7 Days to Die - and How I'm now Spoiled

[FlowerChild]

How is the zombie-player GPS ? I have been told it been fixed/added so zombie don't know where you are and stealth is now possible

Yeah, version 7 included the stealth system which covers all this and was the big reason I decided it was time to give the game another go. It works pretty well overall. There's some nice touches in there too like zombies will smell you from much further away if you're carrying raw meat.

In play it feels pretty good and natural, although I'd like to see it pushed further where tons of noise (like repeated gunfire or what have you) would eventually make an area uninhabitable by attracting excessive numbers of zombies. At present, the zombie concentrations never really hit critical mass, and it didn't really feel like I was hurting myself too much when I went nuts with guns on occasion.

I suspect this may be the direction they intend to head in the future though. Would certainly make stuff like PvP interesting if prolonged gun fights upped the environmental hazards in an area significantly, and open up tactics like making a ton of noise near an enemy base or something, then taking off and letting the zombies soften up the defenses.

[Taleric]

Alpha 7.3 up with armor system, smell feedback on minimap and sickness :D
I think I will wait till the totally random maps then dive in if it still runs as smooth as it does now. I love the direction they are going!

[FlowerChild]

Aha! Interesting. I just read over the change log and it turns out they fixed a bug where hordes weren't spawning after day 10. I wonder if that was responsible for the thing I was saying about the number of zombies never reaching "critical mass".

Will have to give this a try :)

[DocHussey]

A little over two months later and I think I will raise this thread back from the dead as opposed to make a new one.

Since the last time I posted about this, things have ramped up, down and straight sideways in places. Alpha 8.1 is quite a mess, but as a man with certain "connections", I can tell you that things are getting sorted rather well. Don't get upset that it isn't all done at once, but progress is being made as time progresses and bugfixes are coming in at a staggering rate.

As someone with a deep attachment to and involvement in the game (check the credits under "Entourage" if you don't believe me), I'd like anyone's honest feedback on the game so far. FC has mentioned that he was playing not too long ago, so I'd like to hear our tentacled overlords special brand of critique if willing, as well as anyone elses. We know about the aiming issue while mining, and the damn server stability issues (I own FibreServers, you're not going to tell me anything I don't already know there heh), but I'm looking for like the REAL feedback. Gameplay wise, what is good, what seems messed up in implementation, etc. Y'all know what I'm talking about.

Thanks in advance!

[FlowerChild]

I love the game man, I really do. I start up a new world with almost every update.

I think many of the new systems being introduced are very interesting. The block upgrade system through frames in a recent update particularly caught my attention as a real innovation in the genre, and I think the timed crafting, forging, and cooking have gone a long way towards making night time play more engaging and less "crouch in a corner waiting for the sun to rise".

So yeah, I'm impressed by a lot of the design that I see go into the game.

However, I think a lot of times though, the designers aren't going far enough and are pussying out on making some of the really tough decisions. Still way too many guns in the world (it's better, but not enough). Starting tools like a stone axe and homemade crossbow are stupid powerful. Food is still too easy to come by. No idea why they reduced fatigue for sprinting as it seemed like a step in the wrong direction. That kind of thing.

So while I'm impressed that they are taking tough decisions in some cases and actually making things harder, I'm often left with the impression that they don't go as far as they might have originally intended out of fear of their community rather than out of any real design justification. Would love to see those gloves come off and see what the game they'd actually want to be making if that wasn't the case.

A more direct observation though: I'm really not certain about the whole smooth terrain thing. Yes, it looks nice, but I'm feeling there's a lot of cases of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) that are violated in the process. Terrain winds up deforming at odd angles and such, particularly underground, and the seams between what is generated terrain and what is a player construction have been becoming less and less seamless. Interacting with the terrain is becoming more and more of a pain in the ass as a result, and if anything I'm finding it's requiring the player to think *more* about the underlying systems to get things done and is thus adversely affecting suspension of disbelief. In other words, with a blocky world, once you get used to it, you tend to forget about it and it just fades into the background. With this smooth terrain thing though you're constantly confronted with little nuisances associated with it and thus constantly reminded you're playing a game.

