PC feedback/experience

A

AlTheSlacker

New member
I've played 7d2d for about 4 months and I think I'm done for now. So here is some feedback for the devs and some minor mods I tried out for everyone else:

I really enjoyed the learning curve... I died so many times and in an unbelieveable number of different ways in the first few weeks.

Then I sort of stopped dying for a while; except to dogs. I died 4 times in a week to dog attacks, they were pretty annoying as I felt somewhat powerless to prevent them - I either did not hear them at all or it was already too late when I did. Once I had a gun this problem was reduced.

The first big development I made was farming. Crops grow too fast, require almost no processing and last forever. In the space of a few days I had more food than I could hope to eat in a month, and the more I had the more I could grow. I went from a day-to-day struggle to survive, to sitting back and drinking beer (well, cutting wood anyway). It was a good insight, if required, on the role of agriculture on the development of society - it gave people time to think and make things. But it is too easy and too fast as currently implemented. A definite requirement for a food preservation mechanic.

Next I finally figured out the dig down option and the easy times arrived. This both made and broke the game for me. I see I am far from the first to observer this...

The combination of dig down and the Z's being able to smash through buildings with ease, made constructing any sort of surface fortification pointless, which was a real shame. After grabbing a few buckets of water and some mushrooms I moved underground for a long time.

So I thought I would shake it up a bit and tried some mods.

1) I edited materials.xml setting dirt, clay and stone <property name="stability_glue" value="0" /> gives some fun results. You can no longer dig enormous mine tunnels/rooms, but you can still mine a little hidey hole straight down and you can open cast mine for resources. This also added value to the underground POIs: They don't collapse unless you try to expand / mine them further. It did result in the few houses with cobble blocks over locked doors loosing the top of the doorway if you smashed the doors open. Easy fix is to add wood or concrete lintels to such POI doors and windows.

2) I wanted to be able to actually shelter in houses so I changed the entityclasses.xml file and replaced with lines that attacked blocks and doors with ApproachAndAttackTarget instead. This results in the Z's hanging around on the other side of doors waiting for you to come out - occasionally amusing. This was crude, but it was easy.

3) I nerfed farming into the ground by changing the grow time blocks.xml (edit "cropsGrowingMaster" changing GrowthRate). I'm not sure this was a good idea as the constant struggle to find food can be quite dull. There is probably a sweet spot for the correct growth time. Or have yield built around block fertility - at the moment it is too easy to hoe a large area of grass into productive farmland. It would also be nice to see some irrigation requirements (perhaps varying by crop type to reduce land flexibility). I think farming is nice, but it needs to be much more costly than it currently is (try asking a farmer what he does with his time between the 1 day to plant and the 1 day to harvest!)

4) The final change I made was to prevent cop explosion damage (Explosion.BlockDamage in entityclasses.xml) This was a shame as I think they would really bring something to horde night later in the game, but my first encouter with them was so annoying - after much searching I found my first missile silo. It had two cops in it that exploded and completely ruined the POI.

I think the whole rebuild civilisation thing could go a lot further (I really liked the chemistry station / science, but it could be so much more). I would recommend "The Knowledge" By Lewis Dartnell for some great ideas for this.

On a related note, it would be good to have some win scenarios, e.g. recapture the map from the Z's.

The big POIs need to offer something special - by the time I could actually explore a hospital I didn't need anything there. Water purification, hydro-power and piping fluids about (water/oil) would be fun. And railways please.

So in short: Great game, great alpha. Needs a little bit of tuning, the xml files are an amazing option - I think it would also be nice to see some fixed menu options within the game for things such as spawning frequency, crop growth, Z interaction with blocks/doors etc.

 
With regards to your point on farming, as has been much discussed on these forums (though not especially recently I think), the nature of it's geometric progression (farm 1, get 2, farm 2, get 4 etc etc, even without fertiliser) means that no matter what you do with it (reasonably), you'll still sooner or later end up with more food than you could ever possibly use.

The growth time just merely decides how quickly you reach that point, OR, how big a farm you need to reach that point sooner.

 
Agreed on the geometric growth (for single player very long harvest times do delay the problem) . I'd like to see 2 harvests per year max at specific points of the year per crop type (don't get me started on meaningful seasons and weather), with yield depending on ground fertility and crop circulation. Perishable food would also add challenges and reduce massive reserves.

