWG need is newsstand XD

Btw i hope A21 will be focused on zombie , bandits character models and water. Honestly - i hope new updaded will in next month. and we will get new road map ( i mean i want to know what will be in A21)

 
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What about 7dtd and TFP ? idk honestly people complain about small number of updates. So maybe "small but offten"  will be good solution like : after 2 weeks we get update with junk guns and drones  only+ fixes . after that  2 weeks after - hd zombies after another 2 weeks news quest etc 
I don't think that's how it works, you know?

Everything you add to a (complex) game impacts some other feature/item/game mechanic.

If they did that, they'd probably have to triple the time for bug hunting and people will be extremely disappointed with the "current version" mess.

 
I don't think that's how it works, you know?

Everything you add to a (complex) game impacts some other feature/item/game mechanic.

If they did that, they'd probably have to triple the time for bug hunting and people will be extremely disappointed with the "current version" mess.


Not only that but people don't appreciate having their saves broken so often. How many times has TFP claimed that starting with the next alpha they will probably be able to update without breaking old saves and it never pans out for them. It just isn't possible for this studio to do it and forcing everyone to start over and wipe all old maps every 2-3 weeks would not be good for morale. We will even get complaints about it when A20 hits and after such a long cycle since the last forced restart hit everyone.

I think 8 months would probably be the sweet spot if they could hit that. The items on their list for A20 couldn't be finished in that time frame unfortunately. The good news is that people like A19 and the A19/A20 changeover is totally an enhancement of existing popular mechanics, the world, the zombies, and tons of new places to explore. It is going to be very different than the A16/A17 changeover.

 
I would say a recent example of the devs listening could be the focus on RWG in A20. Lots and lots of players critizised the vanilla RWG, wanted dense cities back and pointed to a popular mod as having a lot more features. I remember Madmole inquiring about this mod once and then, months later, A20's main focus was announced to be a substantial RWG upgrade.

My guess is that RWG seemed generally good enough for them internally, i.e. they would have been content with Kinnjaju just working on it beside his other task until release. But when they noticed so many players were not content with it and they themselves had the idea of needing biome-specific difficulty settings they decided to devote a whole alpha to RWG.


I'll add that if you look at the changes to zombie behavior from A17 until A19 you can see that faatal took community feedback very seriously. Now he didn't go as far as some people would like because they wanted behavior that completely matched pre-A17 zombies but I know for a fact that faatal watched streamers, looked at YouTubes, read the forums both here and on steam listening to what people didn't like about the zombies and also about how people were exploiting and finding loop-holes and weird limitations of zombies and he made changes based on that feedback.

I, personally, loved how the zombies behaved in A17. There was definitely something very horrific and never feeling safe that I liked when I knew that they could get to me no matter where I hid. For the first time ever they were scary monsters to me and I really liked that-- especially for POI exploration. But TFP listened to others instead of people like me and I can recognize that. I would never say that TFP didn't listen to the community because they made adjustments to zombie behavior that I didn't like.

Now, this brings up another interesting issue. Driving around on horde night. Some percentage of people in the community complained that you could drive around all night at zero risk. Some percentage in the community felt that driving around was just fine. This was an issue for years and TFP was aware of both sides. They went with preventing that behavior ultimately. Some may say that they don't like the solution that TFP implemented and may be mad that they aren't changing it but here we have another case of TFP listening to player feedback and acting in reaction to that but also sticking to their guns in how it is implemented despite more feedback that people didn't like super vultures. I don't even think that it is impossible that they may eventually make more adjustments to that in reaction to what they've read from player feedback. They do tend to like to do extreme draconian changes and then pull them back and soften them a bit over time.

 
I'll add that if you look at the changes to zombie behavior from A17 until A19 you can see that faatal took community feedback very seriously. Now he didn't go as far as some people would like because they wanted behavior that completely matched pre-A17 zombies but I know for a fact that faatal watched streamers, looked at YouTubes, read the forums both here and on steam listening to what people didn't like about the zombies and also about how people were exploiting and finding loop-holes and weird limitations of zombies and he made changes based on that feedback.

