For me it looks like the Z´s get redundant more and more as the game progresses. Silent Dogs, Food spoilage coming, shortcoming of bones for duct tape, fire arms at day one and so on make them just an annoyance. In a game that has "Horde" in the subtitle.
Rather get more z´s. To demanding for the hardware you say? Get rid of UMA. What use are good looking Z´s if they aren´t a challenge. I don´t care if the Z´s that i don´t see a whole day (while beeeing outside) on a MP server do look good. I want more of them.
Roland it would be cool if you went through a few of the more common gripes about a17 and made some polls...i enjoy polls. i think it would be cool to see how the actual percent of forum users feel about certain features. theres so many opinions one way or another and i like to see how many other people feel the way i do about stuff...i think im not a minority in the way i feel? or am i?
Perks and levelling are boring. It's that simple. World exploration is dead. Especially on multiplayer. You can survive, level up and get to a steel base with turrets and spikes and max weapons by doing the following. Find the shotgun messiah factory, setup camp nearby, mine rocks for stone, iron coal etc, harvest trees, dig for clay, raid the factory which also has cars outside for you to wrench and boom...super base and awesome weapons with tons and tons of ammo. One of the things I loved about 7D2D when I first played it was the level by doing system that meant you had to get out there and get good by using the tools and weapons and moving around. It forced you in a way to have to explore the world in. Now, it's just a standard XP grind watching the bar go up over and over like...pretty much every other game out there with most things level gated instead of allowing the player to take the much better natural progression path. The game was once organic in feel where you could take the path of your choosing. Now..you pretty much have to follow the same path over and over and obtain the same things in the same order through perks. Boring.
POI's. Still predictable, ton of zombies, you know they are in every room. No variety or randomness. Generated around the player instead of random encounter. Boring, repetitive.
Overall, the game is becoming a linear open world with predictable AI and not much wiggle room in the progression you take. The old way of doing things was way better.
You all need to listen to your community more. Whilst some like the changes a lot of others do not. Rather than force the more boring path on people you should create different game modes. Allow people to setup either a XP grind by boring progression or progression organic and naturally, maybe re introduce the horse mode thing that was in A7 and before. Give people a variety of play styles to choose from. Let them choose between the whole 20 hour game thing and something that's longer, harder and more organic. That's one of the problems I see in this forum. The users tell you what they want and you guys...let's be fair...you ignore it, leave a ♥♥♥♥ish comment or acknowledge it but act like you don't really listen. And your answer in the end "guys we have a new vehicle". You need to step back and look at games such as Warframe. A game largely dictated by the wants of its community. It's repetitive, grindy, more so than 7D2D yet it's immensely popular. Why? Because the devs actually listen to their community and take on board and implement the things they want implementing. They quiz their community about how they would like to see the game progress and have earned immense respect and dedication from their fans.
- RWG is still a mess. Crazy roads, solid walls of water, radio tower districts, bad terrain transitions around pois
- No indication of entering RAD zone except you start dying very quickly and will still die (usually) even if you turn around instantly.
- Zombies still popping in right beside you, or behind you. I had a group of 5 pop in behind me while sneaking. Can often watch zombies spawning into a poi.
- Water is like jelly again, no more like glue this time.
- Hit boxes around zombies make head shots harder than they should be. Amazing amount of arrows caught by shoulders, hands, forearms
- Perks are level locked as well as being stat locked. Bad decision, choose one or the other don't punish players for min maxing
- You Are Encumbered (nah just kidding) You Are Encumbered (nah, not really) You are Encumbered (Ok, it's a bug)
- Whoever is playing with the ambient light, chill. Green tint, pink tint, black tint, light tint. So many transitions in a short time, almost like being at a disco.
- The fog off the water effect is low quality and cheesy. It's literally the same puff spammed like 10 times at different angles. I get dizzy looking at it.
- Weapons should not reload automatically, it reduces their usefulness drastically. Hunting rifle and crossbow, you would rather switch to a different weapon after firing a round in a tight situation but can't until the reload animation is finished. Precious seconds wasted.
