PC Initial thoughts

Well, I'm loving it.

The stamina is mildly frustrating, but it rebuilds quicker than it did in A16. Use that rebuild time to pick up rocks instead of smashing rocks.

It's a very rich world in there.

The new geographical traps (places where Z's can pin you into deep dips in the terrain) add another new challenge.

As with A16, it'll severely punish mistakes, and gives even more ways to make those mistakes, but it's going to be a fun learning curve.

Really appreciating the audio alerts of zombies on the move.

 
get educated? day 13 is 13 hours. that is a looooong time to go with only rng iron tools.
perk points are limited, but we are being told to "just take the Qol perks to lessen the effects of these new systems we implemented to slow you down" but we also need those perk points to unlock game necessities. there isn't "choice" in this system, there are just limits.

i haven't been able to play this build for more than 30 minutes at a time. because its boring. hitting a block a couple times and then resting to regain stamina over and over and over and over again isn't fun. having your hunger directly effect your stamina forces you to constantly eat, which isn't fun. having to eat 20 ears of corn to get your hunger up from 20 to full isn't fun. a pack of dogs on day 3 giving me a penalty that nerfs me to level 1 for an hour isn't fun.

this game isn't fun anymore. its been intentionally made slow, grindy, and limited. for the life of me i cannot figure out why.
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This. On day one, my friend and I were micro-managing our health with bandages any time we take damage. And of course stamina is lowered for more micro-managing with food that now has a chance of giving you food poisoning. We're potentially being punished for simply doing what's necessary to counter-act a mechanic we can't avoid. It feels like a chore doing anything: running, fighting, mining weak blocks.

On day 2, a pack of dogs spawned and killed me. I didn't stand a chance because you have no stamina and no viable weapons to defend yourself. At the same time that happened my friend goes into a simple house and finds at least 20 zombies https://i.imgur.com/BqzuiJj.jpg when he dies. We then get penalized for an hour for dying. And if you keep dying, it keeps lowering your max health even more. This makes no sense to me; If I died the first time, why would putting me in a ♥♥♥♥tier situation help me get through the fight next time? I'm all for punishing the player for dying, but this death debuff mechanic is just stupid. There are far better routes than adding more time gates in a game that doesn't have microtransactions. For the first time after hundreds of hours in this game, we turned on the debug and creative menus to explore the update.

On the other end though, when you do level up enough, things get a billion times easier. It actually makes no sense how it's set up. There's a perk where melee kills give you 50 stamina. FIFTY. That's on top of other perks that lower melee stamina drain and increase stamin regen and possibly the Charismatic Nature one should a teammate get that. A grindy early game =/= more end game. I feel like they made the start more grindy so it took longer to get to end game rather than adding to end game. If it stays this way, I'll definitely be modding more than just the horrendous UI this alpha.

 
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perk system is great, really like most of it but WHY..W H Y did you lock every ****** thing behind a level limit? oh yes, thats right, to force people to grind levels instead of picking what they want, god forbid someone might want to put their first 20 points into making themselves an awesome archer, for example, no NO N.O.! instead lets force you to level to 100 to be that awesome archer, level locking the perks destroys their fun

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Agreed. If you don't want to report bugs here is a mod for it:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?68183-MOD-Change-all-Player-Level-Requirements-to-Level-1

There are already implicit level limits, adding explicit ones just defeats the purpose of having a point system. If you don't want someone to have something until level 40, just make it cost more or put it at the end of a chain of costs that equal 40 or whatever level you want it to be available.

Otherwise, I'm really enjoying A17e, but levelgating is a horrible kludge to what is otherwise looking to be a fun system, that just needs some tweaks here and there (and all level requirement removed, as noted)

 
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Jumped in the deep end settings on Insane / always run:

+ There's definitely way more zombies outdoors and if u engage one others seem to join in pretty quickly so you're dealing with a group. Way better challenge now. But almost impossible to loot POI's on the first couple of days, I'd definitely put points into agility first next time.

- They run much slower than a16 and give up chase relatively quickly, they also run a bit wonky following a strange offset path towards u. But new ai is better.

+ The vulture ai is excellent, picking it's moment to attack and hunting u for a long time, one followed me into a building from a hole in the ceiling we were dueling in a small bedroom it even tried to follow me through into the kitchen but I closed the door just in time.

