Bandits have been listed as a feature in several dev diaries going back several alphas. I can’t remember the first alpha that listed them though. However, none of that really matters. Most of people complaining about their absence haven’t thought much further than: “it would be cool if there were bandits.” And the reality is many won’t be happy when they are added because all they have been doing is wishcasting, i.e., assuming what they want to happen is what will actually happen. It’s similar to people who complain about games spending too much time in early access. This complaint only makes sense if the player assumes that the things they don’t like about early access will be fixed at full release. But why would anyone make this assumption? It could easily go the other direction. For some players, the full release could be worse than the early access version. There are ample examples of that here during the game’s development.
Personally, I’m very skeptical about the addition of bandits to 7dtd. I can foresee a lot of ways it could go wrong or simply change the game loop in a way that I don’t care for. When will you first encounter bandits? Will you have sufficiently strong ranged weapons to deal with them? How often will you encounter them? Will you end up getting swamped by screamers during or after gun battles with them? How many changes will have to made to existing game systems to accommodate the addition of an entirely new class of enemies? What will be the performance cost of adding bandits? Will the value added be worth the cost? Et cetera, et cetera.
