PC V2.3 Experimental

[Double G]

It’s a really good start, but they still haven’t even touched on one of the biggest topics players have been bringing up and they just keep ignoring it.

The co-founder of the company recently went to reddit about jars. How can you say they keep ignoring it?

And what makes the old version of the game a different experience is far more than just jars. Jars are basically insignificant. If the current water system was in A16 it would still feel pretty much exactly like A16.

I think what's happening is that people have difficulty articulating what they experience so they latch on to something obvious as an answer. "What used to be in the game? Jars! That's it. It must be the jars. It must be learn by doing. It must be.....".

There are so many different factors involved that differentiate the experience of the current version vs older versions that adding one or two things back wouldn't make a dent.

What I would imagine the devs should do is actually sit down and play (at length) one of these old versions that people crow about so much, to get a deeper overall understanding of what might actually be appealing about it - and then add options to the current version of the game to allow people to bring it to a point that it can replicate the experience of that older version. It has to be done with option settings because a significant portion of the player base does not like a lot of what goes on in these older versions.

People keep bringing up Steam reviews, but if you actually look at the detailed review metrics over time, these older versions that people seem to love so much had worse and inconsistent reviews. As the game moved away from a lot of these mechanics, reviews trended consistently higher. That ultimately puts the devs in a difficult position.

 

[LittleRedSonja]

A lot of good changes in this update, thanks!

Not everybody wants jars back. I personally do not want jars back, never liked it, it is a mechanic that makes no sense to me.
Just my opinion .

 

[BatShevaSida]

Okay, but why do you actually want jars back? If the only reason you want jars back is so that you can scoop water again, you don't need jars for that at all. Just like you don't need empty gas cans to gather gasoline.

It makes no sense that a glass jar, just disappears into thin ear every time you drink the content. What happens to the glass jar? In terms of survival, if you are surviving, you dont throw away that which you need to fill and boil. None. Same with tins of food. Loosing the tins? It just disappears? Does any of that make sense to you?

Post automatically merged: Friday at 2:10 AM

It's not that the jars are on my list of top priorities but, it's not realistic that you can carry entire stacks of rocks and other materials, or store a 4x4 in your backpack, to give more realism to survival it would be necessary to implement a crane truck and containers, to transport all that material.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with more realism, but then we would have to look at other things.

that is also a good idea, perhaps even better. Also, cooking water from snow should be in the game as well. It would be nice.

 

[Kalnazzar]

Why did you have to go somewhere for water in the old version? We collect a bucket of water and leave it in the house. If you need water, then we pour the bucket into any hole, from which you can either collect 2 buckets or collect a stack of cans and a bucket. And you don’t have to go anywhere, poured out a bucket, filled the cans, filled the bucket - repeat as many times as you have empty stacks of cans.

I get why some might like the bucket trick for water, but that approach just wasn’t my style. To me, it felt like a cheesy mechanic that detracted from the game's immersion. Exploits, glitches, or anything that feels like a shortcut like pouring a bucket into a hole to endlessly fill cans that way, made the game less fun for me. I love playing 7 Days to Die vanilla, no mods, just straightforward, hard-earned survival. There’s something satisfying about putting in the work, like trekking to a lake or river to gather water the old fashioned way with jars. That grind felt rewarding and kept me hooked. I wish they’d bring back that system alongside the Dew Collector so players like me can enjoy the challenge without relying on mechanics that feel like cheating.

 

[BatShevaSida]

also remember stacking, stacking for glass jars can be set at a very low amount, even single digits. But a person starting out, would need it, unless making a water sack to carry is easy to make in the beginning, and then making better ones as you go along that can carry more water. Devs, please add small amount of leather to dead animals in the roads, then use resources like grass, leather, and string (made from a certain plant or something), and make water sacks. That would be a good replacement for glass jars in my opinion. Or something to this effect, if glass jars arent coming back. But in overall, it makes no sense that glass jars just disappears when drinking, perhaps make them scrap able rather and very low stacking.

 

[Kalnazzar]

A lot of good changes in this update, thanks!

Not everybody wants jars back. I personally do not want jars back, never liked it, it is a mechanic that makes no sense to me.
Just my opinion .

