PC It's all gone wrong, terribly wrong.

[Novamourne]

I bought this game back in '14. It quickly shot to the top of my played list on steam. I loved it and revered it as my favorite game. Now, I want to share with you why I haven't been able to enjoy the game or hardly play it for the last couple years. I think a lot of people will disagree with me. I don't really care; I just need this off my chest so I can move on I suppose, idk. Most of the things I will list aren't wholly terrible, in fact, the concept might be really good, and I might like it but feel like the implementation took something away that used to be important. Anyway, in no particular order:

Quests - 
Way too lucrative and way too often. The gameplay loop changed from exploring and checking every nook and cranny into an endless cycle of Point A to Point B rinse & repeat quest completions. Bullet and material production rendered obsolete. Just buy what you need with the mountain of coins you get, if the rewards from the quest themselves don't keep you topped up. No reason to duck into this building or that - there's nothing in there that you can't find in the quest POI and the quest POI has extra super lucrative loot containers.

Bottom line is, you can do quests too often and there's no incentive to explore anymore. You should only be able to do 3-5 quests per ingame week, especially if they are going to remain so lucrative.

Game Stage - 
Game stage scaled the world to you. What a terrible thing. Game Stage should not make sure you are powerful enough to do anything you want, but that's what it does. It tries to make up for it by also making things rewarding in a way that is relevant to you so you're not getting better stuff than you should be getting. It fails at that balance. Game Stage should have been used to prevent relevant content from being too difficult or too easy for you, what it became instead is a world nerf and removed incentive to do anything other than the most lucrative things because they were just as easy as the less lucrative things. Everything should have a minimum Game Stage setting so that if you wander into the wastelands and try to do a Shotgun Messiah in week 1, you get absolutely obliterated.

Bottom line is that Game stage should keep relevant content manageable and nothing more. Some places should be more dangerous and you should have to be aptly prepared to go there with skills, equipment, and consumables - all of which are not considered in Game Stage difficulty scaling. Progression is important, and watching the color of my gear change isn't progression enough.

Skills - 

I thought skills would be a lot different than they are. I thought everyone would be able to progress through everything and I thought it was going to serve as more of a "mastery" of tasks and actions. Instead, we found ourselves fractured. Now, so much of the game is inaccessible to you in a single playthrough. It took away a lot of the ability to self sustain or to support yourself through the way you wanted to play. The skill system locks you into weapon choices. This is an apocalypse, I should have to be using everything at my disposal because I shouldn't have so much of anything that I can specialize. It's not immersive and it makes the game smaller.

Screamers & Heat Map -
Nothing killed this games crafting and production aspect faster and more efficiently than this atrocious mechanic. I don't even know where to start. The old roaming hordes were so much more immersive and enjoyable. I remember being able to crouch in the corner of a dark room and wait for them to pass. It was immersive. It was horror in a video game. I loved it. It got replaced by an incessant and compulsory interaction with combat if I decided I wanted to anything other than run a single campfire. Screamers are ok, but they shouldn't be spawned and heat based. They should just be out in the world, roaming the streets or hiding in the closets of POIs - not knocking down my door every 5 mins because they heard me burning wood/coal too loudly?

The heat map and screamers were probably the biggest blow to my interest in the game, If I'm being honest.

Gun Parts/Loot and Crafting Parity -
I didn't like gun parts when they were introduced but I couldn't see their value at the time. Gun parts created a parity between crafting and looting which doesn't exist at all in today's version of the game. In fact, most of my friends don't even bother crafting anything and only loot the major containers where you can find most things worth crafting in an extraordinary abundance. We should have to loot to craft. We should need to craft to put our loot to use. It's the soul of the game and it's been locked away for several alphas now. Bring it back. I used to loot seeds. Now I loot food. No parity. Bring it back.

"Smart" & "Gimmick" zombies -
You are losing the arms race and have been since you decided to enter it. Please give up. Players will always outsmart your AI. No that's not a challenge. It's the reason we're the dominate species on Earth. We use tools well. We outsmart things. We outlast them. Please stop trying to make zombies smarter than us. Their danger is in their unrelenting tides and sheer numbers. Not through dynamite strapped on their chest, slapping a wood wall twice and breaking it, or pathing cleverly to you.

Gore blocks were an infinitely better zombie threat than anything you've put in the game thus far and you removed them without trying to iterate on it at all. Get rid of the stupid demo zombies. Bring back gore blocks. Stop trying to make "counters" to player strategy and get back to making zombies like the irradiated or the army zombie whose head is protected, etc.

Still no NPCs / Limited Game Modes -
I don't really want to complain about content but I have to. Zombies being the only aspect of the game world limits the game modes severely. Without NPCs like bandits, we can't have fire fights and territory disputes. Without NPCs like doctors or farmers, we can never build an actual "base" with buildings and specializations which means we can never progress toward resolution. We can't rebuild, we can just survive until we're bored of having more of the same. There has to be more to the "point of playing" than just staying alive. The game can have so much more depth but we're too busy redesigning the trees for the 14th time.

It's time to expand the scope of the game. We need more to do, and more reasons to do it. Give us an endgame to work towards. Give us more than loot to care about.

That's all I came to say. I know its a long post. Few of you will read it, even fewer will agree. Like I said, I don't care. I'm just here to say it so I can tell myself I did. 

Good luck survivors.

 

[No_Name_Idea]

Well I agree with a majority of this post. The one thing I strongly disagree with is the "skills" paragraph. I think that having a system centered different builds makes the game more replayable. The point about gun parts really derailed into something different but I still agree with it. The game is mostly about looting and questing now, I also preferred when it was looting to craft and crafting to loot. I don't dislike traders/quests overall but I feel like the game is centered around them a bit too much.

I've come to this conclusion before reading your post, I think that devs are trying to make the game more boring and annoying. Screamers, demos, and speed of sound vultures are all annoying, the current perk point system is annoying. Everything scaling to game stage is kinda boring, stealth is boring and sometimes annoying, traders (while very, VERY useful) also get boring after a while, designing a base got boring since only one type is really viable.