I, personally, loved how the zombies behaved in A17. There was definitely something very horrific and never feeling safe that I liked when I knew that they could get to me no matter where I hid. For the first time ever they were scary monsters to me and I really liked that-- especially for POI exploration. But TFP listened to others instead of people like me and I can recognize that. I would never say that TFP didn't listen to the community because they made adjustments to zombie behavior that I didn't like.

Now, this brings up another interesting issue. Driving around on horde night. Some percentage of people in the community complained that you could drive around all night at zero risk. Some percentage in the community felt that driving around was just fine. This was an issue for years and TFP was aware of both sides. They went with preventing that behavior ultimately. Some may say that they don't like the solution that TFP implemented and may be mad that they aren't changing it but here we have another case of TFP listening to player feedback and acting in reaction to that but also sticking to their guns in how it is implemented despite more feedback that people didn't like super vultures. I don't even think that it is impossible that they may eventually make more adjustments to that in reaction to what they've read from player feedback. They do tend to like to do extreme draconian changes and then pull them back and soften them a bit over time.
honestly : i have have something with memeory so i can mistake  Alpha - but in previouse they usually on blood moon just go throught dirt below walls, well this iritating but well even immersive, but in next alpha they started to jumping on theyself like in cs 1.6 so it was annoying as hell. well i see a lot of changes in zombie behaviour and... nothing. A lot of zombie variants were cuted. yeah we get hd models. well some of them looks good some of them worst (well look is subjective ) but still they number is so small.  People are doing exploit. ok so? i understand this problem in cod - well microtransation connected with blueprints, skins etc .  Ofc people say it will be broke PVP and i can agree. but i think everyone have sitation like - 2 this same nurce in house or 10 this same one 1 shoe hazmat zombie . honestly in diffrent game ofc number  of variants is limited - like dying light- but there workers have diffrent suit color, skin and wound. ofc you will meet this same zombie lady in this same thirt and skirt but they clothes looks diffrents so you don't have feeling that you kill army of clones. Honestly - if they will say straight -  we will add 20 more models of normal zombies and 10 special and tough - i would stop complain but without any information ? ok we will get zombie doc and radiactive zombie - but we loose cheerleder and footplayer so this give you 0 right? 

I don't think that's how it works, you know?

Everything you add to a (complex) game impacts some other feature/item/game mechanic.

If they did that, they'd probably have to triple the time for bug hunting and people will be extremely disappointed with the "current version" mess.
well i can't agree if you add new guns for example no matter if you add 10 or 100 they will work almost this same. ofc this  have influence on meta , loot etc but you can  get info from players - silverbull shotgun suck because have so weak durability etc. and without opinions it will be hard to fix it. and honestly a new variant of zombie ( i mean normal zombie) can have connected with this variant like  animations rangdoll etc. but this type of problem you will get with big update too

 
they started to jumping on theyself like in cs 1.6 so it was annoying as hell


And I love that they pile on top of each other and wish that it happened a bit more consistently. I love it when I knock out the stairs and a few still get up to where I am because they all piled up near the stairs. I think that it would be cool for an option that would give them ant-like instincts so that the piling up on each other wasn't just be accident or happenstance but intentionally done whenever they couldn't reach you. If zombies could see using each other to create paths to the player it would totally change the game and base design in a whole new way. Just as an option, though, since I don't think upsetting the entire base building meta like that as a default setting would be good.

 
And I love that they pile on top of each other and wish that it happened a bit more consistently. I love it when I knock out the stairs and a few still get up to where I am because they all piled up near the stairs. I think that it would be cool for an option that would give them ant-like instincts so that the piling up on each other wasn't just be accident or happenstance but intentionally done whenever they couldn't reach you. If zombies could see using each other to create paths to the player it would totally change the game and base design in a whole new way. Just as an option, though, since I don't think upsetting the entire base building meta like that as a default setting would be good.
I wonder if that looks even cooler now that the zombies can crawl now.  Will need to test that out 😁

 
And I love that they pile on top of each other and wish that it happened a bit more consistently. I love it when I knock out the stairs and a few still get up to where I am because they all piled up near the stairs. I think that it would be cool for an option that would give them ant-like instincts so that the piling up on each other wasn't just be accident or happenstance but intentionally done whenever they couldn't reach you. If zombies could see using each other to create paths to the player it would totally change the game and base design in a whole new way. Just as an option, though, since I don't think upsetting the entire base building meta like that as a default setting would be good.
well pile is  stupid as hell for "slow" zombies. it works good in word war z game but this is just... bad idk even why - maybe a dmg system in l4d2 was better or not interesting characters.  and honestly i don't exepect good behavior from zombies - they just to try kill when they saw you and forget for some time

I wonder if that looks even cooler now that the zombies can crawl now.  Will need to test that out 😁
honestly can you explain why people are "hype" over they behavior?

