PC You cant balance Sp and Mp in the same game

[Kage848]

If well balanced Im not against specialization. It was more of a general comment against every frikin survival game beeing focused on MP. Except some pearls like subnautica, the forest, Empyrion and ofc 7d2d. This last 2 at least for now.

I don't want 7 Days focused on MP at all. I'm just saying with a skill point per level setting it can make the people that love MP and SP happy at the same time.

- - - Updated - - -

The game difficulty is determined by gamestage.
The solo player gets fewer skill points for specialisation but also lower tier enemies.

And that's been a very good way of handling things. But Id still like to get all those really cool skills. If the game becomes too easy I can always up the difficulty to compensate. Harder enemies with me having more abilities > weaker enemies because I have less toys to play with.

- - - Updated - - -

My thoughts exactly. I play with my wife in MP, but I also play solo on MP servers. I haven't had any problems with balance but I also have to play differently.
Disagree with Kage on this one. I think it's fine.

Yea and that's cool. If you want to limit yourself to fewer skills playing alone that's great. But for those of us who don't want to miss out on those abilities we shouldn't have to.

To be clear I don't think this is a problem atm and never has been. Just saying if you added this feature you could really squeeze the people in MP teams if they want to, so they can specialize. I know I would on my MP server.

 

[Randomdude]

I don't want 7 Days focused on MP at all. I'm just saying with a skill point per level setting it can make the people that love MP and SP happy at the same time.
- - - Updated - - -

And that's been a very good way of handling things. But Id still like to get all those really cool skills. If the game becomes too easy I can always up the difficulty to compensate. Harder enemies with me having more abilities > weaker enemies because I have less toys to play with.

As I posted in another thread... Maybe the solution is bringing Skill Books (+1) back for SP. You get more things to loot, get eventually more points and you dont have to change a thing programming-wise (not as much as other options).

 

[lazyknob]

If there's an imbalance between sp and mp... it wouldn't be about the perk points.

 

[Krougal]

The problem is that everyone runs, everyone carries stuff, everyone loots, everyone buys from the trader, everyone (HAS TO) craft (certain) stuff. And those are tied into the specializations.

Having to deal with the encumbrance penalties because i chose to play a ranged character is incredibly frustrating. I don't mind spending the points to reduce encumbrance, but now I have to invest a LOT of points to do it. Oh, to add to the ranged conundrum, I also end up with sub-par resource harvesting, so gunpowder will be super tight.

If i go melee, I miss out on the ranged benefits...thats fine with me, thats the choice i made, but my looting also suffers. Additionally, assuming SP playthroughs are likely to be melee (strength, endurance, intelligence) or ranged (perception, agility, intelligence), the melee build will suffer from reduced stamina, and if they do put points into agility, the combat benefits of it are significantly worse for melee than ranged (sneak bonuses).

picking a combat style for SP is fine, locking players out of core gameplay elements is much much less fine. It's looking like MP players will get to specialize, but SP will be...not FORCED, but strongly strongly encouraged to avoid the top levels of most attributes, which means those nifty top level perks will be locked to those players until absolute extreme levels.

...not being godlike at the core gameplay elements (looting, crafting, carrying, running & jumping, self-heal-over-time, resource gathering) just feels frustrating. I'm hoping the attribute system gets refined later to perhaps disassociate THAT kind of perk from the attribute and be able to be boosted independently.

This!

 

[Noompsie]

What if... you are not supposed to play the exact same way in SP and MP?
What if... using traders and actually finding loot instead of having it all crafted matters now?

What if... you are supposed to be more limited solo, because that's how people work?

If the game is too hard for you, play with creative mode on or mod files yourself.

The direction they are taking right now was always supposed to be a thing.

Maybe instead of trying to max every single stat and perk you should not plan your progression and make sacrifices? You know, like in ALL RPG GAMES.

What If....You tried to give a less sarcastic answer and came up with a few helpful suggestions instead.

 

[Royal Deluxe]

Well as workarround maybe edit the Bedrollquest and add 15 Skillpoints.

For the moment i try the vanilla settings

(But i allready regret it: You are to cold, No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold, )

With ZERO possibilitys to solve that

 

[mikemr2]

So there's no way to balance the game for the sp game and the mp game without a key game option. Skill point options.
I love the idea of specialization in mp. I really do, it's a fantastic idea. Not so much for sp though.