I won't crap on everything the devs have done of course, they've added much cool @%$#. Vehicles are probably the best thing that happened to this game, mods are great (but they shouldn't increase damage just by slapping a scope on a gun for example), the whole electricity system is cool and the a20 cities are way better in the new random gen. There are of course more things I like but I'll conserve space.

Man, I'm just kinda sad about how the game is evolving backwards in some aspects.

 

[Boidster]

The gameplay loop changed from exploring and checking every nook and cranny into an endless cycle of Point A to Point B rinse & repeat quest completions.

I agree that doing nothing but quests would minimize the time spent getting maximized loot, which is why I don't play the game that way. I haven't played the latest alpha yet, though - is doing quests mandatory now? I would definitely not like to be forced into min/maxing.

Game Stage should not make sure you are powerful enough to do anything you want, but that's what it does.

I agree Game Stage should not make you powerful, but that is not what it does. It makes the zombies more powerful as you progress. Check out gamestages.xml and entitygroups.xml for details.

Some places should be more dangerous and you should have to be aptly prepared to go there with skills, equipment, and consumables - all of which are not considered in Game Stage difficulty scaling. Progression is important, and watching the color of my gear change isn't progression enough.

This is a pretty good description (except for the last part) of what Game Stage does, though? POI zombie volumes are set to different difficulty groups, and the type of zombies which spawn as parts of those groups get harder as Game Stage goes up. So a Tier 5 POI will have harder spawns than a Tier 1 POI at the same Game Stage, but both tiers will get harder zombies as your GS goes up. Is that not what you're asking for? Possibly there's just a misunderstanding of the mechanic.

The last part - your gear getting better - is now controlled by Loot Stage, not Game Stage. Loot Stage can also be affected by POI tier and also biome, so you will find better loot in a T5 in the wastelands, but presumably the extra difficulty balances it out. Or not, I think, in your opinion.

Now, so much of the game is inaccessible to you in a single playthrough. ... The skill system locks you into weapon choices.

Can you elaborate a bit? I usually perk into pistol and shotgun, but on horde night I stick with TAR and M50, which are plenty effective. Which parts of the game are inaccessible, or which weapons are locked out to you? Perhaps your game has a bug - do you run any mods?

The old roaming hordes were so much more immersive and enjoyable.

For what it's worth, these still exist. See gamestages.xml for details, spawner "WanderingHorde". You might also enjoy just bumping up the quantity of biome spawns, so the game is more populated in general. And Feral Sense will keep your head on a swivel.

It got replaced by an incessant and compulsory interaction with combat

For what it's worth, you can hide and avoid screamer hordes also. In fact, hiding from a screamer prevents her from calling in any help at all. One silent crossbow from cover and the threat is eliminated. Or a turret can take care of her for you. But if she screams, the zombies she calls are just normal zombies. They'll lose interest in you if you hide from them.

Edit to add: it is also pretty easy to turn them off if you want. If you're okay with using a text editor.

We should have to loot to craft. We should need to craft to put our loot to use.

I will sign your petition. I'm fine with complete guns being found in loot, but I'd love for highest-tier stuff only being available via crafting. It is not a popular opinion, and not one shared by TFP, so it's not going to happen except via mod, I think. That said, we still play our game with a full crafting setup (and farm) every time, because we're not really interested in min/maxing our experience. We like crafting, so we do it. Could we prioritize finding/buying ammo and not need to craft it? Sure. Could we buy or be awarded all the mods we want if we just focused on the A->B grind of questing? Yeah. But we don't like playing that way, so we don't. We spend our days exploring the nooks and crannies of the map (with 4x normal spawn rates) and prepping for BMH. But not everyone likes playing that way, so it's nice the game gives some options.

 

[BFT2020]

Quests - 
Way too lucrative and way too often. The gameplay loop changed from exploring and checking every nook and cranny into an endless cycle of Point A to Point B rinse & repeat quest completions. Bullet and material production rendered obsolete. Just buy what you need with the mountain of coins you get, if the rewards from the quest themselves don't keep you topped up. No reason to duck into this building or that - there's nothing in there that you can't find in the quest POI and the quest POI has extra super lucrative loot containers.

Bottom line is, you can do quests too often and there's no incentive to explore anymore. You should only be able to do 3-5 quests per ingame week, especially if they are going to remain so lucrative.

The traders are going to be incorporated into the main story so there will be changes to them, but at the same time, TFP want people to use traders right now.  Fortunately, you don't have to even take quests from traders to advance in the game.  You can ignore the trader quests altogether.

And if you are determined about not getting loot rewards from the traders

    <remove xpath="/quests/quest[contains(@id='fetch')]/reward[@type='LootItem']"/>
    <remove xpath="/quests/quest[contains(@id='clear')]/reward[@type='LootItem']"/>    
 
    <remove xpath="/quests/quest[contains(@id='buried_supplies')]/reward[@type='LootItem']"/>




As for limiting quests, you have a couple of options:

limit the number of quests given

<quests max_quest_tier="5" quests_per_tier="7">




limit how many quests a survivor can take in a day

    <trader_info id="8" full_reset="true" min_inventory="30" max_inventory="70" min_items_swapped="20" max_items_swapped="20"
        reset_interval="3" open_time="6:05" close_time="21:50">




This one is not as obvious, but if you limit their hours open, survivors can't speed through a bunch of quests in a day

Skills - 

I thought skills would be a lot different than they are. I thought everyone would be able to progress through everything and I thought it was going to serve as more of a "mastery" of tasks and actions. Instead, we found ourselves fractured. Now, so much of the game is inaccessible to you in a single playthrough. It took away a lot of the ability to self sustain or to support yourself through the way you wanted to play. The skill system locks you into weapon choices.

I never had lack of perks in machine guns or sniper rifles or shotguns locked me out of using those weapons.

This is an apocalypse, I should have to be using everything at my disposal because I shouldn't have so much of anything that I can specialize. It's not immersive and it makes the game smaller.

The mod I am working on, I removed all recipes from the perks (you now have to find them or buy them from the trader if they become available).  Even with that restriction, I am still able to use everything at my disposal as soon as I find the crafting recipe for it.
 

