PC End-Game Content and Player Goals

OldManBrian

OldManBrian

New member
I think it would benefit this game greatly if like the original X-Com, the Civ Games, etc, you have this framework of end-game content where you basically fill in the "story" yourself through dynamic events and a certain number of goals. I know some of this is planned, but I wanted to lay it all out for the overall picture of what it could be like:

Building a Settlement - Builder Based Goal

  • Recruit NPCs
  • Build Infrastructure To Support Them (Specialized equipment that zombies are drawn to target, ie water filtration etc)
  • Eliminate or Ally with nearby NPC settlements\strongholds
  • Survive X number of Horde Nights without losing NPCs or Infrastructure
  • Trigger Final Super Hard Horde Night with Unique Threats
  • Players get a "You've done it!" type prompt, and can keep playing.
  • Zombies now completely avoid the radius around the settlement, even on horde nights.
  • Players can pursue other end-game goals if they want.


Elimination of Zombie Threat - Combat Based Goal

  • Kill X number of zombies
  • Trigger Specialized Zombie Hordes that come from the direction of "Sources"
  • Track Multiple Zombie Groups Back to "Sources" (A zombie nest, infestation, tainted water source, graveyard, mine, etc)
  • Eliminate X number of sources (These would be big difficult battles on unique zombie "home turf" POI's)
  • Eliminate Final Super Hard Source with non-stop horde until completed (Maybe something underground, etc)
  • Players get a "You've done it!" type prompt, and can keep playing.
  • 7 day horde is now disabled. Players must kill X number of zombies per week or 7 day horde starts again.
  • Players can pursue other end-game goals if they want.


Escape - Avoidance Based Goal

  • Go X number of days without killing a zombie, which triggers an NPC to give the player escape vehicle quest, or:
  • Randomly find quest notes to build escape vehicle (blimp, RV, mad max-esque 18 wheeler, etc)
  • Hunt down rare parts for escape vehicle in unique POIs, guarded by unique threats and hordes
  • Build escape vehicle with the found parts, which triggers a Super Hard Non-Stop Horde while it's being done
  • Players get a "You've done it!" type prompt once done, and can keep playing.
  • Players spawn on new random map at the center of a unique city/stronghold/paradise with random map generated around it.
  • Players can pursue other end-game goals if they want.


Bandit King - Conqueror Based Goal

  • Kill X number of Bandit Leaders at their strongholds
  • Trigger Bandit hordes that are invading armies or hit squads of bandits
  • After defending against X number of bandit hordes, trigger quest for unique Bandit King POI that is a Bandit Fortress
  • Accepting the bandit king quest causes non-stop bandit hit-squads to come for the players until they eliminate the Bandit King at his fortress.
  • Players assume the mantle of the Bandit King and must defend against a final horde of zombies who were drawn by all the combat.
  • Players get a "You've done it!" type prompt once done, and can keep playing.
  • All Bandit NPCs are now friendly to the player. Bandits will randomly spawn on horde nights to help fight zombies. Random wandering bandit squads now spawn and fight any zombies they see.
  • Players can pursue other end-game goals if they want.

 
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YES!

We need more conversations like this.

Far too many developers aren't considering late-game goodies.

A game like 7DTD with Player Colonies will fair much better than without.

All that effort to survive the hordes........ and then.... what..... exactly? O.o

I like these ideas.

Would like to see more people putting these forward.

 
These are great ideas, Brian, and that is exactly why I play modded: for the endgame stuff.

Mortelentus and his team's mod (Starvation) tick off a few from your Builder Goals list.

I think with the tweaked/additional framework from A17 and on, our modding community will create some pretty spectacular stuff.

Who knows, maybe the Pimps are planning a content push once they're happy with the final framework? Should I keep dreaming? :-P

 
Hopefully! There's a real drop-off gameplay-wise once you get settled in and all the key schematics \ skills currently. At that point you just build for fun, grind, and wait around for the next horde. Would be great to have new milestones to work towards that change the gameplay.

Random events and quests in general would help, but having concrete long term goals help motivate when you've already go everything you need.

 
Story wise I liked the scenario in the Walking Dead of travelling towards Washington to find a cure for the apocalypse, just to find out that it was a hoax.

That could be an overarching story in the game. With tasks like raiding a specific POI, travelling to a far city, interacting with NPCs.

 
"Purge/cleanse the map" - Best/easiest for multiplayer.

- Once a certain amount of zombies have been killed in a town, it will trigger

a horde the following night.

- Big town = big horde, small town = Small/easy horde.

- If you fight that horde in that town, or very near, you cleaned that town of zombies.

- It will have to be fought to count as valid.

- Once every town/city is clear you have victory condition.

 
I wonder how much of this is doable with modding in a17? I'd totally be down for tackling it as long as it's possible. I'd hate to spend a bunch of time on it just to find a deal breaker down the line. (I'm sure the bandit stuff isn't possible yet, but the others might be...)

 
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"Purge/cleanse the map" - Best/easiest for multiplayer.- Once a certain amount of zombies have been killed in a town, it will trigger

a horde the following night.

- Big town = big horde, small town = Small/easy horde.

- If you fight that horde in that town, or very near, you cleaned that town of zombies.

- It will have to be fought to count as valid.

- Once every town/city is clear you have victory condition.
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I'd love to see a game mode like this!!!!!

What a fantastic idea.

 
Recently i've been thinking about some of the points you put up, mainly clearing out the map. I think it would make a great addition if you were able to clear out POIs and/or sections of settlements permanently. Below points could illustrate my idea:

1. Each POI has its own zombie count, so killing all of them would stop any sleepers from spawning. Wandering zombies could walk in, but after a while more sleepers spawning in? Would love to know if you can disable recurring sleepers and just leave the initial ones.

