Ideas for the Future of this game (+Criticism and Multiplyer).

[LuRiOh]

Ive been play 7days for YEARS (pirated sry Devs was broke) and bought it on 1.0. Ive loved this game for a long time now and always thought that it had AMAZING potential to be a stable even mainstream game. But it needs multiplayer with a cerain amount of quality. (Im gonna write a lot sry these are things i wanted to say for years both for MP and SP)

This game IMO resembles one game the most. RUST. Its a role playing/ more realistic version of Rust and a bridge between the Super realistic Survival of DayZ and the arcade and Messing around with others type of Fun of Rust. And i wanna see this game's multiplayer to be come a thing with a very simple Update. Modernise the Gunplay. It doesnt need to be revolutionary for the start it just needs better animations and consistency in Shooting. Maybe a PUBG style of Gun play would suit this game.
With more focus on multipleyr and Dedicate servers this game will see a rise in players (and sales) like never before and will fund the dev team to do what ever they plan on doing.
Imagine this game with 300+ people on a server interacting, Figting over POI loot, controling small towns or even cities and other groups trying to take them down. Or humble Solos and duos trying to make their living in a post apocaliptic world by robing others of their loot.
Imagine raids. the bases either hidden underground or whole sky skrapers. This game has the ponetial to be THE best online Zombie game that has ever existed if yall only just show some love for the multiplayer side of the game BUT:

The issue's that the game has, that need to be adressed befre this happens: 1)Too much focus on XP and Perk System and 2) Traders too much of the focus on progression.

1) For 7days to work as multiplayer PVP game you cant have Damage of Weapons tied to Perks. I know it works well for Single player Power fantacy type of Design but a multiplayer game needs consistency. Anyone with an AK should be doing the same damage at least to players if not zombies too. IMO xp and perks should work for what loot you find based on prefrence and what crafting stuff you unlock. Not the damage you deal. Maybe with exception beeing Mele weapons. multiplayer games need consistency and the "leveling up" prosses is more about individual player skill or knowledge and creativity rather numbers on perks and XP.

2) Traders are (SRY) bad design even for single player. I actively avoid them every playthough because they mess with the games Freedom and exmporation. Instead of having an Open world free for the taking where you dont know what youre gonna find at the next corner, you instead have coocie cutter quests that progressively give more and more loot by brainlessly going where ever the Quest giver tells you to go. No brain involved. Traders IMO should be just traders. Local save zones with some stuff to buy and as a hub for players to gather and maybe trade among them selvs through some Mechanic in the game.

-PIO loot needs to be more thematical: More focus on each poi not having only randomized loot but even more focus on thematic loot: Pharmacies having practicaly Only meds, paper, glue etc... not a GUN. Making exploration of specific POIs and active statigic choice.

-Guns should be rare: Finding a gun should be rare enough to make you wanna focus on it for each playthrough. Nowadays we run around with 2-3 guns plus Bow/Crossbow and mele weapon. Actual guns should be more rare. Ammo too. Making the game about preserving more ammo on normal days because you WILL need it on Horde Night. ANd spending ammo clearing normal POIs should be a RISK alering zombies from afar and (in MP) players to your location. Now you find guns, gun parts and ammo even in trash. Balancing the loot and making it tied to some realistic logic should be a priority IMO.

-Clothing system (Im sory guys) SUCKS! We went from the Realistic and self expresive clothing system of NORMAL clothes that you chose to match based on prefrence or biome, to some Generic Mobile game style outfits. They look cool yes but its lazy design for a game with realistic vibe as 7days that actually FEELS like a post apocaliptic world. Players should be able to create their own outfits piece by piece with a system like the old one with Clothing + Armor but more fleshed out and with many more options to chose from both aesthetically and about utility. The game should focus on its more realistic aspects same as it already has with Food,Healing, crafting systems. The clothing just doesnt fit. WDYM Nerd Armor or Assassin Armor. Where is the coolness of OLD military Armor where you just found OLD pre apocalipse ilitary equipment in what ever condition and it was good because it was of quality that resembles real life??? Hope yall get what i mean here.