"Smart" & "Gimmick" zombies -
You are losing the arms race and have been since you decided to enter it. Please give up. Players will always outsmart your AI. No that's not a challenge. It's the reason we're the dominate species on Earth. We use tools well. We outsmart things. We outlast them. Please stop trying to make zombies smarter than us. Their danger is in their unrelenting tides and sheer numbers. Not through dynamite strapped on their chest, slapping a wood wall twice and breaking it, or pathing cleverly to you.

Gore blocks were an infinitely better zombie threat than anything you've put in the game thus far and you removed them without trying to iterate on it at all. Get rid of the stupid demo zombies. Bring back gore blocks. Stop trying to make "counters" to player strategy and get back to making zombies like the irradiated or the army zombie whose head is protected, etc.

A) The majority of the zombies we face are the standard ones (though they also come in feral and radiated versions to up the difficulty).  I like the specialized zombies actually, it makes you have to think and anticipate how they might get past / around your base defenses.  Otherwise, all you need for a base is a box with bars and turrets that you can feed all day long.

B) Gore blocks were removed because they greatly affected the performance and pathing in the game.  This has been discussed in the past

 

[No_Name_Idea]

I agree that doing nothing but quests would minimize the time spent getting maximized loot, which is why I don't play the game that way. I haven't played the latest alpha yet, though - is doing quests mandatory now? I would definitely not like to be forced into min/maxing.

No it's not mandatory per se but ignoring quests gimps you severely, especially in early game. I'd say quests right now are probably the best source of loot and of course cold hard cash.

 

[Roland]

Quests

Way too lucrative and way too often.

Completely voluntary. You don't have to do a single one. Its totally possible to do one quest a day and explore a ton of POI's of your choosing and win the game. Doing quest after quest after quest maniacally striving to grind up to the highest tier as quickly as possible is not even close to necessary for survival and success. It really is interesting to me that the most LBD-like feature in the game today is the quest system and people get obsessive about unnaturally power leveling up the quest chain just as they did up the skill chain with LBD. Should TFP put a daily quest limiter in the game to save people from themselves and burning out on questing or should they keep it as a choice: quest obsessively if you want or once or twice daily/weekly if you want?  Part of me wants them to keep it a free choice but part of me is tired of people posting that questing ruins the game and act like they're forced to quest constantly or they might lose somehow. Maybe some forced restriction on questing would help those folks not overdo questing.

Game Stage - 

As of A20 things are getting closer to as you wish them to be. Different biomes have a higher gamestage value making them very difficult to tackle until you are stronger. Hopefully they will continue to fine tune and improve this going forward. I believe they plan on allowing individual POIs getting an additional gamestage boost as well.

Skills

This is an apocalypse, I should have to be using everything at my disposal

Every weapon is viable and equal to the task of killing zombies whether or not you are perked into them. I use weapons all the time outside of my skillset and they are fun and effective. Once again, this complaint is only going to come from the most stringent of max/min players who can't bring themselves to use anything but whatever gives them the most effect dps. A purple weapon fully modded that you have zero skills invested into will mow enemies down. You say that survival is about using whatever you pick up. So do that. Nothing in the game prevents you from that kind of gameplay.

Screamers & Heat Map -
Nothing killed this games crafting and production aspect faster and more efficiently than this atrocious mechanic. I don't even know where to start. The old roaming hordes

Roaming hordes are still in the game. They never left. If you don't like screamer hordes that's one thing and you are entitled to your opinion of them but regular wandering hordes are still very much a thing. It takes awhile before you notice them because they start out very small in the beginning but as the weeks go by they get bigger. You can mod them larger as well because....well....they are still in the game.

Gun Parts/Loot and Crafting Parity -

 This week we will hear new details on how looting and crafting are going to be changed for A21. Hopefully the changes will be to your liking.

"Smart" & "Gimmick" zombies -

There's nothing to be said here except that the devs love special infected zombies. This may not be the zombie game you want although it has been a zombie game with special infected zombies since the very beginning and you should have known. Cop zombies that launch acid vomit and all zombies with the ability to tear down structures with their bare hands were special abilities from day one. Later came spider zombies that could run up the sides of buildings, screamers, radiated zombies, demolishers, pus erupters, and there may still be a few more coming before they are done. This is that kind of game and always has been

. Period.

Still no NPCs / Limited Game Modes

Still to come: More NPCs and more game modes. You bought an unfinished game and they are taking their time to finish it. It is not surprising that some people will lose patience and move on. It is perfectly legit to shelve this game for a year or so and then check back in and see where it's at. Lots of people who are now loving the game haven't played it in 3-4 years and have picked it up to try it out.

No it not mandatory per se but ignoring quests gimps you severely, especially in early game. I'd say quests right now are probably the best source of loot and of course cold hard cash.

Gimps you severely against whom? Are you competing against other players? I know you can't mean the game because even at Warrior difficulty I intentionally limit my quests and I survive and thrive quite well. So what or who are we gimped versus? I know for a fact that spamming quests is like drinking out of a fire hose and absolutely not a necessary strategy to survive and win the game. I also know that the end of that gameplay style is boredom and burnout. Therefore, I don't play that way. The big question is why does anyone else?

 

[No_Name_Idea]

Ok technically you weren't replying to me, but I just have to comment on some of your takes. I figure I might since my opinions are pretty similar to OP in some aspects. Feel free to ignore I guess.
 

Completely voluntary. You don't have to do a single one. Its totally possible to do one quest a day and explore a ton of POI's of your choosing and win the game. Doing quest after quest after quest maniacally striving to grind up to the highest tier as quickly as possible is not even close to necessary for survival and success. It really is interesting to me that the most LBD-like feature in the game today is the quest system and people get obsessive about unnaturally power leveling up the quest chain just as they did up the skill chain with LBD. Should TFP put a daily quest limiter in the game to save people from themselves and burning out on questing or should they keep it as a choice: quest obsessively if you want or once or twice daily/weekly if you want?  Part of me wants them to keep it a free choice but part of me is tired of people posting that questing ruins the game and act like they're forced to quest constantly or they might lose somehow. Maybe some forced restriction on questing would help those folks not overdo questing.

