PC Hard-core survival description on Steam store

[Matt115]

Just to clarify, in case I was misinterpreted. I'm not saying that description is "a scam", I'm not saying that TFP are lying by saying that.

I'm just saying that until the devs fix and/or improve some of the survival mechanics, that description is not currently in line with how most of the survival elements play.

Fixes and improvements needed, in my opinion, are:

1. Make effects from cold/hot weather significant again (make clothing great again!)
   
2. Reintroduce diseases and illnesses: stay out in the cold too much? You get a cold! Stay more? You can even get the Flu.
   
3. Make hunger and thirst have more relevant effects: dizzy effect when very thirsty and lower stats when very hungry.
   
4. Introduce mental health: the old Starvation mod had this part done very well (if you go insane, you start hearing REAL voices whispering!)
   
5. (Re)introduce extreme weather events (depending on biome): sand storms in the desert, snow storms in the snow biome, lightning strikes in the woods!
   
6. (Re)introduce a wellness system: if you eat a balanced diet you'll be full strength, but if you only eat meat or if you only eat veggies you'll get weak and then ill.
   

But they will never do this because people would complain - Roland give few example what people suggesting 

"There are plenty who see this game as very hardcore and even too hardcore in its present state for their liking. We even have mods that change the game to be less hardcore like we have mods that push it further towards more. One that comes to mind is the one that makes all the animals friendly and all of the zombies neutral unless attacked first. Some people see that as the perfect amount of hardcoreness that they desire for the game. Someone else posted awhile back that the game shouldn't allow us to die but should just make us have to eat more by having damage hit our hunger gauge instead of having hitpoints and that we never should have to look at the player stats page and see number of deaths. That was too hardcore for comfort for them." 

So no chance for such change because this create review bombing xd

 

[warmer]

Your definition of difficulty is inversely proportional to the number of hours you have spent playing the game.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Jost Amman As Matt pointed out, most of that is not going to happen sadly.

But maybe, just maybe, that could be an extra hardcore game mode they make once the game is finished. @Roland?

 

[Matt115]

Your definition of difficulty is inversely proportional to the number of hours you have spent playing the game.

Unfortunatly no.... i wish it was true.

If you spend 100 hours playing MC and then 100 playing factorio you will always say that factorio is much much harder.  Trust me. I'm not pro. But if pros sayes that for example project zomboid is always "high alert" diffuclty this mean hours don't change hardcore game into normal

@Jost Amman As Matt pointed out, most of that is not going to happen sadly.

But maybe, just maybe, that could be an extra hardcore game mode they make once the game is finished. @Roland?

Honestly chances are almost 0. Why? TFP want to make another games so they want to finish 7dtd fast

 

[warmer]

Unfortunatly no.... i wish it was true.

I am pretty bored with the difficult once I had over 1000 hrs so I made an edit to the spawn.xml and it's been making it a lot more fun/difficult

Put this .xml into \steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VdQpPG0w3THx7XTLeXiZyDlh9WsiW8MY?usp=sharing

and make a new random gen map. 2.5x Zeds per spawn at a much faster respawn rate. This makes the game feel a lot more "lived in" regarding populations of places. With this you can't wipe out an area quickly and become comfortable for days on end like you can with vanilla spawn.xml

The biome.xml I made to add more cars/thicken forests/add more rocks/more guts and gore - not a difficulty modifier per say, but more of an atmospheric change. Same link for that one if you are curious.

 

[Matt115]

I am pretty bored with the difficult once I had over 1000 hrs so I made an edit to the spawn.xml and it's been making it a lot more fun/difficult

Put this .xml into \steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VdQpPG0w3THx7XTLeXiZyDlh9WsiW8MY?usp=sharing

and make a new random gen map. 2.5x Zeds per spawn at a much faster respawn rate. This makes the game feel a lot more "lived in" regarding populations of places. With this you can't wipe out an area quickly and become comfortable for days on end like you can with vanilla spawn.xml

The biome.xml I made to add more cars/thicken forests/add more rocks/more guts and gore - not a difficulty modifier per say, but more of an atmospheric change. Same link for that one if you are curious.

Well for aestetic point of view - i hope there will be more types of dead corpses in A21.

Well difficulty don't mean hardcore - hardcore is more like... a lot of mechanics you can lost a lot in few seconds etc.

Cod have "1 hit kill" diffuculty but isn't fun at all.

 

[meganoth]

Suvival -  if "radical" right is project zomboid, then a little bit could be the forest 3 should be hm.... well idk how to write because title of this game is considered as "rude word". Then you have factorio after that Medieval dynasty and after that 7DTD and 'radical" left MC -

Wait a moment. Are you saying Factorio has Survival in the game? Where?

