PC Why you broke your game

[Snowydeath]

Of course, I would never expect TFP to take any responsibility for negative aspects of the game, it's clearly up to the players to mod their way around things. 5 years of early access is also very reasonable, very normal, yes, a great factual excuse. Anyone pointing out flaws is definitely just spewing hate speech, it's not like TFP have missed every deadline they self impose and focus on small items, like polling for death penalties, instead of actually addressing large scale issues that have multiple threads up on the front page.
TY for proving my initial point, guess I'll try back in a few years to find you people responding to everything with "early access, mod it out!"

Considering the way people word their "criticisms" they most definitely are spewing hate with no construction at all. Seeing as how you've never developed a game, it took 6 years (or was it 5?) for a team of over 1200 people to make the Witcher 3. A non voxel based game with a world already built around it. 5 years in EA for a small team is nothing. Oh look, the large team making Star Citizen have made almost no progress in over 7 years of development. yet that team has over 200 million under their belt. which they use to make a space ship to sell for over 1 grand to idiots who wanna "support" that games "development"...

Seeing TFP actually create a game and upgrade the engine twice in a year while rebuilding many mechanics from the ground up is very pleasant from my point of view (as a game developer myself). I understand what this team is going through right now and yes, developing a game how you envision it takes many iterations. They are very close to their original goal and have delivered nearly everything they've promised in the KS. There are issues for them to resolve and they shouldn't worry about the simple minded kiddies and casual gamers who do not understand how game development work nor how to provide actual feedback instead of simple complaints with no constructive criticism at all. I simply do not understand the hate bandwagon that has been going around for the first week of A17 EXPERIMENTAL with very little real feedback from the vocal minority here on these forums. Balance will come with updates and CONSTRUCTIVE feedback is always welcomed. You really cannot play a major release like this for a day or two then say it's bad. You have to learn and adapts then provide feedback based on what real issues exist.

TL;DR

This is a small team making a massive game, their dream game! There will be issues with experimental and balancing that needs to be done. this is the first iteration of many systems that will be ironed out as A17 progresses. There are large companies with hundreds of people working and still taking 5+ years just to make 1 game that uses mostly rehashed systems and some new textures. The vocal minority refuse to provide real feedback and just complain about how this isn't A16, how it's hard because they refuse to adapt to the new AI and mechanics. As a developer of my own game, I understand the issues TFP have faced (2 engine upgrades, hiring new people and training them, redoing mechanics from scratch, AI are a pain in the ass!).

 

[Kamuchi]

Not every time. There were some great threads of a negative nature that were well received because they were stated matter-of-factly and without insulting accusations. You're off to a bad start on facts if that is indeed the theme of your thread.
1-3. Gear

Here are some more facts:

Old system progression was limited to two parameters: durability and damage. Other than that every shotgun was the same. Every iron armor was the same. Every pistol was the same.

Old system created weird player actions where nobody would open crates because they were too low level. If players were playing with higher level friends only the higher level players would be allowed to open chests.

Old system made brown and orange level gear completely useless and shunned.

New system makes all base gear the same so brown and orange are basically as useful as the higher tier and don't have to be completely discounted.

New system progression adds several parameters to durability and damage. Examples: Rate of fire, accuracy, range, ammo capacity, stamina reduction, special hits like knockdown, stun, and bleed. Through mods all of these paramaters and more can be progressed and you can have two very very different and unique pistols. There is no limit to what the new system will be able to add to gear progression.

New system is brand new and in its infancy. More mods will be created.

You are soooo wrong on this one.

Friends and I were hoarding low quality items to upgrade weapons to 600 and for repair.

Repair kits were always a pain in the rear so we reserved them for horde nights where even multiple 600 weapons would be down the drain. (upped zombies to 64 active+boosted horde night swarm)

4. Exploration

Disagree with your claims that the new stamina and hunger mechanic stifle exploration. If you aren't opposed to drinking drinks to help stamina then you should be opposed to buying some ranks in Agility and also some of the hunger and thirst reduction perks in Fortitude. I run all over the place without any more problem than in previous versions.

I disagree with the stamina aswel, the bycicle is kinda fun to start with.

I do however have a MAJOR issue with the motivation to explore:

When you get a gun, you basically have no reason to get another one any time soon.

With zombies being bullet sponges and I hate melee, I just avoid them unless they are nearby.

POI's drop crap loot so I don't even go into those dungeon houses or just make a hole in the roof to avoid a time sink.