Can we please drop the whole "lol just don't use it if you don't like it" argument? I think that traders and quests are blatantly overpowered but I'm not looking for a challenge run. The "lol just don't use it" approach imo leads to stagnation of the game. And yes, it is on the devs to protect us from our own bs to a certain extent. There is this pretty famous quote by Soren Johnson: ”given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. I figure it's kinda famous for a reason.
 

Every weapon is viable and equal to the task of killing zombies whether or not you are perked into them. I use weapons all the time outside of my skillset and they are fun and effective. Once again, this complaint is only going to come from the most stringent of max/min players who can't bring themselves to use anything but whatever gives them the most effect dps. A purple weapon fully modded that you have zero skills invested into will mow enemies down. You say that survival is about using whatever you pick up. So do that. Nothing in the game prevents you from that kind of gameplay.

This is just factually not true. Weapon+corresponding weapon perk is obviously better than just the weapon. You may claim that all weapons are viable (and to a certain degree I'll agree) by themselves, but they aren't equal.
I've kinda mentioned it somewhere on the forum but imo weapon damage shouldn't be affected by perks (and slapping a scope on a gun also shouldn't increase it). A bullet shot from a firearm should hurt the same no matter if I've shot a gun once in my life or I'm a seasoned gun nut. It would be better if perks only affected things like handling, reload speed, etc. THAT would make guns more "equal".
 

There's nothing to be said here except that the devs love special infected zombies. This may not be the zombie game you want although it has been a zombie game with special infected zombies since the very beginning and you should have known. Cop zombies that launch acid vomit and all zombies with the ability to tear down structures with their bare hands were special abilities from day one. Later came spider zombies that could run up the sides of buildings, screamers, radiated zombies, demolishers, pus erupters, and there may still be a few more coming before they are done. This is that kind of game and always has been.

Period.

I like special zombies, I don't like annoying special zombies. I like dealing with Cops, Spiders, Mutated Zombies, etc. I though about why I like dealing with them and I've come to a conclusion that those enemies mix up the combat and present a certain degree of danger without centering the whole encounter around themselves. On the other hand, whenever I see a Screamer or a Demo I just roll my @%$#ing eyes. They're not that dangerous, they're just REALLY annoying. By the way, I like the idea behind the Screamer, just not the execution.
 

Gimps you severely against whom? Are you competing against other players? I know you can't mean the game because even at Warrior difficulty I intentionally limit my quests and I survive and thrive quite well. So what or who are we gimped versus? I know for a fact that spamming quests is like drinking out of a fire hose and absolutely not a necessary strategy to survive and win the game. I also know that the end of that gameplay style is boredom and burnout. Therefore, I don't play that way. The big question is why does anyone else?

Uhh, I'm gimped in literally every way? Weapons, exp, cash, loot - all of this is either easier to get or more plentiful with traders. I've never said that it's necessary to play without traders, all I'm saying is that it is objectively more viable to play with heavy usage of them.
You say that you don't play that way and more power to you, but not everyone is like you. Some people just don't like gimping themselves for no reason.

 

[theFlu]

Can we please drop the whole "lol just don't use it if you don't like it" argument?

Or if not, at least apply it evenly;

"no need to fix force fields, people don't need to use them"

"no need to make zombies dig, players can choose not to hide underground"

I'd rather drop it too though..

 

[Roland]

Can we please drop the whole "lol just don't use it if you don't like it" argument? I think that traders and quests are blatantly overpowered but I'm not looking for a challenge run. The "lol just don't use it" approach imo leads to stagnation of the game. And yes, it is on the devs to protect us from our own bs to a certain extent. There is this pretty famous quote by Soren Johnson: ”given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. I figure it's kinda famous for a reason.

Oh, I am totally for designed restrictions on questing. But saying so usually brings a lot of irritated people out of the woodwork ranting about people forcing their playstyle on others. I know the quote and believe in it wholeheartedly. But as long as the devs leave it to me, I'm capable of self-limiting and so I do. But I think there should be a game mechanism that limits for sure.

This is just factually not true. Weapon+corresponding weapon perk is obviously better than just the weapon. You may claim that all weapons are viable (and to a certain degree I'll agree) by themselves, but they aren't equal.

I didn't make that erroneous claim. I said any weapon is equal to the task of killing zombies. I never said all weapons are equal to each other. I love the fact that the weapons are not all the same in their killing power because it gives great variety in feel depending on what you choose. Some people around here really want the weapons to all be equal but not me. They are not and they should not be.

However, you can kill zombies and win the game with any weapon even if you are not perked into it. That is what I meant and I stand by it.

Uhh, I'm gimped in literally every way? Weapons, exp, cash, loot - all of this is either easier to get or more plentiful with traders. I've never said that it's necessary to play without traders, all I'm saying is that it is objectively more viable to play with heavy usage of them.
You say that you don't play that way and more power to you, but not everyone is like you. Some people just don't like gimping themselves for no reason.

Do you know what a gimp is? A bad leg or a bad arm that makes you function below normal human efficiency. Its usually used in game terms to compare yourself to another player who isn't disadvantage like you as you compete. Foregoing a playstyle that turns you into a god isn't gimping yourself unless you are directly in competition with someone else. So I asked whether you are playing PvP because in that case, yes, you must use the traders as much as possible or you'll find yourself out of the competition. But for PvE in single player or multiplayer? There is no conceivable "gimp" if your goal is to survive. You just progress slower but you still win. 

But that is just semantics and I know what you mean. 

Like I said, I know how to get long term fun out of this game and I don't need the devs to force me to it. If you do, then I am all for the devs imposing limits on the players so that they don't min/max themselves out of the fun of the game. When that day comes I hope you won't be on the side complaining about the huge questing nerf.

 

[Roland]

Or if not, at least apply it evenly;

"no need to fix force fields, people don't need to use them"

"no need to make zombies dig, players can choose not to hide underground"

I'd rather drop it too though..