From the various release notes about it, I know the Pimps were very excited about it, but my reaction was distinctly "meh". I'm really not sure if the increased visual fidelity was worth all the annoyances it causes. And really, I find the visual fidelity only really stands out when you boot up the smooth terrain for the first time and say "oh...cool". A few minutes later it fades into the background and makes very little difference until you become annoyed by it while building.

Beyond that, I could probably write a book on the things I've observed and what I'd do differently. Given I'm going to be working on a game in the same genre however, I'll reserve those for my own project :)

[DocHussey]

Wow, prompt and friendly! Thanks for the feedback FC.

The issues with smooth terrain are being addressed. I can't go into details, but they are being addressed. It wasn't really a matter of visual fidelity that they wanted, it was more to distance themselves from the MC crowd and break into something more their own. It's been a hackneyed experience. Some things that didn't make final release were worse, lol. But all in all, once they figure out the whole collision thing, smooth terrain will work better. On that though, what would you think about doing differently in that regard? The blocky terrain is unfortunately off limits, but there's always room for improvement.

As far as the "tough decisions" being made, its a matter of money really IMHO. The backlash from the "Drop nothing on death" option being removed made a positively outlandish precedent in my book. Madmole, a fine guy and a downright masochist like myself, finds that most games are far to simple today. No consequences. This is why there are no save files so to speak. I digress though. He's the gentleman that does almost all of the game balancing, with input from the closed cadre. I frequently make allusions to BTW when discussing the various aspects and changes that I believe would make for a more interesting and ultimately fulfilling game.

The problem lies in a money vs experience trade off. Being realistic, how many downloads does BTW have per-release? Couple thousand? Maybe 25k? I'm *NOT* criticizing mind you, I'm putting things into perspective here. 7DtD has only recently broken the 250k in sales mark. Thats worldwide. Not a great sales run by any means, but for an indie company, its outstanding. To keep the sales coming in and to prep for their next game, the guys are concentrating on getting a good balance between difficulty and what the average user will want. It's either limit your customer base and ultimately your funding to make a one off game that is EXACTLY what a few thousand people want, or meet in the middle with some casual changes that allow people to be top shit in ten mins while expanding your customer base and incoming profits.

I think that things are going to continue on this path, with everything becoming an option so that you can tailor things how you see fit. Slowly the terrain will get fixed. And at some point, I might find you on a server that has a decent ping and make your head into a trophy in my bunker.

[FlowerChild]

The issues with smooth terrain are being addressed. I can't go into details, but they are being addressed. It wasn't really a matter of visual fidelity that they wanted, it was more to distance themselves from the MC crowd and break into something more their own. It's been a hackneyed experience. Some things that didn't make final release were worse, lol. But all in all, once they figure out the whole collision thing, smooth terrain will work better. On that though, what would you think about doing differently in that regard? The blocky terrain is unfortunately off limits, but there's always room for improvement.

I wouldn't have done it, and I don't think it will be fixable. Honestly, I was considering a similar system for RTH and after seeing it in 7 Days, I'm probably not going to go that route because I think it improves visuals at the cost of worsening gameplay.

If you're going purely for sales though, it makes for a good back of the box feature even if it makes for a worse game.

It's either limit your customer base and ultimately your funding to make a one off game that is EXACTLY what a few thousand people want, or meet in the middle with some casual changes that allow people to be top shit in ten mins while expanding your customer base and incoming profits.

I guess that's one way to look at it. I do not think that the existing fan base was attracted based on how easy the game is though, or that's behind the success. I think a differentiation must be made between what people say they want and what they actually do.

Anyways, I've gone on about that at length in the past. If mass-market is what they're primarily concerned with, more power to them as it leaves a larger niche for guys like me :)

[DocHussey]

*looks left and right shiftily*

If you're looking for a marketing man or someone to beat your code into submission, let me know, I've got a good group of guys like ourselves that would give their kidneys for the chance ;)

[FlowerChild]

One last point on the terrain thing: wanting to be different really isn't a valid reason to do something.

I run into this many times as a designer myself. Pretty much every time I'm designing a feature I look at what the competition has done in the past that is similar. I do this sometimes by going through my extensive mental inventory of games that I've played throughout my life, sometimes I actively seek out titles I haven't played to see how they handled it.

