Time to reflect

[avalonnn]

I'm happy being able to customize a more chill postapocalyptic zombie game experience. Also had not known that the kickstarter did not make the final stretch goal, which is still on the development roadmap. See https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/7daystodie/7-days-to-die-zombie-survival-game.

 

[Roland]

At no point did i ever say that.
You just making things up at this point.

You’re right! I apologize. It wasn’t my intention to make things up and I admit I was mistaken. I had read such sentiments elsewhere at the same time I read your comments and remembered wrong who said what. I adjusted my reply.

As to your AI analysis it is very impressive but is only as strong as the assumption that your view and the negative comments it gathered actually represent the majority of the player base—or even the core. I asked AI whether forum posts represent the views of the majority.

“Usually not. People who post on game forums are a self-selecting minority of the player base, and their views can differ quite a bit from the “silent majority” who just play without engaging in discussions. A few dynamics explain this:

• Motivated voices: Players who are highly passionate—whether positively or negatively—are more likely to post. That means complaints, balance concerns, or strong praise are overrepresented compared to the average player’s more neutral experience.
• Skewed demographics: Forum users often represent a specific slice of the community: typically more hardcore, more invested in mechanics, and more likely to follow news closely. Casual players, who make up the majority in many games, are often absent.
• Echo chambers: Regular posters influence each other, creating group consensus that may feel like “everyone thinks this,” when in fact it’s just common among that small active group.
• Visibility bias: Because developers and players see those forum posts, it’s easy to assume they represent most players, but actual in-game behavior (e.g., what characters people play, how they spend time/money) often tells a different story.”

As you said, time will tell whether the silent majority aligns with your views or not.

 

[Roland]

The reason for posing here is to add quality feedback so the dev team dont get stuck listening to the bandwagon crowd that predominantly parrot their fav streamer. Obtain a better understanding of the core issue as to how they ended up in this situation giving them the chance to save their revenue stream.

Thanks for posting your views here. Just because you get some opposition to your opinions doesn’t make this place an echo chamber for blind bisitive support.

We get plenty of criticism here and there is debate as people refine and share their dissenting views. You’ve kept to the etiquette rules and so your posts have remain visible and available for devs and community members to read. Just because there is more disagreement with your views here than there might be in a subreddit or on Steam doesn’t mean your arguments haven’t been made.

Its good that you’ve stuck around to answer those challenges so that readers can get a better sense where you are coming from and also read arguments against your POV and see where their own opinions align.

Your only two flaws in this entire conversation is your tendency to immediately assume that any opposing viewpoint is thoughtless fanboy parroting and that the devs are somehow marionettes controlled by the positive comments people may post here.

 

[BFT2020]

AI has no such concept as truth and lies. There is frequency of mention, experience and weight of experience. All its algorithms are built on these three things.

True, but it also has no concept of facts. We are already seeing this in the real world where lawyers are being sanctioned because they relied on AI to search for court cases / decisions that support their side of the case. In those instances, the AI generated fake cases. A lot of this fake information was not mentioned online, but was from the AI piecing together random information to create the fake case.

 

[YourMirror]

True, but it also has no concept of facts. We are already seeing this in the real world where lawyers are being sanctioned because they relied on AI to search for court cases / decisions that support their side of the case. In those instances, the AI generated fake cases. A lot of this fake information was not mentioned online, but was from the AI piecing together random information to create the fake case.

And can be easily steered into a bias just by choosing the right prompts.

 

[BFT2020]

You are right models can be manipulated and AI can and will fabricate data.. I have had to deal with this, you mitigate it by custom prompting scripts / instruction sets that go with each API query. Its why multiple models are used across a huge range of data sets (forums/platforms) and including date ranges to compile a consensus removing the inaccurate data.
If you look around in the current world most aspects are already run by AI which does a far better job of humans.
But fully understand you dont trust it.
If thats the case happy for you to provide an alternative analysis looking at statics datasets and internet forum posts across multiple platforms dating back half a decade.
Or we can just go on your opinion that the AI analysis is incorrect.

When it comes to large data models and key analysis AI is surprisingly accurate.

We have evidence of AI models creating fake court cases for lawyers who are looking for cases to bolster their side of the suit. And we have seen information that is heavily weighted to be true even when it was obviously false information

Algorithms can have inherent biases in them based on how they were coded. Facial recognition technology, a form of AI, is widely known to generate false positives of minorities when comparing photos where human eyes could easily tell that they were different people.