In mp you can get a group of 3 friends, work together, and do it all. In sp, your screwed. Now that's not the state of the game today but im worried its heading that way.

The reverse is true too. If you give the sp all the stuff he wants, not even nessesarly all the perks but the good ones, then the mp game get screwed because there little to no need to specialize.

So, 1 game option, just 1. Hey if you can add 4 different run speed options you can add this lol. Just an option to adjust how many points we get per level. I dont even want that many more tbh, many like 1 extra point every 2 or 3 levels. You could then let the players balance the skills in there mp game by changing the skill points in the opposite way, like 3 or 4 points per level, for maximum specialization.

You wont get any kind of real balance giving the same amount of perk points to both sp and mp, just wont work.

suppose the other option is that in a MP game you choose a class... ie healer, tank mage - awesome dps (death knight) lols ... but of course this would mean another rewrite of the system and making 7 days a complete dungeon crawler l

 

[Bhaaltazar]

Maybe the solution is bringing Skill Books (+1) back for SP. You get more things to loot, get eventually more points and you don't have to change a thing programming-wise (not as much as other options).

This is the smartest solution to the the whole "lack of points". Maybe reintroduce the +Skill books instead of current magazines which has no real use ( though now they might get little use since points are more scarce ). But I would definitely add some skill books into the mix of book containers - or maybe just crates? )

That would pretty much solve whole thing and give you more initiative to explore and look for book stores and alike, and bookstores revisit when you explore more.

In A16 you had no reason to revisit the bookstores once you found your recipes... this way you would look for more schematics and Skill books!

 

[LuckyStar]

So there's no way to balance the game for the sp game and the mp game without a key game option. Skill point options.
I love the idea of specialization in mp. I really do, it's a fantastic idea. Not so much for sp though.

In mp you can get a group of 3 friends, work together, and do it all. In sp, your screwed. Now that's not the state of the game today but im worried its heading that way.

The reverse is true too. If you give the sp all the stuff he wants, not even nessesarly all the perks but the good ones, then the mp game get screwed because there little to no need to specialize.

So, 1 game option, just 1. Hey if you can add 4 different run speed options you can add this lol. Just an option to adjust how many points we get per level. I dont even want that many more tbh, many like 1 extra point every 2 or 3 levels. You could then let the players balance the skills in there mp game by changing the skill points in the opposite way, like 3 or 4 points per level, for maximum specialization.

You wont get any kind of real balance giving the same amount of perk points to both sp and mp, just wont work.

This can be solved by having Single Player Only quests that give extra points.

Have them related to a Story Progression and you've got yourself a winner!

You're welcome.

 

[Reth]

So there's no way to balance the game for the sp game and the mp game without a key game option. Skill point options.
I love the idea of specialization in mp. I really do, it's a fantastic idea. Not so much for sp though.

[...]

You wont get any kind of real balance giving the same amount of perk points to both sp and mp, just wont work.

I play builder SP exclusively, so I feel your pain. My solution - to manually adjust XP/level/skill point settings to fit my play style, so I'll have an option to get all the skills eventually if I choose to do so.

SP specialization *can* and *does* work in other games, but it takes a lot of balancing and game features. You have to make sure that for *every* single task there are as many ways to accomplish it as there are specialization paths. 7DTD isn't there yet and I don't think it will ever be.

For example, lets say we have four classes - builder, warrior, thief and adventurer. Builder should be able to get all the food from farming, warrior from killing zombies, thief from bartering and adventurer - from looting. Builder should be able to create impenetrable fortresses and deadly turrets. Warrior should be able to just melee his way through any horde. Thief should be able to stealth and pick zombies off one by one. Adventurer should be able, I don't know, rent safe spaces or something. Different classes should have different weapon and armor types they excel at. Etc, etc.

This is how specialization usually works. Not sure TFP can pull it off though, to be honest. They seem to concentrate on MP/FPS/Nomad approach with everything balanced around it.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

What If....You tried to give a less sarcastic answer and came up with a few helpful suggestions instead.

What if you don’t agree with the premise that you can’t balance for SP and MP PVE. The history of Kage’s posts on A17 strongly suggests he finds it too grindy and/or too hard for SP. Personally I don’t agree that it is too grindy or too hard. More importantly I don’t think what Kage is displeased about has a whole lot to do with balancing MP PVE and SP. Is MVP PVE easier? Sure. But I think this is best handled by adjusting the difficulty level, not by changing skill points for SP.

