PC Steam reviews - I kinda figured

I never said 7 days was a sandbox game.... I'm just saying that creative mode is not what a sandbox game is.
however, I just checked the kickstarter page and it says:

An open world, voxel-based, sandbox game blending the best elements of FPS, Survival Horror, Tower Defense and Role Playing Games.
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Sandbox is a reference to a place when you can do what you want easily. Children play in a sandbox, for example. Creative mode allows that gameplay. Why so many people find the "use the creative mode" advice insulting ? It's a nice way to play. And best of the best, you can start a game in creative then switch to standard mode.

 
Sandbox is a reference to a place when you can do what you want easily. Children play in a sandbox, for example. Creative mode allows that gameplay. Why so many people find the "use the creative mode" advice insulting ? It's a nice way to play. And best of the best, you can start a game in creative then switch to standard mode.
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Again, that is not correct.... yes, the term comes from playing in a sandbox but that does not mean creative mode. I don't find it insulting for you to suggest creative mode. I do find it amusing that you think creative mode is what a sandbox game is.

 
Sandbox is a reference to a place when you can do what you want easily. Children play in a sandbox, for example. Creative mode allows that gameplay. Why so many people find the "use the creative mode" advice insulting ? It's a nice way to play. And best of the best, you can start a game in creative then switch to standard mode.
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Who is this advice for? The people who want LBD? The people who don't like the AI changes? As far as I can tell, the only people this helps are the ones that are getting a brand new config setting to never have to deal with horde again.

 
1. I was responding to someone about whether it is more/less challenging, nothing to do with the pros/cons of being slower2. I was literally responding to a person who was acting condescending about people wanting to spend less time getting resources and you're giving me crap about people enjoying different styles of games? lol
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My apologies for misinterpreting your post.

 
Who is this advice for? The people who want LBD? The people who don't like the AI changes?
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Absolutely not. For those people, the advice is : play A16 :)

Again, that is not correct.... yes, the term comes from playing in a sandbox but that does not mean creative mode. I don't find it insulting for you to suggest creative mode. I do find it amusing that you think creative mode is what a sandbox game is.
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So what is a sandbox for you ? or rather, what should this game become to stick to your design of a sandbox?

 
Alpha 17 is to previous alphas what Diablo 3 was to Diablo 2, still a nice enjoyable game but a lot less complex, I know it's only my opinion but difficulty shouldn't come only from spongier zombies, it should come from complex systems and it's share of rng, I know a lot if people hate with passion rng but without it you remove the carrot from the stick, raising crafting and mining xp won't make a difference, at the end of the day you'll be placing points in a menu window just like we do now.

 
I enjoy the early game because it is more challenging to survive fighting zombies, clearing POIs, and defending on blood moon as a vulnerable character.
It’s not that I enjoy hours of hitting trees and rock with a stone axe. That isn’t fun at all but then again I don’t do that. I harvest only what I need and in the beginning my needs are smaller because I haven’t yet reached the point in progression to be wanting to harvest full stacks of wood, Stone, Clay, and Ore.

As soon as you level up to a point where you bringing in tons of resources for much less effort you now have the means and time to create much safer bases, armor, and weapons which in turn make the challenge of exploring and clearing POIs a cakewalk and blood moons negligible and then the game really does feel repetitive.

Now maybe there are people who really do like to tunnel down to bedrock using their tier one stone axe but not I. I would never start a project like that until I had progressed to the point where it is fun to do so. I just don’t want that progression to last a couple of days or as Wolfy was saying—for the game to begin at that point.

I agree that there is no challenge to hitting a rock 50 times vs 3 times and if you isolate that one activity and call that the early game then I agree with the detractors. But looking at mining in isolation and calling that the early game is a phenomenally skewed thing to do.

All anyone needs to do is change the number of points they get from starter quest and it solves all differences of opinion. Take 20 points instead of 4 and you can start out at a higher baseline. It is one simple edit.

