Player Choice Is the Heart of a Sandbox Game

[meganoth]

I totally get where you're coming from—and I agree. There are a lot of things I didn’t mention in my original post, not because I don’t care about them, but because I’ve learned from experience that long posts tend to get overlooked. Just take a look at these two I made:

Comprehensive Gameplay & World Enhancement Suggestions for 7 Days to Die Part [1]
Comprehensive Gameplay & World Enhancement Suggestions for 7 Days to Die Part [2]

I poured a lot into those, but shorter, more focused posts tend to get better engagement. As for your point—I completely agree. Whether it's driving to avoid the horde, burning fuel to keep moving, or using a vehicle to kite zombies, that's a strategy. Just like setting up traps, stealthing past enemies, or building an AFK-style robotic defense base where clever block placement confuses pathing. These are all valid tactics in a sandbox game. Players being creative is not cheesing—it’s survival ingenuity. And the beauty of sandbox games is that you should be rewarded for creative problem-solving, not punished. Honestly, even if someone plays the same strategy 20 times, that’s fine—because it means they’re still playing the game, enjoying it, and choosing it over thousands of other games out there. That’s a win, in my opinion.

Now—there are a few caveats for me personally. I don’t support:

• Exploiting clipping bugs (e.g., phasing into solid blocks—humans can’t do that).
• Floating bases with no structural support—there’s just no realistic way to justify that.
• Gold/dupe exploits for infinite money or resources.

Those break immersion and stretch beyond the logic of the world. But clever, strategic survival? That’s what the game’s all about, and we need more support for that kind of playstyle—not less.

What is creative about jumping on your minibike when things get tough on horde night? In essence this is a flight reflex and taking the minibike instead of just running is hardly a sign of ingenuity

Can you tell me the names of a few games you consider sandbox games?

 

[meganoth]

Bicycle. If on foot, I just turn around and dispatch them, so I don't know if they're faster while on foot, but would assume so as feet are a vehicle, too. ^.^ And, nope, not hopping on a vehicle trying to outrun them. Just riding along with nowhere near enough health lost to even think of bothering with a bandage. (That should probably kick in at a reasonable percentage, too, but it doesn't.)

I would have to check the xml to be sure, but I think the bicycle is comparable in speed to running, just uses much less stamina. It is possible vultures are faster without any special speedup so their flight doesn't look unnatural or they are an appropriatly difficult enemy.

Get a motorbike and I think you should be able to outrun a vulture easily outside horde night.

 

[ZehMatt]

Would you call it an exploit/abuse or problem if they were unable to attack and damage concrete blocks before them? Horde nights would be drop-dead boring if that were the case.

But if you look at pop culture? Ever see zombies go through concrete? Nope. Pop culture has no say about what is exploity in this game. Though I would not say it is an exploit as it is a balance problem.

I somewhat understand what you are saying that "this is a game" but majority of people have the expectation that humanoid beings are typically incapable of breaking down concrete with their bare hands. Lets just say that they can't do that anymore that also means they will be still outside waiting, if the game would actually perform better with way more zombies around, like lets say hundreds, then you have an entirely different problem to deal with since you will have to eventually step outside your base at some point. These days I disable horde nights as I play with WalkerSim which changes entirely how the game is played and is way more immersive by having a lot of zombies wandering around which forces me to carefully consider how I explore. The horde night thing is to me a pretty cheap and boring game loop mechanic, it can be fun to some degree until it gets boring. As for the base, players don't start with concrete so it would be initially pretty weak and zombies could still find their way in or break it down, so I don't exactly see this is as problem, concrete shouldn't be something to obtain that easily which would make the roaming zombies an actual threat to your base at the very beginning and that would also give players a reason to upgrade it with stronger materials.

Good game design comes from making things believable and not forcing a certain way on players, adding options is also not the solution that is just another band-aid to make it work, the option should be always the choice of the player and not some setting in the menu, that is what makes really good games and that is what historically all good games did and all the books I've read about game design will tell you the same. I do love this game but it is rather sad to see that somehow every update makes things worse gameplay wise.

