The return of old POIs?

[Michal.ak]

I watched Izprebuilts video on update 3.0 and let me say, the sandbox feature holds so much potential. If you have the freedom to toggle rpg and survival features on and off, it gives so much potential. Is there any way to add back old structures (maybe take the buildings from the older versions) and make it so you can toggle between dungeon style or classic. How you could keep it a challenge is instead of the skulls, you can visually see and use your own common sense to judge how dangerous a building is. For example, a military base could have 100 zombies in it (not falling through roofs or anything) and a basic house would have maybe a family of zombies. Additionally, you could add a toggle feature to choose how much "roaming" zombies spawn on streets and forests. Finally this can hold potential to bring back and toggle between "learn by doing" which would be amazing too but would definitely need a whole update in itself to add it as a toggle. This would let players choose between the rpg/fallout style gameplay or a realistic survival game, im really happy that you are starting to bring back features. After all these years, im starting to have hope in my favourite survival game

 

[ALEXZANDER]

I watched Izprebuilts video on update 3.0 and let me say, the sandbox feature holds so much potential. If you have the freedom to toggle rpg and survival features on and off, it gives so much potential. Is there any way to add back old structures (maybe take the buildings from the older versions) and make it so you can toggle between dungeon style or classic. How you could keep it a challenge is instead of the skulls, you can visually see and use your own common sense to judge how dangerous a building is. For example, a military base could have 100 zombies in it (not falling through roofs or anything) and a basic house would have maybe a family of zombies. Additionally, you could add a toggle feature to choose how much "roaming" zombies spawn on streets and forests. Finally this can hold potential to bring back and toggle between "learn by doing" which would be amazing too but would definitely need a whole update in itself to add it as a toggle. This would let players choose between the rpg/fallout style gameplay or a realistic survival game, im really happy that you are starting to bring back features. After all these years, im starting to have hope in my favourite survival game

Also wish POIs would be less dungeon style

 

[Michal.ak]

Also wish POIs could be less dungeon style

Yeah, i mean whether it was a flop changing it, itd be nice if they could just bring back the old ones as a toggle feature, they could add realistic zombie spawns according to the place (not falling through roofs and stuff) and just use the old structures before the dungeon style got introduced. This way you can just choose if you want to do a fallout type playthrough or just a realistic survival playthrough. I think itd be a win win situation, the devs dont have to undo all the hard work they done on the current POIs and OG players can play the game they fell in love with.

 

[Kyoji]

They talked about adding roaming zombies within POIs and that would be very nice to see. That being said I wouldn't expect POIs to be less dungeon-like as that is the current state of the game and I doubt they would go back and "fix" all of the POIs in the game and adding new POIs that are not quest-able would be development time on something many players wouldn't interact with unless...you offered something very nice to the POIs.

I for one would like to see some more unique POIs that are in the wilderness that offer amazing loot for their tier. They should be worth exploring to find and they should come in various sizes such as campsites, downed helicopter, a defensible house, better Ranger Stations, an Outlet Mall, and military bases and quarantine zones. Each POI should offer above average loot for it's tier or offer something more unique.

Currently the meta is find big city and just stay there as it has the best loot/sq inch in the game. When you have a 7 day timer it leads me to play efficient rather than spend time exploring. May just be me, but for me it would be nice to see incentives to exploring - whatever that may be.

 

[Michal.ak]

They talked about adding roaming zombies within POIs and that would be very nice to see. That being said I wouldn't expect POIs to be less dungeon-like as that is the current state of the game and I doubt they would go back and "fix" all of the POIs in the game and adding new POIs that are not quest-able would be development time on something many players wouldn't interact with unless...you offered something very nice to the POIs.

I for one would like to see some more unique POIs that are in the wilderness that offer amazing loot for their tier. They should be worth exploring to find and they should come in various sizes such as campsites, downed helicopter, a defensible house, better Ranger Stations, an Outlet Mall, and military bases and quarantine zones. Each POI should offer above average loot for it's tier or offer something more unique.

Currently the meta is find big city and just stay there as it has the best loot/sq inch in the game. When you have a 7 day timer it leads me to play efficient rather than spend time exploring. May just be me, but for me it would be nice to see incentives to exploring - whatever that may be.

I disagree about the not so many people interacting with non dungeon style POIs if all of them were like that and toggable on/off, i genuinely feel like it would be a great addition, it would probably be a whole update worth of content but I think it would be worth it. As I said, being able to toggle between rpg and survival is what everyone needs, especially the people who played this game since the early alphas who would prefer that type of gameplay. And with the loot thing. Yeah it wouldnt have the end room loot with lots of items in it, but they could easily balance it would by just adding more gun safes/crates depending on the location.

like my previous example, a military base would have tons of gun safes, munition boxes and so on but with hundreds of zombies inside. This meant even if you tried to break in how you wanted, there would always be a threat and if you would want to get all the loot, you would still have to clear it out.

