PC What can be done for game balance?

[Maharin]

I mean, that's 140 UMA zombies. TFP's point is "the streets are empty for FPS gainz", but there's a pretty huge gap between 140 UMA zombies in a single chunk and 1 normal zombie per chunk, don't you think ? Even during the crazy wildlife patch where you'd find a bear/direwolf every 50 blocks, my group and I never had any FPS issues.

I love new art and deco blocks but hell, gameplay rules everything. I'd rather have a living world than a beautiful dead one like we currently have.

Graphics aren't the whole story when you add a lot of zombies.  The more complicated the AI, lighting, shadows, and a lot of other stuff, the more demanding things get in scale.  This game won't sell a lot more copies if it takes a super computer to run it.  There is a reason the default setting for blood moons is 8 zombies at once.

 

[Boidster]

but there's a pretty huge gap between 140 UMA zombies in a single chunk and 1 normal zombie per chunk

This game won't sell a lot more copies if it takes a super computer to run it.  There is a reason the default setting for blood moons is 8 zombies at once.

At the risk of taking slight exaggerations too seriously, I'm going to push back a bit. We have been able to easily surpass 1 zombie per chunk (on average, I mean, 'cause obviously they're scattered around in clumps) on our server and we play 12-per-player on horde night without significant problems. And neither the server nor the clients are super-computers. Server is a Core i7-3770 (several years old now) with 32GB RAM. One client is an old Dell laptop with a GeForce 960M in it. I cannot run at Ultra and I do not get 60FPS lock. But it runs 30-40FPS without problems and we are constantly having to fend off zombies when roaming around (by quadrupling normal biome spawns).

I don't mean to argue that the game is perfect or that the default settings are fine. Only that it is not too difficult, nor does it require a top-notch gaming rig, to significantly improve things if you want. TFP has to leave the defaults pretty tame so that the "minimum" specs will still play. If you're a modest amount above the minimum, you ought to be able to get more zombies in your game without much trouble.

Maybe not 140 at once, though!

 

[JCrook1028]

At the risk of taking slight exaggerations too seriously, I'm going to push back a bit. We have been able to easily surpass 1 zombie per chunk (on average, I mean, 'cause obviously they're scattered around in clumps) on our server and we play 12-per-player on horde night without significant problems. And neither the server nor the clients are super-computers. Server is a Core i7-3770 (several years old now) with 32GB RAM. One client is an old Dell laptop with a GeForce 960M in it. I cannot run at Ultra and I do not get 60FPS lock. But it runs 30-40FPS without problems and we are constantly having to fend off zombies when roaming around (by quadrupling normal biome spawns).

I don't mean to argue that the game is perfect or that the default settings are fine. Only that it is not too difficult, nor does it require a top-notch gaming rig, to significantly improve things if you want. TFP has to leave the defaults pretty tame so that the "minimum" specs will still play. If you're a modest amount above the minimum, you ought to be able to get more zombies in your game without much trouble.

Maybe not 140 at once, though!

Aye. TFP sets the default. Mods have room to play. All is well.

5 hours ago, kebab39 said:

Rest of the world is optimized (no distant buildings, less objects, less block types etc.), there is potentially 70 people I know who want to play "alpha 14 but without downgrade" which is a goal of this mod. I can spawn same amount of current non UMA zombies (with 3-4 variants) and you will see that performance is similar (biggest factor is ai tbh, if you freeze it, you can slap maybe 300-400 entities before you notice anything).

Here is what the saved performance would be used for in the mod:

Yep. TFP sets default. Mods can change that. It's easier to take away extra's TFP has given us than it is to add them. Working As Intended imo.

 

[Anoraki]

Okay let me ask the main question here, do we really need this much balancing here?

Ummm, yeah? Adding filler content that doesn't really add to the gameplay doesn't make it more fun, and probably would just mess up the balancing even more. Add a bunch of guns that aren't balanced well and people will only use one of them.

 

[beHypE]

Aye. TFP sets the default. Mods have room to play. All is well.

Yep. TFP sets default. Mods can change that. It's easier to take away extra's TFP has given us than it is to add them. Working As Intended imo.

Just gotta love it when they are out of arguments and invoke the 'mod it' card. 

 

[Solomon]

Ummm, yeah? Adding filler content that doesn't really add to the gameplay doesn't make it more fun, and probably would just mess up the balancing even more. Add a bunch of guns that aren't balanced well and people will only use one of them.

Really? Then explain please just what content did the removal of learn by action, mass nerf of stealth and our loot rebalance added?

