PC No goal in sight
- Thread starter Baxitus
- Start date
Outlaw_187
Active member
Yeah nice try Roland. I actually tried this on console. I mean I lit up the sky....and.. nothing.
Roland
Community Moderator
Oof..awkward. That was actually in that last partially done update that never released from Telltale....Yeah nice try Roland. I actually tried this on console. I mean I lit up the sky....and.. nothing.
HungryZombie
New member
Isn't 7d2d a sandbox game? Sandbox games don't have an end goal I don't think. It's just a world to play in and to make up your own goals.
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there is no goal in sandbox games ... it canbe added later but it wont play major role anyway
you can easily say most developer time is spent on hundreds of poi often with "dirty secrets" like giant labs deep under ... or mines ... shelters sacrificial rooms full of bodies ... not to mention pois have many hidden spots if you look around you are almost always rewarded by some hidden loot container
its basically game about exploring those hundreds of poi filled with zeds progressing by looting to top stuff
just like in the forest you start rather weak and hunted scared of wolf or feral leveling and gearing up until you actually hunt even the most dangerous zombies as unstopable predator
as fill system you have
1) complete freedom in building/changing terrain (not to the point of minecraft as massive structures /moving hills take alot more effort but you can still comfortably build any base you want
2)quests encouraging you to clear specific poi /dig map
3) blood moons challenging you every 7th day encouraging you to build defenses and prepare for hordes overall
so whats goal in a19 ? 1) max gear 2)chase all magazines(bonus perks from loot) 3)build well defended base 4)start big enought farm to never starve 5) level up 6) become hunter instead prey
you have to be joking
subnautica truly is beautifull game ... but one that can be finished in 3/4 hour .... if you are slowpoke progression literaly doesnt exist at all you can get anything you want within minutes if you know where it issubnautica is all about exploration .. so many different biomes .. creatures .. wrecks ... lore pdas...
main storyline quickly become secondaryto filling your own aquarium in huge base
AtomicUs5000
New member
Also, since it is a sandbox game with modding support, end goals should be able to be modded.
If someone made a mod like this, maybe with a set of several possible end goals to choose from, I bet it would be pretty popular. A lot of people feel the same way about games like this.
AtomicUs5000
New member
Speaking of end goals:
BTW... I won this vote even though the likes did not carry over to the new forum.
Lord Shakaka
New member
It comes down to your play style preference. Some like story driven content which is fine. Linear games have that. MMOs have that as well but endgame becomes gear grind / group play loop.
Some sandbox games have a story to them but that doesn't always ends the game for some players. Many sandbox games you as a player would set an end goal in mind. For some, progressing levels to a point is their enjoyment. Once that is reached, your bored of whatever game loop and rather start over. Look for what you like in the sandbox game and set goals based on the way you play.
Examples of some goals:
1. Build a horde base that can last.
2. Become a one man zombie wrecking army.
3. Explore the entire map.
4. Build a nice base and farm.
5. Complete book sets / perks (as many as you feel you would like to do)
6. Play with others and collaborate base building.
With sandboxes, you can just go with whatever you want to set out to do. Its like having a Lego set. Its a bunch of blocks. But you are only limited to what you want to create out of them.
Some sandbox games have a story to them but that doesn't always ends the game for some players. Many sandbox games you as a player would set an end goal in mind. For some, progressing levels to a point is their enjoyment. Once that is reached, your bored of whatever game loop and rather start over. Look for what you like in the sandbox game and set goals based on the way you play.
Examples of some goals:
1. Build a horde base that can last.
2. Become a one man zombie wrecking army.
3. Explore the entire map.
4. Build a nice base and farm.
5. Complete book sets / perks (as many as you feel you would like to do)
6. Play with others and collaborate base building.
With sandboxes, you can just go with whatever you want to set out to do. Its like having a Lego set. Its a bunch of blocks. But you are only limited to what you want to create out of them.
Outlaw_187
Active member
Boidster
New member
Scyris
New member
Your lucky, I am usually bored by day 10 or so in single player, I also play dead is dead, game is quite different when you play on higher difficulties like warrior and above when you delete the save on death. Your much more careful and such. The reason I get bored so fast is by day 10-14 I am usually well established, and there just is no real reason to keep playing. The game has no mid/late game, and the current linear loot was a piss-poor way of trying to extend the early game. I mean I don't even got a farm up in my current game on day 10 and I have enough food to prob last me almost a month of game time. Water is also no big deal, all you need is a bucket and a shovel to make infinite water. Dig a 1 block wide 5 block long ditch, drop water from bucket in center, then pick it back up from the edge, you'll notice a block of it usually stays behind, then just drop it again, and it'll often fill the entire 5 block ditch. When you need water, use a jar to fill them, then take bucket, pick up remaining water in ditch and just refill it.
