You've Stripped the Soul Out of 7 Days to Die

[theFlu]

Exploration doesn't happen just because they change questing or change town size or change biomes.

I think you guys are talking about "exploration" in different senses. Easy counter example, you make all your forest biome "cities" mostly remnants with max 3 tier 1 POIs in them. And lock the POIs from repeating. Now you'll have to explore 4 separate forest towns just to complete Tier 1.

Now I don't know if that's an improvement, but I think it demonstrates the idea well enough.

 

[EvilPolygons]

The game has sandbox elements. There will always be things you CAN do but don't HAVE to do. I personally never double dip on POIs. It's just a choice I made and I don't do it. So for me it doesn't matter if they removed that ability or not. But the players who love double dipping would lose their gameplay. So what's best? ...

Optional settings, that's what's best. My opinion has always been that any game design that requires players to self-regulate or self-nerf themselves is bad game design. Take XCOM for example -- you have the option to start an Iron Man game, but you aren't forced to. Once you make that choice, you're stuck with it, which is what differentiates it from simple self-regulation.

Leaving game balance up to player self-regulation/restraint is terrible because that ignores the golden rule of game theory: that the typical player will always seek out the path of least resistance, even if not consciously, and even if doing so ultimately ruins their experience.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

This game just will never be a game where exploration is at all worthwhile.

TFP could take some cues from Fromsoft on this one. Theirs is not the kind of "exploration" that will ever appeal to me, but though Elden Ring has identical *bleeping* ruins and rises throughout, each contains a different weapon or talisman or "memory stone," ad infinitum, so it's worth it to dive into every, single one of them.

7 Days will never have the kind of exploration one would expect from a RPG no matter how many "RPG elements" they add to it. That would require tidbits of world history, story, characterizations and so forth to be scattered throughout the gameworld, wilderness included, and that's not going to happen in this game.

 

[Kalen]

This won't ever happen, though. Not in the way you are thinking. Due to how towns are generated, you will have the same POI in multiple towns. In most cases, you are going to see the same POI in quests even if it required you to go to another town. And they can't just prevent it entirely or you might not have enough different POI of a given tier for the higher tiers. I've had maps from RWG that only had only 3 tiers 5 POI, which would mean I couldn't complete tier 5 without doing the same POI more than once. That doesn't happen often, and as they add more POI, it should happen less, but you can't entirely prevent it because RNG will make a situation where you can't finish your tiers.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't being clear. Not talking about the same style of POI... I'm talking about the exact same POI meaning the POI in the exact same location.

Obviously you can't avoid seeing the same style of POI.... I've seen them all hundreds of times, probably (well, except for the newer ones)

 

[Riamus]

If not using traders also got rid of dungeon-style POIs, I'd never use another trader again. I was so excited for the dungeon style POIs when A17 came out, then I did like 3 of them, and I was already bored.

I don't think you will ever see those go away. You will need to use custom POI that aren't designed in that style.

I think you guys are talking about "exploration" in different senses. Easy counter example, you make all your forest biome "cities" mostly remnants with max 3 tier 1 POIs in them. And lock the POIs from repeating. Now you'll have to explore 4 separate forest towns just to complete Tier 1.

Now I don't know if that's an improvement, but I think it demonstrates the idea well enough.

I wouldn't call that exploration. At best, it is traveling.

Sorry, maybe I wasn't being clear. Not talking about the same style of POI... I'm talking about the exact same POI meaning the POI in the exact same location.

Obviously you can't avoid seeing the same style of POI.... I've seen them all hundreds of times, probably (well, except for the newer ones)

No, I understand. There are always duplicates in each town. It is just how POI and tiles work.

 

[Kalen]

No, I understand. There are always duplicates in each town. It is just how POI and tiles work.

I know?

I dont think that was ever debated.

 

[Roland]

Optional settings, that's what's best. My opinion has always been that any game design that requires players to self-regulate or self-nerf themselves is bad game design. Take XCOM for example -- you have the option to start an Iron Man game, but you aren't forced to. Once you make that choice, you're stuck with it, which is what differentiates it from simple self-regulation.