 

[warmer]

Crank your zombie damage against blocks to max, turn on feral sense, up difficulty to max, set sprint day and night, and add in my spawn files 2.5x spawn amount everyday.

Then set it to 60min days, bloodmoon to daily, with no loot respawn, no airdrops, 

Play dead is dead. 

No one can pull that off for long my friend. That is PLENTY hardcore enough for anyone. That makes the game so hard it isn't fun anymore. BEYOND hardcore. 

 

[Jost Amman]

We were talking about "hardcore survival", not about hardcore difficulty in games.

I don't know how the topic steered in that direction...  :suspicious:

 

[warmer]

We were talking about "hardcore survival", not about hardcore difficulty in games.

I don't know how the topic steered in that direction...  :suspicious:

the essential definition of survival is "not dying" so either you are being difficult for the sake of it, or dont want to mod your game to suit your taste.

Have some agency, take control of your satisfaction, or accept the fact that you've played a game until you exceeded its base mechanics. You beat vanilla. Now go find a mod for more of a challenge in your desired direction, or stop playing.

 

[theFlu]

so either you are being difficult for the sake of it

No, he isn't. He's talking about a genre of games called "Survival games". Minesweeper is all about not dying, but that doesn't make it a survival game. PUBG is all about surviving the longest and that isn't a survival game. "Hardcore survival game" implies things, that aren't being met.

If that isn't a topic you wish to discuss, you're free not to

 

[Jost Amman]

If that isn't a topic you wish to discuss, you're free not to

Thanks @theFlu, I knew I could count on a disease, to defend a topic on survival!  ound:

 

[theFlu]

Thanks

Hey, careful there; I'm a little risky as a debate ally... you're probably in a bad spot if you get me. Get me?

And that's not entirely about viral loads, either

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

the essential definition of survival is "not dying" so either you are being difficult for the sake of it, or dont want to mod your game to suit your taste.

Have some agency, take control of your satisfaction, or accept the fact that you've played a game until you exceeded its base mechanics. You beat vanilla. Now go find a mod for more of a challenge in your desired direction, or stop playing.

Ok. so pretty much the majority of games is survival then, inlcuding things like super mario games? The survival genre isn´t about not dying alone. Not dying isn´t a genre as you can die in the majority of games.

The list Jost posted above pretty much sums up what survival as a genre is about.

 

[Roland]

I’ve not played The Long Dark or Green Hell. Do either of those games start to feel trivial from a survival aspect once you gain enough experience with them and come to know exactly what you should do and where to go in order to overcome whatever might be threatening your life at a given moment in the game?  If not, why not?  How do those games remain hardcore survival for the fan with 1000+ hours? @theFlu brought up the point about gameplay loops that trivialize survival and that the gameplay loop that does that in 7 Days involves the trader and is easily discernible after not too many hours playing the game. 

In these other games that deserve the title hardcore survival, what is it that makes survival difficult no matter how experienced you are with the game?

 

[Matt115]

Wait a moment. Are you saying Factorio has Survival in the game? Where?

i made tower defence and surivival in one in this game case - there is mode called death world - you are starting in small zone with small number of resources - outside there is tons of bugs --> so instead food andd water you have to managment electricity and ores so  yeah this is some type of  survival

I’ve not played The Long Dark or Green Hell. Do either of those games start to feel trivial from a survival aspect once you gain enough experience with them and come to know exactly what you should do and where to go in order to overcome whatever might be threatening your life at a given moment in the game?  If not, why not?  How do those games remain hardcore survival for the fan with 1000+ hours? @theFlu brought up the point about gameplay loops that trivialize survival and that the gameplay loop that does that in 7 Days involves the trader and is easily discernible after not too many hours playing the game. 

In these other games that deserve the title hardcore survival, what is it that makes survival difficult no matter how experienced you are with the game?

Yes off experience no matter - i remeber that was guy who spend  200+ hours on one map (this is rly big achivement - it was topic of one video) in project zomboid - character died because he bleed out in very stupid way.  So.... you can "in theory" know what to do but you can a bush was on your way. Total war attila is much more harcore that total war shogun 2 - in shogun 2 you have public happiness, money, technology , religion/faction influence ( but it's very simple - this is just connected with public connected). While in attila you have - influence of your family and you have to take care about support, culture regions - in some regions you will have big problems because of that, if you claim region --> culture of building, much more advance diplomacy, a lot of religions, big scales events,  "family" events, mercenary units etc. So... Attila is much harded even even pro players campain sometimes are go to bin because something radomly happens

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Roland Every game get´s easier and has a point where the challenge curve flattens out the more experience you have. That´s not the point here. The reason for comparing these games with 7 days is that for a person who didn´t play 7 days and Green Hell (or any other game i listed) at all, will perceive 7 days WAY easier in comparison.