 
I think the growth rate is high due to our position in the development process. Though it was painful, I think they need to bring back crop trampling (player and zombie) along with a greatly reduced growth rate. Having to protect your crops (or accepting the diminishing returns of larger and larger farms impacted by every roaming critter out there) would go a long way to provide the ultimate balance necessary.

The need to refrigerate or preserve the harvest would also help to mitigate the runaway economy. Blights, weather effects on growth, and a more dynamic (random) crop yield would help too.

-Morloc

 
Not in favor of long crop returns. I personally eat meat as a food source. But I need crops for item crafting. Messing with this mechanic of the game would destroy the Starvation mod. Corn is needed for alcohol which is needed for many recipes.

Considering the balance for quite a few things, trying to balance the exponential crop growth does not seem important enough, especially since you cannot get exponential crop growth without constant effort. To me, as long as there is effort put into something, you should get your return. Its like sayig the game is not balanced because if I run 20 forges, I could get tons of steel in 3 weeks. If I put in the effort to run those 20 forges (and collect the iron), then why should I NOT get tons of steel? (Yes, I do know it is not the same and not exponential).

 
Messing with this mechanic of the game would destroy the Starvation mod.
Click to expand...
lol

Couldn't they...you know...mod it back to the way they need it to work for their....mod...?

(and then if they DID mod it back to shorter crop cycles wouldn't they need to technically change the name of their mod? ;) )

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Why would you play and "be done" NOW? Alpha 17 is just around the corner and it's over a year of development.

Also been reading that Lewis Dartnell book, it's an absolute work of art. I love it.

 
If anything crop returns should be much higher than they currently are. I mean, do you really think a single ear of corn really only yields one seed? Sure the grow times should be longer, but you also shouldn't need to consume an entire deer carcass in a single day. A small deer should provide enough meat for a couple weeks minimum.

 
It was a good insight, if required, on the role of agriculture on the development of society - it gave people time to think and make things. But it is too easy and too fast as currently implemented. A definite requirement for a food preservation mechanic.
Click to expand...
Common misconception. Early farmers had far less free time and were less healthy than contemporary hunter/gatherers (easily confirmed by Google). The reason agriculturalists won out in the long run is mostly that it supported higher population density, so they supplanted hunter/gatherers by numerical superiority.

 
It's all about game balance. If the game was balanced for longer-term play, trees and crops would grow slower, and many other things would change. This game isn't supposed to be super-ultra-realistic, though.

 
The issue with the farming suggestions I've seen so far are pretty much all solved with planting more crops, and planting them underground with glass ceiling - something I did in my own server.

The only solution I can see having any sort of merit is spoilage, as that requires other mechanics of the game - some of which are not easily replenished.

Preventing spoilage requires a fridge, which requires power, which requires fuel, which has to be collected in the world, which means leaving your Fortress of Solitude.

Simply having more crops means more spoilage, more waste.

 
Firstly, these were just my observations from playing the game, I'm sure they are not unique or the same as everyone else's. To reply to some statements here:

We need food spoilage. Rest is a matter of fine-tuning.
Click to expand...
Spoilage alone would be easily circumvented by planting at staggered intervals, it only becomes truly significant when combined with long growth cycles (which would require complex planning and a lot of space to cover with staggered planting). The concept I suggested of having specific harvest points through out the year was specifically to counter staggering.

If anything crop returns should be much higher than they currently are. I mean, do you really think a single ear of corn really only yields one seed? Sure the grow times should be longer, but you also shouldn't need to consume an entire deer carcass in a single day. A small deer should provide enough meat for a couple weeks minimum.
Click to expand...
As Torezu pointed out, "It's all about game balance". My first impression of the game was that the standard game on the standard setting was far from balanced, but that all the ingredients were there for a great game - with further development. I don't feel that the game should be a simulator, I feel it should be a fun and challenging experience.

Common misconception. Early farmers had far less free time and were less healthy than contemporary hunter/gatherers (easily confirmed by Google). The reason agriculturalists won out in the long run is mostly that it supported higher population density, so they supplanted hunter/gatherers by numerical superiority.
Click to expand...
This is nit picking and inaccurate: Yes, if you live in a region with poor fertility and climate, and/or without an organised society then subsistence farming may be no better or worse than hunter gathering. However, if you are in an environment where high yield farming is possible within society, then it frees up a lot of time to do other things. The major event that you consider a misconception would be the Neolithic Revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution). Note: there is debate over whether agriculture drove society to large settlements or whether large settlements required agriculture to survive, but there is no debate over the ability to have division of labour and specialisation it gave to societies. I hope it is obvious from both my statement before this and your experience of the game that it is trivial to grow a month's supply of potatoes compared to hunting 300+ meat? Thereby freeing up time to practice other skills / resource gathering?