- Rivers are back! Awesome.
- I haven't really played since 16.4, it's not all bad but I haven't put enough time in yet to tell the whole story
Sorry, but there are so many pages and i won't be reading what everyone posted in the last couple weeks... I'm gonna just say...
Don't have a very strong PC, nor a very weak one, yet after trying out a modlet that increases zombie spawns in the wild i don't tend to have FPS problems (playing SP only). Should be tested on various configurations, but i think people could handle increased zombie numbers. Would definitely enhance the gameplay and not make outdoors look deserted.
'So, for example, when you make it so players can't effectively hide from the hordes, what you are essentially saying to them is: "The choice you made is not intended gameplay. Even if you try you will fail." I feel that message - subtly directing the player towards a particular style of play through mechanics - is at odds with the spirit of the open-world sandbox survival game that you have created, because it eliminates the most important thing gamers look for in these type of games: player-choice.'
I believe, there shoudl be option, 'allow for cheating strategies'.
So you still have choice, and you clearly understand, game was not designed that way.
Game is designed specific way for a reason. It's vision of developer, it's way it was meant to be played if you like.
Too much freedom and game looses what makes it a game. No one stops you from going 'god mode', if you don't however, you struggle. Struggle is core of ANY game.
I don't play game that allows me to win 100% of the time. Digging into hole in the ground does exactly that. So no, devs, while your code is ♥♥♥♥(yet), I like your vision. And your stuff you come up with - surprises me in a good way. I never build car yet, but I'd love to make one.
Friends of mine when created game set air drops to be dropped every day. I hated it. I asked to not drop every day. They made air drop visible on map - I hated it. Too easy. There should be options for zombies to dig ground or not in game settings perhaps. So those wanting it to be another minecraft can do their things. But it's not going to be 7dtd. Defaults should be challenging. Anything else is a plus.
I am rather upset that meat smell is gone and you can't be infested with zombiosis. I am SERIOUSLY upset with performance of the game. But otherwise I am happy with whole concept and what you do. Keep up good work Pimps!
It would be VERY nice of you to remove the slow effect when you get stunned.
I just died to a zombie I couldn't aim ,which moved zig zag ,which stunned me ,and GOD FORBID I was reloading with my shotgun.
Combine that with the lag and super stuttering where more than 5 zombies in an area and I'm dead laughing at how ridiculous the game feels like after months of a beta.
So for the love of god,remove the super slow effect when stunned which is proven fatal when reloading ,when I can't switch to bandages or other stuff. At least until the super stuttering effect is completely removed.
What FPS are you getting? I certainly didn't see much by way of stuttering in my own A17.x playthroughs, so I'd be curious to know what sort of frames per second you're getting.
Actually, the game is in Alpha, not Beta.
What FPS are you getting? I certainly didn't see much by way of stuttering in my own A17.x playthroughs, so I'd be curious to know what sort of frames per second you're getting.
I never liked when you decided to remove the 10mm ammo and make the smg use the same ammo as the pistol.
the only thing that this did for me was to render the pistol useless as soon as i got an smg.
the idea was to save space etc, but now that you released the steel ammo you really stepped on your last statement.
The thing is i would love to use the pistol more now that i can mod it with silencer and all that but i wont waste my smg ammo on it. i would rather see a one type of ammo for each gun than to see 3 guns use the same ammo. Because then i would have to choose between one of them.
Love the guns now though, huge improvement to have whole guns and mods instead of weapon parts.
I'm not sure if I've ever posted before. If so, it would have been years ago during A... A... A??... I could only guess at the version. Anyways, Hello. It feels like the first time playing, again. So I thought I'd pass along some first time observations in case they might be useful to the Devs.
