So, after more than 325 hours played and a lot of time lurking around on the forums, i guess its time for my first post here. Mostly because Alpha 17 is the first version of 7D2D that i really dont know how to feel about. There are a lot of things i like about it, but also quite a few things i dislike. So lets just get right to it...
The good things:
- The graphics rework is really noticeable in a lot of areas. The game just looks gorgeous now. Maybe not really needed at this point, but still a welcome improvement.
- The new and reworked POIs are amazing. I dont think I ever had so much fun exploring POIs in any previous version of the game. Even the smaller houses are now actually worth looting because almost every POI now has some crates or weapons stashed away somewhere in the basement or on the roof. On top of that we have all the hidden loot and traps etc and those huge factory POIs that almost feel like a dungeon in an RPG. Just hats off for this! Amazing work really!
- The new weapon/tool/armor mods are great. Its just so much fun to customize all the different weapons and tools and experiment with different setups. Being able to set up a weapon for my personal playstyle is great and it made me use weapons I have not really used in the past. The armor mods are a bit less noticeable because for the most part you just slap them on and forget about them, but they are still nice. Especially things like the headlight for example.
- Party system and shared XP. Its just so much easier and more fun to play with friends now. I know a lot of people dont like the shared XP mechanic, but i personally think its a good addition. It gives us more reason to stay close to each other and actually play together. And i dont feel like i am "stealing" XP from my friends by killing all the zombies in a POI.
- New vehicles. New toys to play around with are always nice. And i really like the bike to be honest. It just makes it a lot easier to get around and explore the map early on.
The not so good things:
- Punching plants intead of picking them. This might be a trivial thing to complain about, but it actually really bugs me. Picking plants felt a lot more immersive and was actually kind of realistic. Instead, now you have to punch plants with you fists which feels really weird and looks kind of ridiculous to be honest. To make matters worse, the hitboxes seem to be a bit weird, so I often dont hit the plant i am aiming at but instead hit some already harvested seed in front of it, which then pops out and i have to replant it. To avoid that i now have to go through my fields looking straight down and hitting the plants at a 90° angle from above while standing right on top of them. Why was that changed anyway? In what way does this improve gameplay?
- The magazines that give you a temporary perk or skill are close to useless in my opinion. I dont know about other players but i personally only save up the ones that give me some kind of crafting skill or maybe the bartering one or Mother Lode. All the others I either scrap for paper or just use immediately to get them out of my inventory. I really dont care about an additional point in Dead Eye or Deep Cuts or something. I cannot even be bothered with selling them because each one takes up one inventory slot. Maybe they are more usefull on higher difficulty settings where you have to play more tactically, i dont know.
- Weapon quality and the removal of weapon parts. I just feel like finding a better weapon is close the irrelevant now and the weapon quality just means a lot less. In previous versions of the game I would check every weapon I found for better parts I could use for my current one. Maybe they had a better barrel or a better stock or whatever. And the better the overall weapon, the more damage it would do. It made every weapon find a little exciting because you never knew what parts could be usefull for you. In Alpha 17 thats gone. Weapon quality only changes durability and number of mod slots now and there are no weapon parts anymore. So as soon as I have a pistol now for example, I dont really care about any other pistol I find. No need to really check them, because no indiviual weapon parts anymore. And since almost all weapons seem to be either level 1 or 2 now, I pretty much scrap 99% of weapons I find because they are just useless to me. Once you have a level 2 or 3 pistol, the excitement of finding any other pistol is just gone.
To bring that back it would be nice if weapons could (rarely) come with mods installed for example. That way, even a level 1 pistol could be an interesting find again, if it had a magazine extender for example.
- Weapon schematics. As much as I like the mods, I do not like how the schematics work. I really think that the schematics should teach the player how to craft a mod permanently instead of just once. It makes absolutely no sense that we actually use up the schematic when crafting a mod and then even forget how to make that mod one second later. To make matters worse, you need a certain level in Yeah, Science to even be able to craft them. So first you need to find the schematic, then you need to spend points in the required perk and then need to spend resources to actually craft that mod. They are just straight up worse in every way than just finding the actual mod.
To make up for that, schematics should be a lot more rare than mods, but once you find them (and have invested in Yeah, Science), you should be able to craft them forever. To prevent that from being overpowered and to make the already assembled mods still relevant, the resource costs for crafting mods could be increased. Or maybe add a certain item that would be needed to craft mods which you could only get by scraping other mods.
- Risk vs reward after a player reaches a certain game stage. Right now, players will rather quickly reach a game stage that will make radiated zombies spawn in pretty much every POI, while the loot in those POIs will stay the same. At that point, looting those POIs becomes pointless to a certain degree because you will most likely spend more resources (ammo, repair kits, medical supplies etc) than you can get from that POI. Dont get me wrong, i like the difficulty and the fact that the game remains at least a little challenging even later on. I just think that the loot in those POIs should level with the player and the game stage, just like the zombies do. I think when i spend an hour and 200 rounds of ammo raiding a POI that is infested with radiated zombies, i deserve a bit more than a level 2 shotgun and some paper.
(on a side note: is the Lucky Looter perk even doing anything? Because it really does not feel like it. Got Lucky Looter 5 in my current singleplayer world and it does not seem to make a difference at all)
- Vehicle balance. From bike to motorcycle the balance seems to be fine, but everything after that point is just a waste of resources. The 4x4 is slower that the motorcycle and has less inventory space than 2 of them. When playing coop, its just better to build 2 motorcycles than the jeep. They are faster, cheaper, have more space and are available sooner.
And dont even get me started on that gyrocopter. That thing is just bad in every way imaginable. It is expensive, it is ridiculously slow and the controls are probably the worst i have ever seen on any vehicle in any game ever. Seriously, who came up with that? I built it once, flew it around for a few minutes and will probably never touch it again. Why would anyone ever use it over any of the other vehicles? It really needs a complete rework, especially the controls.
- RWG. I dont think i really have to say much about this. Please just fix this. It was fine in Alpha 16, but in Alpha 17 we now suddenly have roads all over the place, floating POIs etc. Its really annoying.
Anyway, thats it I guess. At least for the moment. There are a lot of other changes in Alpha 17 that I either dont really have an opinion on or that i have not yet decided about.
That includes the new perk system for example. I know a lot of people really hate it, but so far i does not bother me that much. Yes, it made more sense that digging a hole made me better at digging for example, instead of killing zombies and then somehow learning how to make a bike. But you can still do that to a certain degree. You still get XP for mining etc, and you could just go ahead and spend that mining XP in some mining perks if you really want. I guess i have to play more to really make up my mind about this.
I also dont care about the digging zombies a lot of players seem to have a problem with. It makes sense for them to dig. Saying its a bad change because you cannot spend the horde night in a little hole with one wood block over you head is not really a good argument in my opinion. I did not miss them in previous versions but i also dont mind them being here now.
The new AI with the all-knowing zombies is a bit annoying right now, but i know why they did it and i am sure they will adjust this in the future.
The trader quests are whatever for me at the moment. Have done a few of them, but since they are all just "kill zombies" or "get me that", i dont care about them anymore. So they are neither good nor bad. They might become interesting in the future if the devs decide to add some more variation or even small stories to them.