It is clear that different people have fun in different ways. The only difference seems to be the inability of some people to comprehend that the universe actually is more diverse than themselves. You can spot this when they express confusion over how the devs made their decisions, assume that others can’t possibly like things they don’t so must be fanbois.
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Weird. I often found myself spending nights digging down to bedrock just because . ... It's night. What else am I going to do? Run out and brawl with a bunch of zombies and a wooden club who run and now run WAY better than I in the first 7 days? And I'd end up with a great chunk of stone to work with and could spend my days resource gathering and building.

I often found myself at bedrock with a stone axe or close to it. Though later play throughs I made I'd spend the first 3 days looking for sand to build over. Just made things easier overall.

 
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In case you're wondering why so many people think you love the changes. Please see your own words here.
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Except I'm not talking about THESE changes specifically. I'm talking about whatever 7 Days to Die eventually turns into. I might be one of those who turns to modding. I will for A17 if level gates remain. You are missing the point of my post in an attempt to attempt a zinger. If you weren't so intent on teaching Roland a lesson you would have seen that my post isn't even about A17. It is about an attitude about modding.

I'm not saying people who don't like A17 are small minded. I'm saying that people who look at modding as fixing something and compensating for incompetent developers is small minded. If TFP decide to go back LBD in A18 I'll understand that there are people who really find that the most entertaining way to play. If I decide to mod that out I won't post that I'm fixing the developer's mistake. I'll simply post that I am changing the game to align with my own preferences.

 
Again, that is not correct.... yes, the term comes from playing in a sandbox but that does not mean creative mode. I don't find it insulting for you to suggest creative mode. I do find it amusing that you think creative mode is what a sandbox game is.
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I dunno...Gary's Mod is almost universally seen as THE example of a pure sandbox game and from what I can tell our Creative mode is the closest to that in the offerings we have. A sandbox game is one in which you have all toys available to play with so that you can do anything you wish. With creative mode enabled you can do anything you want. You can ignore the creative menu and just play straight but at any moment you could give yourself a stack of concrete blocks to have fun with that-- or you could go through the steps of harvesting and crafting to get that stack of concrete blocks methodically.

At any rate, I can tell you that the developers, themselves, consider Creative Mode to be the purely sandbox mode of this game whereas they see the survival game (non Creative mode) as being open world and also that the players create objectives for themselves but also restricted to the rules and constraints of being a game. There are elements of a sandbox because I could choose to build whatever I want even if it isn't conducive to my survival but then there will be consequences to that.

There is nothing wrong with enabling creative mode for pure sandbox play. I know that when you post a pic of a great structure people always ask whether it was done in Creative Mode so they can think less of it but screw those people...

 
I dunno...Gary's Mod is almost universally seen as THE example of a pure sandbox game and from what I can tell our Creative mode is the closest to that in the offerings we have. A sandbox game is one in which you have all toys available to play with so that you can do anything you wish. With creative mode enabled you can do anything you want. You can ignore the creative menu and just play straight but at any moment you could give yourself a stack of concrete blocks to have fun with that-- or you could go through the steps of harvesting and crafting to get that stack of concrete blocks methodically.
At any rate, I can tell you that the developers, themselves, consider Creative Mode to be the purely sandbox mode of this game whereas they see the survival game (non Creative mode) as being open world and also that the players create objectives for themselves but also restricted to the rules and constraints of being a game. There are elements of a sandbox because I could choose to build whatever I want even if it isn't conducive to my survival but then there will be consequences to that.

There is nothing wrong with enabling creative mode for pure sandbox play. I know that when you post a pic of a great structure people always ask whether it was done in Creative Mode so they can think less of it but screw those people...
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Using a pure example kind of distorts the conversation as we don't live or play in a world of purities.

Some sandbox games require progression still to get to the goodies. That progression can vary. Be it skills, item grinding, or exploring more distant and difficult locations. Just have a look at the Sandbox tag in Steam and the games that pop up.

Sandbox may let you play with all the toys, but the big difference between Sandbox and Creative 7D2D is in creative, you can just get anything for free by pulling it from thin air. That's.... Not sandbox. 7D2D vanilla is absolutely sandbox. I can eventually play with all the toys. Just have to progress to it.