Leaving game balance up to player self-regulation/restraint is terrible because that ignores the golden rule of game theory: that the typical player will always seek out the path of least resistance, even if not consciously, and even if doing so ultimately ruins their experience.

I'm all for optional settings but I wouldn't call allowing self-regulation outright bad design. If you are going to have a game that is at least partly sandbox then there is going to be some self-regulation and personal objective manufacturing going on. But that's neither here nor there. I understand the downsides you have outlined.

The other thing with options is that they don't seem to make people as happy as you would think. The biome progression is optional. The storms are optional. Yet....the critics use those options against TFP sneering that the Devs themselves had so little confidence in their new designs that they made them optional. So implement restrictions and rules that prevent players from destroying their own fun and they get angry about forced linearity and artifical gates. Make it an option and they say its a sign of a bad design. Leave it open choice and self-regulating and they say the game is broken because you CAN make all these choices that make it too easy. <shrug>

I know for a fact from many conversations that the Hueninks value the aspect of the sandbox that allows players to do things in the game in different ways. Players can choose to play how they want. They can use the trader to purchase loot, or scavenge it themselves, or craft it themselves. They can double dip POIs or not. They can build POIs that exploit the AI weaknesses or not. They can walk along the border of the forest and the burnt forest dipping in and out until they've made their badge and never make a burnt smoothie or they can make a burnt smoothie. Maybe TFP will add actual options but I doubt it. They enjoy the story telling aspect of the game and taking a nice long and slow progression route and aren't tempted to play in a way to be at endgame by Day 30. They've made the xmls available for the community to create the options and make the game more sim-like and less arcade-like.

 

[EvilPolygons]

I'm all for optional settings but I wouldn't call allowing self-regulation outright bad design. If you are going to have a game that is at least partly sandbox then there is going to be some self-regulation and personal objective manufacturing going on. But that's neither here nor there. I understand the downsides you have outlined.

The other thing with options is that they don't seem to make people as happy as you would think. The biome progression is optional. The storms are optional. Yet....the critics use those options against TFP sneering that the Devs themselves had so little confidence in their new designs that they made them optional. So implement restrictions and rules that prevent players from destroying their own fun and they get angry about forced linearity and artifical gates. Make it an option and they say its a sign of a bad design. Leave it open choice and self-regulating and they say the game is broken because you CAN make all these choices that make it too easy. <shrug>

Developers should listen to their players, but not to the extent that it drives them crazy or out of business. A lot of gamers don't even know what they actually want (other than to complain). A lot of gamers use message boards to try to "metagame" developers into giving them that path of least resistance, whether they realize it or not.

And then there are weirdos like me who want to suffer the path of MOST resistance and turn the game into a Souls-like abomination that no one in their right mind would ever want to play.

I know for a fact from many conversations that the Hueninks value the aspect of the sandbox that allows players to do things in the game in different ways. Players can choose to play how they want. They can use the trader to purchase loot, or scavenge it themselves, or craft it themselves. They can double dip POIs or not. They can build POIs that exploit the AI weaknesses or not. They can walk along the border of the forest and the burnt forest dipping in and out until they've made their badge and never make a burnt smoothie or they can make a burnt smoothie. Maybe TFP will add actual options but I doubt it. They enjoy the story telling aspect of the game and taking a nice long and slow progression route and aren't tempted to play in a way to be at endgame by Day 30. They've made the xmls available for the community to create the options and make the game more sim-like and less arcade-like.

The fact that TFP supports modding to such an amazing degree is all I need, personally. That doesn't help console players -- or PC players who refuse to use mods -- though. Now, there are some optional features I'd like to see added to vanilla... but it's unrealistic to think TFP can add options for every little feature or variation or tweak that people can dream up. The juice has to be worth the squeeze. An option that only 5 people will ever use isn't worth spending development time on. That's just reality.

But I hope the devs will give some consideration to some of the more popular optional feature requests... even if those won't be any of mine, lol.