PC Hey Mooooom.... the Meatloaf..... we want it now!

[n2n1]

Why always a punishment for dying? Why not a reward for not dying ? A reward that gets bigger with time so you have to rebuild it after death. This would be much more motivating to avoid death if possible.

This

By the way , i noticed the general mood of those who played vanilla from A17 - clearly traced that the gameplay is based only on punishment or restrictions, but not enough on encouragement. The overall feeling of the game is appropriate.

(i think no need to explain how bad it is)

But i must say that the plans of developers now does not include balancing, due to the fact that they do not want to stay long on each Alpha. Whether it is right or not - is another question.

 

[Bolliz]

Ahh gamers telling developers how to develop their game. How many devlopers have facepalmed them self to death because of this?

 

[Hollowprime]

Ahh gamers telling developers how to develop their game. How many devlopers have facepalmed them self to death because of this?

I don't think you have any idea how a developer should manage their games . A game developer delivers happiness to their audience. A greedy company doesn't care what their audience says ,go their own way and eventually turn good titles into piles of zombie vomit . Just like EA and Bethesda.

 

[n2n1]

Ahh gamers telling developers how to develop their game. How many devlopers have facepalmed them self to death because of this?

When all is well no one doesn't explain anything or anyone - all play.

 

[Gazz]

All this talk about uplifting and encouraging features. Anyone notice that we're dealing with the zombie apocalypse here?

 

[Jackelmyer]

I'd personally just love to know what the hell long term vision TFP is looking at. It feels like they went Skyrim/Wow with skills but with zero story. If they're heading towards some story to follow and progress through and balance character progression against the story then cool. I get it. Otherwise... I've not the foggiest clue as to what TFP is doing other than taking a game that had rave reviews, great player buy in, and then butchering it with A17.

 

[Jackelmyer]

Its still there but we reduced how nasty it is. I think it just takes one point away now.

Can you guys fix it so you can level up based on your debuff free still level?

It's kind of annoying to have to wait until the debuff wears off to level up a skill.

 

[Jackelmyer]

I can understand backing down on stamina changes - the backlash was large and had some points, but I think you could have gotten away with just reducing the penalty's duration like you did... You decided on it initially in order to create impactful consequences after all.

I don't understand this.

Seems like people who want harsh impactful consequences play dead is dead. Or. Drop all on Death or delete all on Death.

Everyone else either avoids death out of pride or doesn't care about dieing. But couldn't care less about impactful consequences and would rather not be annoyed by them.

I don't understand why just setting your drop on Death to something like lose all your stuff isn't sufficient or playing dead is dead if you want more of an impact.

 

[RestInPieces]

I don't understand this.
Seems like people who want harsh impactful consequences play dead is dead. Or. Drop all on Death or delete all on Death.

Everyone else either avoids death out of pride or doesn't care about dieing. But couldn't care less about impactful consequences and would rather not be annoyed by them.

I don't understand why just setting your drop on Death to something like lose all your stuff isn't sufficient or playing dead is dead if you want more of an impact.

Avoiding death out of... pride and "doesn't care about dying"? Care to elaborate? Where do you belong?

No, that is definitely not the case. Not everyone who doesn't play DID belongs to that category. It's like me saying "if impactful consequences annoy you, you might as well be playing on cheat mode". Do you see me saying that? Nope.

Besides DID is not really an option in MP.

Deleting on death doesn't even constitute for a penalty most of the time and is very unintuitive overall.

-The severity of the penalty depends on inventory management. Subsequently increases inventory management by a *lot*, compels the player to build chests and store items every time there is imminent risk.

-The severity of the penalty also depends on loot RNG when you e.g. die accidentally when scavenging.

-It is mostly useless as a penalty when the player expects danger like BM, or when the player knows he will risk his life/is prepared and can be used to exploit death to teleport (and currently reset other "annoying" debuffs) etc.