 

[theFlu]

Facial recognition technology, a form of AI, is widely known to generate false positives

In a similar vein, the current "age verification falling for norman reedus" is rather hilarious...

 

[Riamus]

AI is a useful tool. However, it is severely limited by what data is available, and even being careful with your prompts can't fix that. Take something that gets a lot of people talking about it who are incorrect in what they are saying. AI will see all those comments and little against them and state it as fact. There are ways to help mitigate this, such as telling AI to ignore all data from forums, but it is still always a problem. And this is especially true with opinions. AI will assume that the loudest voices are the most popular, just like people do. It will then state it is a fact that such is the most popular opinion.

There are a couple main problems with using AI on a forum. First, a lot of people don't like to read what is clearly AI generated text. They feel that if someone wants to make a point, they should do it in their own words. It is over things to use AI to get some information, but another to have it write your post for you. Second, when AI gets used on a forum like this, it is often used to get data that includes forum posts, which is inherently bad data.

Take for example, a topic that keeps being brought up here about "millions" of people playing PVP in this game. It is bright up so much that AI can call it a fact even though it isn't. In this case, there are enough people who point out that it isn't true that AI usually won't give wrong information about that, but if enough people didn't disagree, AI would assume all of those sizes of posts were fact. Now, take something like Steam or Reddit, where people actively try to prevent people from disagreeing and that field false information for AI unless you force it to ignore forums and sites like those.

In addition, most of the time when people use AI to post for them, they do not include the prompt. That means they can easily manipulate the results either intentionally or through a bad prompt and there isn't any way to know other than to try running your own AI prompt.

For all these reasons, and more, a lot of people don't like seeing AI used in posts.

Now, I do use AI for things. It is useful. But it is also very dangerous because it is so easy to get the answer you want through asking a biased question without raising that you are doing so.

Someone asked about people playing this game on console in China and AI said that millions played the game on console in China, which is obviously wrong. But because of how the prompt was worded, that was the response. Too many people assume that any AI response is true. And even if someone is very experienced with using AI and getting it to use only valid data and not opinions or purposely misleading information, it is still often wrong with anything that isn't a very distinct answer. All it a math question and it will usually get the right answer. Ask it about opinions and it will often be wrong. Even something like asking it for code can be wrong without using additional prompts.

It also becomes a problem when there isn't much data available. If you ask it how many people pay this game, you won't get a good answer because although Steam numbers are easy to get, other platform numbers aren't available. But AI doesn't normally add a note that the numbers they provide are only from one source or a limited set of data. It will just give something like Steam numbers as of that was the entire amount of players. Or it will "guess", which can be even worse.

We have also seen people post using AI and when people pointed out errors in it, they responded with another AI post. I doubt many people want to have a conversation with AI.

In short, AI just isn't a good choice for posts on a forum, especially when related to either opinions or hotly debated topics. It is far better to just write your own posts.

 

[Soulmonster]

What creeps me out is that you seem to love the absolutely worst version this game has ever had and have zero complaints and youre also optimistic about the future as well. Its just not human. And again, like I said before, if you really feel that way about the game, then fine, you know theres a 0.0001% chance even for that scenario to exist, but the way you wrote your post was just downright amazon bot-ish to me. Now with this cleared off lets stop derailing the topic with personal arguments.

Maybe I don't think it is "the absolute worst" version of the game? Subjective preferences can be a challenging concept.

I have no idea how you have arrived at the conclusion that I have zero complaints. Probably a cognitive error.

 

[ilexev]

Well i am posting here in a final last hope that the devs may read and compile everyone's opinions.

There has been a lot of noise going on over the last few weeks. In my opinion this has steamed from years of player neglect.
With almost a decade in 7DTD and it being my most played game by a lot my personal experience with the game in its current state is really not enjoyable.
The original vision which i signed on for was an open world survival game with no limitations on how you play. Sadly this is not that game today. To me this has turned the game into an arcade FPS zombie game.

Before you jump the gun hear me out as i will also include some suggestions for how to improve the experience and remember this is only my opinion.

I would like to think i understand a lot of the changes they have implemented was to reduce the learning curve to new players, stop exploits improve content and a plot/story. But in reality i dont...
It would be interesting to understand what data they used to grade/rank the feedback to prompt these changes because for a long time the same issues keep coming up in forums, private chats, discord and the likes. For a very long time we the players have felt that TFP's have actively gone out of their way to restrict how we play and do the exact opposite of the suggestions offered to make the game more enjoyable. (Oh and dont forget the promises "NPC's)

Lets start with my biggest gripe. Progression, skill trees and perks
To have any chance of progressing with the bioms and zombie strength you need to specialize in a skill tree due to the additional buffs you get from each perk in that tree. This works well in a 5 party co-op as each person can specialize in each area. But look what that does... Locks you into a play style that is predefined. This goes against a lot of the marketing and dev talks (from the past) where they spoke about playing the game how you like as a player.