I started with a Single Player random seed. I went through around 4 starts before deciding that perhaps the random seed approach wasn't making for a viable world. The game was largely "a desperate search for water while being killed by dogs and harassed by vultures. I eventually found the game's feature that would generate the seed and show you the map. There was no water (rivers or ponds) on any of the maps I generated. This led me to try the Navezgane map where online maps assured me there would be water, and that has worked out much better.
Along the way in this latest play-through I've been killed by a boar, drowned beneath a house, swarmed by Z's in a basement, and clobbered by a Z after I appear to have tripped over my bicycle. Collapsing floors are a nice sneaky challenge.
I find myself wondering what happened that led to a zombie apocalypse because there are strange things that I'd like to know more about. For instance, why are there Z's inside completely fortified houses? Was there an airborne virus? Why do Z's hide in cabinets, or I suppose, why did the human with bite out of his head hide in a closet before they became a Z?
I suppose a more pressing question would be how did I end up laying outdoors in my boxers? I'm going with an unfortunately timed bachelor's party ran into a zombie apocalypse. The hangover is taking a while to clear as I still cannot focus well enough to read any of the cast-aside newspapers.
The difficulty of the Z's has started to noticeably increase. The Cops are entertaining, but I'm not a fan of somehow their bodies have changed such that they can projectile vomit an incredible distance, or that they can... explode. Huh?
I don't mind animals being part of the game. I really like that, actually. But their behavior seems odd. Are snakes and dogs just Z's in disguise? Why are the snakes in the barn charging me along with the Z's? There aren't any mice and I am much slower than the rabbits, so I guess I can see it from the snake's point of view.
For my land claim, the green boundary... does my territory include the squares of the boundary, or only those squares within the boundary? Maybe it would be better if the boundary were presented on square edges instead of down the middle of the blocks. I've found a Z inside my walls twice and I'm not sure how they got there. I'm sure I've messed something up and need to spend more time observing. I'm wondering if they stepped on spike blocks outside the wall and then jumped over. Maybe they spawned on top of the wall? Maybe there was a quiet Z or two inside the bounds that hung out for a while?
Some UI observations...
I couldn't figure out the Forge. I had to search the web to figure out that I needed to "Smelt" stuff into the Forge's inventory. Everything else so far leaves items in my inventory until I start a recipe.
I didn't realize there is a way to harvest crops without destroying the plant. I saw that mentioned on these boards this morning. I was trying to figure out why anyone would farm, otherwise.
Tripping over the bicycle and being hurt and stunned seems so petty. Yeh, it got me killed. I'm not bitter. I'm not. (sniff) Really!
Can I fashion a boar spear to hunt boars? You know, keep them at a distance, and... I'm not bitter. (sniff) I respect life lessons. I can see how an arrow through the skull might piss one off. Ah well, you only live... an infinite number of times.
Anyways, once I got started in Navgazine the game became quite fun. I can see using some mods to make the Z's more human, but so far things are interesting and entertaining.
And I wanted to congratulate faatal (if hes still working with you havent seen him in months) and give just two or three things that, in my opinion need to be changed for the A.I. to feel better than A16 again.
And yes this has been discussed a lot, but I honestly don't know anymore what is allowed and what isn't.
Posting discussions slightly phrased as questions gets it moved to another forum which means the effort put in is wasted because nobody looks there, necroing old threads gets the thread closed, opening new threads get things moved somewhere nobody can see it. So you do whatever you need to do
So... I have finally started playing A17 for real this time, since Rolands mod fixes the most agonizing mistakes that ruined A17 and the performance is at least bearable and Nitrogen fixes the horrible rwg.
And I have been very much open about my dislike and criticism of the factually bad features/decisions that A17 implemented/changed.
One of them was A.I. Now I have around 60 hours in A17 under my wing and 55 are in 17.3/4.
And I have to say that it got a lot better. There are still things that need to be fixed (see below).
I specificially built my base around the current A.I. but not exploitative (I used a big prefab and put rotating blades on the walls) and I must say, its a lot of fun. Zombies on hordenight still get through (might be a sideeffect of rolmod since my gamestage is at 250 on day 40) to me even though they need to get up two stairs, one of them only 1 block wide.