I then think upon ways that I can improve upon those approaches, or entirely different approaches that I can take.

I of course feel the desire to be innovative and do things differently. Sometimes though, I have to actively fight against that desire, swallow my pride, and just have to admit the way it's already been done is better than anything I've come up with. I tend to remind myself that it isn't right for players to end up with a substandard experience just because of my personal desire to be a special and unique snowflake.

In that light, I think the smooth terrain thing is a failure that's leading to a conflict between what the game world actually is and what it looks like. It's basically like you're trying to pretend you aren't playing or making a voxel game, when that's exactly what you're doing and you're making guilty concessions about it as a result.

My conclusion is that while yes, it is certainly different, it's not better for it.

[FlowerChild]

Oh! One other bit of feedback I don't mind sharing: giant wasps are lame.

Flying enemies are cool, serve a definite gameplay purpose, and I can definitely get behind that idea. Brightly colored buzzing giant insects in a dark post apocalyptic world is just comical in a bad way. They basically scream "placeholder" as they really don't fit in.

It kind of reminds me of that face-palmingly bad scene in the downright awful film Exorcist 2 with the giant bee that only serves "wtf were they smoking?" value. To me, in film, a creature like that would instantly label something as a B-movie (Bee-movie?). Seriously, can you imagine the fan fallout if in something like The Walking Dead or a Mad Max film (7 Days kinda feels like a mix between the two) the survivors were suddenly attacked by giant wasps? It just doesn't fit the genre.

I don't know if one of the team has a bee allergy or something that makes them feel bees are terrifying, but I think it's worth noting that for most people, they really aren't, and thus it's not tapping into any kind of primal fear or anything to have them flying around.

[Taleric]

Cool an update, so many alphas/betas are getting additions, too little time to try it all :P

Update:

Spoiler

Show

Official Alpha 8.2 Release Notes

Added
•Added new Enemy Aggression game option. With normal and feral. Feral means zombies sense you from over 100 meters at night simulating our old horde mode. They also come every night. Combine this with short 24 hour cycles and air drops for the classic horde mode experience.
•Added lens flare to sun and new sun texture
•Added moon shadows and increased moon light
•Added pine and maple tree farming. Tree seeds can be planted on dirt or forest ground and do not need to be watered or near water using seeds dropped from pine and maple trees
•Added rebar ramp recipe
•Added cobblestone upgrade path to include ramps and require forged iron (Joel)
•Added rotting flesh, femur and hide to zombie dog loot
•Added military weapons and ammo loot groups
•Added melee weapons loot group
•Added Hard Metal Door recipe & two upgraded versions. They are upgraded with forged metal.
•Added furniture material that has no stability (couches and chairs can no longer be stuck to walls)
•Added a weight to small rocks so they can be smelted into cement (Joel)
•Added cobblestones to airdrops
•Added new icons glass pane, cement mold, forged iron, goldenrod flower, goldenrod tea, dirt, sand, and clay