By the way , i noticed the general mood of those who played vanilla from A17 - clearly traced that the gameplay is based only on punishment or restrictions, but not enough on encouragement. The overall feeling of the game is appropriate.

You guys might want to consider a more "sandbox-friendly" mode for builders who occasionally want to kill zombies, with light or no consequences, much like the 6 difficulties you have now, because I think it more accurately represents the chasm in different preferred experiences. I know you have gone out of your way to add a LOT of options and that you can already virtually do that by configuring them correctly, but a mode encompassing a collection of options, "describing an experience", is a really good idea, especially for new players and the 6 difficulties don't exactly do that - plus they also change some things which are not configurable yet.

 

[RipClaw]

All this talk about uplifting and encouraging features. Anyone notice that we're dealing with the zombie apocalypse here?

Whether the game is about a zombie apocalypse or flowers and unicorns has nothing to do with using positive reinforcement or punishment.

In Doom you fight demons from hell. A dark setting similar to a zombie apocalypse. Nevertheless the game developers use positive reinforcement and not punishment to get the players to play in a certain way.

 

[RestInPieces]

Whether the game is about a zombie apocalypse or flowers and unicorns has nothing to do with using positive reinforcement or punishment.
In Doom you fight demons from hell. A dark setting similar to a zombie apocalypse. Nevertheless the game developers use positive reinforcement and not punishment to get the players to play in a certain way.

How do they do that?

 

[RipClaw]

How do they do that?

They wanted the players to push aggressively forward instead of constantly searching for cover as is usual with other FPS games. They introduced the Glorykill mechanics. The player runs towards the demon and kills him with his bare hands. As a reward he gets health packages and saves ammo.

 

[RestInPieces]

They wanted the players to push aggressively forward instead of constantly searching for cover as is usual with other FPS games. They introduced the Glorykill mechanics. The player runs towards the demon and kills him with his bare hands. As a reward he gets health packages and saves ammo.

as the combat system puts emphasis upon momentum and speed.[5] The approach is known as "push-forward combat" which discourages the players from taking cover behind obstacles or resting to regain health while playing from the "Doom Slayer"'s perspective.[6] Players instead collect health and armor pick-ups by killing enemies. "Glory Kills" is a newly introduced melee execution system; when enough damage has been dealt to an enemy, the game will highlight it and allow the player to perform a quick and violent melee takedown as well as reward the player with extra health.[7]

Indeed, it makes sense that they'd want to emphasize action - it's a fully oriented action fps.

As for 7DTD, I think that you may be taking some things for granted and forgetting the game is literally brimming with encouragement. Killing enemies or doing various other activities gets you perks that make combat easier, net you more resources, unlock content etc etc. Exploration is encouraged in order to acquire items and improve your QOL etc. Doing pretty much anything is rewarding.

Like Doom, it emphasizes the activities you would expect from a game with its genres.

 

[RipClaw]

As for 7DTD, I think that you may be taking some things for granted and forgetting the game is literally brimming with encouragement. Killing enemies or doing various other activities gets you perks that make combat easier, net you more resources, unlock content etc etc. Exploration is encouraged in order to acquire items and improve your QOL etc. Doing pretty much anything is rewarding.

The problem with the death penalty is that, in my opinion, it prevents the player from immediately going back out again and doing better. In another post someone described that he feels useless during the time of the death penalty.

Actually, it's much more painful to lose a bonus at death you've built up over time.

It was similar with the wellness system. You had to work your way up again by eating the right food.

 

[RestInPieces]

The problem with the death penalty is that, in my opinion, it prevents the player from immediately going back out again and doing better. In another post someone described that he feels useless during the time of the death penalty.
Actually, it's much more painful to lose a bonus at death you've built up over time.

It was similar with the wellness system. You had to work your way up again by eating the right food.

The current DP prevents nothing with an extra attribute point - but even if we are talking about the A17.0 DP, you had to die multiple times within a period to get the max penalty and even if we are talking about the max stacked penalty, it roughly took away half of your perk levels which, essentially, ARE bonuses you already got earlier in the game. And even if you lose half of them, that hardly prevents you from doing better. The penalty seems harshest on crafting - but even that is mostly circumvented by just retaining supplies.