Locking perks behind trees - This restricts player freedom. For example i would like to have a character build of knife, machine gun and tools. Game dev's say no you cant. You must play the tree we have set for you.

Locking progression behind books - I cant tell you how much i hate the way this has been implemented as you also need to spend points in the area you want to progress in just to get the probability added to the loot table. But you cant add skill points because the progression tree and its perks system punish you for diversifying.
Then the whole progression is resting on RNG to get to your end goal. RNG is great for finding that special weapon or treasure map but here really does not suit.

This is where the "Learn By Doing" argument comes into play vs Book system. Each system can and will be exploited.
Example- current book exploit- Forced play path to Interlect, book worm, mailboxes, nerd armour. Ok dont want that build. Your punished!
Petite robe noire : j'ai fabriqué cet objet plus de mille fois (versions précédentes), mais je suis maintenant bloqué par des pièces d'outils ou d'armes. Od, debout dans un coin, court nulle part pour des raisons sportives.
Peu importe ce que vous faites pour lutter contre les exploits, cela se produira toujours.

Exploits - Comme ci-dessus, il n'y a aucun moyen d'arrêter les personnes qui exploitent les mécanismes du jeu. 10 millions d'esprits auront toujours une longueur d'avance sur l'équipe de développement.
Mon problème est qu'en adoptant la position selon laquelle tous les exploits doivent être supprimés, y compris le choix de la façon de jouer, tous les styles de jeu, à l'exception de « The Fun Pimps », ont été supprimés. La liberté de jouer comme on le souhaite est désormais remplacée par « à vous de suivre cette voie ».

J’ai l’impression que beaucoup de ces éléments ont été mis en œuvre pour la nouvelle pièce afin de réduire la courbe d’apprentissage.
La courbe d'apprentissage pour les nouveaux joueurs était abrupte, ce qui a découragé un grand nombre de joueurs. Il y aurait deux pistes à explorer : réduire la complexité ou proposer de meilleures informations pédagogiques (infobulles, tutoriels, etc.). J'ai l'impression qu'ils ont simplifié les mécanismes de jeu, vous enfermant dans un chemin de jeu, tout en les complexifiant avec des zombies diplômés en ingénierie, rendant la horde de 7 jours cauchemardesque à comprendre, sans pour autant proposer de tutoriels.

La réunion publique organisée par TFP la semaine dernière était un bon signe qu'ils pourraient peut-être écouter un peu les joueurs. Malheureusement, il a fallu une révolte massive et le système d'évaluation Steam pour y parvenir. De plus, ils n'ont abordé que l'implémentation de la version 2.0, avec la météo et les badges, sans aborder les fondamentaux sur lesquels le jeu a été initialement construit et vendu. Je n'ai pas grand espoir qu'ils règlent ces problèmes.

N'oubliez pas que ce n'est pas mon jeu... Je suis juste un joueur. Mon seul pouvoir est de jouer ou de ne pas jouer. (Ne créez pas de mods, ne gérez pas de serveurs pour les joueurs.) Ne soutenez pas le produit.
Je ne veux pas ça. Les TFP ne veulent pas ça. Mais je ne suis qu'un, et ce n'est que mon opinion.

Je ne jouerais pas à 7DTD sans les mods de refonte. En réalité, ce sont les moddeurs qui conservent le noyau dur des joueurs et les heures de jeu dont TFP se vante…

Personnellement, je souhaite voir ce jeu réussir. Je suis dans le train de TFP depuis presque dix ans et je ne veux pas en descendre… Mais j'ai ce sentiment redoutable qu'il est sur le point de s'écraser.

Remarque : Soyez respectueux et constructif dans vos réponses. Si vous faites preuve de respect, je le ferai aussi.

Je suis d'accord avec beaucoup de choses intéressantes et pertinente que tu a dit, j'ajouterai que réfléchir à des systèmes hybrides entre livre/apprentissage par la pratique serais plus subtil et plaisant pour tout le monde, de plus il est vrai que le jeu manque d'infobulles et a un tutoriel assez peu develloper, je l'avais déjà dit mais on m'a répondu que c'était suffisant, hors, il y a beaucoup de mécanique qu'on ne peut pas decouvrir par hasard, le tuto doit être repensé, et le jeu doit avoir plus de systèmes hybrides pour certaines choses concernant la progression

 

[ilexev]

Merci d'avoir partagé votre point de vue ici. Ce n'est pas parce que vous rencontrez une certaine opposition à vos opinions que cet endroit est une caisse de résonance pour un soutien aveugle et éclairé.

