PC Some A17 thoughts

[madmole]

67% of the steam reviews since A17 stable dropped are negative. I want people to buy and play the game, so I can play with them on multiplayer servers and enjoy their creations. So I need people to like this version, which means I need to convince TFP to make it less bad.
edit - Min/Maxing is just about the dumbest thing I've heard. It falls right in line with Madmole's thinking. You both are missing the point. If you can get valuable rewards by min/maxing, then you've already lost the argument.

Historically every time we come out of experimental review scores plummet.

Historically every time we go on sale, the review scores plummet.

Historically every time we have big changes the review scores plummet.

Historically every time we have mac and linux problems the review scores plummet.

Historically TFP always made it right and review scores rise after patch 3. Relax, theres 23,000 players online right now, 2-3x more than a six weeks ago.

 

[madmole]

Why bother having different types of zombies, if they don't drop anything of value at a meaningful rate? Used to be a thing to hunt for nurse zombies when you were infected, because of the chance to drop a pill or if you were having a hard time getting a beaker. Same is true for a lot of the classes/higher tier zombies. Now, what's the point?
I saw your other post where you talked about how it's all temporary until Bandits come, and they will drop reliably. If that's the case, then just change the % drop rate to 33% and nerf it back to hell when you get bandits in with A18. For the next year, we'll still have a reason to kill zombies.

You didn't hunt for it, you sat in your base and the spikes killed everything and you profited without any risk. Now you want meds go find a med store or raid medicine cabinets, or find a trader. Very few people liked looting 200 corpses after a horde night. Now when they drop, its something pretty great. Much better than collecting trash loot 200 times.

 

[madmole]

Makes sense. Maybe I was doing things wrong, but even in A16 I didn't just sit in my base and let the zombies bring me everything. There were things I needed, and while I enjoy being self-sufficient (big fan of Swiss Family Robinson, Mystery Island, etc), it never occurred to me to just live off of the horde. Maybe I just wasn't clever enough at taking advantage of the game, but I actually did feel the need to go looting and trading, or I was going without. Special delivery of questionable quality or content every 7th day I happened to be on was great, but it didn't amount to that much in the grand scheme of things--most of the good quality items I had were acquired through looting or trading.
On the subject of the danger of the virus, that also makes good sense. It doesn't totally jive with the fact that I've just slaughtered the horde in and around my base by any means possible without risk of a plague setting in. Am I good as long as I'm not up to my elbows in them, in this line of thought? I'd say you're absolutely right with regard to exposure to the virus, but this idea actually doesn't show up in your game except as a justification for not being able to harvest corpses in this thread... (would be better if it did, IMO, since I agree with you)

To anyone else poo-pooing the idea of finding usable loot on a zombie, let me just say that in my mind it's best hashed out as a matter of frequency and quality. I'm certainly not suggesting that we need MORE loot than was dropped in A16. I feel it's been adjusted to a bit of an extreme in the other direction, and I don't think it was totally necessary.

Which is why we're still balancing. At Christmas as a kid were you super excited for that one awesome gift Santa was bringing? For me it was, all the other little gifts were ok but didn't mean squat to me compared to getting that one big meaty gift. This is how zombie loot is supposed to be now, rare but kickass, instead of just more clutter and junk.

 

[Guppycur]

I don't disagree that the loot dropped IS better, but it's fracking weird killing a miner and his hat isn't in the loot... Or a cop, farmer, nurse... These variants used to mean something.

 

[madmole]

Your point was that 7 Days to Die doesn’t need level gates. The problem is that level gates are not a foreign concept to most classic RPGs. This game is a survival game but it is also an RPG and tower defense all in a voxel world— so mining and building.
Sandbox.....is going to have to be it’s own mode since that concept clashes with a formalized game with rules and restrictions. Creative mode is the sandbox mode pure and simple.

Now you named a whole slew of games that are survival but not rpg’s that don’t use gating of some sort to save better powers for higher leveled characters. 7 Days to Die is survival and rpg so delaying powers to be awarded as achievements for reaching milestones we’ll call levels is very very common.