 

[meganoth]

I somewhat understand what you are saying that "this is a game" but majority of people have the expectation that humanoid beings are typically incapable of breaking down concrete with their bare hands. Lets just say that they can't do that anymore that also means they will be still outside waiting, if the game would actually perform better with way more zombies around, like lets say hundreds, then you have an entirely different problem to deal with since you will have to eventually step outside your base at some point. These days I disable horde nights as I play with WalkerSim which changes entirely how the game is played and is way more immersive by having a lot of zombies wandering around which forces me to carefully consider how I explore. The horde night thing is to me a pretty cheap and boring game loop mechanic, it can be fun to some degree until it gets boring. As for the base, players don't start with concrete so it would be initially pretty weak and zombies could still find their way in or break it down, so I don't exactly see this is as problem, concrete shouldn't be something to obtain that easily which would make the roaming zombies an actual threat to your base at the very beginning and that would also give players a reason to upgrade it with stronger materials.

Good game design comes from making things believable and not forcing a certain way on players, adding options is also not the solution that is just another band-aid to make it work, the option should be always the choice of the player and not some setting in the menu, that is what makes really good games and that is what historically all good games did and all the books I've read about game design will tell you the same. I do love this game but it is rather sad to see that somehow every update makes things worse gameplay wise.

Years ago TFP could have increased minimum PC requirements and avoided adding more graphics fidelity. Then they could have added more zombies and balanced the game differently, removing horde nights and changed this game to a more typical zombie game or something similar to WalkerSim.

But they didn't increase minimum PC requirements and also tried not to drop tower defense aka horde night. This was a choice, but that choice also meant that zombies could not be in the hundreds in vanilla and had to be able to break whatever blocks are in the game, not only concrete.

This has nothing to do with good or bad game design or forcing players or what reality demands. It was never a goal of TFP to make 7D2d into a simulation. Which means they had no problems adding zombies who can destroy blocks of any type.

Is boulder dash a good game? Chess? Those two have very strict rules, no open world, no real player choice to do anything he wants. Are they bad games because of this? Is Half-Life a good game? No player choice, linear levels, options provide the only choice the player has. Portal? Linear, no player choice. (If you now want to reply with "but 7D2D is supposed to be a sandbox", my answer would be that 7D2D is supposed to be a blend of a lot of genres, only one being a sandbox)

 

[Kalnazzar]

What is creative about jumping on your minibike when things get tough on horde night? In essence this is a flight reflex and taking the minibike instead of just running is hardly a sign of ingenuity

Can you tell me the names of a few games you consider sandbox games?

Well, you see, deciding to hop on your bike is a legitimate strategy—it’s about staying ahead of the horde and playing smart. Whether or not you personally think it’s clever doesn’t change the fact that it’s a valid way to survive. Some players would rather burn through a ton of gas and repair kits to outrun or mow down zombies all night instead of standing still and tanking it. That’s their way of playing. It’s not cheating—no one is glitching into a solid cube of blocks or spawning infinite ammo. It’s just another approach using the tools the game provides. And if a guy decides to sit and pee, are you really going to say, “You’re doing it wrong?” People make different choices, and that’s what sandbox games are supposed to allow.

Back in the day, one thing I’d do when my team needed time to repair the base was ride circles around it on my bike, drawing the horde away. It worked. It helped. But with the newer changes, that’s become nearly impossible—all because the devs didn’t want players driving around too much. So now, instead of encouraging creativity and freedom, they’re clamping down on how we’re allowed to survive.

At the end of the day, the goal is to have people enjoy your game, right? The more options people have, the more likely they are to stick around, recommend it to friends, and bring others in. But if you start removing every creative or non-standard way of playing just because it’s not “your way,” then what message are you sending? That it’s only a sandbox when it suits someone else’s idea of how it should be played? That’s not how you build a lasting community. That’s how you shrink one.

 

[meganoth]

Well, you see, deciding to hop on your bike is a legitimate strategy—it’s about staying ahead of the horde and playing smart. Whether or not you personally think it’s clever doesn’t change the fact that it’s a valid way to survive. Some players would rather burn through a ton of gas and repair kits to outrun or mow down zombies all night instead of standing still and tanking it. That’s their way of playing. It’s not cheating—no one is glitching into a solid cube of blocks or spawning infinite ammo. It’s just another approach using the tools the game provides. And if a guy decides to sit and pee, are you really going to say, “You’re doing it wrong?” People make different choices, and that’s what sandbox games are supposed to allow.

If a guy sits down and pees while zombies are around him I expect him to die. He is not doing it wrong if he expects to die as well.