- Loot: Im an oldschool player. I remember the days where you could find a lvl1 gun very early on (day 2-3 even) or a good tool if you risked and cleared a dangerous POI. Now this is gone from the game. It wa so exciting to find a Pistol or Double Barel early on and base your early build on that weapon to get the most out of it. I miss finding a wrench day 1 or finding a POI with a working workbench and making trips from you base to that workbench to make use of it. Too many things are bound to Level and Loot stage. The game doesnt have exciting stuff you can get lucky of if you risk on clearing some dangerous POI. The early game has become stale and boing.
Im gonna compaire this to Rust. Getting a Tier2 gun early on can either boost your progression or make you a target. You either use it for PVP and snowball or you keep it for research to craft it latter (1 hour+) when everyone else will be on the same lvl. That choise has good and bad concequences cuz if others progress faster you lose. If you risk you may die and your enemies now are more geared. Finding good loot early on leads to excitment and choices. I believe the same rules apply to 7 days (even in Single Player) with your better early game gun you want to take riks and go to POIs with more zombies and better loot which means higher chances of dieing but also higher loot and XP. But instead now we have Pipe shotguns that cant oneshot zombies till day 14. Hours of gameplay and not a single change to get somethig anctualy cool.

Btw these last arguments arent based on nostalgia but actual gameplay design. Im not making an argument about the game "Once beeing better and now etc etc" i actually believe that you had the perfect recipie. And by trying to make changes to spice the game up you lost the perfection of the old systems that just simply needed to be expanded and fleshed out. 7 days is the perfect bridge game between causal fun and something realistic. Its what if Minecraft and Dayz had a baby and its wonderful.

Hope i got my point across, or my vision rather for the game. Ive yapped too much and i could continue for quite a while more about details but imma restrain my self. Ty for reading , anyone who took the time LOL.

 

[Riamus]

Here are some thoughts on what you said...

• The game is designed for 1-8 players. Some servers allow more than that, but the game is not intended for more than 8 players and they won't support more than 8 players.
• The game was designed as a PVE Co-op game. Although they added some support for PVP, that isn't their focus and they will mostly make updates related to PVE. Sometimes those help PVP and sometimes those hurt PVP. They may occasionally make an update related specifically to PVP, but only if it doesn't impact PVE negatively.
• They won't remove perks associated with weapons. As above, the game is not designed for PVP. If people want to play PVP on this game and don't like how something works because it was designed for PVE, they'll need to use mods to change the game to fit their preferences.
• Traders won't be going away and are likely to become more active when they add bandits and factions. Players can choose how much they want to use traders, and can choose not to use them at all. They can even remove them from the game pretty easily even without a mod by just editing one file from the world. That being said, traders do need more balancing work.
• Loot will likely not change significantly. There are specific containers that have specific loot and those containers can be placed in specific types of POI more than others, but it's up to the POI designer what loot containers to use. And the loot is tied to the containers, not to the POI itself. I agree that this does make the loot from different POI mostly the same, but it is how they designed it and the game is nearing completion, so they aren't going to make sweeping changes to anything that isn't on the roadmap.
• No reason for guns to be rare. First of all, this is set in the US, where guns are not exactly hard to find. Second, people like using them and making them rare will upset a large percentage of players. If you want them to be more rare in your games, you can use a mod to do so. As far as using guns alerting enemies, that's already part of the game through the screamers. Try using a shotgun to clear a large POI and you're going to see screamers showing up and bringing their friends. Do the same POI with a melee weapon and you aren't likely to see a screamer unless you raise your heat level in another way.
• The old clothing system did offer more variety, but it looked horrible. Of course, they could have improved how it looked and kept that system, but they chose not to. The new system reduces clipping significantly and, as you said, the outfits look much better. They will be adding a wardrobe system that will let you adjust how you look at least somewhat, and there will be more outfits added (some DLC and some in the base game) to increase variety. But the new system isn't going to go away. It's too late for that.
• You can still find a pistol in a toilet on day 1. But, yes, loot is tied to your game stage. You can increase that by going to a higher tier POI or a higher tier biome, though with 2.0, going to a higher tier biome will be more difficult. I agree that they've removed some of the RNG from the game in various places. The change to magazines removed the RNG from finding schematics, letting you find something really good in the early game, for example. At the same time, if you find a really good weapon in the early game, it makes the game far too easy in an already easy game. As it is, most people stop playing the game shortly after getting all T3 Q6 equipment, so getting stuff early will just lead to people ending the game earlier, which isn't what they want.

Many of what you have suggested are things that they have intentionally moved away from. With them trying to finish the game, they aren't likely to make significant changes that aren't on the roadmap and are even less likely to revert changes they've already made. All of these things can be done with mods, though there may not be mods for all of these things yet. That would be the best option if you're interested in these changes.

