PC Level gating. Why it ok for other games but not 7DTD
- Thread starter ColdGate
- Start date
Jugginator
Tester
Correction, you DISLIKE it. It doesn't mean EVERYONE should dislike it. Opinion means opinion, it doesn't mean fact. If you took a poll that reached 90-100% of the players and more than half disliked it, then sure I'd see a reason to change it. But if it's just a handful of people who want everything at the start of the game, then no. Stop demanding everyone else to like only what YOU like. It's an EVERYONE thing, not a handful of people thing.
In fact, why do you think the Steam ratings went into very-positive from mixed in the transition from A16 to A17 experimental? Obviously, a majority of the people are liking it. It's about the larger mass of players. And most of the complaints about level gating are instant-rages and not even thinking things through. You CAN survive with stone tools. You just have to adapt, and not sit there like "Well, guess I'll just sit here and die". You can now, and before, find what you need without even crafting a forge/workbench. You can get around not having iron tools before you can craft them -- if you think outside the small, hand-carrying box. With a closed-mind like that, you won't enjoy it. Be more open-minded and you'll have more fun.
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elucidus
New member
Personally, it is that using level gating reduces the options of how I can level, ultimately forcing me to play a certain way. If I want to save up points over multiple levels in order to maximize my weapon quality, rather than upgrading using those weapons, I should be able to. But by level gating, and even more specifically removing quality damage bonuses, that completely removes that option. A lot of other roleplaying games havea lot more going on, and grinding is a possibility, some of us even enjoy it, but now that is gone too.
Jugginator
Tester
Nah, spend your points as you get them. I spent a point every level, and when I reached 20 I was able to get the INT and perks which allowed me to craft iron tools/forge, and I've been able to place points in cooking/heavy armor/perception/archery/Boom Headshot/Endurance/Agility/Cardio/miner 69er(and the other 2 resource perks I forgot their names)/the wrenching perk.
Hryllingur
New member
Just a little reply to all those "We need more XP"-Voices ... Ever made a TreasureHunt in A17? Effort of one (and they always drop twice) is 30k XP. Yep, a bit of luck, sure. But selling Diamonds, Silver and Gold is pretty nice to get XP.
But yep, i jump on the "More XP for Basebuilding"-Train.
But yep, i jump on the "More XP for Basebuilding"-Train.
Dimpy
New member
What's your criterion for "level gating"? Whether you consider something to have levelgating or not depends wildly on the definition.
All I saw was something about how the forge is "a tool, not an achievement" and it would be bad for newbies coming into a hostile PvP server, although I'd argue that applies to player progression speed in general, not just levelgating.
Jugginator
Tester
They just want everything handed to them on day 1, and not have to actually do anything different, lol.
Viktoriusiii
New member
No actually. Its not "because I dislike it".
This is basic gamedesign.
If you interfere with the player directly, telling him what he can and can't do, instead of letting the world do that, this breaks the players immersion. Therefor, any other solution, that does the same job WITHOUT artificially interfering with the player IS OBJECTIVLY better.
To you, it might not matter. And that is fine. You aren't "lesser" because of it.
BUT it still is worse design.
Every time something is levelgated it is basically the same as a textbox popping up telling you:
"Nope! Not yet! We need you to stay weak for a little longer sorry!"
What would I do to slow progress down, to have the same effect?
(remember those are solutions off the top of my head and if I were to actively think for over a year about it, I'd find better/better optimized solutions)
-reduce overall leveling (simple, you have the choice to go full melee but to not have a forge or get a forge but not be a good fighter)
-bind Perks to things done in the world (HS perk needs you to do 10, 25,50,100,175 hs; forge needs you to find a book/buy it at a trader/get it as a questreward/visit a factory...)
- (going back to A16.4) leveling up a perk cant be done via spamming, but needs time to go forward (your character needs time to learn new things)
those are all things that could be done and the devs didnt have to "gut" the players choices, but let the world do it.
And there are a lot more ways, but I hope my point got across.
Its not that I don't like it. It is that it is OBJECTIVELY a bad design.
It might be better then A16.4, but that is only because it was poorly optimized. I could think of a lot of ways to make levelgating FAR worse then 16.4
Its like a bell curve.
The way A16 did it, had WAY more potential, but was badly optimized, while A17 has little potential to improve, only to balance it, but doesn't suck as much.
Viktoriusiii
New member
Simple. A skill that is not learnable simply by the fact that you have not yet reached a high enough overall leveling.