+- New POI's are fantastic, the new variations are a real threat, entering buildings should be risky. But the respawning sleeper bug still exists and it's even more prolific now, there can be half a dozen sleepers in a small house, I lure them away instead of killing them, head back to the house and another dozen spawn in different positions. FPS takes a real big dive close to and inside POI's.

+- The new power attack is essentially the old left button attack, I'm thinking the Flurry of Blows perk might make some use of the left attack as it doesn't knock them down or do much damage early on. I'm not sure the melee is more challenging than a16 from what the early streamers have said, maybe more a case of just getting used to the new mechanics and the zombies running slower really hurts the challenge.

+- Perk system levelgating / locked skills, not sure about this one maybe leaning towards a16, I agree there is a lot locked away now, iron tools are locked behind a few levels of Intellect but I find that's a luxury perk on always run so I'll be stuck on stone axe for awhile unless trader has any. This plus...

+ 25% loot drop is really great now, Day 5 I only have 20 arrows, no pills, no first aid bandages, no magazines, no armor, no extra clothing, no weapons, even had my first old sham sandwich in a couple of alphas and also had to buy drinks from the vending machine, it feels like a survival game.

+ Overall I'm loving the harsh survival challenge, zombies do a ton of damage to blocks now, spikes have been greatly nerfed no more 64 crawlers on horde night, old ideas aren't so effective and we have to adapt. But I see why people are complaining about locked skills and debuff penalties, the harsh challenge isn't for everyone but this is how I envisioned how a survival game should be.

- I miss looting / harvesting zombies, fat n bones was my money maker.

 
I know different people will find different things fun for themselves, especially as they settle in too deep into the mechanics of a particular alpha, it's harder to shift their mindset.

On the other hand, i remember when i started ( i think in A15) and i was focused on so many things that were lost while gaining playing experience. A16 changed things altogether, but i feel that A17 brings back this nostalgia of early-game exploration and management.

ONE thing i would love to see is change in sleeper mechanics. I find big concerns in how they are constantly spawned and the count of sleepers is constantly being verified. I feel it would be way more IMMERSIVE and fun if all the sleepers were spawned once and never coming back to them ever (or respawned only after a long period of time). Current mechanics support mob spawning out of thin air. Like in Minecraft (there are mob spawning blocks), if you don't disable the spawn in any way, you got an xp farm, where you could just kite the Zs out of a POI and keep spawning sleepers for easy xp or get ambushed by suddenly spawning "horde".

EDIT: With the new zombie behaviors i don't think it's necessary to dump the numbers on players, i'm more into simply spawning the Zs and let the world spin on itself.

 
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Haven't played a lot yet, but I think I agree with the folks who complain about the level gating. It used to be possible for smart/experienced players to focus on certain milestones, in order to get past the "gimped" feel of the early game a little faster. I don't mind it being harder to get a forge going on day 1 (something I regularly managed on A16), but simply making it take longer doesn't really feel like an interesting change.

I'm staring at these level requirements and thinking to myself: "it's going to be a while before I can actually play how I like". Boredom feels right around the corner, because it's like I'm held back from the parts of the game that I enjoy the most. I.e. not whacking at rocks and trees for minutes on end.

Dying now feels like double punishment too, at least early on. There's too much waiting before you can really do anything without greatly increasing your risk of simply dying another time and getting set back even further. Having to stick to resource harvesting with gimped stamina feels like a chore instead of a challenging gameplay mechanic.

There's plenty of excellent stuff in A17, but the grindy nature of the early game is getting on my nerves already and dampening the fun of discovery.

 
i prefer the visuals and graphics of a16, the landscapes, biomes .....the zombies. This build the scapes are so bland the zombies so pasty and bland, Could use some color

 
At the same time that happened my friend goes into a simple house and finds at least 20 zombies https://i.imgur.com/BqzuiJj.jpg when he dies.
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Who knew? Arizona apparently had the highest population density in the world. Every POI had like 10-20 people living in it.

I'm still way too early in A17 to have too strong a take on it, but so far I'm not liking the shift away from the building and crafting aspects of the game.