 
Weird. I often found myself spending nights digging down to bedrock just because . ... It's night. What else am I going to do? Run out and brawl with a bunch of zombies and a wooden club who run and now run WAY better than I in the first 7 days? And I'd end up with a great chunk of stone to work with and could spend my days resource gathering and building.
I often found myself at bedrock with a stone axe or close to it. Though later play throughs I made I'd spend the first 3 days looking for sand to build over. Just made things easier overall.
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You are faster than any zombie at any setting. There really isn't any reason to not go outside at night. I will spend my entire day looting and then spend my night time doing my traveling either back to my base or to time getting to the trader when he opens.

In fact, if I were to make a long ranting disrespectful negative post it would be about current zombie speed. However, faatal has stated that for now the top speed is capped and he can't do anything about it until he has time. So I'm hopeful zombies will eventually be able to be at least as fast as the player at least on nightmare speed settings.

What is fun at night is to shoot a zombie that is far away. They will start running to your location but they don't see you. So if you crouch walk to the side about five blocks they end at your location and stop. Then you throw a rock and they run there and you can fire another arrow at them and repeat the process. They can hear you if you aren't crouched and walking however.

 
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First of all, even GTA is considered a sandbox game on many sites, just so you know. In general, there are as many kinds of sandbox games as the number of meanings people give to the word sandbox.

I know that when you post a pic of a great structure people always ask whether it was done in Creative Mode so they can think less of it but screw those people...
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Sorry but it's absolutely different when you create something in survival and when you create something in creative mode. Time and effort is incomparable. I know it from my own experience. As long as the survival is a real survival and not just survival without enemies and with loads of resources, then making something beautiful in survival has a thousand time more value than doing the same thing in creative in 5 minutes time without all this pesky resource gathering, tool making, dying etc.

 
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Using a pure example kind of distorts the conversation as we don't live or play in a world of purities.
Some sandbox games require progression still to get to the goodies. That progression can vary. Be it skills, item grinding, or exploring more distant and difficult locations. Just have a look at the Sandbox tag in Steam and the games that pop up.

Sandbox may let you play with all the toys, but the big difference between Sandbox and Creative 7D2D is in creative, you can just get anything for free by pulling it from thin air. That's.... Not sandbox. 7D2D vanilla is absolutely sandbox. I can eventually play with all the toys. Just have to progress to it.
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Using a pure example sets the standard and then we can look at how other games compare to tell how much they align or don't align.

Here is the googled definition of a sandbox game: A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will.

That is the soul of Creative Mode and the opposite of Survival Mode. Even though you CAN get everything for free in Creative Mode you don't have to. That is the minimal character limitations and being able to change a virtual world at will.

As soon as significant character limitations are placed and the gamer cannot at will change the virtual world it not really a sandbox. It can be open world and the player can roam wherever they please but the rules of progression imposing requirements on the character BEFORE they can do whatever they want is the deal killer.

Again, developers have stated: Creative Mode is the sandbox version of the game.

They are not trying to keep the survival mode as a sandbox.

 
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You are faster than any zombie at any setting. There really isn't any reason to go outside at night. I will spend my entire day looting and then spend my night time doing my traveling either back to my base or to time getting to the trader when he opens.
In fact, if I were to make a long ranting disrespectful negative post it would be about current zombie speed. However, faatal has stated that for now the top speed is capped and he can't do anything about it until he has time. So I'm hopeful zombies will eventually be able to be at least as fast as the player at least on nightmare speed settings.

What is fun at night is to shoot a zombie that is far away. They will start running to your location but they don't see you. So if you crouch walk to the side about five blocks they end at your location and stop. Then you throw a rock and they run there and you can fire another arrow at them and repeat the process. They can hear you if you aren't crouched and walking however.
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I never said faster. I said better. Doesn't really matter how fast I am. If I'm out of stamina I'm screwed. I said they can run better. They don't have to worry about stamina and one wrong turn in the dark and I'm dead face to face with a running zombie and me with zero stamina.

That who distraction technique... Nice! All this time I completely forgotten it.