Changes
•Changed recipe crafting system overhaul includes: new recipe group tags to items and blocks so recipes are now sorted by groups. New color backgrounds for matching groups F.E. ammo and weapons are read, semi-transparent item icons appear in recipe grid, new recipe text colors bright green quick craft, dark green known, white unknown but have ingredients, grey unknown and don’t have ingredients, new alphabetical recipe sorting and sorting based on text color
•Changed cut down memory consumption by clearing refs on chunks
•Changed the limit on the number of chunks that are generated at the same time. Also to reduce memory consumption
•Changed optimized chunk memory consumption once again
•Changed internal handling of all normal maps to save memory. On a client this will bring about 300MB of system memory
•Changed the game uses now a different texture compression that leads to a 300MB memory saving on clients
•Changed the voice chat is now disabled per default! If a server switches voice chat off, no client can do voice chat! Note the voice chat bug is not fixed but this allows folks with this problem to play
•Changed biome resources underground to have no gravel and more small deposits of ore for better mining
•Changed mismatching versions cannot connect message is shown “Incompatible versions”
•Changed improved suitcase loot
•Changed increased drop scale of metal fragments, lumps of coal, and small rocks
•Changed selectable max player value in game options, limited to 8
•Changed removed Rusty Metal Door recipe
•Changed all recipes using thin metal plates or forging iron (a block) to use forged iron (an item)
•Changed hunting knife and bone shiv to have more durability and damage
•Changed lightened dead shrub texture
•Changed new high res cacti
•Changed default spectrum to be desert blue sky
•Changed went through menu descriptions and fixed inaccurate or incorrect wording and updated new options english.txt
•Shortened names of the recipes that are too long in the english.txt
•Changed ammunition nation book now unlocks bullet tip mold and bullet casing mold
•Changed cobblestone recipe now yields 2 cobblestones instead of 1
•Changed Sleeping bags now drop cloth when destroyed
•Changed increased stack limit on coal and potassium nitrate to 250
•Changed dirt is now at least 3 meters deep before hitting stone
•Changed increased stack limit of aloe cream to 10
•Changed weight of scrap brass to 8 oz so smaller items can be scrapped like trophies
•Changed updated icons for yucca juice, small rock, coffee, and stone
•Changed decreased fog in the plains
•Changed resource rock prefabs to more optimized sphere colliders, fixed excessively large collision area boxes had previously had
•Changed updated grass texture, curbs and curb corners
•Changed tuned zombie loot
•Changed Mp5’s, rocket launchers and sniper rifles are only found in military munitions crates
•Changed corrugated metal textures

Bug Fixes
•Fixed players can’t fall through terrain or get stuck inside blocks
•Fixed problem that wrong blocks were hit when digging
•Fixed zombies can’t hit doors & heads clip through doors and can attack things behind doors
•Fixed grass should be easier to hit from every angle
•Fixed colliders on melee weapons. Gave each weapon appropriate sized colliders. For example its much easier to hit a zombie with a sledgehammer than with a stick
•Fixed campfire output not clearing when changing recipes (putting in bag)
•Fixed issue with oven not being able to loot from certain angles
•Fixed stability problem in Diersville homes with basements
•Fixed the lighting on zombies & animals black at night except dog
•Fixed glass panes forging bug
•Fixed you can’t crouch while iron sighted
•Fixed the bad lighting on the ski lodge roof
•Fixed cobblestone so doors can be placed in it
•Fixed Sledgehammer not playing all the time
•Fixed supply crate bgs Airplanes animate smoothly on clients, parachute not showing, supply crates appearing black, supply crates despawning after landing
•Fixed maneuvering through open door doorways is bad
•Fixed burnt wooden frames to be made of wood instead of stone
•Fixed use of don’t not use texture in several prefabs
•Fixed use of thin grass only in many prefabs f.e the grass in Diersville is now thicker
•Fixed hole in the plains that went down to the bedrock
•Fixed fall damage not working since introduction of smooth terrain
•Fixed player keeps walking/running when opening chat window

ServerConfig.xml
•<!– 0 = Normal, 1 = Feral →

Known Issues
•You have to hit Shift+Tab twice to bring up the steam overlay
•64 bit is known to unstable run it at your own risk
•Sometimes players might bounce up and down from certain collision situations
•Some users have reported a possible problem with Windows 8. A possible fix is to run the executable in windows 7 compatibility mode.
•64 Bit version could be unstable.

[FlowerChild]

Hmmmm...the recipe sorting is much welcome and has been a long standing pet-peeve of mine. Will have to give it a try.

[lostone1993]

bit of a random question but when was offline mode removed ?
it is a serious pain in my arse given I mostly play steam games in offline mode

[Taleric]

Alpha 9 looks sweet! This may turn into one of the better alpha/beta games I bought.

http://7daystodie.com/8-8-hotfix-pimp-news-and-alpha-9/

If you can't link:

Spoiler

Show

Alpha 9 Status
Ok now for the news you’ve all been waiting for. The word on the street is that the Pimps have decided to accelerate their Alpha 9 schedule shuffling a few features around moving some things forward and a few things back to post Alpha 9 to get you guys a kick ass new build sooner. If all goes well you’ll get it as soon as August 8th. Here are the planned features going in.
•Randomly Generated Infinite Worlds which include all biomes types with custom elevations, lakes, natural deeper rivers, curvy roads, random locations, and a procedurally generated centralized wasteland city with some never before seen locations!
•A kickass new AAA GUI with all new art including belt, backpack, character screen, map, friends list, new minimalist compass and player stats. The GUI also includes added functionality including our new data driven in game map system with fog of war, a searchable recipe list and friend compass tracking
•New leg sprain, leg fracture, leg break and dysentery de-buff systems
•Under water effects and drowning system
•World improvements including decorations adhering to the terrain to altering what is found out and about while scavenging. All major prefabs have been given a container overhaul. We thinned out the cabinets and other things that can hold loot, but increased the odds that things will be found within them. This has the dual benefit of making longer scavenging ventures more profitable while not spreading too much more loot into the world as a whole.
•And lastly if time permits watch out for our new Gore block system where zombie bodies decompose into bloody piles that stack up and can work in the zombies favor.

[FlowerChild]

And lastly if time permits watch out for our new Gore block system where zombie bodies decompose into bloody piles that stack up and can work in the zombies favor.

Ok, this one gave me a big smile :)

Don't like the sound of condensing/increasing loot though. While I'm a strong advocate of playing games on default settings, with 7 Days, I just can't handle playing it anymore without turning the loot settings WAY down so that there is at least some small survival element to the game.

[Gilberreke]

Ok, this one gave me a big smile :)

Haha for sure

[FlowerChild]

Icy just posted the first episode of a 7 Days LP me and him have been playing:



Good times, and we talk a lot about the game's design while playing.

[DerAlex]

@FlowerChild
I kind of cringed when you said you don't pick up moldy bread. You can cook it with a beaker (rare drop from nurses. Like, really rare) and produce your own penicilin that way. Or did you deactivate that recipe with your config?

From a game design standpoint, what do you think about zombies "learning" to run in darkness? In my game, I play with 200% zombies, 50% loot abundance, no loot respawn, 90 sec memory, feral zombies, airdrop every 48 hours (monstly for the recipe books) BUT slow mowing zombies, night and day (Also, I always carry around a stack of meat on my toolbelt for that extra detectability, since even on feral, the zombies are mostly short sighted and seem to have a stuffed nose :D). It is my version of the "Walking Dead"-Settings form reddit, I believe... I play a variation of this since alpha 6, I don't know exactly were I got the idea from anymore.

I get what they are trying to do with the nocturnal athleticism (making night harder than day), but, do you think their way of doing this is the right one? The jump from slow walking zombie to running zombie from going inside a building for example feels really arbitrary and "gamey" to me.

[FlowerChild]

Well, the whole time I've played 7 Days, the night/day behavior never once struck me as odd, so I can't say it bothers me :)

Really, it's similar to the behavior you get with spiders in Minecraft, so I've been cool with it for way longer. As much as I love zombies, I'm not a purist by any means (as long as they don't pull a Land of The Dead and pick up guns or something), so having them subject to those kind of rules is fine by me.

And yeah, I know about the moldy bread now. Found that out when I started to dig in the recipe file to change things around. Me and Icy are playing with stock recipes though, and we recorded that before I started mucking around with the file. The conversation I had with him was largely what motivated me doing so.

Not sure I like the antibiotic recipe as before I knew about it I had a few infections that lasted days slowly getting worse while I desperately searched houses for pills. Was very tense and very cool.

[DerAlex]

The comparison to MCs Spiders is a fitting one, I never thought about it that way. The great thing with 7DTD is that you can modify the game settings to that extend. I can play it how I like it best. I urge you to try it once, since you are able to even change the settings in an existing game. With 200% Zombies on "walk only", the occasional stray zombie is easier to handle, but a horde can seriously wreck your shit if they suprise you at your safehouse :D

The beaker is really really rare. I consider it gamechanging if you find one, kinda like unique loot (kinda the same level as the auger or the chainsaw - haven't found one of those in 60 hours of playtime over multiple versions and worlds).

On my 8.0 game it took about 40 days until I found a beaker, in my 8.8 game I still haven't after about 12 days. I would like more of those kind of really powerful but really rare gamechanging items, as the game tends to get a bit boring about 15 days in. Being able to craft a magnum is another one of those moments that somehow really feel great because you worked so long for it.