Teacyn
New member
To use a similar game that went the other angle on this, Rimworld is a sandbox game with very explicit goals that end a playthrough and the game uh, very heavily pushes you towards them. You're more or less on a timer because eventually the game will just scale to the point it's physically impossible to keep playing, so the goals exist to cut the game off before it gets to that point. You aren't forced to go for the goals, but if you don't then the game will just delete you eventually. The community has really mixed opinions on this design philosophy, some people praise it because it stops burnout, encourages you to do different things on different playthroughs, stops you from seeing the game fall apart, and stops content exhaustion. Other people despise it because they want to build their infinite survival colonies and they don't want to rush to build a ship and flee the planet, and they feel like the game pushes them into it too hard and they're too restricted. The response to this schism has been an absolutely massive and incredible modding community, with people on both sides of the design (and many who don't care and just make cool mods) making mods that work for whatever you want out of the game. You can mod the game to be an infinite base builder with impossible-to-get-all-in-one-run amounts of content, or you can turn it it into a condensed and focused game where your goal is to survive a harsh and unforgiving planet and GTFO.
7DTD theoretically has this same issue, but it takes 60+ hours on one save to get there and thanks to how cheesable and exploitable zombie AI is you can make base designs that work literally infinitely. Game also runs out of any ability to scale eventually, because it can't make the zombies any stronger and if it spawns any more the game will break. However, I don't think adding Rimworld-style end goals would be healthy for the game at this stage. This game does not have enough unique content to survive with goals like that. Even once the loot system is fully fleshed out per Roland's big post, it won't have enough unique content or replayabilty. Rimworld has effectively endless replayabilty and so much content and so many unique situations and scenarios that I can't even imagine running out of things to do. The goals exist to stop you from just becoming god and exhausting everything. This game has a very limited set of items and locations, a mostly limited set of builds and strategies (including many "best in all cases" ones, and nowhere near enough replayabilty for finite goals.
In single player I am demotivated as soon as I have a small base and a food supply. In multiplayer with my wife, we both have the feeling from the start that we're just doing pointless things. That's the problem. The game simply needs the carrot that you can run after.
A game end that you can work towards, but not have to, if you want to play like before, would be essential for 7dtd in my opinion.
What the game currently offers has turned out really well. The atmosphere and the gameplay are really good! But somehow I have the feeling that someone had the idea "Let's combine Minecraft with zombies" and just started production without thinking the whole thing through to the end. The game has so much potential and unfortunately it is not used ...
A game end that you can work towards, but not have to, if you want to play like before, would be essential for 7dtd in my opinion.
What the game currently offers has turned out really well. The atmosphere and the gameplay are really good! But somehow I have the feeling that someone had the idea "Let's combine Minecraft with zombies" and just started production without thinking the whole thing through to the end. The game has so much potential and unfortunately it is not used ...
If you look up the best designs on youtube then base building is trivial. Everyone digs his own grave that way. I avoid streamers like hell and with >1 or 2k hours play time have still fun trying out designs (although eventually I will run out of ideas too).
The intention to have bandits and the Duke and the White River coalition has existed since the kickstarter 7 years ago. The possibility to replace the Duke with yourself is also mentioned. So the plan for this end-game goal was there 7 years ago already. What did you you say about "not thinking the whole thing through the end"?
This is not a service game, this is still an unfinished alpha
well while this is truth from story point of view .. i highly doubt it turns into some major goal/focus of game 7days is heavily oriented toward building /random roaming/gearing giving it serious "rpg storyline structure" would keep them busy for next 10 alphas
.. iam quite sure bandits will be just addition to world with some lore backgroundand maybe some kind of boss ... but ghame definitely wont be centered around that
Correct. But Baxitus did not ask for a full-fledged RPG story-line, he wanted an end-goal. The end-game goal in Factorio likewise does not even have a shred of quest-structure or anything, it is just a goal so people can take it as their default focus.well while this is truth from story point of view .. i highly doubt it turns into some major goal/focus of game 7days is heavily oriented toward building /random roaming/gearing giving it serious "rpg storyline structure" would keep them busy for next 10 alphas
I assume in TFP there will actually be a faction quest that tells you to kill one leader at least and at the end you will be told that you either are the right-hand of one of the leaders or the leader yourself. Cue end-music you can click away.
TheProphet
New member
Try a PvPvE server, so you have to worry about zombies and real people which may or not be friendly. Keeps you in tension just like a real post apocalypse madmax.