Hope to see you all in A17 :-)

 
The issue with the farming suggestions I've seen so far are pretty much all solved with planting more crops, and planting them underground with glass ceiling - something I did in my own server.The only solution I can see having any sort of merit is spoilage, as that requires other mechanics of the game - some of which are not easily replenished.

Preventing spoilage requires a fridge, which requires power, which requires fuel, which has to be collected in the world, which means leaving your Fortress of Solitude.

Simply having more crops means more spoilage, more waste.
Click to expand...
I was too slow typing the last one :-). I agree with you, although there are other food preservation strategies that kept us alive before the fridge came along - smoking, pickling, preserves and salt spring to mind immediately. These are all things that would take user time and so reduce the time efficiency of farming (and provide another skill tree/branch).

 
I was too slow typing the last one :-). I agree with you, although there are other food preservation strategies that kept us alive before the fridge came along - smoking, pickling, preserves and salt spring to mind immediately. These are all things that would take user time and so reduce the time efficiency of farming (and provide another skill tree/branch).
Click to expand...
True, and while one of those methods might be a good idea for early-game, where electricity isn't easily obtained, I don't think another skill tree would really be warranted. Personally, I think that how they changed the skill point system means that the tree is too big if you're playing alone or with 1 or 2 other people.

 
Some thoughts for reducing the effectiveness of farming / gardens:

* Crops need to be periodically watered, or they perish.

* Crops need to be tended / weeded, or yields drop significantly.

* Crops simply / randomly fail to produce as expected. You may get a typical yield, or you may get half.

* Zombies can destroy crops by moving through them (as in previous alphas).

* Crops need to be fertilized to yield a net surplus. Without fertilization, you can expect a 1:1 return (1 seed = 1 consumable crop).

* Food spoilage. It's an interesting idea, but I feel like it could be challenging to implement (from a programmatic standpoint).

Even with all of this, it still seems like a dedicated "farmer" would -- sooner or later -- have an absolute surfeit of food.... but one could argue that's the benefit of being a dedicated farmer.

-V

 
Another simple idea is to tie farming / gardening success to a skill. Low skill = low yields. This would only be truly effective though if there weren't enough skill points to become a master of everything.

 
This is nit picking and inaccurate
Click to expand...
Far from it.
Yes, if you live in a region with poor fertility and climate, and/or without an organised society then subsistence farming may be no better or worse than hunter gathering. However, if you are in an environment where high yield farming is possible within society, then it frees up a lot of time to do other things.
Click to expand...
No, even in the Nile valley or Mesopotamia, farming takes a lot of effort and hard physical labor. Where hunter-gatherers typically spend 2 to 5 hours per day on obtaining their food and everything required for that, for farmers that figure easily goes up to 8-10 hours a day.

Hunter-gatherers lived longer, were taller, healthier and had a more varied diet than early farmers.

http://www.trunity.net/sam2/view/article/51cbf44b7896bb431f6af515/ (see especially figure 6.17)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21507735

http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

http://www.rewild.com/in-depth/leisure.html

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/18/the-case-against-civilization

The major event that you consider a misconception would be the Neolithic Revolution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neolithic_Revolution).
Click to expand...
Of course not, and that's not what I said. The misconception is that this revolution was an improvement in terms of time-efficiency.

I hope it is obvious from both my statement before this and your experience of the game that it is trivial to grow a month's supply of potatoes compared to hunting 300+ meat?
Click to expand...
Only because the game was designed that way, not very realistically on both sides.

 
smoking, pickling, preserves and salt spring to mind immediately..
Click to expand...
Yes, that is actually a brilliant idea. Salt would be an amazing addition to the game as an ingredient. Non-iodized salt is a natural disinfectant that could be a mining alternative to either of the antibiotics in the game at the cost of HP. It could also be used to create new recipes or preserve food if a spoiling mechanic is implemented. Maybe as an ingredient for new building materials, like glazed ceramics. I'd say fishing would be a better addition than other cooking options like smoking and pickling though. Meat is difficult to come by, looting is dangerous, and unless you're either farming or raiding farms you don't have a consistent way of getting food. Fishing could fix that.

 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top