As far as PVP, I know there are people who play PVP with this game, but as you are aware, the game is not designed as a PVP game and has a lot of problems for PVP. You are welcome to try to fit the square peg of PVP into the round hole of a PVE Co-op game, but you'll enjoy PVP more in a game that was designed for PVP. I certainly wouldn't pick this game to play PVP in even though I like the game. I'd choose something that was designed for PVP because it'll play much better and be much more fun. That won't ever change with this game even if they make some adjustments to help PVP. It'll still be designed as a PVE Co-op game and many of the mechanics just don't work for PVP as you're aware. Mods can help with that, but there's a limit to what mods can do.

 

[LuRiOh]

Here are some thoughts on what you said...

• The game is designed for 1-8 players. Some servers allow more than that, but the game is not intended for more than 8 players and they won't support more than 8 players.
• The game was designed as a PVE Co-op game. Although they added some support for PVP, that isn't their focus and they will mostly make updates related to PVE. Sometimes those help PVP and sometimes those hurt PVP. They may occasionally make an update related specifically to PVP, but only if it doesn't impact PVE negatively.
• They won't remove perks associated with weapons. As above, the game is not designed for PVP. If people want to play PVP on this game and don't like how something works because it was designed for PVE, they'll need to use mods to change the game to fit their preferences.
• Traders won't be going away and are likely to become more active when they add bandits and factions. Players can choose how much they want to use traders, and can choose not to use them at all. They can even remove them from the game pretty easily even without a mod by just editing one file from the world. That being said, traders do need more balancing work.
• Loot will likely not change significantly. There are specific containers that have specific loot and those containers can be placed in specific types of POI more than others, but it's up to the POI designer what loot containers to use. And the loot is tied to the containers, not to the POI itself. I agree that this does make the loot from different POI mostly the same, but it is how they designed it and the game is nearing completion, so they aren't going to make sweeping changes to anything that isn't on the roadmap.
• No reason for guns to be rare. First of all, this is set in the US, where guns are not exactly hard to find. Second, people like using them and making them rare will upset a large percentage of players. If you want them to be more rare in your games, you can use a mod to do so. As far as using guns alerting enemies, that's already part of the game through the screamers. Try using a shotgun to clear a large POI and you're going to see screamers showing up and bringing their friends. Do the same POI with a melee weapon and you aren't likely to see a screamer unless you raise your heat level in another way.
• The old clothing system did offer more variety, but it looked horrible. Of course, they could have improved how it looked and kept that system, but they chose not to. The new system reduces clipping significantly and, as you said, the outfits look much better. They will be adding a wardrobe system that will let you adjust how you look at least somewhat, and there will be more outfits added (some DLC and some in the base game) to increase variety. But the new system isn't going to go away. It's too late for that.
• You can still find a pistol in a toilet on day 1. But, yes, loot is tied to your game stage. You can increase that by going to a higher tier POI or a higher tier biome, though with 2.0, going to a higher tier biome will be more difficult. I agree that they've removed some of the RNG from the game in various places. The change to magazines removed the RNG from finding schematics, letting you find something really good in the early game, for example. At the same time, if you find a really good weapon in the early game, it makes the game far too easy in an already easy game. As it is, most people stop playing the game shortly after getting all T3 Q6 equipment, so getting stuff early will just lead to people ending the game earlier, which isn't what they want.

Many of what you have suggested are things that they have intentionally moved away from. With them trying to finish the game, they aren't likely to make significant changes that aren't on the roadmap and are even less likely to revert changes they've already made. All of these things can be done with mods, though there may not be mods for all of these things yet. That would be the best option if you're interested in these changes.

As far as PVP, I know there are people who play PVP with this game, but as you are aware, the game is not designed as a PVP game and has a lot of problems for PVP. You are welcome to try to fit the square peg of PVP into the round hole of a PVE Co-op game, but you'll enjoy PVP more in a game that was designed for PVP. I certainly wouldn't pick this game to play PVP in even though I like the game. I'd choose something that was designed for PVP because it'll play much better and be much more fun. That won't ever change with this game even if they make some adjustments to help PVP. It'll still be designed as a PVE Co-op game and many of the mechanics just don't work for PVP as you're aware. Mods can help with that, but there's a limit to what mods can do.

I believe there is room for both. That is my argument in its core. There can be both side by side for a larger player base. Limit some stuff for PVP and let players have fun in a sandbox PVP and continue development in PVE as intended. I think there's a way with limited dev time to make this a reality. And i do believe it will work VERY well if attempted.

 

[YourMirror]

Grandpa?