Well I do apply it evenly.

I'm all for the devs fixing blocks that foil zombies as they discover them.

I'm all for the devs implementing digging zombies.

I'm all for the devs limiting quests per trader per day.

But until that happens, I'm also for reminding players that nobody is holding a gun to their head to make choices that will ultimately lead to their dissatisfaction.

"I'm forced to spam quests every day until I loathe them" is a mindset I will oppose every time. I think a limit on quests would make the game better but if the devs decide to keep it open and free-will then I'm fine as well because I'm mindful of what destroys my fun and play accordingly. Anyone can do it.

 

[Matt115]

Quests - 
Way too lucrative and way too often. The gameplay loop changed from exploring and checking every nook and cranny into an endless cycle of Point A to Point B rinse & repeat quest completions. Bullet and material production rendered obsolete. Just buy what you need with the mountain of coins you get, if the rewards from the quest themselves don't keep you topped up. No reason to duck into this building or that - there's nothing in there that you can't find in the quest POI and the quest POI has extra super lucrative loot containers.



Game Stage - 
Game stage scaled the world to you. What a terrible thing. Game Stage should not make sure you are powerful enough to do anything you want, but that's what it does. It tries to make up for it by also making things rewarding in a way that is relevant to you so you're not getting better stuff than you should be getting. It fails at that balance. Game Stage should have been used to prevent relevant content from being too difficult or too easy for you, what it became instead is a world nerf and removed incentive to do anything other than the most lucrative things because they were just as easy as the less lucrative things. Everything should have a minimum Game Stage setting so that if you wander into the wastelands and try to do a Shotgun Messiah in week 1, you get absolutely obliterated.

Bottom line is that Game stage should keep relevant content manageable and nothing more. Some places should be more dangerous and you should have to be aptly prepared to go there with skills, equipment, and consumables - all of which are not considered in Game Stage difficulty scaling. Progression is important, and watching the color of my gear change isn't progression enough.

"Smart" & "Gimmick" zombies -
You are losing the arms race and have been since you decided to enter it. Please give up. Players will always outsmart your AI. No that's not a challenge. It's the reason we're the dominate species on Earth. We use tools well. We outsmart things. We outlast them. Please stop trying to make zombies smarter than us. Their danger is in their unrelenting tides and sheer numbers. Not through dynamite strapped on their chest, slapping a wood wall twice and breaking it, or pathing cleverly to you.

Gore blocks were an infinitely better zombie threat than anything you've put in the game thus far and you removed them without trying to iterate on it at all. Get rid of the stupid demo zombies. Bring back gore blocks. Stop trying to make "counters" to player strategy and get back to making zombies like the irradiated or the army zombie whose head is protected, etc.

Still no NPCs / Limited Game Modes -
I don't really want to complain about content but I have to. Zombies being the only aspect of the game world limits the game modes severely. Without NPCs like bandits, we can't have fire fights and territory disputes. Without NPCs like doctors or farmers, we can never build an actual "base" with buildings and specializations which means we can never progress toward resolution. We can't rebuild, we can just survive until we're bored of having more of the same. There has to be more to the "point of playing" than just staying alive. The game can have so much more depth but we're too busy redesigning the trees for the 14th time.
 

1. i agree about quests

2.Yep game stage in my opinion is just bad solution

3. They will add bandits

As of A20 things are getting closer to as you wish them to be. Different biomes have a higher gamestage value making them very difficult to tackle until you are stronger. Hopefully they will continue to fine tune and improve this going forward. I believe they plan on allowing individual POIs getting an additional gamestage boost as well.

Every weapon is viable and equal to the task of killing zombies whether or not you are perked into them. I use weapons all the time outside of my skillset and they are fun and effective. Once again, this complaint is only going to come from the most stringent of max/min players who can't bring themselves to use anything but whatever gives them the most effect dps. A purple weapon fully modded that you have zero skills invested into will mow enemies down. You say that survival is about using whatever you pick up. So do that. Nothing in the game prevents you from that kind of gameplay.

There's nothing to be said here except that the devs love special infected zombies. This may not be the zombie game you want although it has been a zombie game with special infected zombies since the very beginning and you should have known. Cop zombies that launch acid vomit and all zombies with the ability to tear down structures with their bare hands were special abilities from day one. Later came spider zombies that could run up the sides of buildings, screamers, radiated zombies, demolishers, pus erupters, and there may still be a few more coming before they are done. This is that kind of game and always has been

. Period.

Well  i agree that biomes with diffrent difficulty is good but... world gamestage is just bad idea. Diffculty should opinion would looks like country --> town --> small city --> big city, Well i undestands that number of zombie is limited by number of players but - there is no logical reason to just show up mutants, guns etc. DL1 is good example what i mean ---> you find chemical storage so there will be a lot of mutants ,  boom zombie can be found in wet places because faster decying etc.

it could be done very hm natural but still keeping balance : everybody know that number of zombie in city is bigger that on desert but it's warm on desert so you have to prepair.  Like Dark souls - it's harder not because world becaming harder but because you are going to more dangerouse places

2. i will write about that below

3. i hope there will be more special zombies

Can we please drop the whole "lol just don't use it if you don't like it" argument? I think that traders and quests are blatantly overpowered but I'm not looking for a challenge run. The "lol just don't use it" approach imo leads to stagnation of the game. And yes, it is on the devs to protect us from our own bs to a certain extent. There is this pretty famous quote by Soren Johnson: ”given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game”. I figure it's kinda famous for a reason.
 

Well i agree - cod is good example for that or BF1 - in first case everyone often use this same perk guns because they are too op or are op because are spammed (tropy system). Granades in BF1 were too powerfull because... well again spammed by many.

I didn't make that erroneous claim. I said any weapon is equal to the task of killing zombies. I never said all weapons are equal to each other. I love the fact that the weapons are not all the same in their killing power because it gives great variety in feel depending on what you choose. Some people around here really want the weapons to all be equal but not me. They are not and they should not be.