Really wish there was more attention put into the starting quest line. And actually break it into a few starting quest lines. Building Starter Quests, Combat Starter Quests, Crafting starter quests... Would really go a long way imo. Put that distraction tactic right into the combat line.

 
At this point i have to re write a bunch of features thay have added up over the alphas and some of it just plain cannot be modded back in:

Things like the mini map, removing crafting timers, removing football zombies

Are nothing by themselves. I can make these little changes.

What i cant do is remove the item mod system or harvest system or get back LBD or skillbooks or gunparts or make the AI behave like previous versions.
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But your list is not just one or two things. Your list there is pretty big. And I'm sorry but a big NO on adding a minimap back in. That's stupid. But it's ok i think its stupid, and its ok you enjoy it. Again modding.

You're being unreasonable. What on earth makes you think people want what you listed? Are you making the assumption that ALL people want those things? Because if you are asking devs to add all that back you're being incredibly selfish. Now you want the devs to make the game for YOU. and only YOU.

I can guarantee you Roland can put a poll up asking if people want football zombies gone, a minimap and 16's AI back that poll will not reflect what you think it will.

 
I know that when you post a pic of a great structure people always ask whether it was done in Creative Mode so they can think less of it but screw those people...
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Is it OK if I think ~MORE~ of the people who do it in survival mode though? :pirate:

-Morloc

 
First of all, even GTA is considered a sandbox game on many sites, just so you know. In general, there are as many kinds of sandbox games as the number of meanings people give to the word sandbox.
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Which is why industries develop standards and over time the industry standard is what sticks. You can consider anything to be whatever you want and you will be correct for yourself. Meanwhile developers will make games according to the industry standard. Our developers consider Creative Mode to be the sandbox and they are developing survival mode as a game with rules and restrictions and consequences. If the survival game once upon a time resembled a sandbox it is because it wasn't developed yet.

Sorry but it's absolutely different when you create something in survival and when you create something in creative mode. Time and effort is incomparable. I know it from my own experience. Sadly, since the time I realised the difference I've been having a hard time getting back to playing survival mode in games like this. After I've seen what I can create in creative and how fast it can be done, it's just such a pain in the ass.
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I agree. But being creative and being able to build something amazing is still amazing if done in Creative Mode. I give props to people who can create awesome structures whether it be in the survival game or in the sandbox mode.

 
Using a pure example sets the standard and then we can look at how other games compare to tell how much they align or don't align.
Here is the googled definition of a sandbox game: A sandbox is a style of game in which minimal character limitations are placed on the gamer, allowing the gamer to roam and change a virtual world at will.

That is the soul of Creative Mode and the opposite of Survival Mode. Even though you CAN get everything for free in Creative Mode you don't have to. That is the minimal character limitations and being able to change a vertual world at will.

As soon as significant character limitations are placed and the gamer cannot at will change the virtual world it not really a sandbox. It can be open world and the player can roam wherever they please but the rules of progression imposing requirements on the character BEFORE they can do whatever they want is the deal killer.

Again, developers have stated: Creative Mode is the sandbox version of the game.

They are not trying to keep the survival mode as a sandbox.
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Pure examples distort reality imo and I'll stick to it. Especially in my software development world. The day anything behaves out in a pure way is the day I'm doing a demo with fake everything behind the scenes.

The soul of Creative completely missed one of the more important phrases in that very definition.

"Minimal character limitations".

Which is not at all a creative mode. With zero limitations.

With minimal character limitations implies some limitations actually exist. Creative Mode has none.

 
I never said faster. I said better. Doesn't really matter how fast I am. If I'm out of stamina I'm screwed. I said they can run better. They don't have to worry about stamina and one wrong turn in the dark and I'm dead face to face with a running zombie and me with zero stamina.
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Yes but you are so much faster than them that you easily get beyond the point where they can see you and then all you need to do is crouch and walk quietly five blocks to your left and they will never find you (non bloodmoon night obviously). You don't have to run until you run out of stamina. Zeds are incredibly blind at night. When they chase you they are not seeing you. They are running to the last place they heard you make noise.

 
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