Now if this thread was about the impossibility of balancing for SP, MP PVE, and PVP, I would agree 100%. More often than not balancing for PVP mucks up SP/PVE and balancing for SP/PVE mucks up PVP.

 

[HungryZombie]

So there's no way to balance the game for the sp game and the mp game without a key game option. Skill point options.
I love the idea of specialization in mp. I really do, it's a fantastic idea. Not so much for sp though.

In mp you can get a group of 3 friends, work together, and do it all. In sp, your screwed. Now that's not the state of the game today but im worried its heading that way.

The reverse is true too. If you give the sp all the stuff he wants, not even nessesarly all the perks but the good ones, then the mp game get screwed because there little to no need to specialize.

So, 1 game option, just 1. Hey if you can add 4 different run speed options you can add this lol. Just an option to adjust how many points we get per level. I dont even want that many more tbh, many like 1 extra point every 2 or 3 levels. You could then let the players balance the skills in there mp game by changing the skill points in the opposite way, like 3 or 4 points per level, for maximum specialization.

You wont get any kind of real balance giving the same amount of perk points to both sp and mp, just wont work.

I wish we could upvote or something. Well said.

 

[HungryZombie]

What if... you are not supposed to play the exact same way in SP and MP?
What if... using traders and actually finding loot instead of having it all crafted matters now?

What if... you are supposed to be more limited solo, because that's how people work?

If the game is too hard for you, play with creative mode on or mod files yourself.

The direction they are taking right now was always supposed to be a thing.

Maybe instead of trying to max every single stat and perk you should not plan your progression and make sacrifices? You know, like in ALL RPG GAMES.

I would agree with you if we were playing Fallout or Skyrim. This game, as fun as it is, is neither.

 

[LuckyStar]

Well as workarround maybe edit the Bedrollquest and add 15 Skillpoints.
For the moment i try the vanilla settings

(But i allready regret it: You are to cold, No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold,No Stamina, You are to cold, )

With ZERO possibilitys to solve that

Aaaaaack!

All those missing "o"'s,

It's "too" not "to".

My OCD is completely triggered.

LOL good post otherwise though.

 

[HungryZombie]

What if you don’t agree with the premise that you can’t balance for SP and MP PVE. The history of Kage’s posts on A17 strongly suggests he finds it too grindy and/or too hard for SP. Personally I don’t agree that it is too grindy or too hard. More importantly I don’t think what Kage is displeased about has a whole lot to do with balancing MP PVE and SP. Is MVP PVE easier? Sure. But I think this is best handled by adjusting the difficulty level, not by changing skill points for SP.
Now if this thread was about the impossibility of balancing for SP, MP PVE, and PVP, I would agree 100%. More often than not balancing for PVP mucks up SP/PVE and balancing for SP/PVE mucks up PVP.

I think you missed Kage's point entirely.

How I interpret his comment is that for example in MP, one person can focus on INT and be the group crafter. That means the other people don't need to spend points in INT and do other things with those points. That's unfair to SP. Unfair might be too strong a word, but it's different at the least. SP and MP players have the same skill point pool right now.

SP has to spread points around. You personally may not and that's cool but I think the vast majority of players would spend their mostly the same way and there won't be much option to have much variety without a standard set of perks for quality of life so to speak.

Would be nice if at the least, you could get more points, or an unlimited skill cap or something to help the SP guy fill in his build and have some variety as well.

It's at least worth a discussion no?

 

[LuckyStar]

I think you missed Kage's point entirely.
How I interpret his comment is .....

Well...

... I reject your interpretation of someone else's interpretation of someone else's thoughts expressed as words reflecting their perceived experience of an event and/or idea and substitute it with my own.

CLEARLY the post was about how Pizza is INDEED the best food on the planet.

At this point I'm not sure how you could have possibly missed something so obvious.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

I’m not trying to stop the discussion just expressing my opinion that I don’t agree. Trust me I really didn’t miss his point. I just don’t agree with it. Additionally, every option TFP adds to the game creates another failure point. Based on my experience with the past alphas, I would prefer the least amount of failure points possible.

I also don’t agree at all that most SP spend their skill points the same way. I have spent them differently in every build I’ve played and every streamer/YouTuber I’ve watched has spent them differently from me. Will min-maxers spend their points the same way? Maybe. But the game shouldn’t be balanced for min-maxers because they will optimize the fun out of the game no matter what the devs do.