2. Zombie spawning in the streets would be associated with the number of "dirty" POIs against the number of "clean" POIs. This would make the game livid, apart of some randoms appearing when you travel around. If you have "cleared the whole city", why would you see so many zombies wandering around (wandering hordes aside)?

EDIT: 3. Creating big hordes of zombies "out of thin air" doesn't sound too appealing, unless you make a fictional count of zombies in a town outside of POIs. This number would be generated at world generation on base of number of POIs in a town. A horde would be created when the number of zombies in a town is big enough and the player incites enough "chaos" or "noise" to attract attention.

EDIT: 4. Wandering hordes would shift numbers of zombies between towns spontaniously throughout one day without players notice. Depending on the numbers themselves, big cities would have higher chance for a horde to "wander" to a different town.

EDIT: 5. One thing to consider in sense of mechanics: When a player walks into a POI and spawns sleepers, the sleeper count should lower (disabling another spawn) if they awaken, yet the number of zombies in a city should rise in the said amount. This would make a living world where sleepers are generated, yet if left alone they still "sleep", but awoken go into the city overall zombie numbers.

This would give a lot more incentive not only for clearing POIs around the player base, but also clearing POIs themselves. Not to mention you would be able to simply aim for clearing the whole map. Imagine a server with a random map and each season players strive to clear the whole map of zombies, with rankings of who killed how many, how much time they spent, matching them into groups, etc.

 
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I like these ideas a lot. 7dtd is the best game I have played but there has always been I thorn in my side that I felt that the development is more featured driven than story/lore driven.

A storydriven design process would inevitably lead to some sort of endgame or intriguing quests.

And I have almost giving up on getting it in vanilla but I'm hoping that TFP acknowledges this and open up the possibility for modders to redo core features of the game.

With that said. I could also see a scaling endgame with rewarding checkpoints. For example.

Clearing city block gives ability to build a small settlement. You need to keep zds out or infection will spread among npcs and block will be lost.

This can be repeated till the whole town is cleared. Then ability to reconstruct civilization quest starts. Plus Keeping npc's safe and happy is getting harder.

Next step is clearing outposts and a travel route to it. So you can have a safe road to next city to clear out.

If you ever managed to clear out the whole map (which would be almost impossible alone) you would get end credits and be able to keep playing.

The end game would become building epic big scale defence system and infrastructure for cities or a whole world!!!

 
I highly doubt 7DTD will transform its endgame to building mega defense structures or something. Even the sheer change from survival to settlement and block defense shifts the game focus to more of a strategy. It never was and don't think ever will be something like that.

But we still can hope...

 
Thats why i hope that before beta or gold they'll give Modders better tools and ability to change core features of the game.

For my scenario some can be handled today with the buff system and hopefully even easier with the new buff system.

The big change for TFP would be to add the ability to clear a block from Zombies and give modders ability to handle block events like spawning and keeping track of entities.

 
I highly doubt 7DTD will transform its endgame to building mega defense structures or something. Even the sheer change from survival to settlement and block defense shifts the game focus to more of a strategy. It never was and don't think ever will be something like that.
But we still can hope...
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Madmole did mention in one of his videos that Colonies are being talked about.

Also said it would be one of the very last things they add in "if" they do.

Probably right before PvP overhaul which he also said would most certainly be the last thing they work on before release.

So ... that's good.

Plenty of time for them to mull it over and come up with some fun ideas for colonies.

 
I'd like to run a settlement maybe have npcs join me on hunts/to use as mules. In a16 once I get established I tend to get pretty bored as I have nothing to struggle/strive for anymore. I loved the system in fallout 4 where you can build stuff and invite settlers to come then manage them. I believe fallout new vegas had a mod that did the same thing long before fallout 4 was a thing. Be even better if the settlers themselves could build on their own, with some AI just to see what they'd do.

Did hear its much harder to get established in a17, in that halloween cast thing, Madmole was on day 27 and still having issues with food. So thats a good sign.

 
Im interested to see how the manage the balance of fun for veteran players vs new players.

I think the paste of A15 was great but the lack of mid-end game activities was limited.

In A16 I felt like they mainly extended the early game. GS was a great feature for mid-end game but still it feels like something is missing.

Im looking forward to see what the mod and buff system have to offer in A17.

 
Im interested to see how the manage the balance of fun for veteran players vs new players.I think the paste of A15 was great but the lack of mid-end game activities was limited.

In A16 I felt like they mainly extended the early game. GS was a great feature for mid-end game but still it feels like something is missing.

Im looking forward to see what the mod and buff system have to offer in A17.
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I hope that debuffs actually work on zombies in A17, because most of them do not work on zombies in a16 like the ak47/club crits for example. The shotgun move speed debuff works once in a blue moon on running zombies, but ferals seem immune to it as i've never been able to slow them with it.

 
I Think they have put a lot of effort into the new buff system

The ability to track actions has become a lot greater in general.Hitting a burnt zombie with a hunting knife (and only this weapon and this zombie) could start a buff on either you or the zombie, increase a variable counter, anything, really.

Gone are the days when damage and stamina were the only "real" stats. =)
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I hope that debuffs actually work on zombies in A17, because most of them do not work on zombies in a16 like the ak47/club crits for example. The shotgun move speed debuff works once in a blue moon on running zombies, but ferals seem immune to it as i've never been able to slow them with it.
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I've had tremendous success slowing down feral wights and dogs with the shotgun. It does seem like the ferals and radiate zombies lose the debuff faster though. Usually I shoot once, get a little room when they slow down, and then they're already running again. With the regular zombies running at night you can shoot once and they're slow for a good while. Take it with a grain of salt though, I've been playing modded for the past 8 months so maybe vanilla isn't quite how I remember it.

 
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