All they did was to show how empty the game is, how you dont have much to do. What i suggested would go a long way to make people feel like theres soo much to do kind of like how minecraft has tons of "decoration" mods what are getting downloaded en masse so people can make more and bigger creations.

They could have forgot all these "balance" patches and instead concentrated on adding actual content ingame and people maybe wouldnt grumble here about how an AK on day 5 means game over because they would actually need it.

Yep. TFP sets default. Mods can change that. It's easier to take away extra's TFP has given us than it is to add them. Working As Intended imo.

And the mods show what TFP should have done.

You know how embrassing is to use mods as an argument point is towards developers? A guy who has a regular 8 hour job for 5 days a week comes home and in his 3 hour free time he manages to overperform an entire development team by releasing bugfixes, stability patches and more content than what they ever could.

When a mod community churns out content faster than the devs it usually means that the devs are either finished with that game mostly or just not competent enough to fight against some couch programmer.

 

[meganoth]

Just gotta love it when they are out of arguments and invoke the 'mod it' card. 

The core argument was from Boidster: "TFP has to leave the defaults pretty tame so that the "minimum" specs will still play". Are you able to counter that with real arguments?

 

[meganoth]

Really? Then explain please just what content did the removal of learn by action, mass nerf of stealth and our loot rebalance added?

All they did was to show how empty the game is, how you dont have much to do. What i suggested would go a long way to make people feel like theres soo much to do kind of like how minecraft has tons of "decoration" mods what are getting downloaded en masse so people can make more and bigger creations.

They could have forgot all these "balance" patches and instead concentrated on adding actual content ingame and people maybe wouldnt grumble here about how an AK on day 5 means game over because they would actually need it.

And the mods show what TFP should have done.

You know how embrassing is to use mods as an argument point is towards developers? A guy who has a regular 8 hour job for 5 days a week comes home and in his 3 hour free time he manages to overperform an entire development team by releasing bugfixes, stability patches and more content than what they ever could.

When a mod community churns out content faster than the devs it usually means that the devs are either finished with that game mostly or just not competent enough to fight against some couch programmer.

You mean like some mods already had or have bandits in the game?

Those bandits were created by TFP and turned off because their AI wasn't good enough for TFPs quality standards. Modders turned them on again.

You mean like many mods added a lot more plants and foods?

All the plants internal code was done by TFP, they even added a simple XML interface to the code below so everyone could add their own plants and food recipes. This is as if some company builds a house and someone later paints it in a new color and say "Look, I built a new house in a tenth of the time of that company.

7D2D has 10 to 50 times as many modders as TFP has developers. If there were a race to churn out contents, modders would easily win.

 

[kebab39]

Really? Then explain please just what content did the removal of learn by action, mass nerf of stealth and our loot rebalance added?

All they did was to show how empty the game is, how you dont have much to do. What i suggested would go a long way to make people feel like theres soo much to do kind of like how minecraft has tons of "decoration" mods what are getting downloaded en masse so people can make more and bigger creations.

They could have forgot all these "balance" patches and instead concentrated on adding actual content ingame and people maybe wouldnt grumble here about how an AK on day 5 means game over because they would actually need it.

And the mods show what TFP should have done.

You know how embrassing is to use mods as an argument point is towards developers? A guy who has a regular 8 hour job for 5 days a week comes home and in his 3 hour free time he manages to overperform an entire development team by releasing bugfixes, stability patches and more content than what they ever could.

When a mod community churns out content faster than the devs it usually means that the devs are either finished with that game mostly or just not competent enough to fight against some couch programmer.

Exactly that, and I have even seen recent attempt to fix recent block / terrain glitch by making screen black (serv checks if character eyes are in block and runs buff that blackens whole screen). So we can clearly say that modders are much more competent and solution seeking than devs, that can't do this even after 7 years of reports, videos and threads on their forum. Ask @giKoN

They also treat us like @%$*#! when we are seeking new things to implement, so wouldn't be surprised the moment new voxel game comes up, all modders run there (I sure would help to program/ 3d model if competent competition arised):

 

[Gazz]

Wow. Someone needs a hug!

 

[meganoth]

They also treat us like @%$*#! when we are seeking new things to implement, so wouldn't be surprised the moment new voxel game comes up, all modders run there (I sure would help to program/ 3d model if competent competition arised):

An even better idea: All modders should just program the next new voxel game themselves. After all they are the only competent staff around here, right?

 

[kebab39]

An even better idea: All modders should just program the next new voxel game themselves. After all they are the only competent staff around here, right?

 Well, it seems, it is already happening, heh. At this point 7 days needs any kind of competition to stimulate it for change. As long there is no other voxel zombie game available, devs will pretty much do whatever and call it a day.

