Lets say previous states should be known as well to infer the intentions of the devs. Also my statement was about AI not the other changes you then brought up.
Making significant changes frequently creates the impression that their intentions are sorta: Vicissitudinous. What a nice word.
The mild corrections to AI since A17 seems to indicate that good pathfinding abilities of the zombies is not regarded as a mistake but part of making tower defense work. I may still be wrong on that and they might make ALL zombies A16-dump again after bandits are in, but I would have to ask them then why tower defense is in the game only at end game.
Everybody likes "good pathfinding abilities", noone prefers "bad pathfinding abilities", and tower defense was always in the game. Imho, tower defense is practically dumbed down since you know exactly where they will go. If you know exactly where they will go, that makes it much easier to set up a defense of your tower, does it not.
Many players critisize the intelligence of the zombies even though I would not call that intelligence. An intelligent human won't see that you have a hidden entrance on the backside of your tower. A dump dog though might sense that your smelly foot prints always go to the backside. So a dog is more likely to find that back entrance than a human.
I do agree that practically the zombies are less intelligent, because their behaviour is more forseeable. But since they know more things than before, i.e. which path is the easiest (while ignoring traps), players say they are "more intelligent".
And the word "intelligent" comes from the "I" in "AI", so.. *shrugs*
Is a Romero zombie able to go through a clearly visible opening 5 meters left of him instead of trying to attack the wall if his target is behind the wall? No idea, I'd have to watch Romero movies again to find out. But I can readily give them that kind of "intelligence" (on the level of a dog) in this game without having problems with identifying them as zombies.
Romero zombies' intelligence is on the level of simple reactions, with no reflection, no planning, no creative thinking. Kinda like plants or bacteria, even insects' behaviour is more complex. They will just follow sensory input. If you had a chain link fence and stood right in front of a zombie behind it, but one step away was an opening, the Romero-zombie would not go for the opening, but only straight for the sensory input right in front of it. Just like they would thoughtlessly walk right into spikes and such, on their bee line path to a potential victim. Was there a wall and the zombie would hear you through the wall and not the door 5 meters away - it would go for the wall. Would it hear you through the door, it would go for the door. Hyper simple.
If you make it so that on hordenight the zombies have some kind of GPS in place of sensory input, then yes, they would go in a straight line and bang against walls. Imho, it'd be fine if they would find an entrance that is reasonably noticable to them, for example cuz it's five blocks away bleeding light or sound. Should they go to the other side of a base, around several corners, cuz there is an opening? No. That's ok for other, more intelligent enemies. I am, however, perfectly fine with them having increased strength on horde night or - even better - at night in general, so they will break blocks much faster.
You are right, they could be renamed infected or even mutants if anyone inside TFP would put any importance into that. But in seemingly half the zombie movies nowadays there are infected with a tendency to rage. So even if 7D2D relabeled them as infected, I bet 99 of 100 people would still call this a game with zombies. So it would be work for TFP without really making something better. Oh, and the kickstarter promised zombies (not Romero zombies, zombies) so relabeling them to mutants might not be the best idea.
I never said they should rename the zombies. And the zombies in the game are obviously zombies. Noone has ever denied that, it's either a narrative or a misconception. Or it is my misconception that you imply someone has ever denied the creatures in the game are zombies.
*shrugs*
I bought lots of released games that I put down again after minutes of playing them. And that at a time when you couldn't give them back after opening the shrink wrap. I never complained because I willingly entered that bargain. I could have tried demos instead before buying if I wanted to prevent that. It was clearly my own fault and as an adult I have to accept the consequences of my actions.
When kickstarter became popular and later alpha development I occasionally warned people to consider the risk and not expect too much. I (silently) expected a lot of those people that put thousands of dollars into a kickstarter game to be hugely disappointed because game development even without a publisher doesn't guarantee an exceptional game. History shows and logic demands that there is no guaranteed recipe for a good game.
The disclaimer is there for a reason. It tells you not to expect more from the deal than what is part of the deal. The disclaimer looks at you as an adult who can view a contract and infer reasonable expectations from that.
