My overall collective thoughts after many games in A17+
I have had several games now, 1 long game and 4 short/medium length games both with friends and on public servers.
There are so many things i would like to see changed, but im going to focus on the things which matter most to me. Here is my observed experience and feedback:
VEHICLES
Love the new vehicles, however some balancing and bugs need addressing.
1. Party members or allies cannot access 4x4 Truck storage, only the person who placed it down.
2. The bikes are understandably fragile, but the 4X4 Truck is damaged too easily and too quickly. Please consider allowing the 4X4 Truck to have more HP or better resistance to small stones. The truck is wide, making it more a victim to small objects, therefor it should not be as fragile as the bikes.
3. Non occupied vehicles roll down a hill too easily, making much less sense when using the motorbikes and 4X4 Truck...did they not invent the handbrake? Please consider forcing non occupied vehicles to constantly brake, please take into consideration that not everyone's bases are going to be on super-flat land.
PLAYER STATS and PERKS
I have to be honest with the new perk system, this is a large part of why i have lost interest in 7D2D, as it is a huge change to the core gameplay, and its all negative.
1. MELEE just doesnt work, it feels awful and i boil it down to several reasons:
1a. Early game, you have the fitness and stamina of someone who weighs 1200 pounds, but by mid-game (or just 8 levels later), you have infinite stamina and the fitness of 10 Hussain Bolts.
1b. Melee is less of a brawl now, and more you kiting like you are using a ranged weapon, using your endless stamina like a cheatmode. Melee can hardly be called melee, if being at range is how you play it.
1c. Stun/Knockdown spam (very easily acheivable early-on) is too effective and strips real MELEE combat away from us.
(for melee i would probably advise looking at the Left 4 Dead model, in which melee players are given a 'Shove' button, which quickly degrades in effectiveness if spammed. Perma-stunlocking in 7D2D makes melee a joke)
1d. Arm or Leg gibbing is too rare. Head gibbing seems balanced as it is (should be kept rare)
1e. Heavy strike is far too powerful on the Sledgehammer.
2. STAMINA. Where do i begin.. actually, ill just keep this one short.
2a. Early game, far too little stamina crippling peoples experience to the point it makes a lot of people quit the game early. By end game, we have too much, basically infinite. Particularly too much regeneration at end game.
2b. Too many ways to create infinite stamina regeneration methods. Even without coffee, its too much. Start by removing 50 stamina recovery in melee on kill and the stamina recovery on ranged perks, melee efficiency perks are enough.
2c. Another cripple factor is the Encumberance slots. They make NO sense, drop the whole thing. Having Light Armour and Heavy Armour determine our runspeed and stamina cost while running, is more than enough.
2d. Drop swing efficiency perks, you can now Mine infinitely because of it. In the past to mine 'endlessly' required coffee, and that felt a lot better, making coffee had a purpose.
3. PERKS. Poorly implemented, a gamekiller for many especially in single player.
3a. The requirements in levels to craft a Forge, Battery bank,and stuff we need to play, is ABSURDLY high. Many players feel they have no choice but to spend constantly in Intelligence when they want to put points into other things. This problem is the worst for Single Players who have to level up EVERYTHING.
(honestly i miss having to find books to craft things..without them, the game currently suffers from a shortage of Paper).
3b. 'Boom! Headshot' and 'Skull Crusher' are far too powerful.
3c. 'Sexual Tyrannosaurus' too easily creates 'Infinite Stamina', remove its stamina gain on killing blow, and reduce effectiveness to 20% at max rank.
3d. 'Slow metabolism' at max rank is bugged. You never need to eat food for up to an entire week, drinking is fine and behaves properly. You never go hungry EVER.
3e. Archery is the weakest it has ever been, with little way to increase damage. After beginning game, Archery becomes exstinct.
EXPERIENCE AND ZOMBIES
You knew this would be here. What a slow, grindy chore! And its non functional. I will not discuss the Ai here (prefer A16 or earlier). This is THE biggest reason i cant stand playing the game.
A. Killing Zombies is not the one-and-only goal for 7D2D, stop making it so only Zombie Killing is the only way to get XP.
Do you know what should grant more XP? Mining, Cutting trees down, Quests, Crafting, Looting Untouched weapon bags or Untouched Working Stiff crates (things found at the end of a PoI), THINGS PEOPLE DO.
B. On public servers, new players get destroyed by Radiated Feral zombies when they have no gear or stamina to defend themselves, PoI sleepers need to spawn based on the AGE of the player, not how many DAYS the server is up to.
C. On public servers with over 10 players, there are NO wandering zombies. They just never spawn due to limitations, this means barely any XP, because Zombies are XP remember...this made playing on a Public Server a non-option.
ANIMAL ANTICS
A. After the server has been online for 2 hours, animal spawn rates go from a wide variety and fair spawn rate, to almost NO spawns, and only rabbits. This includes bears.
B. Wild Wolfs can spawn anywhere at total random, including inside your large, well-trapped base...including in the block next to you, in front of your face.
LOOT and CRAFTING
A. It can take over a month of ingame time (30 hours IRL to me) to get a Solar Bank running with full set of cells in a single player/co-op game. In public servers? Just dont even bother. You'll NEVER get them before the top dogs do. This is an outrageous demand! (extremely rare trading object)
B. We cant craft any better clothes? Please correct this.
C. I finally crafted a R6 Steel Mining Helmet!...but it doesnt work. Only the trader could give me a working 'basic' mining helmet.
D. We have a massive shortage of, Bones, Potato's (very rare PoI's), Paper, and more on public servers (no cars left for example, extremely rare then to find from a trader). Add better chances for Battery/Engine/Tyres to Garage Storage boxes.
E. Knuckle Duster should be a melee weapon, not an invisible modification.
PERFORMANCE
Lets be honest, its the worst its ever been. Your system can be DOUBLE the recommended game requirements and still be unable to get a stable 60fps, BUT, Hear me out funpimps, i may be able to increase performance for you.
I wont mention the stuttering because we already know youre looking into that. So i'll get to the point:
You dont like people digging underground bases, and have made zombies dig down to you now, we understand that and can accept that, but currently, we can dig down pretty deep...i mean INCREDIBLY deep into the land.
Seeing as theres no point digging deep.. Why dont you reduce the depth of the underground by around 60% ? Think of the dramatic performance boost that will have. Theres no purpose or reason to dig deep anymore. If you really dont want us to dig deep, then COMMIT to it, and reduce the maximum depth by a great amount.
Secondly. Memory leak? FPS loss gets worse over long sessions. After a 6 hour session, i need to restart to get things to normal.
Thirdly, during a horde night after being playing for 4 hours, i couldnt move because my console kept taking input away from me, infinitely spamming red messages and disallowing me from escaping its repeated grasp until i ended the task.