And you are correct, in previous alphas driving with a bike was a valid way to survive. The bad thing about it was that it was also a mostly boring way to survive. A game has to provide challenges to be interesting, except if it is a real bonafide 100% sandbox. This game isn't. It has sandbox elements, but also a lot of other elements which may need more stringent balancing than a pure sandbox game.

All the survival guys want the game to have challenges. All the open world, RPG and shooter guys want there to be challenges. All the tower defense guys want a challenge on horde night.

Not that **they** are happy. All the survival guys complain they have no glass jars and don't feel cold and a **survival game** has to have glass jars and people have to feel cold. The shooter guys say a **shooter** has to have more weapons. The RPG guys say an **RPG game** needs choices and consequences. Sorry guys, 7D2D is just a blend, not a pure single malt

Back in the day, one thing I’d do when my team needed time to repair the base was ride circles around it on my bike, drawing the horde away. It worked. It helped. But with the newer changes, that’s become nearly impossible—all because the devs didn’t want players driving around too much. So now, instead of encouraging creativity and freedom, they’re clamping down on how we’re allowed to survive.

I agree. Circling with a bike to allow repairs was removed and I would call it creative. It fell by the road because a very uncreative and boring option used the same mechanic and that boring option was removed.

At the end of the day, the goal is to have people enjoy your game, right? The more options people have, the more likely they are to stick around, recommend it to friends, and bring others in. But if you start removing every creative or non-standard way of playing just because it’s not “your way,” then what message are you sending? That it’s only a sandbox when it suits someone else’s idea of how it should be played? That’s not how you build a lasting community. That’s how you shrink one.

More options is not the only way to make a game fun. Look at Portal, one of the highest rated games on steam ever has none. It is a very linear game.

I am not saying this game will soon be like Portal. I am saying this game was never planned to be a full sandbox game. It was a lot more like one at the start because literally everything else wasn't implemented yet.

 

[ZehMatt]

Years ago TFP could have increased minimum PC requirements and avoided adding more graphics fidelity. Then they could have added more zombies and balanced the game differently, removing horde nights and changed this game to a more typical zombie game or something similar to WalkerSim.

But they didn't increase minimum PC requirements and also tried not to drop tower defense aka horde night. This was a choice, but that choice also meant that zombies could not be in the hundreds in vanilla and had to be able to break whatever blocks are in the game, not only concrete.

This has nothing to do with good or bad game design or forcing players or what reality demands. It was never a goal of TFP to make 7D2d into a simulation. Which means they had no problems adding zombies who can destroy blocks of any type.

Is boulder dash a good game? Chess? Those two have very strict rules, no open world, no real player choice to do anything he wants. Are they bad games because of this? Is Half-Life a good game? No player choice, linear levels, options provide the only choice the player has. Portal? Linear, no player choice. (If you now want to reply with "but 7D2D is supposed to be a sandbox", my answer would be that 7D2D is supposed to be a blend of a lot of genres, only one being a sandbox)

The graphics are not the problem to why having many zombies perform poorly, me and someone else actually profiled that and seems to have to do with the physics/collision detection. Also who says you can't have both things? I just said I personally find this "tower defense" thing boring, you can have plenty roaming zombies and keep the "tower defense" thing, that however is also not a good argument as to why they have to be able to break concrete blocks, like I said this should be a material not easy to obtain, also there used to be way more zombies in the earlier versions and also had the horde night so I'm not even sure where you going with this.

As for Half-Life, yes it is a linear game but for how you solve the given problems is not, and if you look at Half-Life 2 they even went further with the physics interactions adding another layer of how a player can progress in that linear level, even in Portal there is not always one correct way to solve the puzzles, also since you brought up Valve games, do you know what they also do? They never release a game that didn't undergo very extensive play testing and if there is something that even slightly bothers them they scrap the entire thing and start over, the current bad reviews would have probably not happened if this were to be applied to this game.

To me its just quite obvious that proper game design is just not applied here, there is also a difference between realism and making it believable, majority of sci-fi games are not realistic but they are believable, if zombies for some reason hang around in closets and only ever come out if someone is nearby is neither realistic nor believable, its just bad game design and that is just the tip of the iceberg of problems.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

I do love this game but it is rather sad to see that somehow every update makes things worse gameplay wise.

You'll not convince anyone here of that regardless how true it is. Any observation you proffer will garner you the same response: a supposed solution to a presumably personal (but not) issue with the game and for which you did not ask. The kneejerk reaction is to defend both the game and every decision TFP makes at all costs.