And if you played other survival games you will also have no troubles in 7 days. In Green Hell on the other hand i did struggle a lot and i played a fair share of different survival games.

Sure Project Zomboid will be a breeze once you have a few hundred hours in it aswell for example (well depending on the settings, it can still be very challenging for experienced players). But only once forget to turn off the stove and your base will burn down. No matter how easy the game got after a few hundred hours, a very small mistake can cost you everything. In 7 days? Not so much.

 

[warmer]

I’ve not played The Long Dark or Green Hell.   @theFlu
In these other games that deserve the title hardcore survival, what is it that makes survival difficult no matter how experienced you are with the game?

This exactly what I meant by difficulty being inversely proportional to number of hours in game. Both of the games have severe penalties for ignoring basic character health maintenance.

If you want it "more" hardcore. Mod your debuffs to be deadly. End of story. There you go, more hardcore. the entire argument is based in the "survival" elements not being hard enough.  

How about 7 days to heal a broken bone, 1 day to or an infection kills you, edit the biome.xml for more severe temp difference between areas making cold/heat more of a killer. How about playing "dead is dead" like I suggested?

If you remember that is the definition of "hardcore" difficulty for many games, and you also have "survival" elements. There you go. Harder to survive. Its not the problem of the games framework when the tools exist, it is a problem of your expectations that is remains difficult once you know and understand the mechanics.

Some people complain food/water are already too hard for them. Why? Gameplay experience. That is it.

Anything ceases to be hardcore once you have mastered the basics unless the game ramps difficulty with you, ala gamestage, and that only helps for so long. You have beat vanilla, accept that achievement as a win for you, and not a fault of the game when there are 100's of ways to make it more hardcore if you wish.

 

[Roland]

This exactly what I meant by difficulty being inversely proportional to number of hours in game. Both of the games have severe penalties for ignoring basic character health maintenance.

If you want it "more" hardcore. Mod your debuffs to be deadly. End of story. There you go, more hardcore. the entire argument is based in the "survival" elements not being hard enough.  

How about 7 days to heal a broken bone, 1 day to or an infection kills you, edit the biome.xml for more severe temp difference between areas making cold/heat more of a killer. How about playing "dead is dead" like I suggested?

If you remember that is the definition of "hardcore" difficulty for many games, and you also have "survival" elements. There you go. Harder to survive. Its not the problem of the games framework when the tools exist, it is a problem of your expectations that is remains difficult once you know and understand the mechanics.

Some people complain food/water are already too hard for them. Why? Gameplay experience. That is it.

Anything ceases to be hardcore once you have mastered the basics unless the game ramps difficulty with you, ala gamestage, and that only helps for so long. You have beat vanilla, accept that achievement as a win for you, and not a fault of the game when there are 100's of ways to make it more hardcore if you wish.

I think you make a good point that modding is part of the intended game design. I don’t know how moddable The Long Dark or Green Hell are but I’m pretty sure this game could be modded to be just as difficult to survive as those games are if not more so.

As you said, simply editing the consequences of critical debuffs to be more dire and making their remedies harder to obtain would ramp up the hardcore aspect of the game by quite a bit. It isn’t tough “modding” to lower the food drop rate— just playing on 25% loot drop significantly makes food tougher and that’s a main option without need for editing any code. 
 

If the devs knew at the time of writing the description that they were going to make modding such an integral part of the game to allow users the ability to make it as hardcore or casual as they wish wouldn’t it be okay to give it the hardcore survival label?

Maybe the best “marketing brag” would be to simply state that the game is infinitely adjustable to make it the hardest of hardcore survival games to the most relaxing of casual living games in existence. 

 

[warmer]

I think you make a good point that modding is part of the intended game design. I don’t know how moddable The Long Dark or Green Hell are but I’m pretty sure this game could be modded to be just as difficult to survive as those games are if not more so.

Also, if you want to make it much more hardcore with 3 settings. Turn loot abundance all the way down, no loot respawn, and no air drops.

Instantly a TON harder, you are going to have to hunt for most of your food and water/jars much harder to come by. There are options, but what bugs me is when someone with agency pretends like they are helpless to change the games settings to taste. The settings available are already 10x what most games give you as far as tailored difficulty. If the game just isn't fun for you with all those options...

Maybe it's not the game for you?