 
@Laz Man sorry buddy
 


What @Laz Man meant is that they can duck and crawl when the space is less than 2m high. So for example, all those bases that use a 1 1/2 meter opening that we can duck and crouch through but the zombies can't....now the zombies can in A20. The animation is a crawl but faatal has not adjusted pathways for any zombie that allows them to crawl through a 1m space and won't do that until A21.

I posted a narrative of a recent A20 playthrough and posted that zombies surprised me by ducking and crawling through smaller spaces than they had been able to. But 1m egress for zombies is still on the back burner.

honestly can you explain why people are "hype" over they behavior?


People who feel hyped over new behaviors (whether or not those behaviors seem to fit well with the game to other people) is because they offer new challenges for base building and new tactics for defending and fighting zombies. Old tactics may have to be adjusted or may not even work any longer. For some people, this is simply an annoyance and super frustrating. For others, the gameplay of adapting and exploring new tactics is fun and new or different behaviors set up the opportunity for that gameplay to happen again.

Think of it like a brand new POI. For those who love to explore and clear POI's they've never seen before, the prospect of 100+ new POI's generates a lot of hype in their hearts because they know they will have something new to play with.

The same is true for those of us who like to adapt and strategize vs zombie behaviors. New behaviors or changes to their behaviors that create new challenges get us hyped.

A lot of people hated A17 because they felt the behavior didn't fit what zombies should be able to do. For them, the most important thing was consistent dumb zombies that "don't have a degree in engineering or ESP abilities about structure they don't have line of sight to" For me and others like me, A17 was a blast because we just forgave the misfit behavior and got to having fun finding new ways to adapt.

 
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Back to OP’s original question…….if you read Steams rules or whatever they are called, when you buy any game through Steam, you are not buying a copy of the game, you are buying access to the game through Steam. So if you do something stupid and Steam bans you, you lose access to any ‘purchased’ games through Steam. You can’t take any games with you if you lose Steam. So do developers owe you anything? Absolutely not as the legal agreement is between you and Steam, not the developers of any game. However, good developers do try to do what they initially claimed. That being said, those that were involved in the Kickstarter for the game, it may be a different scenario.

 
What @Laz Man meant is that they can duck and crawl when the space is less than 2m high. So for example, all those bases that use a 1 1/2 meter opening that we can duck and crouch through but the zombies can't....now the zombies can in A20. The animation is a crawl but faatal has not adjusted pathways for any zombie that allows them to crawl through a 1m space and won't do that until A21.
Okay... well that is not what the devpost said, but nice to hear that!

A lot of people hated A17 because they felt the behavior didn't fit what zombies should be able to do. For them, the most important thing was consistent dumb zombies that "don't have a degree in engineering or ESP abilities about structure they don't have line of sight to" For me and others like me, A17 was a blast because we just forgave the misfit behavior and got to having fun finding new ways to adapt.


While this argument certainly is valid, there was, I feel an even bigger problem, which was the gameplay.
You said zombies were scarier than ever before.
For me, they were just tightrope walking piniatas.
They were 100% predictable.
It was never easier to build a 100% hordesafe base with like 20 blocks and the fact that they all came running down the same small hallway made it extremely easy... laughably easy to survive ANYTHING.
There was no need to upgrade your whole base.
Just make everything cobblestone and leave a 1x2 opening and they will funnel through it.

While beeing absolutely hilariously bad behaviour, the biggest problem was that I and as far as I have read the reviews and feedback support me on this, that they became super predictable, and therefor easy to exploit. WAY too easy to exploit.
There were exploits in <A16 and there always will be.
But in A16 they were far more complex and without a youtube video to help, you probably didn't stumble upon it by chance.
In A17 it was literally "they walk in a line and always take the path of least resistance, lets make a funnel ontop of another funnel and just shoot lul"

 
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