I have high hopes for this game, the Pimps seem to know what they are doing.

Keep the videos coming, I enjoyed it very much! I look forward to the point where you too meet, the footage up until now was a bit boring, but somehow your conversations more than make up for that :D

[FlowerChild]

Yeah, I'm not a fan of the plethora of options myself. I've gone on about why I consider that a bad thing in games in general, but I think 7 Days in particular may be suffering a lot from it as I don't think it has a very strongly designed central core at present. Personally, I'd rather just have 1 strong game mode that I know someone put a lot of thought into as how the game is supposed to be played rather than a shit-load of options that basically put the onus on me as a player to design my own gameplay experience.

It's rare that I play anything but default options in games, but with 7 Days the total lack of challenge just got so bad that I couldn't stomach not bumping things up.

EDIT: And turns out the 2nd video is up :)

[DerAlex]

I thought about the game some more, and I am no longer happy with my settings, 200% zombies who never run. This is gonna be a lot of text, so... my problem is, I don't like the design decision that light level somehow affects zombie walk/run-speed. Also, the game is much, MUCH to easy with vanilla settings. My solution *should* fix both of these, but if you don't have a problem with ether of that, you can skip this post. No need to waste anybodys time :D


My overall problem

I like consistent, somewhat predictable behaviour. If I see a zombie and have to play a meta-game of guessing the light level to decide my approach, it somewhat takes me out of the game, kinda like FlowerChild said a few posts back about mining with the "smooth" voxels makes him think about the underlying systems *more* instead of less, thus breaking immersion. Plus, it enables and in fact encourages exploity behaviour like brightly lit "killboxes" or choke points to slow down zombies at night for easy killing.


My "solution" up until now

Me and my friends played almost exclusively with zombies set to "never run". This gave me the desired consistency, but the game gets easier that way, there is no doubt about that. Even if I try to offset that by setting the game to feral zombies, 200% amount of zombies and 50 percent loot abundancy. You are still pretty much fucked if you notice a horde too late, but all in all, its easier than the vanilla settings, at least if you pay attention to your surroundings.


Problems with this solution

• Booooring after about a week, eg. no challenge left
• Crossbow OP nerf plz kthxbai
• Looting buildings with Zombies in them is too easy
• Kiting with stone axe or other melee weapons is too easy

--> Best-In-Slot items are accessible after a few minutes of play, at the very least before the first night. It doesn't get harder than this over time (alpha, I hope that changes in the upcoming versions, I have high hopes for this game)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


My NEW solution, or: "Sir, you are being hunted!"
(not tested yet, in theory only. Also, no relation to "Sir, you are being hunted")


What if:

• 50%-75% loot abundancy (thats a sure thing)
• no loot respawn (thats also a given)
• 100% zombies (subject to testing)
• feral (subject to testing)
• 50% enemy health (subject to testing)
• 50% enemy damage (subject to testing)
• ZOMBIES ALWAYS RUN (what *hopefully* makes these settings work)

Why should this be *better* than vanilla and *better* than my previous settings?

• Zombies are constantly terrifying
  If you are not careful, even a single zombie gets one or two hits on you. You'll live throu it a few times, but you'll learn pretty fast that
  
  
• Sneaking is more useful
  Zombies unaware of your presence are still slow moving and you *should* be able to pick them off with the crossbow, therefore
  
  
• The crossbow is a necessity
  It will still be OP while you are not spotted, but without it, you don't stand a chance, so it is justified. If you get spotted, you are fucked regardless. And because of the slow reloading, the crossbow is pretty much useless if there are more than a few zombies aware of you, wich means that
  
  
• Hordes are really menacing
  like, really really bad... no longer a minor nuisance at day, but a reason to bolt it, as far as possible. If you do get spotted by a horde, don't you wish there would be a way to deal damage very fast? Wich takes me to
  
  
• Guns are finally useful
  mow them down. Guns are pretty much useless in the base game, with the exception of a horde in the night. With these settings however, if you carelessly aggro a horde, you better carry a firearm, or you're toast. Be ready for the stray zombies who might've heard you making a racket... And, last but not least
  
  
• Rebalanced risk/reward for Airdrops
  They do feel kind of strange in the base game, but on these settings, at least in my theory, they work really well, or at least better than before. Since you have to make a split-second decision once you hear the plane, leaving behind everything you are doing at the moment, to run quite a bit to get to the package without losing sight of it, the conga-line of zombies you would pick up on the way would make you think twice about doing that the next time -> much better risk/reward-ratio. Conga - Conga - Co-Nga!