No more schematics, so why even bother exploring?

Even with the broken floating point issue in A16, I made a giant map and explored the hell out of it, A17 so far I have done absolutely nothing besides my immidiate surroundings, that and with the horrible mining, I got bored and only level 49.

5. Claim stones

Agree. I don't know why the change was made.

Every one I know is fed up with this one already and needs to be adressed.

6-7. Zombie Damage and Digging

Disagree. Bases can be built and people can live underground still. Proof is popping up in more and more posts and threads sharing base designs. Underground dwelling is possible-- just not easy and automatically safe.

8. Bedrock depth

Wasn't aware of this. Not sure what the result will be.

Major gripe for me as I love building my underground home with a defense right ontop of it.

During the day I could do what ever surface stuff I wanted, with the change to run into a very large wandering horde and at night I could mine in peace for more concrete or do food stuff, with the change of very large wandering hordes.

The mining nerf that even with miner69 level 4 that it still takes 5 hits! per stone block with a very slow power attack was the thing that made me just quit, befor it was level 4 with the damage skill that you just 2 hit them and all max insta hit, that made building infra structure fun, this ain't.

It took me over 3 months to build this, there was alot below ground and much more built that I have no screenshots from.

https://imgur.com/ouyKQIM

https://imgur.com/AwHbtPg

9. Level gating perks

In A17 I have specialized several times. Sorry, I do not agree that the game prevents one from specializing.

It's not that, but level 60 to get steel smithing? *quit*

Dropping an egg into a jar of water on the campfire requires a skill to pick up the egg, move it over the jar and open your fingers to drop it in the jar? lol *quit*

Mining taking longer then forever and a dozen zombies give more xp then mining for a week? *quit*

I really liked A16 but it needed some serious balancing.

No weapon parts, no zombie loot, no schematics, zombies knocking reinforced concrete over like lego blocks, pretty much no mining and being forced to go zombie hunting?

I'm sorry, but if you're going to force me to go play an fps with building being half pointless then I'll just go play another game as for me I love the building aspect as the main thing and A16 was great.

1768 hours of game time so if this is the new direction that the game is going I'll just call it quit and go from from telling people it's awesome to it sucks from a builder's perspective.

I never had a "offhands" base as I do like zombies as you can see from my open design that I actively had to defend, don't even think of throwing that argument at me...

10. Death penalty

This section was full of opinion rather than fact. Opinions I don't share.

Haven't died once as I'm used to 64 active zombies, but without the urge to explore to find weapon parts or schematics I'll just trust the complaints of others about it.

There is no way to move forward and make final decisions without disappointing some large proportion of the playerbase. A large proportion of the playerbase is having more fun than ever before. A large proportion of the playerbase is ambivalent about it. The devs make decisions based on their own preferences.

Wrong, over one and a half year since the last A16 update, people are just checking out what changed.

If this is what is the deciding factor... Pimps are shooting them selfs in the right and left foot.

I am one of those 23,000 in your "stats", played for 3 days and just got bored and really annoyed with the changes and some others on the server are giving it a bit more time as they want to level to 100 befor deciding, but can tell you that they aren't exactly happy either.

So keep throwing statistics out there...

Also with the snow being north, forrest middle and desert south, it's absolutely boring and uninspiring.

Befor we had to hunt biomes for their resources, adding to the exploring and multiple mining bases untill creating an underground highway that took weeks.

A16.4 with an engine upgrade, some really needed balancing and bug fixing, the new vehicles and A17 would have been AWESOME.

 

[Rockspider]

Fully agree with the OP

also the a17 is so much easier now then a16 ever was I would go for days without finding a weapon (apart from pistols) or being able to open a safe without it taking ages to get in, but even if you did the loot would be poor and at low levels. Now tho lol

You would work your way up to something decent was so much more rewarding and it did take time and effort.

Now levels mean nothing

I tried the new patch today and within 5 minutes of making my bow found a compound bow! It would take days in a16 to find one and even getting making a crossbow was an achievement.

Tried other patches exactly the same just not fun at all. Loot a bit kill every zed and trade yey.

Wish they had never put a trader in the game personally and ott on the new dungeon poi's.

 

[thraka]

OP is 100% correct. Bottom line, it seems TFP accidentally stumbled on a unique game that drew a lot of people in, rather than having actually intended it. Even so, they got it fairly solid in 16, and then, for reasons I cannot understand, threw away everything they had been evolving for years and replaced it with the typical spreadsheet design, low player choice pablum you see in any other product. They had lightning in a bottle and dumped it out, and it makes no sense, but it's their game. So be it.