I’m not arguing for level gates please know. I just want the conversation to be honest and this game does share genre elements with other games (electronic and pen and paper) that decidedly do Gate.

The problem with book gates is that it completely removes major portions of the game that everyone should see and experience if they want. I played long games where I didn't get a minibike book and it was frustrating. The new perk system solves that and so many other problems with progression. You are gated by stuff in every game. Either a level you can't beat, or some money to buy an upgrade to your race car, bullets needed to shoot stuff, some action needed to perform.

Ark is level gated because you need to gain levels to buy engrams. Skyrim and fallout two of the best selling franchises of all times are level gated. Do you think the 1 billion players hated that?

The reason we put in level gates was because teams of guys were hitting INT 10 by day 3. Its an edge case, but generally speaking stuff you have to wait for is more appreciated. I don't think the wait is long, I got my forge on day 5, bicycle on day 8, minibike on day 13. Thats less than 13 hours. Not a big deal when your having fun.

 

[madmole]

You and I agree on a lot, but this we don't. Building is terrible now that it takes zero thought and design to come up with an efficient base. I know, everyone will come with the blah blah stand on box in A16. Still, in A16 there was surface deposits of all resources to make bullets (except brass, but that's not needed for shotgun turrets). Atleast in A16 we leveled at a decent pace when getting the resources together, and building actually leveled us as well. Also, not every design in A16 had to have either a funnel or staircase to dropoff.

We're increasing passive xp and I've never used any chese exploits on my bases. Just a box with railings to walk on and a lot of spikes. We plan on making zombies attack in a circle I think, so not all will go up the cheese ramps, just some. This should make attacks more interesting and cheese methods won't be guaranteed.

 

[Poojam]

You didn't hunt for it, you sat in your base and the spikes killed everything and you profited without any risk. Now you want meds go find a med store or raid medicine cabinets, or find a trader. Very few people liked looting 200 corpses after a horde night. Now when they drop, its something pretty great. Much better than collecting trash loot 200 times.

Yes, I most certainly did hunt for them. The same as I hunted for military zombies to get military gear. Business zombies for valuable clothing and radiated gear from the little orange ones. Never did find a stripper zombie to drop me a dirty g-string, but I kept trying.

I didn't mind cleaning them up. I'd be totally supportive of eliminating the absolute trash (broken glass, nails, $3, can of dog food, paper) from the zombie loot tables and reducing the drop rate to 20-25% though. That way it's much less a chore, and there is still a reason to kill them aside from XP. Porque no los dos?

edit - And btw, this is a tower defense game. One method of survival is to build a bad ass zombie killing base, sit back and relax, and let your hard work do the killing for you. Why is that bad? When people are complaining about how TFP have wrecked the value for building a base and playing a good defense to survive, this is specifically what they're talking about.

 

[HerrKingsley]

I don't disagree that the loot dropped IS better, but it's fracking weird killing a miner and his hat isn't in the loot... Or a cop, farmer, nurse... These variants used to mean something.

Totally agree with this.

Can we get generic zombies with random color on hair and clothes. And a few special zombies connected to specific POI's

 

[Poojam]

Totally agree with this. Can we get generic zombies with random color on hair and clothes. And a few special zombies connected to specific POI's

There's no point to having different models if they all drop essentially nothing.

 

[HungryZombie]

I don't disagree that the loot dropped IS better, but it's fracking weird killing a miner and his hat isn't in the loot... Or a cop, farmer, nurse... These variants used to mean something.

Is it that weird though? I mean you got his helmet but what about his cool utility vest or his tool belt? Most zombies have clothes we can visibly see but can't take. Home come only a small percentage of the time you could take his helmet? What about the other times the zombie didn't drop one?

Is it really strange to you or just something you were used to and having trouble adapting to?

 

[HerrKingsley]

There's no point to having different models if they all drop essentially nothing.

