PC How can the game still be this unbalanced? It's been 10 years.

[meganoth]

Max settings and the nonsense you said has nothing to do with balance.  Time management? Skill management for stamina,h20 and food? Dude you gotta be trolling lol. None of those things require any skill in this game or if they do the bar is so low any new player can easily grasp that night zombies go faster, if water or food meter low then eat or drink. 

You are acting like this is POE levels of complexity when this is barely above vanilla minecraft. 

If your friends had to learn from you then God help them because it's obvious they got bad advice. 

This game is literally do trader quest, get end loot, get reward from trader, put point into attributes, put point into damage perk, craft weapon, buy items from trader and repeat till bored.

This is about game balance and how even new players can easily get OP and break game balance just by sticking with their class/attributes and playing the game normally by doing trader quests, looting and collecting rewards.

You are so out of touch with the typical novice player you could as well live on another planet. I am a veteran player and I would not be able to get the stuff you have at day 8, probably not even if I played min-max to the best of my knowledge. Or read the post of this player with 7k hours: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/36651-feedback-difficulty-at-lowest-settings-not-that-low/?do=findComment&comment=562487 . Just two examples of what we would call experienced players. Now assume players that don't know anything about INT being the fast-lane, nothing about perking into other stuff may be a mistake, nothing about running in armor gets you killed or out of food, no idea where to get food from easily, nothing about how to kill a dog before it kills you, ...

Cureently you absolutely need to play INT and invest into DA to be able to get end-game gear. If not, the trader rewards are very well balanced to your game stage. My group currently has one INT player, the rest perk into other attributes.  Except for the INT player we have not seen a single item in the rewards that was better than tier1 and we are on day 18. Mostly I have seen no weapons at all or stone age weapons (EDIT to clarify: ... in the trader rewards!). The trader sometimes has better stuff but we can't afford to buy them. The only one with access to better gear and enough money is our INT player who actually could buy end-game stuff from the trader.

 

[Slingblade2040]

You are so out of touch with the typical novice player you could as well live on another planet. I am a veteran player and I would not be able to get the stuff you have at day 8, probably not even if I played min-max to the best of my knowledge. Or read the post of this player with 7k hours: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/36651-feedback-difficulty-at-lowest-settings-not-that-low/?do=findComment&comment=562487 . Just two examples of what we would call experienced players. Now assume players that don't know anything about INT being the fast-lane, nothing about perking into other stuff may be a mistake, nothing about running in armor gets you killed or out of food, no idea where to get food from easily, nothing about how to kill a dog before it kills you, ...

Cureently you absolutely need to play INT and invest into DA to be able to get end-game gear. If not, the trader rewards are very well balanced to your game stage. My group currently has one INT player, the rest perk into other attributes.  Except for the INT player we have not seen a single item in the rewards that was better than tier1 and we are on day 18. Mostly I have seen no weapons at all or stone age weapons. The trader sometimes has better stuff but we can't afford to buy them. The only one with access to better gear and enough money is our INT player who actually could buy end-game stuff from the trader.

Dude this is with no points put into intelligence. This is purely going as a damage dealer.  Points into strength and points into whatever the sledge hammer damage perk is. This is doing quests and looting. How heck would a new player not play that way? 

What you are saying is completely ridiculous to be at your stage with stone weapons. There is no way you can be at Day 18 with stone weapons unless you completely ignored the damage perks and aren't looting or questing. 

How the hell is a new player not going to pick damage perks or invest into attributes? Much less do quests or purchase things from the trader.

All you folks keep talking about how new players don't do that so feel free to explain wtf a new player does?

Not one person has explained how the hell a new player would play. Are you folks telling me new players don't do quests? Don't loot? Don't purchase items from the trader? I swear some of you make this game out to be this complex masterpiece when it's barely more complex than vanilla minecraft with Redstone taken out.

 

[meganoth]

What you are saying is completely ridiculous to be at your stage with stone weapons. There is no way you can be at Day 18 with stone weapons unless you completely ignored the damage perks and aren't looting or questing. 

You misunderstood. I was talking about the **trader rewards** having mostly stone age weapons if weapons get offered at all. We already have q6 tier1 or early tier2 weapons because we crafted them and 1 or 2 tier3 weapons because they were offered to our INT player.

 

[Slingblade2040]

Lvl 6 steel sledgehammer, 99/100 armor magazines, forge, workbench and cement mixer crafted / bought from trader (where you got all the money from?) and plenty of ammo all on day 8?

To me this doesn't sound like default settings at all and if so it is not a playstyle lots of players would have. Especially not newer players.