 

[Solomon]

You mean like some mods already had or have bandits in the game?

Those bandits were created by TFP and turned off because their AI wasn't good enough for TFPs quality standards. Modders turned them on again.

You mean like many mods added a lot more plants and foods?

All the plants internal code was done by TFP, they even added a simple XML interface to the code below so everyone could add their own plants and food recipes. This is as if some company builds a house and someone later paints it in a new color and say "Look, I built a new house in a tenth of the time of that company.

7D2D has 10 to 50 times as many modders as TFP has developers. If there were a race to churn out contents, modders would easily win.

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

 

[kebab39]

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

Exactly, also look at this bug marked as non bug



Feature that is clearly there in vanilla not firing on mp? Clearly a @%$*#!up (that used to work in older versions but somehow got broken for no reason). (or someone got touched in wrong place by evil learn by doing),

 

[RipClaw]

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

Turning the screen black because the player glitches through the world is not a fix but a workaround for a problem that is only present in PvP. In PvE this problem has no major impact and turning the screen black would be pointless.

It has been stated a hundred times that the developers are currently not interested in adapting the game for PvP. It is primarily a PvE game.

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

Most Full Conversion Mods have huge frame drops because almost nothing is optimized. The modders have no access to the source code and therefore they cannot fix bugs like memory leaks.

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

The reason why they don't give every block to a player is because some models are very detailed and therefore need some computing power. Normally this is not a problem if you are reasonable.

But there are players who enjoy ruining the game for others. They would simply place 1000 coffee machines in front of a player's base on a multiplayer server and when the player logs in he has problems because his computer can't handle the amount of polygons.

I heard some time ago that on some servers the use of dynamite and TNT is forbidden because players crash the whole server when they blow up a building.

 

[meganoth]

I know that, i just wanted to point out just how stupid this argument can be. Also lets not act like modders are a group of people working together to create more content, they are most of the time 1 person creating stuff in their free time, someone fixing a year old bug because he was bored casts a bad shadow on the devs whose actual job is to deal with the said bug.

If TFP releases a new zombie type and later deletes it because it uses too much memory then a modder comes re-enables that zombie and fixes the memory leaks in it that means the developer was not competent enough to fix a problem.

Looking up the 7DtD nexus i see tons of mods doing absolutely nothing except enabling you to pick up/create vanilla decor blocks and such what are not craftable by the player, in my eyes this is an oversight what could have been fixed since ages but the devs just dont care about it (for whatever reason).

Ignorance is bliss. If you don't see the 300 other bugs in the game which might be more important to TFP than this one then yes, it cast a bad light on the devs. The developers have different priorities than any one player has.

And TFP has more constraints than a modder. As RipClaw said, turning on features that have the potential to wreck FPS is okay for a modder, it can not be ok for TFP.  Decor blocks are not an oversight, it was specifically explained by madmole that they did not add deco blocks for various reasons and that they think it is enough that you can get them via creative menue. Ergo it isn't a bug or oversight that needs fixing, it is a deliberate decision that you just don't agree with.

I have played mods where zombies were re-enabled. It was evident that the zombies had problems, for example the behemoths that were so big that they couldn't path well and either got stuck or even phased into closed spaces like your melee cache. But I didn't care and appreciate the effort of the modders. But I could clearly see that the behemoth was not fit for vanilla.

 

[kebab39]

Turning the screen black because the player glitches through the world is not a fix but a workaround for a problem that is only present in PvP. In PvE this problem has no major impact and turning the screen black would be pointless.

Hahaha, riiight.

https://www.reddit.com/r/7daystodie/comments/hxkz18/a173_ultimate_horde_base_design_with_new_unstick

 

[RipClaw]

2 minutes ago, kebab39 said:

Hahaha, riiight.

https://www.reddit.com/r/7daystodie/comments/hxkz18/a173_ultimate_horde_base_design_with_new_unstick

And how exactly does it affect your gameplay when someone else uses such a base? 

 

[kebab39]

And how exactly does it affect your gameplay when someone else uses such a base? 

When you are scavenger and suddenly builder in your team starts placing those cubes instead of normal structures for example. Kinda breaks immersion, doesn't it?

 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, kebab39 said:

Great. More choice is always good.

Like any other new game the first steps are the easiest. With all the assets available from asset stores of a graphics engine you can make a 0.1 relatively fast. But the more the game grows the development time for new features grows and grows.

Lets see where this project is in 2 years. And whether you still agree with the features the developers of that game decide to implement. Wana make a bet that this won't be a real competitor in 2 years? Maybe in 4 years there is a small chance if it still exists.

By the way, is that a voxel game as well, with voxel ground?