Exactly my point. Diffrent models would only be esthetic in special pois like hospitals and construction sites.

 

[Poojam]

The problem with book gates is that it completely removes major portions of the game that everyone should see and experience if they want. I played long games where I didn't get a minibike book and it was frustrating. The new perk system solves that and so many other problems with progression. You are gated by stuff in every game. Either a level you can't beat, or some money to buy an upgrade to your race car, bullets needed to shoot stuff, some action needed to perform.
Ark is level gated because you need to gain levels to buy engrams. Skyrim and fallout two of the best selling franchises of all times are level gated. Do you think the 1 billion players hated that?

The reason we put in level gates was because teams of guys were hitting INT 10 by day 3. Its an edge case, but generally speaking stuff you have to wait for is more appreciated. I don't think the wait is long, I got my forge on day 5, bicycle on day 8, minibike on day 13. Thats less than 13 hours. Not a big deal when your having fun.

Having everything be awarded to you by leveling gutted most of the incentive to explore, scavenge, and loot things. Why bother? I can sit outside of one POI, kill the zombie spawns over and over and over, and unlock everything in the entire game eventually with this new system?

 

[Reth]

[...]Ark is level gated because you need to gain levels to buy engrams. Skyrim and fallout two of the best selling franchises of all times are level gated. Do you think the 1 billion players hated that? [...]

No, they didn't. Because level 1 character in Fallout and Skyrim can do great many things without stopping for stamina every 10 seconds. Make the game fun at level 1 and all your problems will go away.

For example, I don't know why you think that swinging an axe twice and then waiting ten seconds is fun, but I assure you, it's not. Reduce the stamina usage for everything by 50% right now and start balancing from there.

People dislike gates in A17 not because they just hate the whole concept, but because there so very little to do until you open some of those gates. You want to gate iron tools - fine, but make stone tools usable.

And one other thing - add a "Respec" button, at least for the alpha versions. It's tough to figure out how useful some of those perks are, especially since some may be broken atm.

 

[HungryZombie]

Yes, I most certainly did hunt for them. The same as I hunted for military zombies to get military gear. Business zombies for valuable clothing and radiated gear from the little orange ones. Never did find a stripper zombie to drop me a dirty g-string, but I kept trying.
I didn't mind cleaning them up. I'd be totally supportive of eliminating the absolute trash (broken glass, nails, $3, can of dog food, paper) from the zombie loot tables and reducing the drop rate to 20-25% though. That way it's much less a chore, and there is still a reason to kill them aside from XP. Porque no los dos?

edit - And btw, this is a tower defense game. One method of survival is to build a bad ass zombie killing base, sit back and relax, and let your hard work do the killing for you. Why is that bad? When people are complaining about how TFP have wrecked the value for building a base and playing a good defense to survive, this is specifically what they're talking about.

Is this a tower defense game though? One thing I see as a common thread among complaints on A17 is everyone thinks this is a different game. "X doesn't belong in a survival game!", "X doesn't belong in a building game!", "Why is this becoming like an RPG?", "Why is this becoming like a shooter game?"

While the game is listed as a "Zombie horde survival crafting building tower defense RPG game" (not an exact quote) which says to me this is supposed to have elements of all these kinds of games (Quite ambitious!) This games going to be not exactly like any one type of those games and it's hard to make a statement about what should or should not be in the game because of this.

TFP might need to do a bit better about setting peoples expectations of what this game is. Might quiet down some of the uproar. Probably not though.

 

[toores]

Madmole, can you tune down the visual effects of wasteland and burnt biome?

Too much fog and too much tint. They look horrible and ATM you want to avoid them. Crossing between biomes is pretty annoying also because of it.

In FO3 it was one of the must-have mods to remove the green tint.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

The problem with book gates is that it completely removes major portions of the game that everyone should see and experience if they want.

but levelgates are not a choice!!! How often do I have to tell you.

When you removed the levelgates, ppl were finally happy, because they could descide WHAT parts of the game they wanted to skip.