Moreover, for new players nothing is easy in 7D2D. Wild animal? Dead. Beat a cop or fighter with melee weapon? Dead. Constant food / drink problems lead to stamina problems lead to next death. Regular POI with hidden sleepers more than 2 at once? Dead. Land mine? Dead. It is a constant struggle of play, die, learn, respawn and repeat until you have a good amount of hours played into the game. And even then you understand near to nothing about crafting, base building, skill tree, clothing and so on.

Selling brass and polymer which are very abundant and easy to get.

Forge ahead you only need 10 to craft workbench and forge. You could easily get anywhere from 1-4 at the trader and if they are selling some maybe another 1 or 2. Crafting magazine bundle also gives them.

If you want to take away the easy ammo from infested quests that's fine I can give that up since folks here think this games combat is dark souls level of difficult.

Default settings would make it much much easier.

I don't know why so many people here think this game is so difficult. Maybe if this was the very first video game someone ever played I would agree but the chances of that are beyond slim.

Most folks have played games before this one and if they are interested in survival games then many are like this hell even the combat is close to that of mineceaft. 

It isn't that difficult to sell items, loot, do quests, purchase items and pick perks to do more damage. That is the literal basics of almost any RPG, Bethesda game or survival game.

The fact so many here keep going to oh the difficulty when this is about balance and how bad it is shows most of you don't have a good argument against it so you try to equate it with difficulty 

 

[Slingblade2040]

You misunderstood. I was talking about the **trader rewards** having mostly stone age weapons if weapons get offered at all. We already have q6 tier1 or early tier2 weapons because we crafted them and 1 or 2 tier3 weapons because they were offered to our INT player.

And the stuff i got aside from the cement mixer and crucible are crafted because going full into an attribute makes armor magazines drop like crazy and going into a damage perk to max makes those magazines for that weapon drop at a ridiculous rate especially from crafting magazine bundle.  Along with those parts appearing in loot alot. That whole going more into perks to get magazine drops was new to me till someone pointed it out. Which makes it even more ridiculous to players who read and pay more attention than I do since I was only reading the attributes and perks.

I can give the cement mixer not being a trader loot as pure rng luck but so far the crucible has been there on every day 4 restock as it's been also seen in youtubers who went to traders in day 4.

This playstyle that I did is as close to new player as anyone can get. Do quests, go for damage since most folks usually want to do the most damage possible, loot, sell items, buy stuff from traders to improve skills or use money to buy food and drinks from vending machines.

I can easily so yeah some new players might avoid infested so take away the easy ammo and take away the cement mixer since that's luck RNG but aside from that it is ridiculous for folks to assume a new player wouldn't do any of the other stuff. 

Hell that's how I play almost any game. Project zomboid is far more complex than this game and as a new player to that I didn't find it difficult to grasp how the game works. The combat was the only thing that took some time to get ahold of but even then it wasn't some complex thing.

 

[meganoth]

And the stuff i got aside from the cement mixer and crucible are crafted because going full into an attribute makes armor magazines drop like crazy and going into a damage perk to max makes those magazines for that weapon drop at a ridiculous rate especially from crafting magazine bundle.  Along with those parts appearing in loot alot. That whole going more into perks to get magazine drops was new to me till someone pointed it out. Which makes it even more ridiculous to players who read and pay more attention than I do since I was only reading the attributes and perks.

Which is exaclty what a new player doesn't know. Which makes it very random. He might just invest into his weapon and no other magazine-perk, but it is also very likely that he would take miner69er and cooking if he only looks at strength. Even worse he might look around and think it sensible to also invest into automatic weapons because he saw an M60 and that sounded powerful. Because he might not know that attributes in this game are not attributes like in many RPGs but really classes and he will not know that tidbit about the magazines, just like you.

I am fully on your side about the totally balance-wrecking magazine-bonuses of higher perk-levels. And there is a maybe even substantial chance for a new player to just stumble onto this "progression highway" and have end-game gear early. But my guess is that the majority of new players will not and they will have anything from a similar progression like my group has to even worse as they get killed too often by dogs and radiated guys after falling down a trap floor.

Lets do the math (tldr: is below): To craft a tier3q6 weapon at day 8 you would need to find 75 magazines of that type, right? That is 10 per day. Even with maxing it your chance to find such a magazine in any loot container is 20% at game start if you got perk level 2 immediately. That goes up to 33% when you are level 5 in that perk, but for that you need to be at least level 11. Lets assume you go up 3 levels per day then you are at perk level 5 sledgehammer on day 4. Your average loot chance is still nearly 33% on average. It means you need to find 30 magazines in loot containers and as reward ON EACH single day.