 
I'm level 40 by day 13, I'm not sure how that is really slowing the game down to a grind. Buy cardio and you can run nearly infinitely with no aid. Drink coffee for nearly unlimited stamina. Get educated before thinking its so bad.
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But day 13 is at least 13 hours of play (probably). Gaining levels takes a lot of time, and having things locked behind time is bad.

 
HATS OFF TO YA PIMPS!

In my current game I'm using to explore A17, I've been stuck in the desert from Day 1, while working my way up the survival tree, and I just about 20 minutes ago, managed the final piece for my Minibike. I used it to venture forth and head out to the Trader to complete the initial quest who was 2.5km's away. Through the desert, some burnt forest, then finally a forest biome where the trader was, it was a great drive (and the cars I salvaged along the way have really helped out with some missing loot).

Damn if this game ain't gettin' awful purrdy!

Really this game has two eras now: pre-A17 and post-A17.

 
-Dying was not a penalty - it was a "buff", with which you casually reseted your status. Which was unacceptable for a survival game.
I kinda like this quote Restinpieces.

I don't think the death penalties are viable for PVP though. PVE yes.
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Was speaking for PvE exclusively, death penalty might indeed be too much for player kills.

As for gating - it is what enables progression, you shouldn't expect getting end-game items so soon into the game. Progression was too short, both tech-wise and level-wise. The game does have quite a bit of content but still felt too empty. Mid-game materials are still barely used.

But, as I've said before, essential recipe perks could be gated with POI exploration instead of leveling. This doesn't mean they should be more accessible, it just means that you can use another parallel gameloop to progress tech-wise.

 
I'm level 40 by day 13, I'm not sure how that is really slowing the game down to a grind. Buy cardio and you can run nearly infinitely with no aid. Drink coffee for nearly unlimited stamina. Get educated before thinking its so bad.
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Assuming level gains are roughly linear in time, your 40 levels in 13 hours suggests getting to level 100 will take almost 33 hours. That's way too long for me I'm afraid. This would have been fine for me 15-20 years ago but long gone are the days that I can spend 12 hours a night playing a video game. Heck, I've been playing 7D2D since A10 and have only 100 hours total.

Now I'm not the person that needs to have every perk in the game so I don't mind if it takes 33 hours to get them all. Leave that to the completionists. What bothers me is that swathes of content are locked away from me due to this artificial restriction - I will probably never get to use a gyrocopter.

I understand that you need to cater also to the young'uns but please at least give us game config options (that are more convenient than xml edits) to lessen the grind for those who don't have time to burn!

 
this game isn't fun anymore. its been intentionally made slow, grindy, and limited. for the life of me i cannot figure out why.
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This

There's plenty of excellent stuff in A17, but the grindy nature of the early game is getting on my nerves already and dampening the fun of discovery.
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and this.

Although to be brutally honest it has been this way since xp/leveling/skills was added. Reminds me why I got burnt out on MMOs. Grind, grind, grind. So this isn't a big change from A16, although I suppose it's an improvement even if it's a game mechanic I am bored to death of.

The new POIs are amazing, although a bit overly generous with zombies. It really makes me want to explore again. Most of the changes are pretty good. Still a bit confused on how food/water/meds are working, but it beats the old wellness system. The combat changes are pretty good (other than headshots gimped sucks major ♥♥♥♥ing ass) and melee is still viable despite many claims to the contrary, it just requires more situational awareness. The mods, especially to guns are cool AF.

And yet still after a few hours the game was feeling like a chore again. I consoled XP to max level, maxed all perks, loaded up on the different guns & military armor with mods to see how the high end stuff was (not to mention the new vehicles), and flew around Navzgane a bit.

What's funny is even with maxed skills and gear, the way the game scales up it's like nothing changes, I don't know if the POIs got more zeds or not because of the silly gamestage I was at, but every house in Diersville had at least 5 per floor. The hospital was insane. I can't imagine what the towers are going to be like. Of course they were all high end zombie bullet sponges and if I wasn't cheating I'd have bought it repeatedly. Granted I was playing very sloppily, not like I would normally and had I "earned" my stuff.

Don't get me wrong though, all in all a lot of huge improvements in A17.

 
I've only gotten about 2 hours into getting started and here are the things that I've run into.

Teleporting seems to be hit or miss. I generated a random map and launched the game. Then, went into Editor and found a good starting spot. Launch the game again, teleport to the coords, and it's not the correct spot. I tried this 3 times and got 1 successful attempt. So, seems to be intermittent.