Dislike walking miles? Spec into intelligence and get vehicles first. Same with forge and steel tools.

Like building? Get strength and miner perks.

Dislike running out of stamina? Get agility.

Dislike dying? Fortitude.

But instead of giving the player the choice, you said:

"multiplayer is unbalanced, because everyone has steeltools on day 10"

which is not a problem that is solved with levelgates BUT BY REMOVING THE STUPID MULTIPLICATIVE XP.

There is NO WAY to balance 1(player)x xp to 4(players)x4(other player xp) xp thats a ratio of 1:16.

make the shared ratio

10% with 1 players

8% with 3 players

5% with 4 players+

EVERYTHING MORE is insane. And you go and ignore this and put in levelgates because something else is unbalanced!

MM PLEASE! Stop beeing so defensive about A17. It might be the child TFPs love the most... but a lot of things are going VERY wrong. And to say anything else is trying to find excuses.

10.000 LESS peak players than with A16, (can't say for certain about average players, but it doesn't look too good either when compared to A16 release) but when comparing to every other alpha, A17 is the worst rated, least played (when compared to the rate at which the game grew) and most heatedly discussed on the forums.

I've been there since steamrelease. I've seen some #gates.

And some of them I'm still not happy about, but have come to accept. A17 actually made me edit the xmls and told my friends to do so myself. I am even looking out for mods... and I have never modded my game till today.

Levelgates are ridicolously bad. Nobody should ever implement them if they haven't exhausted EVERY other option. And I have seen (and given myself) LOTS of good suggestions, which you ppl just declined. Yes its your game.

But as I have said before A17 released:

players will grow tired of this game very VERY quickly. And IF I'm right and less players play this game in January or february than in Oktober/November, you will dismiss this as its "not the final version of this alpha", ignoring that other alphas will only improve, if you actually acknowledge the mistakes you made instead of trying to dismiss everything players say.

Reviews are less that 30% positive since release of stable. LESS THAN 30%!!!

ATLAS (the EA title that is a worse ARK reskin that overpromised worse than NoMansSky) has 27%.

You are basically that. Its THAT BAD. So PLEASE realize that we are NOT just "haters", but actually have some points and TRY to communicate with us, take solutions to obvious problems into account. We are fans of this game. We give you these advice willingly.

PLEASE MM. Do it like you did with the bear, with the burningzombie and with other minor things AND LISTEN to the community.

Yes those were only textures and models and not gameplay related (there are still nonsensicle landmines on top of cranes and in the wasteland), but these scores should tell you that what you did was NOT a positive step.

At best it was a nice foundation for the future. At worst you just lost a big chunk of your playerbase and if you continue to ignore them, that chunk will grow. Be happy to have such a great modding community. Because otherwise this game would be dead on new years eve (hyperbole! Or as you would say with releases: "I never said WHICH new years eve... could be 2050 ")

 

[Ranzera]

All the plains biome did was increase RAM requirements. By nuking those few trees and the special grounds of the two uneeded biomes memory went from 5.8 gb to 2.8. That biome had nothing interesting in it, and too many biome transitions makes random gen a mess.

Since y'alls answer to everything is "mod it" Is this something that modders can reasonably put back in without going into asset creation territory?

I liked the Plains biome. I liked the Maple Forest biome. A17 had been one massive disappointment where you removed a ton of stuff I liked and replaced it with stuff I don't (and in this case with nothing at all). Every map feels same-y now. Every map is boring. The road system is brain dead. I'm falling asleep on this because exploration is as rewarding as a root canal.

 

[Sergoros]

You have some points, but isn't designing base you can survive in the reason you bought this game, not to be a bone farmer? I get really pissed and want to punch something if I die in any game so for me surviving is everything. There is XP to gain, I leveled up 3 times on the day 7 horde, so there is that motivation which is no different than skilling up your pistol in a16. We are going to increase the chance for loot drops a little.
At the end of the day we want everyone to enjoy the game. Its not taylored for the builders yet so that is something we're working on. I'm building a mega castle so we'll see how hard it is and make adjustments as needed. Playing as a rogue scavenger who uses mostly melee is working well but other play styles need some love for sure.

