World Randomness

[Kyoji]

As I was thinking I feel that the allure of A16 was randomness and non linear gameplay where you could venture freely into any POI you thought was interesting.

Now I like the traders and quests and while I think there are ways to make them better I think there are ways to help improve the randomness and non linear gameplay a bit.

Feel free to add your own suggestions.

Flatspot was discussed during the town hall as a way for the ingame engine to determine flat spots of land for spawning air drops and potentially other random events better.

I think use of Flatspot can help bridge the gap for that element of randomness people are seeking.

You could have dynamic events happen around the world around your position that encourage exploration. Such as a downed helicopter with supplies, etc. You could make events differ based on whether there is a tile or not so you can get wilderness events and city events.

Also just making remnant POIs more useful for loot/time spent. Since they are not hardened and now fill out a large portion of the maps. Bandits would help here as well as more zombie spawns within the remnant to compensate.

What ideas do you have to help add randomness into the world and to break up some of the more linear gameplay of rinse/repeating quests?

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

a downed helicopter with supplies, etc. You could make events differ based on whether there is a tile or not so you can get wilderness events and city events.

Thought I'd come over to the new thread you posted on the subject so it doesn't get lost.

They don't necessarily have to be events, either. Can not tiles be designed for inclusion on RWG maps that contain such things as a herd of deer to hunt? I don't particularly like the gamified way games like RDR2 handle supposed (but not) exploration. Nope. They give you optional objectives to take down a legendary animal or something. Leave me alone! I'm perfectly happy just riding around a game world like RDR2's. I don't need no stinking handholding, but such random tiles filled with whatever rewarding discovery you have in mind would be nice in 7 Days. Not neccessary, but nice. I don't think the unrewarding cemetery in the middle of nowhere cuts it, which I think comes back to how much loot has been generalized.

 

[zztong]

What ideas do you have to help add randomness into the world and to break up some of the more linear gameplay of rinse/repeating quests?

A game without traders has been possible on PC where you can edit things. With biome progression that's maybe not as possible as it has been, but biome progression is changing, so maybe. Either way, a "traderless" sandbox option goes a long way to restoring a lot of early play feel, I think.

I'm not sure I'd call that "randomness." When I think of world randomness I think of RWG features. Adding a POI is pretty fast and responsive. Adding major elements like new settlements or districts in cities is a surprising amount of work.

More (or Custom) terrain stamps has potential, though their use for rivers leaves me wanting a little. Counter to an investment in rivers would be there's no major game play for rivers or lakes, other than potentially a source of water (see Jars discussion).

Can not tiles be designed for inclusion on RWG maps that contain such things as a herd of deer to hunt?

I don't think I've ever tried to make a sleeper volume full of deer. Tiles aren't used in the Wilderness, but a Wilderness POI would essentially be the same thing. We have had POIs with Chickens in a volume, so it seems likely to be possible.

 

[Kyoji]

Thought I'd come over to the new thread you posted on the subject so it doesn't get lost.

They don't necessarily have to be events, either. Can not tiles be designed for inclusion on RWG maps that contain such things as a herd of deer to hunt? I don't particularly like the gamified way games like RDR2 handle supposed (but not) exploration. Nope. They give you optional objectives to take down a legendary animal or something. Leave me alone! I'm perfectly happy just riding around a game world like RDR2's. I don't need no stinking handholding, but such random tiles filled with whatever rewarding discovery you have in mind would be nice in 7 Days. Not neccessary, but nice. I don't think the unrewarding cemetery in the middle of nowhere cuts it, which I think comes back to how much loot has been generalized.

Very true. I didn't think of even just natural events like herds of deer. Very intriguing.

More (or Custom) terrain stamps has potential, though their use for rivers leaves me wanting a little. Counter to an investment in rivers would be there's no major game play for rivers or lakes, other than potentially a source of water (see Jars discussion).

Fishing. I still want it. Lmao


I decided to start a new thread on it because I feel like this and Flatspot in general has so much potential.