Wellness was severely flawed, but let's suppose again that death didn't reset your status in A16 and wasn't beneficial - let's say it was neutral except that it was reducing your wellness to a min 130 w/ perks. So, even then, why would anyone try to avoid death?

Don't tell me max stamina, because stamina was virtually infinite in A16 (not that it isn't now - investing on agility hardly makes a difference with this regen). Other than visually enjoying a larger number, it hardly made any difference.

Max life? Let's suppose the player played on "insane" - that extra max life would make him endure 2-3 more hits before dying. So essentially the argument is this ---> mustn't die because max life will be decreased ---> because if max life is decreased, it's easier to die ---> and on death, max life will be decreased! ---> wouldn't want that because it makes it easier to die! Brilliant. And it's not like min life made much difference.

In the end, let's not bs each other here. The DP is too, something you lose temporarily, that you have built throughout the game. Seeing it as a penalty to a "natural player state" is only the way some people prefer to see it. And what hurts most is obvious - by the reactions. Unfortunately in order for something to have impact it has to "hurt" - no other way around it. I totally respect the preference to play without impact or consequences and I am sure there will be options about the DP, but let's not sugarcoat things or delude ourselves.

 

[PoppaTot]

Just caught up on this thread. Curious as to why the debuff is really an issue to anyone. I ask this because myself, and anyone I've played with don't even notice it. I've heard no one really complain about while playing (I know it's a small sample group lol). I don't die often, but when I do, I just go get my bag and then continue on with what I was doing, or go mine, or anything else that needs to be done.

The death penalty has never even really been an annoyance, let alone obstacle for us.

 

[RestInPieces]

Just caught up on this thread. Curious as to why the debuff is really an issue to anyone. I ask this because myself, and anyone I've played with don't even notice it. I've heard no one really complain about while playing (I know it's a small sample group lol). I don't die often, but when I do, I just go get my bag and then continue on with what I was doing, or go mine, or anything else that needs to be done.
The death penalty has never even really been an annoyance, let alone obstacle for us.

Of course since, current DP is by fact, negligible - you only need to invest an extra attribute point to nullify it. Personally I'd prefer the initial A17 penalty, which could stack and penalize 1/2 of your invested attribute points at full stacks, because atm it's not much of a consequence.

 

[PoppaTot]

Of course since, current DP is by fact, negligible - you only need to invest an extra attribute point to nullify it. Personally I'd prefer the initial A17 penalty, which could stack and penalize 1/2 of your invested attribute points at full stacks, because atm it's not much of a consequence.

Understood, however my previous statement applies to the original implementation of it as well. We just hardly ever noticed it. No one that I play/have played with has cared about it. Granted, when it was an hour long it was mildly annoying.

 

[RestInPieces]

Understood, however my previous statement applies to the original implementation of it as well. We just hardly ever noticed it. No one that I play/have played with has cared about it. Granted, when it was an hour long it was mildly annoying.

Oh, I really don't know why some people act as if it was something incapacitating. Or why some people take it so personally, viewing it as a direct punishment from the game.

 

[Roland]

Oh, I really don't know why some people act as if it was something incapacitating. Or why some people take it so personally, viewing it as a direct punishment from the game.

Really? They posted the reason often enough. They didn't like playing at less than optimal performance. If they couldn't harvest as much from trees or rocks than they could've without the debuff then they didn't want to do any harvesting at all. As long as they at were less than peak stats they didn't want to play. People were sitting in their base and going AFK for an hour to do something else while waiting for the timer to end.

This attitude of having zero tolerance to any weaknesses has been prevalent. They see setbacks and weak aspects of their character as punishments and not simply challenges to overcome. Gimped aspects of a character for any length of time means no fun for some and yes, they do take it as a personal assault by the developers.