Nous recevons beaucoup de critiques ici et là, et le débat s'intensifie, chacun peaufinant et partageant ses opinions divergentes. Vous avez respecté les règles de bienséance, et vos publications sont donc restées visibles et accessibles aux développeurs et aux membres de la communauté. Ce n'est pas parce qu'il y a plus de désaccords avec vos opinions ici que sur un subreddit ou sur Steam que vos arguments n'ont pas été défendus.

C'est bien que vous soyez resté pour répondre à ces défis afin que les lecteurs puissent avoir une meilleure idée d'où vous venez et également lire les arguments contre votre point de vue et voir où leurs propres opinions s'alignent.

Vos deux seuls défauts dans toute cette conversation sont votre tendance à supposer immédiatement que tout point de vue opposé est un perroquet irréfléchi de fanboy et que les développeurs sont en quelque sorte des marionnettes contrôlées par les commentaires positifs que les gens peuvent publier ici.

Dans ce cas vous pourriez vous inspirer (sans volé bien sûr) de systèmes qui fonctionne bien sûr d'autres jeux et les faire à la sauce tfp et 7d2d, de plus l'ia apprend grâce au donné, certe, mais elle est aussi paramètrable, ce qui donne une énorme marge de changement, de comportement et de manoeuvre possible selon la manière que vous décidez de modifier les paramètres de traitement ia et donnée ia

 

[ilexev]

AI is a useful tool. However, it is severely limited by what data is available, and even being careful with your prompts can't fix that. Take something that gets a lot of people talking about it who are incorrect in what they are saying. AI will see all those comments and little against them and state it as fact. There are ways to help mitigate this, such as telling AI to ignore all data from forums, but it is still always a problem. And this is especially true with opinions. AI will assume that the loudest voices are the most popular, just like people do. It will then state it is a fact that such is the most popular opinion.

There are a couple main problems with using AI on a forum. First, a lot of people don't like to read what is clearly AI generated text. They feel that if someone wants to make a point, they should do it in their own words. It is over things to use AI to get some information, but another to have it write your post for you. Second, when AI gets used on a forum like this, it is often used to get data that includes forum posts, which is inherently bad data.

Take for example, a topic that keeps being brought up here about "millions" of people playing PVP in this game. It is bright up so much that AI can call it a fact even though it isn't. In this case, there are enough people who point out that it isn't true that AI usually won't give wrong information about that, but if enough people didn't disagree, AI would assume all of those sizes of posts were fact. Now, take something like Steam or Reddit, where people actively try to prevent people from disagreeing and that field false information for AI unless you force it to ignore forums and sites like those.

In addition, most of the time when people use AI to post for them, they do not include the prompt. That means they can easily manipulate the results either intentionally or through a bad prompt and there isn't any way to know other than to try running your own AI prompt.

For all these reasons, and more, a lot of people don't like seeing AI used in posts.

Now, I do use AI for things. It is useful. But it is also very dangerous because it is so easy to get the answer you want through asking a biased question without raising that you are doing so.

Quelqu'un a posé une question sur les joueurs de ce jeu sur console en Chine, et l'IA a déclaré que des millions d'entre eux y ont joué, ce qui est évidemment faux. Mais la formulation de la question a fait de cette réponse la réponse. Trop de gens supposent que toute réponse de l'IA est vraie. Et même si quelqu'un est très expérimenté dans l'utilisation de l'IA et la fait utiliser uniquement des données valides, et non des opinions ou des informations volontairement trompeuses, elle se trompe souvent sur tout ce qui n'est pas une réponse très claire. C'est une question de mathématiques et elle obtiendra généralement la bonne réponse. Posez-lui des questions sur ses opinions et elle se trompera souvent. Même une simple demande de code peut être erronée sans incitation supplémentaire.

Le manque de données disponibles pose également problème. Si vous lui demandez combien de joueurs paient pour ce jeu, vous n'obtiendrez pas de réponse satisfaisante, car si les chiffres Steam sont faciles à obtenir, ceux des autres plateformes ne le sont pas. L'IA n'indique généralement pas que les chiffres fournis proviennent d'une seule source ou d'un ensemble limité de données. Elle se contente de donner des chiffres Steam basés sur le nombre total de joueurs. Ou alors, elle se contente de deviner, ce qui peut être encore pire.