 

[CoolJ]

I knew this would happen. It's why I almost never bother with posting about anything anymore. It's totally pointless. Every single time the pimps change something they make it worse. Followed by a statement that the change was made at our request. When actually, what they have done is a bastardization of the community request. Now we are back to watching points accumulate without the ability to spend them to make our character stronger. Everything you want to do now costs 150% more points than it did before. It seems clear to me that this is not going to allow earlier specialization at all. It will allow you to wait longer, regardless of level, to attain the skills you need, and leave you out of some skills all together.

Now what we have is a competition of perks instead of a compliment of them. You would be a fool if you ever invested a single point into mele combat now. It is inherently inferior to ranged combat. If you want a forge any time soon, best to ignore mele combat perks.

Once you have a forge, you have to worry about being able to utilize it at a rate that allows you to keep up with the ever looming horde every seven days. How many points will you need to spend in order to be able to do that? Every one you put towards that end now directly competes with being able to kill enemies in an efficient manner.

So now, there are questions to answer.

How many points does it take to get a forge?

How many points does it take to be able to make a bicycle?

How many points will I have to spend to be efficient at combat?

Exactly what will it cost me to be able to make steel?

The argument, thus far, is that you can buy the things you need from the trader. Well, not exactly. First the trader has to have it. Second, you have to be able to afford it. This is after massive nerfs to the amount the trader will pay for things vs how much they charge for even the most simple resource. It's simply an untenable option at this point in time. So once again, we move the train forward before we have laid the tracks.

How many man hours are going to be spent on things that are just going to be thrown away? Like zombie dismemberment, or gore bags, or level gates, or weapon parts, etc. At this point we should be bug testing. Instead we are testing concepts that seem to be designed with the least amount of foresight. All of this fumbling in the dark is exhausting. Toss a line and walk it pimps. Level gating wasn't the problem. Poorly implemented level gating was the problem. A poorly implemented quasi laissez-faire system is going to be just as much of a failure.

 

[ktr]

So there's no way to balance the game for the sp game and the mp game without a key game option. Skill point options.
I love the idea of specialization in mp. I really do, it's a fantastic idea. Not so much for sp though.

In mp you can get a group of 3 friends, work together, and do it all. In sp, your screwed. Now that's not the state of the game today but im worried its heading that way.

The reverse is true too. If you give the sp all the stuff he wants, not even nessesarly all the perks but the good ones, then the mp game get screwed because there little to no need to specialize.

So, 1 game option, just 1. Hey if you can add 4 different run speed options you can add this lol. Just an option to adjust how many points we get per level. I dont even want that many more tbh, many like 1 extra point every 2 or 3 levels. You could then let the players balance the skills in there mp game by changing the skill points in the opposite way, like 3 or 4 points per level, for maximum specialization.

You wont get any kind of real balance giving the same amount of perk points to both sp and mp, just wont work.

What do you mean by balance is my first question. I, personally, expect an SP game to be harder than MP. The player has to be more careful about their point expenditures and be aware of other resources in the game that can help 'fill in the gaps'. I play both SP and MP (more SP) and I've really enjoyed needing to think my choices over a bit more.

 

[JCrook1028]

I haven't played deep enough into SP B231 to tell if it's an issue yet or not but yes it is ofc "easier" in MP because the players can spread their skills. I've seen a few different fixes here in the thread, none that imo would work tho.

You can't have the skill points themselves vary between SP/MP because in A17 now at any time you can swap the game between the two. So you could have it set to SP and earn more skills then change it to MP so your buddy can play and you've magically gained more skills than you should have at the same level. Same being true in reverse.

Even the suggestion for SP only quests giving points has the same flaw. People have said the game "knows" whether it is SP or MP. That's only half true. It does know BUT as soon as you start a new session you can change it, then it "knows" it is the opposite of what it was 5 minuites ago.

I really don't see any way to balance SP/MP by varyng skill point distribution for this reason. The only way imo to balance them is to always play MP at a higher difficulty than you would play SP. Otherwise MP is just too easy.

That too runs into it's own issues. In my personal case I just do not handle running zombies well, at all (I just don't have the dexterity to handle them without fumble fingering myself into a special sort of keyboard hell.). So raising difficulty by changing speed settings is something I just wouldn't play.

All this being said I don't really see a way TFP can "balance" the two skill point wise, it's gonna have to be done at the player level.