I respect your opinion that you didn’t like the jar system everyone’s got their preferred way to play. But imagine if something you loved in the game was removed, and someone said, “Don’t bring it back, I didn’t enjoy it.” That wouldn’t feel great, right? My point is about choice. I’m not asking to replace the Dew Collector; I think it’s great for players who enjoy a hands-off approach. I just want the old jar system back as an option, maybe even improved to be more challenging, like requiring more steps to purify water. That way, players like me who enjoy the grind of gathering water from a lake or river can do it our way, while you and others can stick with the Dew Collector. A sandbox game should let everyone play how they want, not remove systems because some don’t like them. Options mean nobody’s forced to play a way they don’t enjoy.

 

[Kalnazzar]

The co-founder of the company recently went to reddit about jars. How can you say they keep ignoring it?

And what makes the old version of the game a different experience is far more than just jars. Jars are basically insignificant. If the current water system was in A16 it would still feel pretty much exactly like A16.

I think what's happening is that people have difficulty articulating what they experience so they latch on to something obvious as an answer. "What used to be in the game? Jars! That's it. It must be the jars. It must be learn by doing. It must be.....".

There are so many different factors involved that differentiate the experience of the current version vs older versions that adding one or two things back wouldn't make a dent.

What I would imagine the devs should do is actually sit down and play (at length) one of these old versions that people crow about so much, to get a deeper overall understanding of what might actually be appealing about it - and then add options to the current version of the game to allow people to bring it to a point that it can replicate the experience of that older version. It has to be done with option settings because a significant portion of the player base does not like a lot of what goes on in these older versions.

People keep bringing up Steam reviews, but if you actually look at the detailed review metrics over time, these older versions that people seem to love so much had worse and inconsistent reviews. As the game moved away from a lot of these mechanics, reviews trended consistently higher. That ultimately puts the devs in a difficult position.

I explained in a post after this one why I enjoyed the Jar system.

 

[BPMVT]

Will there be anything to bring back the main menu features?? Or in game for example i used to run an information panel that had buttons and tabs but since 2.0 it cannot operate with buttons etc any more

 

[EvilPolygons]

It makes no sense that a glass jar, just disappears into thin ear every time you drink the content. What happens to the glass jar? In terms of survival, if you are surviving, you dont throw away that which you need to fill and boil. None. Same with tins of food. Loosing the tins? It just disappears? Does any of that make sense to you?

What happens to your empty gas cans? Candy wrappers? Spent shell casings? Ammo magazines? Bandages? Medical kits? Soup cans? Syringes?

Why are JARS somehow this thing that people latch on to when literally no other consumable in the game needs special containers to collect and carry around stuff? There's nothing realistic about carrying around 300 glass jars to carry water in. There's nothing even remotely realistic about it.

 

[EvilPolygons]

I get why some might like the bucket trick for water, but that approach just wasn’t my style. To me, it felt like a cheesy mechanic that detracted from the game's immersion. Exploits, glitches, or anything that feels like a shortcut like pouring a bucket into a hole to endlessly fill cans that way, made the game less fun for me. I love playing 7 Days to Die vanilla, no mods, just straightforward, hard-earned survival. There’s something satisfying about putting in the work, like trekking to a lake or river to gather water the old fashioned way with jars. That grind felt rewarding and kept me hooked. I wish they’d bring back that system alongside the Dew Collector so players like me can enjoy the challenge without relying on mechanics that feel like cheating.

In any sort of actual survival situation, you wouldn't be collecting water in dozens or hundreds of glass jars. You'd hike down to the river, fill a bucket with water, return to camp and boil your water in a pot. People keep claiming they liked glass jars because they were somehow realistic.

No one carries water around in glass jars. That's just not a thing. Plastic jugs? Sure. Buckets? Yep. Canteens? Of course!

The glass jar fixation is just getting straight up pathological at this point.

 

[Suxar]

In any sort of actual survival situation, you wouldn't be collecting water in dozens or hundreds of glass jars. You'd hike down to the river, fill a bucket with water, return to camp and boil your water in a pot.

In real life, in conditions of biological contamination, I would rather use condensate than water from an open source. And I would make storage containers out of clay. And I would not hunt animals with a gun, but set traps. And I would run away from settlements somewhere far away, for example, to Siberia.

 

[Ostentatio]

What happens to your empty gas cans? Candy wrappers? Spent shell casings? Ammo magazines? Bandages? Medical kits? Soup cans? Syringes?

Why are JARS somehow this thing that people latch on to when literally no other consumable in the game needs special containers to collect and carry around stuff? There's nothing realistic about carrying around 300 glass jars to carry water in. There's nothing even remotely realistic about it.