A16 already had that, and I complained a bit about it, but it was essentially still a learning by doing curve, only restricting the highest stuff (concrete and steel). But now I cant skill my trader fully until im lvl 50 or something. I am restricted to learn basic things, just because they didnt think of better ways to do so.
Poojam
New member
They are having a big steam sale. The game costs $9. There are a lot of positive comments, but I don't know that they are actually playing A17. It defaults to A16.4. You are backing up your statements with "facts" that are actually pretty big assumptions. This was talked about in another thread when Roland was throwing around the player count from steam charts. Even Roland acknowledged we don't really know from the public information, but TFP might have better info.
A closed mind? The level gating is annoying, but the real problems I have are the single land claim blocks, digging zombies, zombie damage (raiding will be super easy now. just hop on the player's roof and let the zombies tear it to shreds), complete slowdown of the movement/agility restrictions, encumbrance, weapon nerfs, loot removal, stone digging nerfs, and general XP gain. I don't want to play Fallout. I want a open world, sandbox survival driven by one's own creativity, raiding, player vs player, player vs environment multiplayer experience with tons of things to do in them. When I say tons of things to do, I don't mean all the things we've been doing since A7 just with extra steps that take us weeks to get through. You seem quite happy with that, which is fine. It's just I'm not. My opinion on the matter is just as valid as yours, so stop trying to paint me into this niche crowd. People have been complaining about some of these things since Madmole's first preview video ~ 2 months ago. It's not news. They said they didn't like it then, they worked on it, they played it, and they're coming back and saying "yep, it sucks for exactly the reasons I said it would suck - please change it."
Jugginator
Tester
I reached level 20 by day 7. It slowed me just enough to where I didn't start the game with everything. It previously made everything too easy. That's why I say closed-mind, have you ever played an RPG? Level gating practically is in all of them. And this isn't even remotely close to fallouts lol. Not saying your opinion is negated, but the niche crowd you speak of me painting you into seems to just give up and rage at it before actually checking it out. If there was no level gating, you could craft a forge and all of that on day 1 and be OP-end game after day 2 or 3. If you want easy-sandbox mode, well, there's creative mode. The game's main selling point is you WILL die + tower defense + sandbox + open-world, not become an OP, invincible god by day 2, never having a threat by zombies. "loot removal" shows you're one of the closed-minded people. I have seen NO decrease in loot, why? Because I looked at things from another perspective. I raided 3 POIs in 8 days, and I have enough guns and things to defend myself and my friend. So, until you show that a MAJORITY of the player base hates all of this, then yes, it's a small group that does hate it, not everyone like you claim. If you don't like it then console + giveselfxp 9999 a few times, there ya go. Everyone I knew who played the game before quit because they had everything handed to them so quickly; in fact, we were modding the game to ADD difficulty so we didn't have to start a new world after 7 days since we were living gods by day 3.
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Check your OWN facts -- where's your evidence everyone hates the level gating/improved AI/digging/no more trash-ass loot from zombies?
TheMouldyCheese
New member
Um, how about the tens of threads on this forum and the steam reviews for a start....
Viktoriusiii
New member
Name me a few! Because I cant think of one!
There is a difference between a skillpath and a levelgate.
If I need 7 levels to get to a perktree, its not a levelgate.
If I need to be level 7 but only 1 skillpoint, it is a levelgate.
And while both more or less accomplish the same thing, one is about freedom, the other one is about slowing a player down.
I'm skipping a bunch of the drama that's been happening the past couple pages and going straight into giving my input:
To me, putting the forge (and a bunch of other really important features) behind a level 20 gate is a terrible idea. For me and those I play with, we tend to level fairly slowly (I think it's day 5 and we're barely reaching level 10) and, as others have mentioned, being stuck with starting gear is such a grindy slough through the least fun parts of the game.
Yeah, we can attempt to loot POI's, but when it takes an hour to break down a door, it really slows down the game.
With all the changes that TFP have made to tools and skills, it's a mega-nurf. Your tools suck -AND- you won't be getting better ones for a long time.
In my opinion, they either should have a lower level gate; or revert changes to skills altogether because your tool does little damage, and it won't increase soon, your stamina doesn't increase like it used to, and your stamina doesn't recover like it used to.
To me, putting the forge (and a bunch of other really important features) behind a level 20 gate is a terrible idea. For me and those I play with, we tend to level fairly slowly (I think it's day 5 and we're barely reaching level 10) and, as others have mentioned, being stuck with starting gear is such a grindy slough through the least fun parts of the game.