That said, the gameplay loop is exceptionally repetitive and boring in and of itself and the gameplay loop is all there is to 7 Days to Die at the moment. Incidentally, L4D's is as well by way of comparison. If you play 7 Days as suggested by the game itself, the loop is: prepare for horde night; horde night; rinse; repeat. Rather than running from safe room to safe room as in L4D, however, this game allows you to build your own and largely has been developed around the way megabase builders play it, imo. They derive their enjoyment from building ever more elaborate megabases and seeking to game the game's AI. Otherwise, they generally go through the motions, taking short cuts along the way. Glock 9 might be an exception.

This has led me to the conclusion that what people are enjoying about it is what they bring to it themselves. Either the game serves as a backdrop for socialization, if playing MP, or the player enjoys taking a stroll through it with only his or her own imagination for company. Therefore, you are quite right: the more that is restricted and/or intruded upon, especially with inanities, the less satisfied the player will be with the game.

Much of the response to 2.0 has been that this or that "breaks immersion," e.g. yetis and mummies in an otherwise grounded zombie apocaplyse setting. That's easy to point out and easy to see as it's so painfully obvious. When it comes to specific gameplay elements, however, it will be an uphill battle to try to get others to see what you see even if you're stating the obvious.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

there is also a difference between realism and making it believable

I think the term you're looking for is "suspension of disbelief." Immersion, for lack of a less hackneyed term, in any form of fictitious media ultimately depends on the reader's or watcher's or player's ability to suspend their disbelief long enough to quite literally lose themselves in it, i.e. think of themselves not at all. That's the beauty and danger of such media.

 

[Kalnazzar]

If a guy sits down and pees while zombies are around him I expect him to die. He is not doing it wrong if he expects to die as well.

And you are correct, in previous alphas driving with a bike was a valid way to survive. The bad thing about it was that it was also a mostly boring way to survive. A game has to provide challenges to be interesting, except if it is a real bonafide 100% sandbox. This game isn't. It has sandbox elements, but also a lot of other elements which may need more stringent balancing than a pure sandbox game.

All the survival guys want the game to have challenges. All the open world, RPG and shooter guys want there to be challenges. All the tower defense guys want a challenge on horde night.

Not that **they** are happy. All the survival guys complain they have no glass jars and don't feel cold and a **survival game** has to have glass jars and people have to feel cold. The shooter guys say a **shooter** has to have more weapons. The RPG guys say an **RPG game** needs choices and consequences. Sorry guys, 7D2D is just a blend, not a pure single malt



I agree. Circling with a bike to allow repairs was removed and I would call it creative. It fell by the road because a very uncreative and boring option used the same mechanic and that boring option was removed.



More options is not the only way to make a game fun. Look at Portal, one of the highest rated games on steam ever has none. It is a very linear game.

I am not saying this game will soon be like Portal. I am saying this game was never planned to be a full sandbox game. It was a lot more like one at the start because literally everything else wasn't implemented yet.

Let’s clear something up.
When I said “if a guy decides to sit and pee, are you really going to say he's doing it wrong?” — it was a metaphor. A commentary on player choice, not a literal survival scenario. The fact that you twisted that into “he should die if he pees while zombies are around him” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the point—and worse, a growing disconnect between the team and the very players who helped build this community.
This reminds me of Blizzard’s infamous line:

“You think you want it, but you don’t.”

That condescending statement dismissed the desires of a loyal player base—only for them to be proven dead wrong when WoW Classic exploded in popularity. And right now, you’re walking the same path.


You keep downplaying the open-world sandbox aspect of 7 Days to Die, like it’s just a minor side note. But let me remind you of the very first sentence of your Kickstarter pitch:

“An open world, voxel-based, sandbox game blending the best elements of FPS, Survival Horror, Tower Defense and Role Playing Games.”

The sandbox isn’t a side dish—it’s the main course. The game’s core identity. You don’t say “blending FPS and RPG” unless they’re part of the experience—not the definition of it. Many of us supported or bought into this game because it promised freedom, creativity, and emergent gameplay. Not because we wanted a strictly tuned survival sim with rigid playbooks and fewer options every update. When you remove valid strategies like bike kiting or limit viable creative methods to survive, and then call them “boring,” you’re not balancing the game—you’re controlling it. You’re not encouraging creativity—you’re pruning it. You’re not listening—you’re prescribing. That’s not what sandbox survival is.