And there is problem in diffrent way - there no feel "power" bettwen melee weapons, bows and guns --> every  type in 7dtd can be usefull sometimes even too usefull. in MG survival melee weapon is used only because is cheap and first weapons, bow is good but low dmg, guns are sooo strong but lack of ammo --> and that's how should looks like -->  melee weapon for weak and lonely zombie, bow for this same and guns for groups. 

Well I do apply it evenly.

I'm all for the devs fixing blocks that foil zombies as they discover them.

I'm all for the devs implementing digging zombies.

I'm all for the devs limiting quests per trader per day.

But until that happens, I'm also for reminding players that nobody is holding a gun to their head to make choices that will ultimately lead to their dissatisfaction.

2. Well this is price for  voxel game so i understand that

3. i agree

But change things make this same choice bad. For example - if you decided to run barefoot in 1960 during race in your HS you would be probably faster that guys running in shoes but in 2020 opposite. 

I don't have example from 7dtd but i will give example from cod --> by some time granades were too powerful so in next cod they nerfed them so much that granades were pretty useless - yep you still could use them. You could us the worst game if you want but it was pretty unplayble - so why to waste time using this if you can use meta weapons right (except camo challenge but it's just unworthy now)

 

[SURVIVE]

I bought this game back in '14. It quickly shot to the top of my played list on steam. I loved it and revered it as my favorite game. Now, I want to share with you why I haven't been able to enjoy the game or hardly play it for the last couple years. I think a lot of people will disagree with me. I don't really care; I just need this off my chest so I can move on I suppose, idk. Most of the things I will list aren't wholly terrible, in fact, the concept might be really good, and I might like it but feel like the implementation took something away that used to be important. Anyway, in no particular order:

Quests - 
Way too lucrative and way too often. The gameplay loop changed from exploring and checking every nook and cranny into an endless cycle of Point A to Point B rinse & repeat quest completions. Bullet and material production rendered obsolete. Just buy what you need with the mountain of coins you get, if the rewards from the quest themselves don't keep you topped up. No reason to duck into this building or that - there's nothing in there that you can't find in the quest POI and the quest POI has extra super lucrative loot containers.

Bottom line is, you can do quests too often and there's no incentive to explore anymore. You should only be able to do 3-5 quests per ingame week, especially if they are going to remain so lucrative.

Game Stage - 
Game stage scaled the world to you. What a terrible thing. Game Stage should not make sure you are powerful enough to do anything you want, but that's what it does. It tries to make up for it by also making things rewarding in a way that is relevant to you so you're not getting better stuff than you should be getting. It fails at that balance. Game Stage should have been used to prevent relevant content from being too difficult or too easy for you, what it became instead is a world nerf and removed incentive to do anything other than the most lucrative things because they were just as easy as the less lucrative things. Everything should have a minimum Game Stage setting so that if you wander into the wastelands and try to do a Shotgun Messiah in week 1, you get absolutely obliterated.

Bottom line is that Game stage should keep relevant content manageable and nothing more. Some places should be more dangerous and you should have to be aptly prepared to go there with skills, equipment, and consumables - all of which are not considered in Game Stage difficulty scaling. Progression is important, and watching the color of my gear change isn't progression enough.

Skills - 

I thought skills would be a lot different than they are. I thought everyone would be able to progress through everything and I thought it was going to serve as more of a "mastery" of tasks and actions. Instead, we found ourselves fractured. Now, so much of the game is inaccessible to you in a single playthrough. It took away a lot of the ability to self sustain or to support yourself through the way you wanted to play. The skill system locks you into weapon choices. This is an apocalypse, I should have to be using everything at my disposal because I shouldn't have so much of anything that I can specialize. It's not immersive and it makes the game smaller.

Screamers & Heat Map -
Nothing killed this games crafting and production aspect faster and more efficiently than this atrocious mechanic. I don't even know where to start. The old roaming hordes were so much more immersive and enjoyable. I remember being able to crouch in the corner of a dark room and wait for them to pass. It was immersive. It was horror in a video game. I loved it. It got replaced by an incessant and compulsory interaction with combat if I decided I wanted to anything other than run a single campfire. Screamers are ok, but they shouldn't be spawned and heat based. They should just be out in the world, roaming the streets or hiding in the closets of POIs - not knocking down my door every 5 mins because they heard me burning wood/coal too loudly?

The heat map and screamers were probably the biggest blow to my interest in the game, If I'm being honest.

Gun Parts/Loot and Crafting Parity -
I didn't like gun parts when they were introduced but I couldn't see their value at the time. Gun parts created a parity between crafting and looting which doesn't exist at all in today's version of the game. In fact, most of my friends don't even bother crafting anything and only loot the major containers where you can find most things worth crafting in an extraordinary abundance. We should have to loot to craft. We should need to craft to put our loot to use. It's the soul of the game and it's been locked away for several alphas now. Bring it back. I used to loot seeds. Now I loot food. No parity. Bring it back.

"Smart" & "Gimmick" zombies -
You are losing the arms race and have been since you decided to enter it. Please give up. Players will always outsmart your AI. No that's not a challenge. It's the reason we're the dominate species on Earth. We use tools well. We outsmart things. We outlast them. Please stop trying to make zombies smarter than us. Their danger is in their unrelenting tides and sheer numbers. Not through dynamite strapped on their chest, slapping a wood wall twice and breaking it, or pathing cleverly to you.

Gore blocks were an infinitely better zombie threat than anything you've put in the game thus far and you removed them without trying to iterate on it at all. Get rid of the stupid demo zombies. Bring back gore blocks. Stop trying to make "counters" to player strategy and get back to making zombies like the irradiated or the army zombie whose head is protected, etc.

Still no NPCs / Limited Game Modes -
I don't really want to complain about content but I have to. Zombies being the only aspect of the game world limits the game modes severely. Without NPCs like bandits, we can't have fire fights and territory disputes. Without NPCs like doctors or farmers, we can never build an actual "base" with buildings and specializations which means we can never progress toward resolution. We can't rebuild, we can just survive until we're bored of having more of the same. There has to be more to the "point of playing" than just staying alive. The game can have so much more depth but we're too busy redesigning the trees for the 14th time.