Nous avons également vu des utilisateurs publier des messages utilisant l'IA et, lorsqu'ils signalaient des erreurs, ils répondaient par une autre publication utilisant l'IA. Je doute que beaucoup de gens souhaitent discuter avec l'IA.

En bref, l'IA n'est pas un bon choix pour les publications sur un forum, surtout lorsqu'elles portent sur des opinions ou des sujets controversés. Il est bien plus judicieux d'écrire ses propres publications.

Une solution pour palier à un problème spécifique c'est peut être de forcer l'ia a utiliser des références fiable publié par des sites de données neutre et objectifs ? Des choses spécifiques, et traiter les messages du forum en ayant les connaissances fiable à disposition ? Après je ne suis pas un expert en ia, mais ce que je sais, c'est que la maîtrise du prompt est tout un art, peut être même une science, pour manipuler ou demander des choses a une ia

 

[Riamus]

A solution to overcome a specific problem is perhaps to force the AI to use reliable references published by neutral and objective data sites? Specific things, and process forum messages with reliable knowledge available? Afterwards, I am not an AI expert, but what I do know is that mastering the prompt is an art, perhaps even a science, to manipulate or ask things to an AI.

Only a relatively limited number of things can be limited to only such data. You can reference things like science and math that way, but you aren't going to get that level of reliable information for a post about this game.

 

[Charger265]

You’re right! I apologize. It wasn’t my intention to make things up and I admit I was mistaken. I had read such sentiments elsewhere at the same time I read your comments and remembered wrong who said what. I adjusted my reply.

Thanks... I really appreciate it. We were never on opposing sides we both love the game and both want it to succeed. Lets hope our interaction has a positive affect on the rest of the members so everyone feels welcomed.

As to your AI analysis it is very impressive but is only as strong as the assumption that your view and the negative comments it gathered actually represent the majority of the player base—or even the core. I asked AI whether forum posts represent the views of the majority.

“Usually not. People who post on game forums are a self-selecting minority of the player base, and their views can differ quite a bit from the “silent majority” who just play without engaging in discussions. A few dynamics explain this:

I agree with you here. The analysis from the AI regarding a single post on a forum is correct statically. That is the most accurate analysis. Many have pointed out why AI can be incorrect also. I use AI a lot to work on large data set models. Happy to provide additional information on the process but dont want to fill this thread up with a scientific paper as its clearly not what people here want to see or read...

Its good that you’ve stuck around to answer those challenges so that readers can get a better sense where you are coming from and also read arguments against your POV and see where their own opinions align.

Your only two flaws in this entire conversation is your tendency to immediately assume that any opposing viewpoint is thoughtless fanboy parroting and that the devs are somehow marionettes controlled by the positive comments people may post here.

Yup thats a very fair point and requires some explanation. This is obviously not the only place i read comments. multiple discords, facebook groups, X threads, reddit, nexus mods the list of varied places i have spent years in have provided a fairly good insight into the general consensus of the average player in 7dtd. I sure you can tell how i go about constructing posts that its clinical and devoid of feelings only looking at factual information.
Now i will say yes i did go straight to that as i knew it would garner that reaction bringing it all to a head. Which it did. Mind you i have done the same with the users who just jumped onto the threads (town hall ect) calling for jars to be brought back. So its not a one sided argument or personal it steams from only having a one sided view and dismissing the wider range of information. Which im sorry to say very much showed those tendencies by a few members of the forum. I have no problem with them as you will never get through to them. But when a moderator does the same it can have a detrimental effect on the whole forum and creates an echo chamber culture. With all due respect this is exactly how some outside view perceives the sentiment of this forum.

Having this open discord is the only way to resolve differences and i will make sure to take all your constructive criticism on.

I see a few here who like to rebuttable opposing view posts because they do not understand the information and rely on sentiment and feelings to make judgment. Granted in most cases the opposing view is based on feelings and sentiment so from a stand point of progressing a discussion its invalid.
Now looking from the outside how do you address an issue where by no matter what information you put before someone they will refute the evidence regardless of how accurate it is. What category do you put the person in?