And here’s the brutal truth:​

If you keep tightening the leash on how players are “allowed” to survive or have fun, eventually the only people left playing will be the ones who agree with you. Not because they love the game, but because you’ve made sure they’re the only ones who feel welcome.

That’s not how you grow a loyal fanbase.
That’s how you lose the one you already had.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

When you remove valid strategie... and then call them “boring,” you’re not balancing the game—you’re controlling it.

Or call them "exploits," which I'd agree TFP is wont to do even when they're not exploits. I've long been under the impression a tug of war has been going on between TFP and, especially (as they're most visible), YouTubers/Streamers seeking to game the game's AI. No doubt, it started out creative and symbiotic. Something TFP implemented would inspire the YouTubers/Streamers and the YouTubers/Streamers would inspire TFP to make a change that was actually more interesting and engaging. Over time, though, it appears to have turned into something else: 1) TFP's trying to control player movement through the game, ergo all the linearization and gateways, which they now realize don't apply to everything just because a story mode is forthcoming and 2) confusing guidance and/or tutorialization with granulation, i.e. overthinking what new players need to know in order to play the game.

That they're backtracking on the linearization and gatekeeping is probably the best thing that's happened for the good of the game and its appeal in a long, long time.

 

[meganoth]

The graphics are not the problem to why having many zombies perform poorly, me and someone else actually profiled that and seems to have to do with the physics/collision detection. Also who says you can't have both things? I just said I personally find this "tower defense" thing boring, you can have plenty roaming zombies and keep the "tower defense" thing, that however is also not a good argument as to why they have to be able to break concrete blocks, like I said this should be a material not easy to obtain, also there used to be way more zombies in the earlier versions and also had the horde night so I'm not even sure where you going with this.

One fact is that the game was performing poorly with lots of zombies on normal PCs even when I started with alpha15, and that wasn't even the minimum spec PCs I am talking about. Graphics were just one thing that scrapped away the small performance allowance the game had, even though it most of the work was done on the GPU. I believe you that physics/collition detection was the main culprit, but if you assume that that part was already well optimized or part of the underlying unity libraries it was not a part where TFP could save cpu cycles to then add more zombies. TFP had to find other places to optimize and because of their lower influence on performance they could not make the game able to add hundreds of zombies.

My main point is still there: If they kept their minimum specs they could not add hundreds of zombies, instead they had to use other ways to make fewer zombies be more deadly.

Sure, say alpha4 to alpha12 probably had a lot more zombies, but the game was blocky and not much of anything was in there. Every alpha TFP added more features and graphics fidelity which slowly also needed more cpu cycles. At that time they could have stopped, scrapped many of the ideas they had for the game and finished it. But they didn't. Todays game can not run hundreds of zombies on a minimal spec machine or on a console. No way.

Concrete was only an example by the way, it is the same for wood, cobblestone, concrete and steel: The few zombies have to be able to break all material if the game has a tower defense horde night, or zombies would be push-overs, probably even outside horde nights. And I assume the developers viewed horde nights as a given, not negotiable.

As for Half-Life, yes it is a linear game but for how you solve the given problems is not,

The first third of the game you had exactly one weapon, and the whole game one exact sequence of rooms to follow. If you call that lots of player choice then 72D2 is a champion of player choice with 10 times as much weapons and a world where you can go freely in all directions at the start of the game.

and if you look at Half-Life 2 they even went further with the physics interactions adding another layer of how a player can progress in that linear level, even in Portal there is not always one correct way to solve the puzzles, also since you brought up Valve games, do you know what they also do? They never release a game that didn't undergo very extensive play testing and if there is something that even slightly bothers them they scrap the entire thing and start over, the current bad reviews would have probably not happened if this were to be applied to this game.

Yes, valve is exemplary in this, though what has that do do with our topic? I totally agree with you that TFPs EA is quite different from getting a perfect AND already finished game. Though i played Portal only once and I played 72D2 for hundreds of hours, and one of the reasons for that is exactly that I got an unfinished game that changed all the time in EA.

I brought up these examples to show you that a good game does not depend on player choice. Player choice can be very restricted and still the game can be excellent.

To me its just quite obvious that proper game design is just not applied here, there is also a difference between realism and making it believable, majority of sci-fi games are not realistic but they are believable, if zombies for some reason hang around in closets and only ever come out if someone is nearby is neither realistic nor believable, its just bad game design and that is just the tip of the iceberg of problems.