It's time to expand the scope of the game. We need more to do, and more reasons to do it. Give us an endgame to work towards. Give us more than loot to care about.

That's all I came to say. I know its a long post. Few of you will read it, even fewer will agree. Like I said, I don't care. I'm just here to say it so I can tell myself I did. 

Good luck survivors.

100% agreed. When I first heard of the skill change I was just reminded of the WOW skill tree change made me want to break their fingers beyond repair. Trying to appeal to an audience ranging from 5 to 25 who run on energy drinks and lays products is just gonna make the rest of not want to play. I mean people here on the forums said it themselves, why play 7dtd when you can play COD? Stupid decisions.

 

[No_Name_Idea]

Well  i agree that biomes with diffrent difficulty is good but... world gamestage is just bad idea. Diffculty should opinion would looks like country --> town --> small city --> big city, Well i undestands that number of zombie is limited by number of players but - there is no logical reason to just show up mutants, guns etc. DL1 is good example what i mean ---> you find chemical storage so there will be a lot of mutants ,  boom zombie can be found in wet places because faster decying etc.

it could be done very hm natural but still keeping balance : everybody know that number of zombie in city is bigger that on desert but it's warm on desert so you have to prepair.  Like Dark souls - it's harder not because world becaming harder but because you are going to more dangerouse places

Your examples of games that do it "right" are either very linear and/or have a handcrafted map. While something like this might work on Navezgane, it wouldn't hold up in random gen.

I get what you're saying but game stage/loot stage is probably one of the better solutions for 7d2d. I'll agree that it should be changed somewhat but the core system is okay.
The only problem I have with it is the fact that we're magically locked some items until we hit some loot stage, every item should imo be "findable" from day 1, I think loot stage should just affect the chances. As for game stage, I figure it's pretty ok, but I think that zombies spawning in tier 5 POIs on day 1 should be pretty similar to those spawned on day 30 or something like that. This way, you can get some pretty sweet loot early if you can pass the challenge. I dunno if I'm making sense.

While the system could be better, at the end of the day I'd be fine if it made it to the finished game in it's current state.

 

[theFlu]

Well I do apply it evenly.

Now that you say it, you probably do.

What frustrates people is, it is often used in a way that feels like an attempt at a counterargument; which it usually can not be.

In this case you did go on to explain you wouldn't be against a change - but I managed to miss that. Your "Completely voluntary. You don't have to do a single one." looked like that's going to be your main point in that paragraph and I skipped the rest... my bad.

When it isn't your whole point, you could come in a little less strong with it, in a structure of "That could be a problem, but you don't have to keep doing it", but I should also learn to read... I mostly should learn to read

 

[Novamourne]

Completely voluntary. You don't have to do a single one.

I really don't care for this argument/counter point. It really shouldn't be on the players to solve the balance issues presented in design implementations. It's not always about min/maxing either, it can just be the path of least resistance. Humans are hard wired to prefer it. Development needs to design with that in mind. Also, if you're playing alone that might be fine but if you're playing with or against people who are using the quest system exclusively then you will fall behind and not be relevant.

 

Every weapon is viable and equal to the task of killing zombies whether or not you are perked into them.

This is another player solution to bad design argument. Sure, there is nothing preventing me from using other weapons and they will surely all work. I guess there's no reason to spec into any weapons then, right? Those are just dead points. No, you spec into something to see progression and increase power. Why would you make player progression decisions based on one specialization and then not do what you can to use that advantage you worked for? What's the point of progression at all if you're just gonna ala cart the game and whimsically use whatever and whenever regardless to any sort of power gains you've acquired? Very weak argument, imo.

 

This is that kind of game and always has been

. Period.

There's a massive difference between zombies who present a new thoughtful challenge to you and zombies who are specifically designed to counter something you are using as a strategy and I feel like I do a well enough job in my OP of illustrating those differences. Demo zombies were a development response to people being able to fortify behind strong walls and defend themselves with traps/turrets. They don't change how you do anything. There's no base design or trap design to counter them. They are there solely to mitigate the strength of automated defenses and nothing more - again, compulsory combat. No more building smart and outlasting the night - you must fight them. The game is not always been that way.

 

[Matt115]

Your examples of games that do it "right" are either very linear and/or have a handcrafted map. While something like this might work on Navezgane, it wouldn't hold up in random gen.

I get what you're saying but game stage/loot stage is probably one of the better solutions for 7d2d. I'll agree that it should be changed somewhat but the core system is okay.
The only problem I have with it is the fact that we're magically locked some items until we hit some loot stage, every item should imo be "findable" from day 1, I think loot stage should just affect the chances. As for game stage, I figure it's pretty ok, but I think that zombies spawning in tier 5 POIs on day 1 should be pretty similar to those spawned on day 30 or something like that. This way, you can get some pretty sweet loot early if you can pass the challenge. I dunno if I'm making sense.

While the system could be better, at the end of the day I'd be fine if it made it to the finished game in it's current state.

It could work even in RWG but it would need a lot of work but i can explain how it could work but small warning : TFP will not change this so i will use "more zombie variant posibility" as base for this idea.

Okay let say that there is more types of zombie - teenage zombie , weak zombie, more mutants zombies etc

So - you respawning in forest so --> the most zombie here are weak zombie, teen and normal. So you want to get stuff -> you are looking in house and depending how "rich" is how there is bigger chance to find more dangerouse zombie ( let say - Star's Villa will have zombie secruity dogs etc.  But in most houses you can find just melee weapons + guns. you want mp5 -> find police station but there will cop zombies. you want AK47? find military outpost but there will be soldiers zombie.  So zombie connected with POI. But what with "wild" zombies? well diffrent spawn depending on biom - in snow biom "snow" zombies , on swamp "swamp zombies" etc So how you could know if biom is harder or easier? just  using logic --> snow slowing decying so zombie will be stronger that on desert , wasteland mean more mutants etc. 