I haven't been playing at all since this alpha came out and I saw the direction things were going. The design philosophy is absolutely against everything I actually loved about the game. This game used to be unique, fun, and endlessly replayable. Now it's not. I have been hoping to see some sign that TFP realized this direction was a mistake, but they never seem to do that, not on any iteration. The fact is that TFP put a lot of work into making the game completely unrecognizable to many long term players, and they are not going to change it. I'm sorry to say this, but it's time for me to uninstall. Time for some of us to face reality and move on, just as we have been repeatedly advised to do by so many here.

GLHF

 

[Kamuchi]

OP is 100% correct. Bottom line, it seems TFP accidentally stumbled on a unique game that drew a lot of people in, rather than having actually intended it. Even so, they got it fairly solid in 16, and then, for reasons I cannot understand, threw away everything they had been evolving for years and replaced it with the typical spreadsheet design, low player choice pablum you see in any other product. They had lightning in a bottle and dumped it out, and it makes no sense, but it's their game. So be it.
I haven't been playing at all since this alpha came out and I saw the direction things were going. The design philosophy is absolutely against everything I actually loved about the game. This game used to be unique, fun, and endlessly replayable. Now it's not. I have been hoping to see some sign that TFP realized this direction was a mistake, but they never seem to do that, not on any iteration. The fact is that TFP put a lot of work into making the game completely unrecognizable to many long term players, and they are not going to change it. I'm sorry to say this, but it's time for me to uninstall. Time for some of us to face reality and move on, just as we have been repeatedly advised to do by so many here.

GLHF

Same.

Pretty sure the ones who are playing a map for longer then 2-4 weeks were expecting a wayyy improved A16.4 version that was great fun to sink a few hundred more hours into the game, but we got this...

 

[Ghostlight]

I do however have a MAJOR issue with the motivation to explore:When you get a gun, you basically have no reason to get another one any time soon.

Your "end-game" looting is for mods in A17.

 

[Kamuchi]

Your "end-game" looting is for mods in A17.

I don't care about weapon mods, I can 1 shot zombies with a level 5 sniper as is.

 

[Ghostlight]

Well if you were on a higher difficulty it would be. A level 200 Sniper in A16 would one shot almost any zombies outside of the top tier ones.

 

[Rockspider]

Well if you were on a higher difficulty it would be. A level 200 Sniper in A16 would one shot almost any zombies outside of the top tier ones.

Looting one was the hard part even the parts in a16 You can now tho in a17 very quickly less a scope tho but even that turns up quick enough or even an ak or 2

 

[Kamuchi]

Well if you were on a higher difficulty it would be. A level 200 Sniper in A16 would one shot almost any zombies outside of the top tier ones.

So does a crappy level 1 in this system, see my issue.

In A16 when you lost your sniper, fav weapon, you'd be upset, now you can just craft a few dozen just for the lols...

 

[vedrit]

Old system made brown and orange level gear completely useless and shunned.

New system makes all base gear the same so brown and orange are basically as useful as the higher tier and don't have to be completely discounted.

New system progression adds several parameters to durability and damage. Examples: Rate of fire, accuracy, range, ammo capacity, stamina reduction, special hits like knockdown, stun, and bleed. Through mods all of these paramaters and more can be progressed and you can have two very very different and unique pistols. There is no limit to what the new system will be able to add to gear progression.

New system is brand new and in its infancy. More mods will be created.

I'll have to disagree with you here, Roland. In the old system, brown or orange were only shunned if higher quality was readily available. Until then, it was desired. Same for any quality level.

In the new system, every think is equally useless because their stats are baseline until late game where you can mod them, assuming you even figure out what mods can even be attached. Which, by the way, is a total guessing game because there's nothing indicating what can go where. No tutorial, no tooltip, nothing.

4. Exploration

Disagree with your claims that the new stamina and hunger mechanic stifle exploration. If you aren't opposed to drinking drinks to help stamina then you should be opposed to buying some ranks in Agility and also some of the hunger and thirst reduction perks in Fortitude. I run all over the place without any more problem than in previous versions.

In A16, the more you ran, the more your athletics skill increased, which allowed you to run further. If you ran for a day, you could run much further the next day. That's a lot of ground covered. Nevermind that your maximum stamina wasn't decreasing.