Trader inventory for example doesn't help as it does not take your perk level into account, you will be lucky to find 2 sledgehammer magazines total in the 8 days at the 2 traders a novice player is likely to find in the first 8 days. The (I grant you) OP magazine bundles are absolutely essential to this strategy as they give you 6 magazines. You seem to get a magazine bundle as quest reward choice in about 62% so on average you only get 4 magazines per quest as quest reward, but you also find magazines in the POI, and that would fill the hole of those 2 missing general magazines (i.e. without counting cooking magazines from the kitchen etc.).

tldr; So my estimate is you need to do 5 quests per day for that.

That is perfectly doable for a really good player but not for joe average or a new player. Joe Average and many new players will get infected by missing the first hit on a vulture a few times in those first days, will get severly damaged, break their bones or even get killed by a dog, probably multiple times. A new player will also need to find out so many stuff (for example how to make clean water, what perks are there...) that a lot of time at least in the first two days will be spend looking for information in the recipes, ..., if will be lucky if he does 2 quests on his first 2 days.

I am not saying the game is super difficult. But there is much to know, and even if you know enough you have to be careful. In my SP game I played on difficulty 3 of 5 and I got only 1 or 2 quests done on day 1. I was hit multiple times, a dog got me down to 20% health and I got a broken leg because I jumped down from too high which slowed me down greatly.

So let me ask you if my estimate is about right? How many quests do you do per day in those first 8 days? (And at what difficulty setting by the way?)

 

[PoloPoPo]

@Slingblade2040 How many hours have you played 7D2D already?

 

[theFlu]

(And at what difficulty setting by the way?)

He described some of that on the first page

 

[meganoth]

He described some of that on the first page

Me too lazy was

Ah, so really it is vanilla day 12 in his game. Makes doing 5 quests in a day much more feasable

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

Me too lazy was

Ah, so really it is vanilla day 12 in his game. Makes doing 5 quests in a day much more feasable

What isn't mentioned there but is discussed in another post is that he focuses on maxing his melee perk ASAP.  And if  you beeline your melee perk to the exclusion of most other perks you drastically increase the rate you get skill books and weapon parts. If the game were balanced to his playstyle it would be miserably slow for anyone that does not prioritize maxing the melee perk.  In my experience, when you spread your points weapon crafting skill progression is much, much slower than he describes. 

 

[vom]

So I'm on my second play through

..and you are whining already?

I've played this game since before traders existed, and I just ignore them entirely. No idea why you are crying.

I've never done a quest. You don't have to do them.

.

 

[meganoth]

What isn't mentioned there but is discussed in another post is that he focuses on maxing his melee perk ASAP.  And if  you beeline your melee perk to the exclusion of most other perks you drastically increase the rate you get skill books and weapon parts. If the game were balanced to his playstyle it would be miserably slow for anyone that does not prioritize maxing the melee perk.  In my experience, when you spread your points weapon crafting skill progression is much, much slower than he describes. 

I know. The problem is that you can influence the magazine loot roll too much with the perks. Even if someone doesn't do 5 quests a day he will have the ability to build high level weapons too early when focusing on very few magazine perks. The only thing that works against this scheme is that you also need a massive amount of forged steel to craft such a weapon.

 

[Riamus]

I almost wonder if it would be better to remove that influence from perks entirely.  Yes, that lowers the rate you will get specific magazines, but it would probably make it a more balanced system.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Imho the game can never be truly balanced, why, it's neither a positive or negative view,  just an observation

from one of millions. There are too many aspects of so many Genres of gameplay, each has it's own default

adapted/adopted and assumed rules, and too many generations of thought for one game to conquer them all

equally, at least not in a default vanilla presentation. Since they left in the ability to adjust most of the other aspects,

i intend to take full advantage now that they my slow down with the version to version updates.

It Pandora's Box but in a good way.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

I know. The problem is that you can influence the magazine loot roll too much with the perks. Even if someone doesn't do 5 quests a day he will have the ability to build high level weapons too early when focusing on very few magazine perks. The only thing that works against this scheme is that you also need a massive amount of forged steel to craft such a weapon.

But does this really matter? I like that there are various ways to speed and slow progression. Want to mostly skip primitive stage? Prioritize daring adventurer. Want to get weapons/armor/workstations faster? Perk accordingly. Want to take it slow? Spread your points and enjoy all the QOL that provides. I like that the options are available even if I tend not to speed progression because I know there will be playthroughs when I want to. 