 

[theFlu]

I just took a quest reward bicycle in a new "rushy" playthrough (testing bookworm). I usually don't bother with the bike, I rather run. Having been immersed in the discussions about the game lately, I might be oversensitive, but I think is actually somewhat real.

Bicycle, a great first mode of transport for the motorless scrub. Or, the rails that take you to the next exclamation point? It was a visceral feel of stepping into a thing-on-rails that will take me "straight where I need to be" .. but nowhere else. It can take me somewhere else, too; but I ain't got no reason to, and exploring on that thing isn't .. fun.

It's such a small thing, but I felt Bad starting to drive it. Mostly because there isn't a reason to go .. anywhere. Current Randomness on the map? Well, it's random city messes (they look fine if you don't think about it too much, but the grids are .. yikes ), or random stencils of mountains with no reason to check them out. No reason to be there. Just give me a teleport-to-exclamation at that point.

Bookworm makes me want to clean up trashes. There's trash in the wilderness, but not That much. "Just run the road, there's plenty of trash at the next resetable POI". Feels like a tiny tendril of the fractal of this game; it's all the same tendril up from there.

 

[durabigael]

The world randomness is what make game great.

Look at the New Ufo X-com Denfense and the old one that was running on DOS. The first one, after you finish it , you know where the enemy are and its done. 0 replayability.

Game that are still good after years ... Master of Orion 2, X-com (dos version), Heroes of Might and Magic 3.

I played 7 days on console years ago when i was looking for a game split screen with my kid. Since the we all have the game on PC.

A few thing that I am missing from the older version.

-Way more zombie in the street
-Random vendor in any biome
-City in any biome
-Clothing system for temp
-The crafting book system is not immersive as well.
-Random spawn point (i had game that i randomly started in wasteland)

So here my advice, don't push player to try to play your game in a certain way, keep the randomness to a maximum and instead of trying to change aspect of the game add stuff to it.

-Add NPC for your base, that you need to feed and equip, dont need to be mercenary. They could even be civilian .... Could maybe even use that for crafting system.
-Add fresh idea, like an option to play a teen/kid. Super weak character that cannot use every weapon with very low HP.
-The costume/armor is kinda nice , but maybe a full character creation with class/bonus/malus would be interesting. Maybe even Stats.
-An option to increase the % of infection.
-Disease like cold/fever

Push as much randomness in the game as possible, so 2 games never feel the same. The biome progression push in a complete opposite direction .....

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

I didn't think of even just natural events like herds of deer.

Would come in handy for plenty of other things condusive to emergent gameplay as well. Random encounters of all kinds are possible. I'd just hope they not go all Wild Wasteland. (Best decision Obsidian ever made was to lock stuff like aliens and Star Trek shuttlecraft behind a perk. Talk about immersion breaking.)

They could devote a little less time to creating new POI structures, awesome as they are, and a little more to creating these kinds of random encounters that, preferably, could only appear in a RWG map once, if unique. (That would eliminate the problem of identical structures appearing with identical item placement, notes and journals on different planets as in Starfield.) I imagine they plan to do that with stuff like bandit ambushes. Dot the wilderness with them in RWG and there'd be a reason to explore the wilderness just following your own curiosity across the game map.

Is there a way to ensure uniques only appear on a RWG map once? With identical traders often appearing just on the other side of town, I have to wonder.

 

[avalonnn]

I admit that before I understood the system, I enjoyed walking into POIs. In my very first playthrough, I turned off zombie spawning and walked through Johnnytown -- one of the POIs that is larger on the inside than it looks on the outside. Might be interesting, perhaps only for supplies, to get the quest in the POI and then reset the location when you cash it in at the trader. But for the other quest types, you'd have to still activate them manually as now.

 

[avalonnn]

One thing I liked about the smoothies is that FP showed that they can do multipart quests -- maybe level 7 quests would involve multiple POIs or tasks. I also found the radioactive mushrooms brilliant -- they were most visible at night and during the times shortly before and after the night, encouraging you to take risks to obtain them. I would have liked them to become critical parts for some sort of expendable, like a mini-nuke grenade or something more interesting than 50% storm damage resistance that the FPs shared in the town hall -- even a quickly-expended laser blast tool.