Everyone has different things they like or ways to play. For you its a reward, for me its not dying because I take pride in 0 deaths, and building a nice castle I know has so many fall back rooms that no matter what horde comes I'm not goind gown. I have my escape hatch and coffee maybe a vehicle ready to run as long as it takes. Preparation and plans pay off usually.

Okay, now we are talking. Why designing a cool survival base is fun. In most builder games you build to make your life easier/better, one way or another. The point is, base is there to make your life better. Not worse.

If I put an effort of a real life month in designing and building a base. I expect it to be top notch. I should be able to sit back and relax for several bloodmoons doing nothing. Only having to repair minimal damages (Not at the big loss, mind you. Base should be almost self sustaining. End game base should work on you. Not be a constant resource sink) and harvesting my gardens/picking up whatever dead zeds left. Inviting other players to securely trade with me at my grounds.

This is a high life I would expect for putting up so much effort into my base. This is why many players build their bases. In dreams of having their own secure fort, where they can live an easy life. This is the end game I was looking for every alpha.

And game wont be ending for me there. I was playing on pvp servers, so I was always aware of other players wanting to raid my fortress. So I had to keep improving it day after day. More turrets, more traps, more claims. (claims are made of 4 diamonds on my server, so you can imagine I put alot of effort into gathering them too)

In short, when you design a game, you should mind, that when people put an effort into something, they usually expect a kick back. If I work hard on my base, I later expect my base to work on me. Right now, in current version, your base is a horrible needy baby, that always demands your attention, time and resources. No matter how late game you are. This is just wrong.

 

[Guppycur]

Is it that weird though? I mean you got his helmet but what about his cool utility vest or his tool belt? Most zombies have clothes we can visibly see but can't take. Home come only a small percentage of the time you could take his helmet? What about the other times the zombie didn't drop one?
Is it really strange to you or just something you were used to and having trouble adapting to?

Since they /never/ consistently dropped mining helmets, it still remains weird. That is not changed.

It was weird then, it remains weird now. Now it's just a more exacerbated weirdness.

Want a chance of a mining helmet, kill those guys. Want a chance at medical, kill the nurses. Etc.

Now it's just blah.

Your attempt at a straw man argument was cute though, but unsuccessful. =)

@madmole, like spam crafting and so many other design flaws, rather than fix the flaw you replaced the system. Bringing on new flaws.

If your testers were reaching int 10 by day 3 then increase the int cost.

If you were not able to use mini bikes because you cannot find a minibike book, then create multiple ways to accomplish the goal.

If you did not like that people could create purple crossbows because they spammed Stone axes, then do not link the two things together.

Instead of continually replacing systems that just needed fixing, fix them, leaving you more time to add more content. In the long run you would have saved a lot of time.

Now we are stuck with an imbalanced version of yet another system. Waiting for it to be balanced, or more likely, waiting for it to be replaced. Again.

 

[JoelleEmmily]

but levelgates are not a choice!!! How often do I have to tell you. When you removed the levelgates, ppl were finally happy, because they could descide WHAT parts of the game they wanted to skip.

Dislike walking miles? Spec into intelligence and get vehicles first. Same with forge and steel tools.

Like building? Get strength and miner perks.

Dislike running out of stamina? Get agility.

Dislike dying? Fortitude.

I agree with you, my personal option is that gating is objectively terrible, and should be removed, it hinders freedom, restricts play, and generally has no point. I tried to have a debate about it... But I think someone sicked a couple AIs stuck in feed back loops on me... just kept repeating the same things like a Max Headroom twitch... Was kinda scary, I felt like I was becoming one with the borg.... my resistance futile... arguments are irrelevant... points of contention are irrelevant... your play-style and avatar will be made to service us...