If I put myself in your shoes and imagine I had bought a turn-based RPG in EA that turned to RtwP mid-development, I would surely tell them that I don't like that change. But then grudgingly try the new RPG and either play that or leave when I don't like it. I accept the developers rights to make the game he wants (in the limits he advertises on the store page). I know I gave up my customer rights to vote with my money when I bought in advance. Simple as that.
*shrugs* Like I said:
"If the alpha disclaimer trumps everything. I see problems with the changes, cuz I don't like them. You're only right, if such disappointment, that not only I experience, is no problem.
And since you don't share that disappointment, but welcome the changes, your stance seems a bit "uninclusive", don't you agree."
Your response inspires no addition to that statement.
In more detail: Generally a dungeon path in a game can have traps, blind alleys, puzzles and riddles that open doors, beautiful vistas, side quests.
You forgot enemies, one of the and often
the most important ingredient(s) of video game dungeon paths. In 7dtd, the path itself is no challenge, has no riddles or puzzles, it's clear where you have to go, so it's a clear case of paths where enemies really are the most important ingredient. And I really hope they don't add puzzles and riddles, these would just be a waste of time, particularly considering that they seem to be dumbing down game mechanics so new players aren't overstrained. The traps in 7dtd are lame too, you must be blind to run into spikes or a mine, and the only danger occurs when the floor caves in and you fall into a zombie pit.
No matter what is in between the expectation is that there is a McGuffin or treasure at the end of the dungeon. Like the suspense climax at the end of most movies. This is a general rule with lots of exceptions, but things to fight are just one of a variety of things inbetween. Specifically 7D2D has only traps and far far too seldom blind alleys beside the fights, but the expectation of something worthwile at the end is still in common with other dungeons crawls.
I think it matters greatly what is in between, treasure awaits at the end of a challenge, not some "path" with a nice view. If I don't have to take a risk and expend resources, why should I receive a reward. Therefor, I must continue to insist that sleepers, dungeons and treasure rooms are a package. Which "probably" (obviously) is why they appeared together.
Going to the treasure room (especially in the sky scrapers) was a recipe to make A16 easier as well. It had the same flair of "cheating" to simply open the staircase and go up directly to the loot.
Sure, but besides that A16 wasn't anywhere near being flawless, the current problem is the sheer number of treasure rooms. They are all over the place. There is no doubt that you can find 10 treasure rooms within 10 minutes after spawning. Not plunder 10, but see 10 pois that have such a room. You can plunder roughly 4 if you bee line to the treasure room and avoid most of the sleepers (some call that exploitation), roughly 2 if you go through the building and kill all the zombies. I mean, hell, these days you often spawn right next to a city. You spawn and instantly see a bunch of treasure rooms. It's absurd, and obviously so.
There exist a few practicable solutions for 7D2D I would be ok with any or all of them: 1) Distributing the loot but still having as much loot in the last room as any other room in that POI. 2) Make 2 or 3 variants of every POI that has the final loot room somewhere else. 3) Add a key you need ot find on the way before you can open the final chest.
It's no problem to go through a poi on day 1, kill all the zombies and grab the loot, except when it's in a locked chest with 5000+ hp. Then, though, you could spend the night wacking it with your stone axe. The overabundance of loot needs to go, cuz you can't have a proper surivival game where you can be fully stacked with weapons, armor, tools, food and ammo within a very few days. Devs, as I hear, agree and are working on it. I wonder, though, because of the "package"-problem, how they will, uhm, "believe to have solved it".
Loot already levels along with the zombies.
Only the quality of items. Afaik. Particularly ammo needs to level along.
An even better solution is that you make it so that certain locations have clearly different difficulties. One poi might be good to clear on your first day, with early game loot, another one has much stronger zombies on day 1 already, with the high-end-loot treasure room guarded by zombies you certainly can't kill on day 1 with a club or a bow. Put down warning signs, so the player knows what's what: No sign = easy (trash mobs inside), "attention, zombies!" = medium (feral zombies inside) and a radiation-symbol = difficult. Differentiate even further through biomes, have biomes apply a multiplier to the poi-zeds. Forest * 1, desert + snow = * 2, burnt * 3, wasteland * 4.