 

[BFT2020]

I almost won't if it would be better to remove that influence from perks entirely.  Yes, that lowers the rate you will get specific magazines, but it would probably make it a more balanced system.

One idea that has been bouncing around in my head recently is lowering the affect the perks have on finding magazines (not removing them completely) and then also boosting all the chances so once you complete a series, it has a lower chance of being picked compared to  a series you are not perked into.

Right now, everything has a default prob of 1 so even odds to get any magazine non-perked.   As you starting perking into abilities, the chance of finding a magazine related to that perk increases normally by 2 for each level of perk (based on a perk with 5 levels).  However, once you complete the magazine series you lose the perk bonuses and it goes back to prob of 1 - same as everything else.

However, if everything started at prob of 3, but then went to a prob of 1 once you found all the magazines - the non-perked magazines would then have a higher chance of dropping at that point (not significant, but better odds).

For reducing the impact on perks, it would change from

• Ranged weapon mags - 5 (including bows) - max level in one perk - 73% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  
• Ranged weapon mags - 5 (including bows) - max level in one perk but halved the impact - 60% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  
• All mags - 23 (from memory, might be missing one) - max level in one perk - 33% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  
• All mags - 23 (from memory, might be missing one) - max level in one perk but halved the impact - 21% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  

I tend to play no repairs allowed so crafting becomes very important in order to keep ahead of the zombies.  I also tend to use all weapons during horde night, even ones I don't max out the perks into (I know, sacrilegious!)

Though this is just simply an idea bouncing around and maybe once implemented, is nothing more than a meh

 

[Fox]

One idea that has been bouncing around in my head recently is lowering the affect the perks have on finding magazines (not removing them completely) and then also boosting all the chances so once you complete a series, it has a lower chance of being picked compared to  a series you are not perked into.

Right now, everything has a default prob of 1 so even odds to get any magazine non-perked.   As you starting perking into abilities, the chance of finding a magazine related to that perk increases normally by 2 for each level of perk (based on a perk with 5 levels).  However, once you complete the magazine series you lose the perk bonuses and it goes back to prob of 1 - same as everything else.

However, if everything started at prob of 3, but then went to a prob of 1 once you found all the magazines - the non-perked magazines would then have a higher chance of dropping at that point (not significant, but better odds).

For reducing the impact on perks, it would change from

• Ranged weapon mags - 5 (including bows) - max level in one perk - 73% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  
• Ranged weapon mags - 5 (including bows) - max level in one perk but halved the impact - 60% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  
• All mags - 23 (from memory, might be missing one) - max level in one perk - 33% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  
• All mags - 23 (from memory, might be missing one) - max level in one perk but halved the impact - 21% chance of dropping the max perk magazine
  

I tend to play no repairs allowed so crafting becomes very important in order to keep ahead of the zombies.  I also tend to use all weapons during horde night, even ones I don't max out the perks into (I know, sacrilegious!)

Though this is just simply an idea bouncing around and maybe once implemented, is nothing more than a meh

Or, why not make a mod that brings the game back to the way it used to be... you know, when the game was still fun. No perks / skills at all (or at least heavily reduced to a level that makes sense), you can craft / do anything you want from the beginning and all loot is no longer level gated, making it actually worth looting again. Anyone who's ever played Alpha 10.4 knows how fun that version was and that's how it used to be.

 

[BFT2020]

Or, why not make a mod that brings the game back to the way it used to be... you know, when the game was still fun. No perks / skills at all (or at least heavily reduced to a level that makes sense), you can craft / do anything you want from the beginning and all loot is no longer level gated, making it actually worth looting again. Anyone who's ever played Alpha 10.4 knows how fun that version was and that's how it used to be.

Not interested in a mod like that, I like the way it is today

 

[meganoth]

But does this really matter? I like that there are various ways to speed and slow progression. Want to mostly skip primitive stage? Prioritize daring adventurer. Want to get weapons/armor/workstations faster? Perk accordingly. Want to take it slow? Spread your points and enjoy all the QOL that provides. I like that the options are available even if I tend not to speed progression because I know there will be playthroughs when I want to. 

Yes it matters because the way the perk systems boots magazines is not revealed to players, and that is intentional. Sure you could say that is for them to discover and learn over multiple playthroughs if they stay with the game. But my guess is the typical player will not really notice WHY his crafting progress is soo slow but just put it on bad balance. Other players will just stumble on the fast path through luck or chance or habit, and without any intent whatsoever make their progress too fast and again put it on bad balance. There will surely be players who make the right guesses, and naturally veterans will know, but for the rest crafting progression will just be a highly random affair.