In A17, you can only increase your stamina, decrease stamina drain, or increase stamina regeneration when you level. Precious points that could be spent in health or damage dealing - which help you to level, in the new system where not-killing nets negligible exp points. As others said, until you get a bike, you're pretty much stuck where you start. Which could be a week later.

9. Level gating perks

In A17 I have specialized several times. Sorry, I do not agree that the game prevents one from specializing.

I don't know one way or the other, I just know that the level gate is way too high initially, especially if one plays solo.

There is no way to move forward and make final decisions without disappointing some large proportion of the playerbase. A large proportion of the playerbase is having more fun than ever before. A large proportion of the playerbase is ambivalent about it. The devs make decisions based on their own preferences.

I understand and appreciate the devs making decisions based on their own preferences, but when I look at the changes made in A17, the direction it's been moving in the past few major updates, I'm beginning to wonder if I like their preferences. I recall that A15(I think it was A15...) was the most fun. A16 introduced some neat features, but (IIRC) started gating skills, which was not so great in my book. A17 has completely ruined it for me.

I don't like fighting every single zombie that loads in my screen and actively seeking them out to get that sweet sweet experience.

I don't like being stuck with rudimentary tools for a long time.

I don't like feeling that when I do finally find a better tool, it's not all that much better in practice.

I don't like how it feels like I can run less than an obese person who usually got around on a mobility scooter.

I don't like how it seems that my character gets hungrier faster, but there's no food, because I can't reach any POI's and the zombies don't drop anything.

What I do like? Gathering resources and building a fortress so that when horde night comes, I am prepared and can readily handle them, and won't be spending days fixing my fortress in preparation for the next one. I like exploring the world (only ever play RWG), dodging zombies between POIs and seeing what goodies are in store. I like feeling that looting actually helps me progress.

 

[Benjiro]

Old system created weird player actions where nobody would open crates because they were too low level. If players were playing with higher level friends only the higher level players would be allowed to open chests.
Old system made brown and orange level gear completely useless and shunned.

New system makes all base gear the same so brown and orange are basically as useful as the higher tier and don't have to be completely discounted.

New system progression adds several parameters to durability and damage. Examples: Rate of fire, accuracy, range, ammo capacity, stamina reduction, special hits like knockdown, stun, and bleed. Through mods all of these paramaters and more can be progressed and you can have two very very different and unique pistols. There is no limit to what the new system will be able to add to gear progression.

You know the new system has players completely disregarding tool levels because very few good mods show up anyway.

When you have player going ... bwah ... buying or finding a Steel axe / shovel vs my Iron axe / shovel is not really worth it. No big differences. I rather sell the steal one.

When they see a level 4 gun and simply sell it because its better to get the credits then actually keeping it. That is the effect from removing the damage scaling by levels of the weapons / tools. You kind of made POI rewards even less interesting.

The game is now broken in a different way. Most of those mods are things that may have been just as possible with the old system as the new. Range, accuracy, ammo capacity, etc ...

Before you got exited to get a level 400 weapon or tool. Now you see a level 4 weapon or tool and you do not give it 2 cents worth of thinking. Good mods are so rare anyway that most people do not even care for most of them. Yay, another dye mod. Sure, having a ugly looking purple gun looks so great.

Do not believe me ... do a bit of Youtube watching how people play and very fast you see their attitudes change about the rewards. At first everybody is exited because they still think like A15/A16. But later on they simply do not care anymore. And that is people in day 7, 8 , 9 ...

 

[Kamuchi]

Roland, in regard to the maximum active claim blocks, could you suggest to just expose it in the serverconfig.xml to something like MaxActiveClaimPerPlayer and just leave it at 1 or 2 by default but pve servers can up it to what ever they like?

 

[wildaxeman1]

i would like to see slight damage increase with tools and weapons in higher tier. even 1 extra damage to block or entity would be nice. mods do rest. it is just to have more desire to get better equipment.

 

[Noompsie]

OP is 100% correct. Bottom line, it seems TFP accidentally stumbled on a unique game that drew a lot of people in, rather than having actually intended it. Even so, they got it fairly solid in 16, and then, for reasons I cannot understand, threw away everything they had been evolving for years and replaced it with the typical spreadsheet design, low player choice pablum you see in any other product. They had lightning in a bottle and dumped it out, and it makes no sense, but it's their game. So be it.
I haven't been playing at all since this alpha came out and I saw the direction things were going. The design philosophy is absolutely against everything I actually loved about the game. This game used to be unique, fun, and endlessly replayable. Now it's not. I have been hoping to see some sign that TFP realized this direction was a mistake, but they never seem to do that, not on any iteration. The fact is that TFP put a lot of work into making the game completely unrecognizable to many long term players, and they are not going to change it. I'm sorry to say this, but it's time for me to uninstall. Time for some of us to face reality and move on, just as we have been repeatedly advised to do by so many here.