Conclusion

This should, while maintaining my philosophy that consistent enemy behaviour is better, provide a much better challenge than my "never run"-settings, while also solving a few balance problems of the game (sneaking is underused/not necessary, crossbow OP, no real challenge once you get a few basic items, useless guns... seriously, who even bothered with making ammonition up until now? Save for trying it once?)


Fixed settings:

• 50% loot abundancy
• Airdrops every 36-48 hours
• No loot respawn
• Zombies always run

Settings to test:

• Enemy health and damage modifier, so that not every slip-up leads to death, but does let you know that you fucked up. (IMHO, squishy, rotting, smelly zombies should not take more than one blow to the head with a stone axe, but I have to see how it plays before deciding. I'll try it with 50%/50%, because I think many smaller hits due to quicker zombies will lead to other problems, especially more bleeding and more infections, therefore not being "too easy" even with low enemy health and damage modifier)
• Feral, yes or no? (First test will be yes. If it's too hard that way, this is the best setting for a quick nerf of the zombies)
• Maybe 150% or even 200% zombie count to offset reduced enemy health and damage? (first test with 100% and I'll take it from there)

Things to test:

• I will test my 10 day world with modified settings first, if it's enjoyable, I'll try to start a new world
• Using these settings, if I do die, is it even possible to get going again, or is it too hard?

--> Settings playable from day one? Or maybe evolving zombies? (7 Days on "never run" with no airdrops, then switch config to "always run" with airdrops every 36 or 48 hours. This would give ample preparation time AND, as an added bonus, give the title of the game a whole new meaning.)


All of this is just theory until I test it, which I will do this coming weekend. Critique more than welcome!

[jorgebonafe]

Snip

I kept hearing that "28 days later" music in my head while reading this post :P It seems pretty scary...

[DocHussey]

What's this? My Tentacled Overlord is doing an LP over my game? I'm honored!

Really though, reading the criticism, I hate to agree with ya, but it's the same crap I've been arguing with Rick and the rest of the guys about for months now. Needless to say, it's getting worked on, but at a damn snails pace. From lowly player, to tester, to having a hand in the team, I've been working my way into the game and trying to put forth a lot of the things I've learned reading your dev speals and what I've learned from playing your game FC.

The option thing is sadly what occurs when you allow for a design by committee. Players don't know what they want, this is just common sense. When you give them options, they tend to make things so that its comfortable, not getting a challenge or going for making themselves better. Mind you this is a majority, not a blanket statement. As the game progresses, I really hope that the guys listen and start toning back the damn options for a set 5 difficulty levels for the standard SP game and leave all this other stuff for a sort of 'Sandbox Mode' to get that core experience that you and I both think is lacking.

In the meantime, enjoy the game. Don't be TOO harsh, just remember that we haven't even gotten the skills or NPCs put in yet, those are a ways off. Random gen is going to make things a lot more interesting, as will the broken leg mechanic. Stay safe in there.

[FlowerChild]

Don't be TOO harsh

Well, keep in mind a couple of things Doc while I rant about giant fucking bees (which I will say once again REALLY need to go ;) ):

-If you watch the LP series Icy and me have been doing, I repeatedly state I love the game, and have done so many times here on the forums as well.

-Generally, the games I am harshest on are the ones that I love the most, Minecraft being a perfect example there. As I said to Gil recently about Space Engineers: if there wasn't a lot of good in the game, it wouldn't be worth talking about in the first place.

On the topic of the overabundance of options, I was actually very happy to see one of the devs on the 7 Days forum mention that as a problem recently. Seriously dude, it's like a breath of fresh air to hear an indie dev recognize that "make it an option" isn't the solution to every problem. I know the community for the game will likely throw a hairy fit over that one, but IMO it's absolutely the right move for them to be trimming things down.