Regardless... Thankyou for addressing this and leading by example

 

[Kyoji]

People who post on game forums are a self-selecting minority of the player base, and their views can differ quite a bit from the “silent majority” who just play without engaging in discussions. A few dynamics explain this:

• Motivated voices: Players who are highly passionate—whether positively or negatively—are more likely to post. That means complaints, balance concerns, or strong praise are overrepresented compared to the average player’s more neutral experience.
• Skewed demographics: Forum users often represent a specific slice of the community: typically more hardcore, more invested in mechanics, and more likely to follow news closely. Casual players, who make up the majority in many games, are often absent.
• Echo chambers: Regular posters influence each other, creating group consensus that may feel like “everyone thinks this,” when in fact it’s just common among that small active group.
• Visibility bias: Because developers and players see those forum posts, it’s easy to assume they represent most players, but actual in-game behavior (e.g., what characters people play, how they spend time/money) often tells a different story.”

As you said, time will tell whether the silent majority aligns with your views or not.

Mixed steam reviews, creator content is in disagreement with the direction, reddit and steam comments are piling on. How many points on a graph do you need?

Keep in mind even if by some measure the people throwing a tantrum was the minority, people select games based off steam reviews, ratings and word of mouth from the very content creators you shun. So yeah it would be good to address the criticisms people have.

It feels like the building is on fire with smoke filling the rooms and some of you would still be there denying the need to worry. The town hall was needed and the changes they brought forth was needed and every person who defended badges, smoothies, and the update are now pushing back against more potential change.

If you guys want to be wrong this much become a weatherman.

 

[Rotor]

weatherman.

Best profession ever.

 

[Charger265]

AI is a useful tool. However, it is severely limited by what data is available, and even being careful with your prompts can't fix that. Take something that gets a lot of people talking about it who are incorrect in what they are saying. AI will see all those comments and little against them and state it as fact. There are ways to help mitigate this, such as telling AI to ignore all data from forums, but it is still always a problem. And this is especially true with opinions. AI will assume that the loudest voices are the most popular, just like people do. It will then state it is a fact that such is the most popular opinion.

There are a couple main problems with using AI on a forum. First, a lot of people don't like to read what is clearly AI generated text. They feel that if someone wants to make a point, they should do it in their own words. It is over things to use AI to get some information, but another to have it write your post for you. Second, when AI gets used on a forum like this, it is often used to get data that includes forum posts, which is inherently bad data.

Take for example, a topic that keeps being brought up here about "millions" of people playing PVP in this game. It is bright up so much that AI can call it a fact even though it isn't. In this case, there are enough people who point out that it isn't true that AI usually won't give wrong information about that, but if enough people didn't disagree, AI would assume all of those sizes of posts were fact. Now, take something like Steam or Reddit, where people actively try to prevent people from disagreeing and that field false information for AI unless you force it to ignore forums and sites like those.

In addition, most of the time when people use AI to post for them, they do not include the prompt. That means they can easily manipulate the results either intentionally or through a bad prompt and there isn't any way to know other than to try running your own AI prompt.

For all these reasons, and more, a lot of people don't like seeing AI used in posts.

Now, I do use AI for things. It is useful. But it is also very dangerous because it is so easy to get the answer you want through asking a biased question without raising that you are doing so.

Someone asked about people playing this game on console in China and AI said that millions played the game on console in China, which is obviously wrong. But because of how the prompt was worded, that was the response. Too many people assume that any AI response is true. And even if someone is very experienced with using AI and getting it to use only valid data and not opinions or purposely misleading information, it is still often wrong with anything that isn't a very distinct answer. All it a math question and it will usually get the right answer. Ask it about opinions and it will often be wrong. Even something like asking it for code can be wrong without using additional prompts.

It also becomes a problem when there isn't much data available. If you ask it how many people pay this game, you won't get a good answer because although Steam numbers are easy to get, other platform numbers aren't available. But AI doesn't normally add a note that the numbers they provide are only from one source or a limited set of data. It will just give something like Steam numbers as of that was the entire amount of players. Or it will "guess", which can be even worse.

We have also seen people post using AI and when people pointed out errors in it, they responded with another AI post. I doubt many people want to have a conversation with AI.

In short, AI just isn't a good choice for posts on a forum, especially when related to either opinions or hotly debated topics. It is far better to just write your own posts.

This is very much on point as to the issues that arise using AI.
And your right i dont like seeing AI used in forums like this. Which is why i made it clear that it was AI and not my own words so it was easy to make a clear distinction.