In the pursuit of Realism™, the game should allow us to fill gas cans with water. And cup candy wrappers to hold water. And fill spent shell casings with water. And ammo magazines should be craftable, repackable, AND hold water. Bandages could be soaked in water. Medical kits, you can dump out those disinfectants and sutures, scoop some water into that box. Cans, duh, water. That syringe model? That's a good mouthful right there. Man, that 4x4? It's got a nice bed; could fit so much water in that bad boy. And for even more Realism™, every time I sprint over a loose stone with my camera angled above horizontal, I should have a 30% chance to stub a toe, which would give a movement speed debuff and make a loud exclamatory noise (chance perked down with Fortitude skills, obviously) that alerts every zombie nearby. In fact, for more Realism™, any loose stone or wood pile or concrete block or curb should have a chance to pop a vehicle's tire, that way it incentivizes carrying spare wheels, for Realism™. Hey, you know what? Wheels! That's several gallons of potential water each! For Realism™, we should be able to fill the wheels with water instead of air that we're clearly blowing into the tires by lungpower, because we aren't Realismistically(™) crafting air compressors... yet. Speaking of lungpower- Realism™! We have the option to fill our lungs with water in the game! Realism™ is already partly upon us, therefore, we must have more! Gosh-darned Ball®-lovers, there's so many other things to fill with water!

In relative seriousness, by the patch notes, I really like the look of 2.3; I didn't personally mind the biome challenges the first time around in single-player, but playing co-op with someone less familiar with the game made the challenges feel more than a bit silly to explain objectively, and these changes improve that a ton. An update that negates the need for a mod I'm using or considering to use is a good update as far as I'm concerned, and 2.3 is putting one (maybe two!) on the block.

And again on the jar note... contaminated water, like Suxar said. Virtually every freshwater source in a zombie wasteland will have had decaying walking corpses and/or wrecked vehicles in it, and decomposition puts more into the water than just boiling will take care of. Making water a ten-steps-to-success process with purification and filtration may be more Realistic™, sure, but is it a good game mechanic? I kinda liked the suggestion of using jars as a collection resource on dew collectors (I think I saw that in the Reddit thread?), but actually having craftable jars for Realism™ would mean something like glassblowing and glass molds (and the lids!), not just melt-some-sand-in-forge as I think it used to be. I'd far more prefer clay/potterywork being introduced as water containers over glass jars (for practicality AND Realism™), or a canteen/waterskin with quality tiers tied to a crafting skill like every other piece of equipment does at-present.

EDIT: To reinterpret someone else's idea (Kalnazzar) without getting ten-step water process- rather than return active water collection by collect-and-boil system, maybe all "container-collected" water would be contaminated (same as drinking straight from the water, lose health and have a strong dysentery chance), but not processed through boiling- leave the dew collector unchanged (or better yet, nerfed by removing the gatherer or tarp but not both), then implement a later-game 'Water Purifier'-style workstation that doesn't generate water, but rather takes murky and contaminated both to process them into 'clean' water - without being a heat-generator, as a mid/late boon when heat buildup is a big issue (and it's a passive filter, what noise is it making). To balance it out, maybe it consumes water filters for every so many units of water.

 

[EvilPolygons]

In real life, in conditions of biological contamination, I would rather use condensate than water from an open source. And I would make storage containers out of clay. And I would not hunt animals with a gun, but set traps. And I would run away from settlements somewhere far away, for example, to Siberia.

Distillation would be best if you were worried about chemical contamination, but boiling is fine for killing pathogens -- especially if you have soap.

But you'd be right about avoiding other people. Especially large groups of people.

 

[Jysen]

Well ■■■■, I see they fixed seeing water through glass (No issue on PS5 on my end), but would love to be able to see clearly out of windows again. Instead I just see a blackened sky and basically N64 graphics of the outside world lol.

Any insight to the HonkEvent mention? I'm old and confused now

Alot of steps in the right direction, only those hellbent on being cynical (which I'm very open to being blunt and ranting) find faults with this imo. Its going to take multiple updates to hopefully balance things, and regardless of opinions and speculation, right now, it seems to be going in the right direction.

If they stopped, then there's a reason to go up in arms again. I just hope they continue forward, and for the love of God, bring actual Balance to the game.

Cause to hell with Jars, they need to fix this crouching bs mechanic and the fact every Zed just targets the bottom block literally cheesing the living hell out every encounter. Completely unbalances every fight and makes defense stupid imo.

Oh, and idgaf, Landclaim Blocks should negate any spawning inside its coverage. I DEMAND my beautiful home to have grass and not have everything be made out of stupid ■■■ blocks like it's minecraft. Or at the least, give me Grass Paint.