Started first game by giving myself a 5 blue stone shovel to start base. Started to dig, and digging doesn't give XP???? Made the bottom of my pit for my base and then went to craft some basic wood spikes to fill the pit. Come to find....

WOOD SPIKES ARE GONE???? WTF??? I checked creative and the only spikes now are wood log spikes and steel log spikes. This is a huge change to base design, and wonder why these got removed? What did they ever do to you?

So, after that tried to just find a good starting spot.

Came up to a house, used stone axe to open up a hole in the wall. Removing 2 wood blocks drained all my stamina. Zombies came out of the hole and with no stamina, can't really move and can't really attack. So I died.

Also, I guess I have to read the patch notes on stealth. I loved the undetected/detected icon when stealthed. Now, who knows how that's working. I see an indication bar, but ????

So, impressions so far. Stamina cost is way high on digging, breaking blocks, and just in general. Are the spikes level gated? If so, that's really stupid. Tons of zombies now and they all seem to GPS right to you when you're somewhat nearby.

Also, I would agree with others in that before you could start the game the way you wanted, and now it seems that you are forced to start a certain way. Personally, I would start with base building once I got the basic quests out of the way. Now, you really can't do that. Not with stamina the way it is. Also, with the loss of spikes, that changes the whole base build for me.

I should have more time in the coming days to really dig in, but so far I'm not a huge fan of the forced start.

Also, remove encumbrance, it has nothing to do in a game like this.

 
Gratz unfun pimps, you finally succeeded in proving to me that you are only making a game for the hardcore "punish me" fanboys. At least now a casual player that plays games to relax and have fun knows this isn’t the game for him. If and when I do play 7 days again it will be 16.4 modded. Peace out.

 
WOOD SPIKES ARE GONE???? WTF??? I checked creative and the only spikes now are wood log spikes and steel log spikes. This is a huge change to base design, and wonder why these got removed? What did they ever do to you?
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Um..........you have that backwards. Log spikes are gone, wood spikes remain. Metal spikes are now made with forged iron.

 
Also, remove encumbrance, it has nothing to do in a game like this.
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On the contrary, it fits perfectly in a game like this. But I think it could use improvements, because while it's a good sentiment that you can still carry stuff even when encumbered, there are many different items in the game and you sometimes loot things by mistake or loot a little bit more than you should, which makes you check your inventory or throw stuff to get rid of the debuff very often.

 
My short opinions, the TLDR of things:

Level gating is BS , even more so with no way to respec. :(

Encumbrance is fine, I actually like that solution. :)

Zombie AI is very much improved. I like it. :) At least it is predictable, which makes it easier.

 
My thoughts on these thoughts.


-It seems that you were too used to that nonsensically large stamina pool and drinking abuse that made you forget that stamina even existed. Stamina felt great to me - it's regeneration a bit too generous.

-The food/water system seems like a good change, just wish that food and water were not so abundant, even with low loot levels. No adversity at all there.

-Dying was not a penalty - it was a "buff", with which you casually reseted your status. Which was unacceptable for a survival game.

-Backpack changes are great. At least, mindlessly taking everything from every container like a bot was not my definition of fun.

-Leveling is extremely easy.

-A new player would be destroyed by boredom if your suggestions are applied, as soon as he stops being a new player (like a few rl hours).

Apparently you were used to having wheels instead of feet. Very glad that ridiculous 360 degree sprinting went away.
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A new player wouldn't be bored if those changes were implemented because they were the changes already in A16 and people loved it. And no, dying cost you 10 wellness and of course having to respawn. So no it wasn't a buff since like you said, no one struggled with food or water. Youre just being a contrarian. The person's arguments were valid.

- - - Updated - - -

Strafing is incredibly important in an FPS. Why they would nerf the player motion speed while strafing is completely beyond me. Go fight someone. You might as well be having a stand-still duel.
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Yes exactly. I hate that I am a slug moving backwards now too. And I especially hate that when you reload, you can barely move at all. This would be fine if you could interrupt reload or switch weapons during a reload, but since you can't the slow movement speed while reloading is an absolute nightmare and a horrible design decision. Absolutely ****ing horrible.

 
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