What do you think is more likely: That the developers actively use their precious time to prevent modders from doing something even though they want modding as part of the game. Or that modding is very low on the immediate priority list when adding new features and removing legacy code.
A reccurent task in modern software development is refactoring and pruning old code so that the software is in a maintainable state. Another task is to replace one method of doing something with a totally different method.
If I were developing a game I would never add modding before release because refactoring and pruning and new features replacing old features would always get in the way of mods and modders. I'm not a TFP developer and can only guess but for example if the static spawner option in xml vanished it is probably because the internal code that acted on that xml simply was replaced with something entirely new and the xml consequently had no reason to exist anymore. It may even be that the xml could be made to work with the new feature as well but that would need another 2 days of development and the developer had some more important tasks in his queue.
*sigh* I mentioned modding only cuz you can't even mod it back in. It's gone. And I clearly indicated that I don't know why. But the removal indicates that they don't want it.
You proposed the following definition in a reply to Roland: "It should be plausible that creators call anything a zombie, that has at least one characteristic of the old Romero zombies".
That's not a definition, I meant that some creators probably just slap the label "zombie" on anything with one characteristic without thinking much about it. It's undead, boom, zombie. It's eating flesh, boom, zombie. It infects other creatures, boom, zombie. Cuz they're not creative enough to come up with a new label, for example, such as "Illithid". Which might answer my question "why call it a zombie". Then again, as I mentioned too, this would quite probably still be done for advertisement purporses, cuz many ppl like "zombies". + have expectations what zombies are.
Now the problem is that zombies, ghouls, skeletons, all are undead, like a romero zombie.
Yeah, if you call anything undead a zombie, that's kinda lazy, uncreative and of questionable accuracy, cuz a zombie really isn't just anything, cept because anything is simply labeled "zombie", cuz noone owns that label and there is no law to only label something a "zombie" that has certain characteristics.
Jason X and some other supernatural serial killers never run.
Babies also don't. Boom, zombies.
And yet, you instantly need not be convinced that they are not zombies. But noone knows what an "Illithid" is, so other creators who invent a creature like that might just call it "zombie". Lazy, and/or misleading.
My comment was a bit of a side comment to that idea. I have no problem in calling the romero-zombie the archetype of zombies and in other words, yes, a romero zombie is without a doubt a typical zombie.
See. And ppl like this particular creature. That's why it is so popular. It's particularly creepy, being dead, still walking, coming for the living, turning them into zombies. Being slow is really creepy too, fast zombies are just more exciting and a more intersting enemy in video games, just like variations such as the wall climber, puker, exploder and so on.
But maybe classifications like undead or shambling have largely lost their meaning in a definition of zombiness.
There are many variations of the Romero zombie, that are obviously inspired by Romero zombies, and still called "zombies", which is perfectly fine. Still, when you say "zombie", most ppl think of the Romero zombie that has a concrete number of characteristics, of which "intelligence" is none, feeling pain is none, self healing is none. Ask 10 ppl to make a zombie impression. How many grab a frying pan and start sprinting at you? How many will raise their arms, put on a dumb face, and shamble towards you with some "hhggnnn grrrr" sound? I'd estimate the ration at roughly 0 : 10.
I might see you not being content with the current state, but judging by your words I also don't see how A16 would really make you happy, as horde nights in A16 were at least as trivial if you "exploited" the knowledge of zombie AI. So whatever horde night AI would make you really happy it can't be the return of the old AI.
But it has been explained a bazillion times what a bunch of ppl dislike about the new AI. It's very simple. I can explain it in 1 short sentence: It's too forseeable that you can design a certain path that the zombies will certainly follow.
Then again, you see, it's not some sort of religious fanatism, the Romero zombie simply is a great monster. Unlike, for example, the vampire. Lotta people just like zombies, because of what they are, not because of some definition. If they could fly, for example, it wouldn't be as fun for people who like zombies. Same with the x-ray vision and omniscience, some ppl just don't like that, all true definitions aside.