Please? Visual aesthetics matter ■■■■it.

 

[Demonoid74]

But I really want sharpened stones and sharpened sticks to go into my glass jars...while walking around my square blocky Alpha 7 game world!!!

No...actually what I want is...for my saves to carry over to every different pc I log my steam account into...now I am stuck here for 2 weeks at my girlfriend's house and unable to continue my new 2.2 test game that I am on day 52! sigh...come on already, that should be a standard working feature by this point in time!

 

[Cruiser]

Today, there is still only 1 thing that bothers me. And that are the jars of water.

While i can understand the need for making it harder to obtain water, and not just have the game flooded (pun intended) with them, there is the matter of the stack size.

I mean, I can totally understand the need to have 125 jars of filthy water in a stack, so they dont take up too much space in inventory or in a box.

But when you boil it..... You only filter it. You do not change the size of the jar or the lid. But for some reason that is beyond me, you can now only hold 10 jars of water in a single stack. Same goes for all drinks that requires clean water. still 10... And you change a glass jar into a plastic bottle, when you make pure mineral water.


Personally, I would look into an overhaul of the water situation.

Introduce a water bucket that fits into a slot in the dew collector. the recipe could be several ropes made from grass fibers and some wood. 1 minute crafting time, no reduction from skills for the time used to craft a bucket with 500 water in it.
That same bucket would then have to be put into the campfire as a material you want to add, like with the forge. no bucket shall be returned.
Then introduce jars back into the game. make it so that you can not fill them from a watersource, but have them be another material to be added into the campfire, like the bucket. If you want to be a total ■■■■■■, make it so that you need to also craft a lid in the forge, so that the jar recipe used for the jar that goes into the campfire, is jar+lid.


Meaning, in order to make clean water, you need to get a wood bucket, a dew collector, a forge (oh noes, you need a few forge ahead books for that, what a shame) and a campfire.

Get water from the dew collector and bucket.
make empty jars in forge.
make lids in forge.
craft 1 jar + 1 lid into 1 sealed jar.
Add 1 sealed jar to campfire.
Add 1 full wood bucket to campfire.
Make 1 clean water in campfire.


This will however, produce another problem with the teas and foods. Unless we get a destillery of some kind, that can be used for the above.


My brain already hurts form thinking so much on my day off of work...

 

[Noxom]

I prefer to source my water from drainage ditches full of crawlers. That's the real gourmet stuff.

It's slightly thick like jello, and when boiled it produces a fine, nutritious broth.

Depending on where you're collecting water, boiling it isn't going to give you clean water. It's going to give you Campbells Chunky Soup.

 

[icehot]

It's not that the jars are on my list of top priorities but, it's not realistic that you can carry entire stacks of rocks and other materials, or store a 4x4 in your backpack, to give more realism to survival it would be necessary to implement a crane truck and containers, to transport all that material.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with more realism, but then we would have to look at other things.

That's all true, I agree with you, however those other items don't really detract from the survival stuff, it just makes it less annoying to place your vehicle, or to be able to build at a reasonable pace... The reason i suggested a canteen though, is because it's a very common survival item, and they have mentioned before that they think water is too easy and would need some kind of different balancing to do it, so I thought that might be one way to consider it, whilst providing the survival side with a touch more realism even if the base building and vehicle construction side (which is less survival imho, i'm talking Bear Grylls type survival stuff when i refer to that word) is less realistic for the sake of gameplay.

 

[meganoth]

But I really want sharpened stones and sharpened sticks to go into my glass jars...while walking around my square blocky Alpha 7 game world!!!

No...actually what I want is...for my saves to carry over to every different pc I log my steam account into...now I am stuck here for 2 weeks at my girlfriend's house and unable to continue my new 2.2 test game that I am on day 52! sigh...come on already, that should be a standard working feature by this point in time!

AFAIK this is not possible because of the size of the savegames, steam has a limit on what they can store in their cloud.

 

[Suxar]

No...actually what I want is...for my saves to carry over to every different pc I log my steam account into...now I am stuck here for 2 weeks at my girlfriend's house and unable to continue my new 2.2 test game that I am on day 52! sigh...come on already, that should be a standard working feature by this point in time!

First, search all the nearest electronics stores for a floppy disk drive and floppy disks. Then take WinRAR, WinZip or 7zip and create a multi-volume archive with a volume size equal to the floppy disk capacity. Copy the archives to the floppy disks. Transfer all this to another computer. Copy the archives from the floppy disks to the hard drive. Unzip. Enjoy the game.