If you want the prompts used it will likely fill 10 pages of this forum. But here is the methodology used. Using multiple prompts through different models to collect the data including different search engines and discord servers. Date parameters, topics, negative/positive annotations, post count, demographic, repeat topic count and quite a few more.
Collate that data into a baserow data base. Use Ai to analyze the data and isolate information that would be considered bad data, apply known models of positive vs negative review counts and compile a prompt to investigate and analyze the over all consensus of the wider community pre 1.0 and post 1.0.

From that combined data set it was submitted to the 4 mentioned AI's again. Those results we put back into baserow and the new data set was submitted to all 4 again looking to summarize the findings. These steps do a very good job of mitigating any isolated data as the primary source skewing results and also stops what i like to call "AI hallucination" With all of that done it still filled up multiple pages of information which then needed to condensed into point form.

You can make judgment on the validity of the data from this point and i will point out i didnt personally review that data set in any great detail due to the volume of data the was collected. But made sure the prompts had a clear instruction set to identify valid/invalid data. Yup i am just some random on a forum with no context to their background. So you have to be rightfully skeptical.

However at this point i must say in the almost 10 years i have been playing 7dtd i can only recall 3-4 times where i have posted any remarks shedding a poor light on the game. And yes my positive review on steam still remains as is unchanged. From personal experience the growing issues have been a very slow burn and only now the silent majority are speaking up as the game they once loved is no longer there. Ignoring that as a whole and dismissing the validity of their opinions does not help anyone. Yes we know which ever the direction the game takes it wont make everyone happy.

Looking at the statics the game is very much at a cross roads and i want to do everything i can to make sure its a success.

 

[MaxTunnerX]

Maybe I don't think it is "the absolute worst" version of the game? Subjective preferences can be a challenging concept.

I have no idea how you have arrived at the conclusion that I have zero complaints. Probably a cognitive error.

You mean except "I enjoyed the game before and now Im enjoying it even more"? Despite this being the most hated update I have ever seen? In any case, stop trolling. And if by some chance you legitimetly dont understand, there is no way for me to make you understand after all those attempts. So finally move on and stop dragging this off-topic 1vs1 discussion that nobody cares about.

 

[meganoth]

Mixed steam reviews, creator content is in disagreement with the direction, reddit and steam comments are piling on. How many points on a graph do you need?

Keep in mind even if by some measure the people throwing a tantrum was the minority, people select games based off steam reviews, ratings and word of mouth from the very content creators you shun. So yeah it would be good to address the criticisms people have.

That is exactly what is happening. Steam rating has a serious influence on the income of TFP. That is IMHO the reason why the town hall meeting happened and madmole asked about jars on reddit (or wherever). But it doesn't mean that the data TFP acts on now is reliable user survey data. It just means that TFP had to react to the steam score whether it shows a reliable picture or not.

To be fair, the steam score IS the most reliable unreliable measure we players have, with the exception of when review bombing happens. Looking at the steam votes over time ( https://www.lorenzostanco.com/lab/steam/ratings/251570/2years/m+u+ur+uc+urc/ ) you can see that the ratings dropping happened at the same time the voting increased by about ~100%-200% (starting ~mid of june, but obscured by the rolling window of "recent votes"), that is a sign of an orchestrated effort i.e. of someone rallying people to vote.

It feels like the building is on fire with smoke filling the rooms and some of you would still be there denying the need to worry. The town hall was needed and the changes they brought forth was needed and every person who defended badges, smoothies, and the update are now pushing back against more potential change.

If you guys want to be wrong this much become a weatherman.

That doesn't mean people can't say they don't want jars back, even if it were a commercial necessity. Though at least with the changes announced at the town hall meeting I am largely pleased.

I am curious how far they will force TFP to go. TFP realistically would need to appeal to the usually silent group of players who like the game to make a vote on steam but as of yet that didn't happen. While the opposition has organised itself. There may be more delays coming before we ever see bandits.

 

[Xacsis]

Well i am posting here in a final last hope that the devs may read and compile everyone's opinions.

There has been a lot of noise going on over the last few weeks. In my opinion this has steamed from years of player neglect.
With almost a decade in 7DTD and it being my most played game by a lot my personal experience with the game in its current state is really not enjoyable.
The original vision which i signed on for was an open world survival game with no limitations on how you play. Sadly this is not that game today. To me this has turned the game into an arcade FPS zombie game.

Before you jump the gun hear me out as i will also include some suggestions for how to improve the experience and remember this is only my opinion.