Yeah, we can attempt to loot POI's, but when it takes an hour to break down a door, it really slows down the game.
With all the changes that TFP have made to tools and skills, it's a mega-nurf. Your tools suck -AND- you won't be getting better ones for a long time.
In my opinion, they either should have a lower level gate; or revert changes to skills altogether because your tool does little damage, and it won't increase soon, your stamina doesn't increase like it used to, and your stamina doesn't recover like it used to.
TheMouldyCheese
New member
I mean, its not all terrible, but the update clearly has some issues. Its not just 1 person saying this....its alot of people as you can see form the forum littered with threads about it. They can't all be wrong.
I was really looking forward to this update for over a year, but at the moment, I have to say I'm not impressed... I got bored very quickly and don't really have any motivation to go back and play yet. I'm sure it will improve though. I think.
I'm gonna offer a little opinion of my own....I may not post here but I do lurk occasionally, and this is based on what I've seen the last few days.
Feedback is feedback, no matter how its conveyed. If somebody is frustrated and posts about it on here, it shows they care. The mods/devs (and even other forum users) should take the criticisms and feedback on board and thank the OP's for their opinions.
Lets just put it this way. I'm astounded that a couple of these guys are community moderators with their attitudes. You should appreciate that these frustrated gamers have put ALOT of hours into the game and they care enough about the direction of its development to make their views known publicly. Yes they may not be being as constructive as they could be, but as a moderator, you need to offer a helping hand and a thank you. It works out alot better than being confrontational or screaming "YOURE WRONG!" Or even telling people to "Go back to Alpha 16 then!" which I've seen on here.
Poojam
New member
Steam's filters are difficult to navigate. When I select the last four days (Nov 20-24), steam purchasers, my language (english); I see there are 519 reviews that match these filters. According to the bar graph, 92% of these are positive. Yet all of the "Most helpful review" in the left column are "Not Recommended".....!?!? The reviews are from above-average play length players too. (430.9 hrs, 342.4 hrs, 1187.5 hrs, 408.5 hrs, 680.8 hrs, 1068.8 hrs, 1356.1 hrs, 412.2 hrs, 474.8 hrs, 2177.3 hrs). Most of these say they dislike A17.
All of the "Recently posted" reviews in the right column are "Recommended." These play counts are a more healthy mix of new and veteran players (354.7 hrs, 987.8 hrs, 24.4 hrs, 525.9 hrs, 244.2 hrs, 5.8 hrs, 392.9 hrs, 205.6 hrs, 79.6 hrs, 577.6 hrs). One specifically mentions they like A17. One positive review indicates "A17 has made them super sad... but still worth it for a discounted price." None of the other positive reviews that show up first mention A17 at all. So I'm not convinced they are even playing it, yet.
I loaded the filter by "Recent", and scanned all of the positive and negative reviews from mid-Nov 21 through 24. I found 26 positive reviews that mentioned A17 or led me to believe they are playing experimental. The rest were inconclusive. The reviews were positive, but many were not without critical feedback that has been prevalent on the forums. Some of the positive reviewers also noted that "A19 is great" or "A18 should be out any day now", so yea....that's encouraging :\ Many of the A17 mentions that were positive were ecstatic that A17 has drastically changed the game and it plays like an RPG.
Even the positive reviews confirm the negative reviewer's gripes.
I'd say that's a pretty good start for some evidence. Need to figure out how to download the reviews and put them into excel, comma delimited or something.
What is clear to me is that anyone that is claiming that the recent uptick in positive reviews is attributed to A17 experimental, then they aren't looking at the same data I am.
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Eyegore
New member
I wonder if you'd still be making the same argument if they nerfed the stone axe to only be usable by lvl 20 and up, and until then you had to use a wooden stick to dig, a sharp rock to chop, and a hard stone to mine, and all three worked about half as well as the stone axe? You'd be really happy to finally get that stone axe at lvl 20...it'd be like a wonder tool after the grind you just went through with stick, rock, and stone for 20 levels. Well, some would argue that the stone axe is already this, compared to higher level tools. It's already a dumbed down placeholder for the real tools. But TFP they could go further...and some people would argue that it makes the game more fun - somehow.
I and many others here see the level gating as a bad choice. A game-design band-aid. But on the bright side, they don't go so far as to say you can't utilize a tool or weapon before you can make it. Level gated USE of items is so much worse. I hate to even mention it here because TFP might think it's a good idea and patch it in.