Roland
Community Moderator
I wonder if other tower defense games get questioned by their fans about when the game ends or if they all have fans that accept the notion that tower defense games just continue forever.
Maybe we need a Hi-Score box in the upper left of the screen...
Are you sure most tower defense games are endless? The only one I have played for a longer time had a story I played to the end.
khzmusik
Well-known member
This is an excellent question, and one that I have been thinking about quite a bit, ever since I got to some astronomical level in A16. (In that playthrough I just kept playing and focused on building bigger structures - like, I had a base where I dug down to bedrock for probably 1000 square blocks and created a garden at the bottom, and dug underground tunnels between cities and traders the size of highways, stuff like that.)
Since the goal (in general) is survival, once you get good at surviving, then you basically feel like you've "won" - but there isn't much of a payoff. You get good enough to be able to kill whatever comes at you, and they become an annoyance while you go about whatever "business" you decided you should be doing.
On the other hand, I don't think a "win" condition is necessarily the answer. The other games you mentioned (like Subnautica) are a good example. They're great games, and I've actually played them multiple times, but I haven't sunk even a tenth of the time into them that I've sunk into 7D2D.
What I personally would like to see are game stages. I don't just mean thinks like the "stone age" vs. the "iron age." I mean things that would fundamentally change the game loop.
For instance, one "stage" would be about the current stuff - finding a home, building a horde base, doing tower defence during horde night. But the next "stage" might be about exploration - the encouraged goal would be to go find all the different locations and POIs in the game that you haven't explored yet.
When we get NPCs, another "stage" might be community building. In this stage your goal would be to gather other survivors into some sort of camp or compound, keep them healthy, and protect them from the horde nights. There would be some goal (explicit or implicit) that couldn't realistically be accomplished without becoming the leader of a community of survivors - like, until this point, neither faction would even pay attention to you.
Or perhaps after you "win" and fight one or the other faction, then the game changes such that your enemy is the new military faction, which has decided to take over and subjugate both the survivors and the bandits. (Think of the final season of Deadwood.)
It's also why I like the idea of seasons - you start in the summer, but eventually get into winter, where all your hard earned work (like starting farms) becomes far less valuable and things get harder again.
The key thing is that you need to continuously have some sort of feeling of accomplishment, but once that accomplishment happens, the game's goal changes, and you have to start a new kind of game loop in order to keep going. There are lots of ways to do this, many of which extend the life of a playthrough, and if done properly an end game might not even be needed at all.
Mods, of course, can help tremendously with this, but it's easier to implement if TFP already have this kind of stuff in mind.
...Of course even if the game broke tomorrow, I've already got close to 3K hours of enjoyment out of it, so I can't really complain.
Since the goal (in general) is survival, once you get good at surviving, then you basically feel like you've "won" - but there isn't much of a payoff. You get good enough to be able to kill whatever comes at you, and they become an annoyance while you go about whatever "business" you decided you should be doing.
On the other hand, I don't think a "win" condition is necessarily the answer. The other games you mentioned (like Subnautica) are a good example. They're great games, and I've actually played them multiple times, but I haven't sunk even a tenth of the time into them that I've sunk into 7D2D.
What I personally would like to see are game stages. I don't just mean thinks like the "stone age" vs. the "iron age." I mean things that would fundamentally change the game loop.
For instance, one "stage" would be about the current stuff - finding a home, building a horde base, doing tower defence during horde night. But the next "stage" might be about exploration - the encouraged goal would be to go find all the different locations and POIs in the game that you haven't explored yet.
When we get NPCs, another "stage" might be community building. In this stage your goal would be to gather other survivors into some sort of camp or compound, keep them healthy, and protect them from the horde nights. There would be some goal (explicit or implicit) that couldn't realistically be accomplished without becoming the leader of a community of survivors - like, until this point, neither faction would even pay attention to you.
Or perhaps after you "win" and fight one or the other faction, then the game changes such that your enemy is the new military faction, which has decided to take over and subjugate both the survivors and the bandits. (Think of the final season of Deadwood.)
It's also why I like the idea of seasons - you start in the summer, but eventually get into winter, where all your hard earned work (like starting farms) becomes far less valuable and things get harder again.
The key thing is that you need to continuously have some sort of feeling of accomplishment, but once that accomplishment happens, the game's goal changes, and you have to start a new kind of game loop in order to keep going. There are lots of ways to do this, many of which extend the life of a playthrough, and if done properly an end game might not even be needed at all.
Mods, of course, can help tremendously with this, but it's easier to implement if TFP already have this kind of stuff in mind.
...Of course even if the game broke tomorrow, I've already got close to 3K hours of enjoyment out of it, so I can't really complain.