I really think this is doable and would be loved by literally everyone. Like I stated, this would be toggable so the fun pimps wouldnt have to go back on their hard work and it would let players choose how their next playthrough would be.

 

[seven]

I'm not a fan of dungeon-style POIs with a treasure room at the end. I enjoy the non-quest locations more. I don't see how this could be a toggle though, unless it toggled between different sets of POIs during map generation. A dungeon POI doesn't work that well if you don't follow the correct path, and excluding those would miss out on so many well done buildings.

What I think I would really enjoy is an 'overhaul' that is something like the compopack, or Khaine's PEP, but with the game POIs reworked to remove the dungeon aspect.

 

[Michal.ak]

I'm not a fan of dungeon-style POIs with a treasure room at the end. I enjoy the non-quest locations more. I don't see how this could be a toggle though, unless it toggled between different sets of POIs during map generation. A dungeon POI doesn't work that well if you don't follow the correct path, and excluding those would miss out on so many well done buildings.

What I think I would really enjoy is an 'overhaul' that is something like the compopack, or Khaine's PEP, but with the game POIs reworked to remove the dungeon aspect.

Yeah the only way they can implement this is if it was a toggle feature for the "map generation". So basically it would be considered as new POIs.

It could be another option in random map generation, "Classic POIs: none to high" and "Dungeon POIs: none to high".

This could also be a cool way to mix in normal POIs with the none dungeon style POIs if the player would want to

Thats why I think this is really doable. It would take alot of time to add but I feel like since the fun pimps are making hundreds of things toggable in 3.0, this could be a possibility if alot of people suggest it.

 

[ALEXZANDER]

I'm not a fan of dungeon-style POIs with a treasure room at the end. I enjoy the non-quest locations more. I don't see how this could be a toggle though, unless it toggled between different sets of POIs during map generation. A dungeon POI doesn't work that well if you don't follow the correct path, and excluding those would miss out on so many well done buildings.

And also is a vomit

 

[zztong]

Is there any way to add back old structures (maybe take the buildings from the older versions) and make it so you can toggle between dungeon style or classic.

Yes, sort of, and No...

I mean I go back and retrieve old Vanilla POIs that people were fond of, bring them up to the current version, and include them in my modlet. My preference is not to make a dungeon style POI. So, if you're talking about a couple of old POIs you miss then pass me their names then I'd likely consider making a variant. (I like doing that; it is fun.) And, if you've not used my POI modlet, you can add 250 POIs to your world where about 5 of them have a dungeon style and the rest are "open."

But I suspect you mean Current Vanilla POIs. Then you're talking about a change in design philosophy from TFP's POI team and I couldn't tell you the odds of persuading them of that. I mean, they're reasonable folks, but they also know the work involved. Based on my own knowledge of building POIs, I don't see them just making copies of all the POIs and then reworking those copies. That's a mountain of work.

Now if you can come up with "options" for different zombie volume behaviors (for example) then I think you've got some hope.

I just don't see a toggle being able to switch philosophies because those different approaches lead to different POI layouts. A dungeon path, for instance, tends to block passage except in one path. An open POI tends to have fewer path blocks. A dungeon path POI makes some assumptions about how players will approach zombies. An open POI approach cannot. You see?

 

[Michal.ak]

Yes, sort of, and No...

I mean I go back and retrieve old Vanilla POIs that people were fond of, bring them up to the current version, and include them in my modlet. My preference is not to make a dungeon style POI. So, if you're talking about a couple of old POIs you miss then pass me their names then I'd likely consider making a variant. (I like doing that; it is fun.) And, if you've not used my POI modlet, you can add 250 POIs to your world where about 5 of them have a dungeon style and the rest are "open."

But I suspect you mean Current Vanilla POIs. Then you're talking about a change in design philosophy from TFP's POI team and I couldn't tell you the odds of persuading them of that. I mean, they're reasonable folks, but they also know the work involved. Based on my own knowledge of building POIs, I don't see them just making copies of all the POIs and then reworking those copies. That's a mountain of work.

Now if you can come up with "options" for different zombie volume behaviors (for example) then I think you've got some hope.

I just don't see a toggle being able to switch philosophies because those different approaches lead to different POI layouts. A dungeon path, for instance, tends to block passage except in one path. An open POI tends to have fewer path blocks. A dungeon path POI makes some assumptions about how players will approach zombies. An open POI approach cannot. You see?

I played 7 days to die on xbox since I can even remember so ive never played a mod or anything.

If they were to implement it, it would probably be a whole update worth which yeah does seem kind of time consuming. However with older features coming back, maybe theres some hope that they could feel motivated to do this.

I dont know much about how easy or hard it is to bring stuff from older versions but perhaps they could find a way to do this. I think this would genuinely push 7 days to die to be the greatest survival game, rpg or sandbox survival to the players choice.

I just hope if this post gets alot of traction or if enough people mention it, maybe just maybe they will consider adding back and remaking the POIs for an option in the random world generation to fit the games difficulty and progression without making it a dungeon style. This would genuinely unite everyone whether they like the rpg style or survival aspects more.