I would like to think i understand a lot of the changes they have implemented was to reduce the learning curve to new players, stop exploits improve content and a plot/story. But in reality i dont...
It would be interesting to understand what data they used to grade/rank the feedback to prompt these changes because for a long time the same issues keep coming up in forums, private chats, discord and the likes. For a very long time we the players have felt that TFP's have actively gone out of their way to restrict how we play and do the exact opposite of the suggestions offered to make the game more enjoyable. (Oh and dont forget the promises "NPC's)

Lets start with my biggest gripe. Progression, skill trees and perks
To have any chance of progressing with the bioms and zombie strength you need to specialize in a skill tree due to the additional buffs you get from each perk in that tree. This works well in a 5 party co-op as each person can specialize in each area. But look what that does... Locks you into a play style that is predefined. This goes against a lot of the marketing and dev talks (from the past) where they spoke about playing the game how you like as a player.

Locking perks behind trees - This restricts player freedom. For example i would like to have a character build of knife, machine gun and tools. Game dev's say no you cant. You must play the tree we have set for you.

Locking progression behind books - I cant tell you how much i hate the way this has been implemented as you also need to spend points in the area you want to progress in just to get the probability added to the loot table. But you cant add skill points because the progression tree and its perks system punish you for diversifying.
Then the whole progression is resting on RNG to get to your end goal. RNG is great for finding that special weapon or treasure map but here really does not suit.

This is where the "Learn By Doing" argument comes into play vs Book system. Each system can and will be exploited.
Example- current book exploit- Forced play path to Interlect, book worm, mailboxes, nerd armour. Ok dont want that build. Your punished!
LBD- crafing that one item over a thousand times.. (past builds) now stoped by tool parts or gun parts. Od standing in a corner running nowhere for athletics.
Does not matter what you do to combat exploits it will always happen.

Exploits - As with above there is no way to stop people who exploit the game mechanics. 10 million minds is always going to be one step ahead of the dev team.
The issue i have here is that by taking the stance that all exploits should be removed including choice in how you play the game has resulted in all but "The Fun Pimps" play styles being removed. The freedom to play as you like has now change to "you must follow this path"

I feel a lot of this has been impleneted for the new play to reduce the learing curve.
The learning curve for new players was steep and this put a huge number of player off the game. There would be two directions to look at this, one to reduce the complexity or provide better instructional information (tool tips, tutorials, ect). I feel they have removed a lot of the complexity to the game mechanics locking you into a play path yet at the same time added complexity with zombies who have engineering degrees making the 7 day horde a nightmare to understand, all while doing nothing for tutorials.

The Town Hall that TFP's had last week was a good sign they might just listen to the players a little. But unfortunally it took a massive revult and the steam review system to prompt it. Further more they have only touched on the implementation of 2.0 with weather and badges but didnt address the core fundermentals which the game was originally buiilt and sold on. I dont have high hopes they will address any of these issue

Remember its not my game... Im just a player. The only power i have is play or dont play. (Dont make mods, Dont run servers for players) Dont support the product.
I dont want that. TFP's dont want that. But i am only 1 and its only my opinion.

I would not be playing 7DTD if it was not for the overhaul mods out there. In reality its the modders that are keeping the core player base and the hours played TFP's brag about....

I personally want to see this game succeed. I have been on TFP's train for almost a decade now and i dont want to get off.. But i have that dreaded feeling its about to crash hard.

Note: Be respectful and constructive in your replies. If you show respect so will i

I disagree with pretty much everything. I feel you would have a valid gripe if you couldn’t reset your skill points. Putting a point into cooking to get more books and resetting later isn’t even a mild inconvience. If anything it just makes the game a little bit harder by having to actually care about what you are doing.

As for the grind until you drop skill progression. I never understood why people liked this in any game. RuneScape is the best example as I don’t want to spend my entire game session with my friends watching me chop down every forest in the game for levels. It turns a game into a chore IMO.

That townhall is the only reason I’m on here now because I was shocked by the amount of complaints for things that are only seem to make the game easier which is a massive disappointment. Even on the hardest difficulty the game is already way to easy

Post automatically merged: Today at 7:30 AM

It is a problem to me because I don't enjoy spending time rummaging through dozen upon dozens of mail boxes for easy magazines while playing multiplayer. I'd much prefer if there was no incentive for me to do it this way and instead the quickest way to progress would be doing something that is fun or natural, like exploring POIs, doing quests, building a stronghold to hold off the next blood moon horde, or just fighting zombies. Sure, I can choose to just not do it -- and just pass by all these mail boxes -- but when playing multiplayer it is harder because each player wants to advance as quickly as possible.

I get all my mags from horde nights. Do you all have long time frames behind horde nights?