GLHF

Yep. Unfortunately the OP is correct. The quoted post here is also correct. They built a game over many, many alphas, which people loved and played to death. This is no longer the same game, and is going down the road of a lot of games that have vanished into obscurity. Damn shame.

 

[DaVegaNL]

OP is 100% correct. Bottom line, it seems TFP accidentally stumbled on a unique game that drew a lot of people in, rather than having actually intended it. Even so, they got it fairly solid in 16, and then, for reasons I cannot understand, threw away everything they had been evolving for years and replaced it with the typical spreadsheet design, low player choice pablum you see in any other product. They had lightning in a bottle and dumped it out, and it makes no sense, but it's their game. So be it.
I haven't been playing at all since this alpha came out and I saw the direction things were going. The design philosophy is absolutely against everything I actually loved about the game. This game used to be unique, fun, and endlessly replayable. Now it's not. I have been hoping to see some sign that TFP realized this direction was a mistake, but they never seem to do that, not on any iteration. The fact is that TFP put a lot of work into making the game completely unrecognizable to many long term players, and they are not going to change it. I'm sorry to say this, but it's time for me to uninstall. Time for some of us to face reality and move on, just as we have been repeatedly advised to do by so many here.

GLHF

Such drama. Such nonsense.

A17e is actually one of the best Alpha releases of 7Days, and I've been around for a long time. A16.4 was an absolute snorefest, with no challenge, nor any difficulty. You had a forge going on on day 1, and iron tools on day 2. And you speak about fun and replayability?

 

[Rockspider]

Such drama. Such nonsense.
A17e is actually one of the best Alpha releases of 7Days, and I've been around for a long time. A16.4 was an absolute snorefest, with no challenge, nor any difficulty. You had a forge going on on day 1, and iron tools on day 2. And you speak about fun and replayability?

Really I think you should trying playing a16 again to get a real understanding of early game in a16.

Iron tools early game were slightly better then a stone axe due to quality!

A17 is even easier then a16 for tools as quality is now redundant so you must find a17 really boring now!

 

[Viktoriusiii]

Such drama. Such nonsense.
A17e is actually one of the best Alpha releases of 7Days, and I've been around for a long time. A16.4 was an absolute snorefest, with no challenge, nor any difficulty. You had a forge going on on day 1, and iron tools on day 2. And you speak about fun and replayability?

If you like A17 I'm happy for you. But it objectively ISN'T the best alpha.

Progression is slower because of stamina and other rebalancing. I still have a forge on day 1 and iron tools on day4-5. Just not in the poi I would like to move in, but in a generic one.

There are things that A17 does better than A16. But most of them are balancing related and not due to changes.

The only benefits in A17 is the "buff"system, even though that needs a lot of balancing and the Quests. And the weaponmods.

Nearly(there are some small things that I like, finishing resources gives an extra reward and stuff like that) every other change was a downgrade.

Tools weapons and armors dont have a real progression anymore or it makes no sense (colour gives dmg)

Zombies are able to wallhack (they rather break 10000+ blockhp then take the obvious free path (with spikes behind the corner)

The perksystem is so old, stale and boring that I still can't believe they threw away their masterpiece, just because it was slightly unbalanced. And don't even get me started on what level-gating is. It is the most bland stupid and restricting way to force the player to slow down and give the illusion of longer playing times. It's atrocious and noone who has even read a book about game design should ever consider implementing it into a sandbox rpg. ESPECIALLY when the game already had a more intricate and immersive system in place.

Think what ppl would do if Elderscrolls 6 has level-gating and such a bland perk system. The outrage over Fallout 76 would look like a joke in comparison and the first and most downloaded mod will bring the old system back.

 

[Ghostlight]

A16 had plenty of level gating. Just saying.

Eg Chem Station needed Science 7 which was locked till level 60.

Nevertheless I agree that player progression in A16 was a masterpiece compared to A17.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

God my reply got deleted (connection issues not by a mod )... ok short version:

It did, but not as much and was often called a temporary solution.

But now they expanded this crappy system even more...