 

[seven]

I expect that no, this won't happen, too much work to make the old POIs work in the game. Just adding them probably wouldn't take much, but many are pretty dull, empty and lifeless compared to what we have now. There weren't any sleepers from what I recall, the interiors were mostly empty.

That teaser of 3.0 settings shows "Quests Enabled: No". Without a quest, there is no marker on where to start the path. Without a quest you don't have to clear all the zombies. But, if you don't follow the path, then you can find yourself walking up to zombies that just stand there, because you didn't cross the line that said wake up. So, I am really curious about how this will be handled.

 

[Michal.ak]

I expect that no, this won't happen, too much work to make the old POIs work in the game. Just adding them probably wouldn't take much, but many are pretty dull, empty and lifeless compared to what we have now. There weren't any sleepers from what I recall, the interiors were mostly empty.

That teaser of 3.0 settings shows "Quests Enabled: No". Without a quest, there is no marker on where to start the path. Without a quest you don't have to clear all the zombies. But, if you don't follow the path, then you can find yourself walking up to zombies that just stand there, because you didn't cross the line that said wake up. So, I am really curious about how this will be handled.

They weren't that dull, yes they missed the zombies but I feel like they must have a tool that can just set the zombies spawn and what zombies can spawn.

They would probably have to add some more lootable things to make places such as military camps worth looking but I still think they can do it. Maybe i put too much faith into them but how can I not, I fell in love with the best sandbox zombie game and I wish to see it back one day. And with all the stuff theyre adding back, i dont think its impossible. Difficult, yes but I have faith that if they saw this or enough people asking, they would consider it.

I still think that giving us the choice of rpg/survival or even letting us mix it with my previous recommendation would give this game the popularity and success the fun pimps want it to have.

 

[zztong]

If they were to implement it, it would probably be a whole update worth which yeah does seem kind of time consuming.

I think it would be more like 2 years plus, I don't think you get any progress on bandit POIs during that time or any other new POIs. But that's just my estimate.

It's close to remaking those POIs and that team goes after high quality, so it's not going to be like if I hacked on those POIs in a rushed effort. They've got around 1,000 POIs, though not all of them would have to be changed. For instance, some of the "filler" (tier 0) POIs are already dungeon-less.

 

[Michal.ak]

I think it would be more like 2 years plus, I don't think you get any progress on bandit POIs during that time or any other new POIs. But that's just my estimate.

It's close to remaking those POIs and that team goes after high quality, so it's not going to be like if I hacked on those POIs in a rushed effort. They've got around 1,000 POIs, though not all of them would have to be changed. For instance, some of the "filler" (tier 0) POIs are already dungeon-less.

Yeah for sure and not to mention they would have to categorise every POI if they were a dungeon style or a classic for the random world generation.

Its clear that now they go for high quality as every POI has so much detail to them but potentially while they implement it fully, they could give the public a beta setting to play around with while they work on detailing it more?

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

it would probably be a whole update worth of content

I think it would be a whole different game's worth of content.

Pure speculation on my part, but I get the impression they had a choice at some point: whether to just finish up a survival game sandbox with a story mode little different from every other survival game on the market, then move on to a RPG, or produce a RPG more like Fallout atop the skeleton of the survival game sandbox, and I get the impression they just decided to build a RPG atop 7 Days, which was probably still too ambitious in scope for a startup despite good sales of the game in alpha. Way more is obviously involved in producing a full RPG, which is why even triple As don't produce them all that much anymore despite their multimillion dollar budgets. Too risky for the bean counters.

That obviously didn't sit well with a lot of people who've been playing it from the beginning. Would they prefer having yet another survival game little different from any other? I definitely get that impression.

As far as making most of the POIs dungeon crawls.... That might be a decent idea for a RPG, but not so much for a sandbox survival game, imo, which it appears it will turn out to be, but hindsight is 20/20.

 

[Michal.ak]

I think it would be a whole different game's worth of content.

Pure speculation on my part, but I get the impression they had a choice at some point: whether to just finish up a survival game sandbox with a story mode little different from every other survival game on the market, then move on to a RPG, or produce a RPG more like Fallout atop the skeleton of the survival game sandbox, and I get the impression they just decided to build a RPG atop 7 Days, which was probably still too ambitious in scope for a startup despite good sales of the game in alpha. Way more is obviously involved in producing a full RPG, which is why even triple As don't produce them all that much anymore despite their multimillion dollar budgets. Too risky for the bean counters.

That obviously didn't sit well with a lot of people who've been playing it from the beginning. Would they prefer having yet another survival game little different from any other? I definitely get that impression.

As far as making most of the POIs dungeon crawls.... That might be a decent idea for a RPG, but not so much for a sandbox survival game, imo, which it appears it will turn out to be, but hindsight is 20/20.

Whole different games worth maybe but they also have changed it mid way to a rpg like with dungeon pois so I think they can do it back again. Its all about finding the time to remake POIs.