This would have never been possible in A16. So good job on that end. And since they now randomly stop to hit certain blocks they dont like, I still had to upgrade the foundation because they still wanted to destroy the bottom floor.
Blockhp dmg was either nerfed or changed in rolmod, but it feels way less punishing and a vault door can now actually take a beating before breaking.
So thank you for your good work. You and roland made A17 playable It's still not rewarding to level up... but lets see what A18 brings.
So with that said, I wanna give my 2 cents on what NEEDS to happen to A.I. to finally feel better than A16. (right now its more towerdefense bloons style and less build up your whole base)
1. decrease Z's search radius.
If my entrance is facing west and a zombie from the east can find it no problem, this is an issue.
It should try and MAKE an entrance on the other side. They sometimes already do it, but only in extreme cases. Mostly they will just wander around the house and entering there.
2. they shouldnt be able to look through walls. Be it seeing spikes behind walls/around corners or knowing which path offers the least hp to break, they should only ever have a general idea.
There are (as far as I can see) two ways of doing it:
2.1. would be to only give them "visual" and "hearing/seeing/smelling" senses.
With the visual beeing the main drive and only beeing able do calculate a path they can see and the latter beeing a general pathfinder waypoint system like it is implemented right now. So they know where to go but since they don't see it, they just start MAKING a path to the closest pathing point.
2.2 would be to do it as it is planned fo A18, making zombies less reliable and simply start whacking blocks if they need to change elevation/direction. This is a bit more random, but might also be more optimization friendly... so who knows.
3. and this might be the biggest point:
ZEDS NEED TO IGNORE TRAPS!!! They are zombies with no sense of preservation. If they see two possible ways one with spikes and one without, they should only very rarely choose the one without over the other.
But currently one spikeblock (iron) is worth more than 8 dirt and 2 reinforced concrete!
(tested more than once: set up a bunker, hordenight 1: only a closed door, zs found the entrance and started a combined effort to break through.
hordenight 2: same setup, but one small row of iron spikes in front of the door (one in front one left and one right of that) OPENED THE DOOR and they didn't care one bit. They all started digging straight down into the bunker, trying to break the concrete until morning.)
They are a horde. A horde is defined by no single one mattering. So if two Z's die on their way to break the quickest path, so be it!
Not only does it make no sense, this leads to easy exploitation and spikes beeing absolutely useless.
Luckily they already ignore bladetraps and electric fences, but they are unavailable until day ~14-21 sometimes later.
So yeah. Gj on the A.I. This is one of the very few points that I actually take back my criticism on. Well done ^^
Did you ever test whether an open door is different than a closed door? I always assumed it, even used it in one of my bases to lure zombies, but never really tested it in a (simple) controlled environment.
As much as i like difficulty, not walking around traps definitely makes sense. What is the point of them if they walk around them. If i wanted to path them id build walls.
I actually think that they should not avoid traps with the exception of the spikes because of how large and visible they are. If those spikes were blocks, which visually they essentially are, the zombies would likely walk around. If they have enough sense not to walk right into trees or walls, they should not walk into a spike trap. Exceptions should be, and are, that they will walk over them or walk into them if they need to make an open path.
However, I do think that zombie movements need some adjustments that would make the spikes more effective.
For one, zombies should bump each other more when close together. This way you could make narrow spike paths to disperse groups. They would bump each other into spikes. (they do this a little right now, but not as much as they should)
Second, zombies that run should have some momentum in the direction they are running. If they are running and need to turn to their left, momentum should bring them to their right some... and vice versa... with the amount of drift depending on run speed. Placing spikes strategically where running zombies are likely to be carried into would give an extra element of having to think about placement.
So does it feel like game stage ramps up too quickly or does it feel about right. I’m very interested in adjusting the game stage speed of progression.
It feels like the first time playing, again. So I thought I'd pass along some first time observations in case they might be useful to the Devs.