So this can be done but this will need 3 things

1. Bigger POI - prison , Airfield etc

2. more zombie types 

3. change in loot

 

[Roland]

I really don't care for this argument/counter point. It really shouldn't be on the players to solve the balance issues presented in design implementations. It's not always about min/maxing either, it can just be the path of least resistance. Humans are hard wired to prefer it. Development needs to design with that in mind. Also, if you're playing alone that might be fine but if you're playing with or against people who are using the quest system exclusively then you will fall behind and not be relevant.

TFP is walking a tightrope between "game" and "sandbox". The more restrictions they implement the more game-like 7 Days to Die becomes but then at the same time the less sandbox-like it becomes. Right now everyone can choose to play how they like. I can limit myself to 1 quest per day per trader. You can spam quests to the exclusion of all other activities. Others can find somewhere in between to play. That is a sandbox oriented design. As soon as they code it to be one or two quests per day it does become a stonger game with rules that better define and limit-- but now there is less freedom to play in different ways.

Personally, I think it would be best if they limit it and let modders remove those limits for those who want more freedom in questing. But the game is still under development so nothing is set in stone. They very well may plan to limit quests in the future. Until they do, you can either play in a way that is going to burn you out or you can play in a way that protects your enjoyment. You can moralize all you want that it is the devs' responsibility to ensure your longterm enjoyment of the game and then continue to play in ways you know will lead to being burned out....or, you can do something about it and limit yourself.

This is another player solution to bad design argument. Sure, there is nothing preventing me from using other weapons and they will surely all work. I guess there's no reason to spec into any weapons then, right? Those are just dead points. No, you spec into something to see progression and increase power. Why would you make player progression decisions based on one specialization and then not do what you can to use that advantage you worked for? What's the point of progression at all if you're just gonna ala cart the game and whimsically use whatever and whenever regardless to any sort of power gains you've acquired? Very weak argument, imo.

You said, "The skill system locks you into weapon choices. This is an apocalypse, I should have to be using everything at my disposal because I shouldn't have so much of anything that I can specialize. It's not immersive and it makes the game smaller."

I am simply affirming to you that you CAN use anything and everything at your disposal. This is what YOU claimed to want and I'm telling you that you can pick up any weapon you find and use it and be successful at surviving. No weapon is denied you in the game. The only thing that stops you from using any weapon is you rejecting it because in your mind it is suboptimal and you can't get past that idea.

The inaccurate part of your statement is that it is the skill system that locks you into a limited number of weapons. Wrong. It is your own unwillingness to use a less than the most optimal weapon. Period. Well, that's your choice. I do enjoy deeply speccing into a few weapons and like that they are my primary weapons for that game. But just because I have an auto shotgun that I'm fully perked into and every mod slot in that weapon is filled doesn't mean that is the only weapon I'm going to use. It doesn't mean I'm locked out of using an assault rifle as well. I know it, because I often do exactly that with great results.

You can call my argument weak but here are the results of my argument: I still enjoy the game after thousands of hours of play time and love using a variety of weapons in every playthrough.

Look at where your approach to playing has led you.

There's no base design or trap design to counter them.

heheh...this was what a lot of posts claimed in the first week after the update when the demolishers were introduced and a lot of people made the same assumptions you did. But just like every update over the past 8 years it turns out that while some cried others tried and learned. You must have quit playing during this time and so never witnessed all the threads and videos showing exactly the base designs and trap designs that players developed to counter them. No...demolishers have been around for a couple of years now and base designs and trap designs to counter them have definitely been found.

You can pick the demolishers as the special infected you don't like and someone else will pick the screamers and someone else will pick the spiders and everyone will have their own personal reason for not liking them. But the truth is this is a game with a variety of special infected with their own unique abilities and what you don't like others do and there are strategies for dealing with them all.

 

[RipClaw]

heheh...this was what a lot of posts claimed in the first week after the update when the demolishers were introduced and a lot of people made the same assumptions you did. But just like every update over the past 8 years it turns out that while some cried others tried and learned. You must have quit playing during this time and so never witnessed all the threads and videos showing exactly the base designs and trap designs that players developed to counter them. No...demolishers have been around for a couple of years now and base designs and trap designs to counter them have definitely been found.

To be fair there have also been some changes. In the beginning, blade traps and turrets triggered the explosion of the demolisher. Only dart traps where safe to use.

With A19 blade traps no longer triggered the explosion and in A20, SMG and shotgun turrets no longer trigger the explosion either, even though it was never officially confirmed that this is intended.

 

[theFlu]

For the weapons / skills bit.. I see a group of possible results / goals:

0) There is no skills to weapons (I doubt we're heading here, so, pointless)

a) No need to spec into weapons, since they work just fine without

b) speccing into a weapon gives some efficiency benefit, or plenty of funsies, but still basically a), it doesn't really matter

c) speccing into a weapon makes a massive difference for that weapon, large enough to "make or break" challenging parts like horde nights

d) speccing into a weapon is required for it to be of any use (including but not limited to being unable to use one at all until specced)

The roles for the non-spec weapons would vary similarly;

- being completely viable to the point of being indistinguishable from the mains

- being a useful way to conserve some main weapon ammo, occasionally

- being useless enough to be worth more practically as coins / brass / lead / whatever you can tear them down into.

- being actually unusable, only good for the resources or even just the trash pile

All of that is modulated by the rest of the game - difficulty level, ammo availability, even difficulty of obtaining food as it plays into needing to optimise gun use - and so forth. At the moment, depending on your settings versus your player ability, I'd say we're landing mostly between a) and b). If you're able to really push yourself challenge-wise, even c).

Any of those can be made into a game, even a good one. For 7dtd I'd prefer there to exist a balance somewhere around c or d; horde nights are meant to be a challenge and so forth. Now, I wouldn't expect it to be the Default balance, but I'd love it if the game was fine-tuned enough to allow something like that to be reached via vanilla settings. I do fear that level of balancing might be nearly impossible, without pushing really strict limitations everywhere else.

 

[Kyonshi]

The minute I saw Roland rectifying their points one by one, I knew TC would get @%$#ed and try to oppose one of the most knowledgeable folk of TFP with their subjective, anecdotal arguments. Always a pleasure to read.