Some players of 7D2D want a dark realistic or believable game, some want a humorous game and have no strong desire to have stuff believable as they allow their mind to make it believable. While I reached my limit with the badge I have no problem thinking of fluid or food containers as readily available everwhere and that they are just not simulated in the game, for example. I also have no problem playing other games where lots and lots of details are left to imagination. This is a matter of taste as well. I like the closet zombies because they are fun to me, that outweighs any realism argument

 

[meganoth]

Let’s clear something up.
When I said “if a guy decides to sit and pee, are you really going to say he's doing it wrong?” — it was a metaphor. A commentary on player choice, not a literal survival scenario. The fact that you twisted that into “he should die if he pees while zombies are around him” shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the point—and worse, a growing disconnect between the team and the very players who helped build this community.
This reminds me of Blizzard’s infamous line:

Sorry I have to disappoint you. You are not talking with "the team", you are talking to a lowly forum user just like yourself. Moderator status just means that I remove spam and flames. I have no connection to TFP.

In my view my reply was as well a commentary on player choice. You still have all choices in the game, especially driving a bike on horde night is still there. You only have different difficulties doing some things from before. And you gave up instead of seeing it as a new challenge.
For example I once build a round parcour for me to drive my motorbike through horde night. It had passages with a roof to give me breathing room, and lots of turrets to shoot down those birds. It was a new kind of fun driving on this parcour and having to cope with some zombies running around as well.

That condescending statement dismissed the desires of a loyal player base—only for them to be proven dead wrong when WoW Classic exploded in popularity. And right now, you’re walking the same path.


You keep downplaying the open-world sandbox aspect of 7 Days to Die, like it’s just a minor side note. But let me remind you of the very first sentence of your Kickstarter pitch:
“An open world, voxel-based, sandbox game blending the best elements of FPS, Survival Horror, Tower Defense and Role Playing Games.”

Not my pitch. But that is exactly what I meant. There is FPS, survival, tower defense, and RPG as well as sandbox in this sentence. I don't know how the developers think of the importance of each of those parts, having sandbox separate could mean it is more important, it could also just be meant as one of many elements the game is mixed together with. And to me it seems the developers may have meant the second interpretation. Or their plans changed, in which case you would be correct. I myself, I don't know what the developers think. I can only see this kickstarter line is open to interpretation, just like the definition of sandbox game is.

Every sandbox game I know of (minecraft for example) still has rules that limit the players choice or make choices less appealing than other choices. You can't just stand around at night doing nothing to protect yourself and expect to live. You can't just fly to get out of danger. You can't teleport, you can't swim in lava, you can't build a spear (or can you? I have played minecraft only for a few hours).

What many players of 7D2D have a hard time with is change, especially when the limits change so they have to adapt. If vultures had always been doing this motorbike chasing, I am sure nobody would have complained about it. This is just my opinion. I do not speak for TFP.

The sandbox isn’t a side dish—it’s the main course. The game’s core identity. You don’t say “blending FPS and RPG” unless they’re part of the experience—not the definition of it. Many of us supported or bought into this game because it promised freedom, creativity, and emergent gameplay.

I gave you an example of that creativity, making a parcour that allowed me to ride a bike on horde night. But in general I agree with you. The game lost a lot of "sandbox" when the other elements were implemented and it wasn't obvious for buyers of the game that that would be happening.

Not because we wanted a strictly tuned survival sim with rigid playbooks and fewer options every update. When you remove valid strategies like bike kiting or limit viable creative methods to survive, and then call them “boring,” you’re not balancing the game—you’re controlling it. You’re not encouraging creativity—you’re pruning it. You’re not listening—you’re prescribing. That’s not what sandbox survival is.

And here’s the brutal truth:​

If you keep tightening the leash on how players are “allowed” to survive or have fun, eventually the only people left playing will be the ones who agree with you. Not because they love the game, but because you’ve made sure they’re the only ones who feel welcome.

That’s not how you grow a loyal fanbase.
That’s how you lose the one you already had.

 

[Suxar]

They never release a game that didn't undergo very extensive play testing and if there is something that even slightly bothers them they scrap the entire thing and start over, the current bad reviews would have probably not happened if this were to be applied to this game.

If this were the case with this game, we would still not have seen it. The game is still in development.