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

[DocHussey]

I'm actually JUST STARTING the first episode. I look forward to seeing how you play.

Yes, bees are most peoples first bitch, no, they aren't going anywhere, don't make me turn them into giant swarms of bees ;). Joel (madmole) has mentioned the options. He and I have a very similar taste in games and on many other things, so he's generally my go-to guy when I really need to gripe about things and get them done. Believe me, people bitch and complain about how abundant loot is, you shoulda seen it before. "Joel. Dude. Seriously, look at this screenshot. It's not even noon and I'm decked out in iron armour, two sniper rifles, a pistol, molds and might-as-well-be-unlimited-ammo. Come on bro, lets fix this a little, yeah?"

Once I get done watching your vids I'll be in a better position to respond to what's going on.

[FlowerChild]

Well, the bees might be most people's first bitch, but they are my most prolonged :)

I have no problem with the mechanics behind them btw, as an avian enemy is definitely the right move to make constructing fortifications more interesting. I just think they are a horrible thematic choice for a zombie game.

Anyways, there's an eventual bee incident coming up in the LP that I think speaks for itself ;)

[FlowerChild]

Actually, let me amend that: I believe bees are probably the worst possible choice for that kind of enemy.

I've been biting my tongue on this a long time now, but seriously man: if only there was a flying creature that's traditionally associated with death, the sight of which causes a sense of dread to rise up in people, which is native to the desert type environments predominant in the game, and whose natural tendency to feed on corpses ties in very well with why they might become zombified...

Anyone? Ferris? Anyone?

Now, given that, and given how cool it would be to see them circling overhead during the day in a survival game, why the fuck would you ever choose bees instead?

[DocHussey]

Hey, those went in before I came on the team. There's more wildlife coming in, so there may or may not be vultures. Remember, there was a nuclear war, that's the story behind the bees. There are already giant hornets that create honey, radiation mutated them into the beasts we see today.

[FlowerChild]

Hey, those went in before I came on the team. There's more wildlife coming in, so there may or may not be vultures. Remember, there was a nuclear war, that's the story behind the bees. There are already giant hornets that create honey, radiation mutated them into the beasts we see today.

Oh, I wasn't blaming you directly :)

And yes, I realize the rationale behind why there are giant bees in the game. However, the explanation doesn't make them any less lame.

Let's put it this way: you could use that same justification to explain why there are giant rodents in the game, that became sentient, put on pants, and started talking in high voices. It still wouldn't make it any less lame and immersion-breaking to have Micky Mouse running around in the zombie apocalypse :P

[DocHussey]

First thing I've noticed: I REALLY have little patience for new players lol. "I can punch things, that's nice." "A building that's getting airstriked..." I had a little rage there, sadly. I'm not really ashamed to admit it though. I just want to pop in and be like "Look man, here. Stop. Just. Stop. This is what you need to do." DON'T USE TAKE ALL YOU FOOLS! Sound triggered hordes... Learn the system before you stream, jeeze people... Use the damn friends list to see eachother on the map! THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCRAPPING AND FORGING! It's the same amount of metal no matter how you slice it, just look at the weights. Clay is found in sand and dirt as a rare drop. I'm really not fit for teaching, I get frustrated, heh...

Second thing: Landmines and other boobytraps fall flat? I guess I'm not following. I'm a big fan of using them to set up self-destructing bridges. Trunk tips make for good static defense, I haven't used wood spikes since A7. If you are feeling like things are too easy, turn down the block durability. Turn up zed damage, down block durability, you're in for a treat ;).

Thirdly: Yep. Too easy. I agree 200%. Believe me when I say that dysentery will solve part of your problem. Drink from that water source, go ahead. I'm also, as much as I hate to admit it, agreeing about the crossbow. It does need a major tweak, let me see about that. The biggest reason that I think it's been left alone has been that its single shot, like the hunting rifle. True facts, the hunting rifle and the crossbow have the exact same stats. I agree about sneak attacks and stealth against the zeds shouldn't be a thing.

I'm going to start referring to venison as "Side of Cthulhu" now, thanks for that...

[FlowerChild]

First thing I've noticed: I REALLY have little patience for new players lol. "I can punch things, that's nice." "A building that's getting airstriked..." I had a little rage there, sadly. I'm not really ashamed to admit it though. I just want to pop in and be like "Look man, here. Stop. Just. Stop. This is what you need to do." DON'T USE TAKE ALL YOU FOOLS! Sound triggered hordes... Learn the system before you stream, jeeze people... Use the damn friends list to see eachother on the map! THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCRAPPING AND FORGING! It's the same amount of metal no matter how you slice it, just look at the weights. Clay is found in sand and dirt as a rare drop. I'm really not fit for teaching, I get frustrated, heh...

Ummmm...yeah man, fuck off right there.

I've been playing the game heavily for months now. So, with regards to any of the above rules systems, if they haven't become apparent to me by now, they are far less than self-evident.

[FlowerChild]

Second thing: Landmines and other boobytraps fall flat? I guess I'm not following. I'm a big fan of using them to set up self-destructing bridges. Trunk tips make for good static defense, I haven't used wood spikes since A7. If you are feeling like things are too easy, turn down the block durability. Turn up zed damage, down block durability, you're in for a treat ;).

Why on earth would you go through all that trouble when you could just plop down a block or whack a zombie over the head? Land mines leave nasty potholes that zombies then use to tunnel under your structures. Why would you bother blowing up bridges when zombies can't path around a simple corner in one?

I haven't tried out trunk tips in quite awhile, so I'll give them a shot before commenting on that one.

As for adjusting block durability and zombie damage for difficulty, no man. I don't really consider HP adjustments to be particularly compelling ways of doing that in games (felt the same way about Skyrim), which is why I lean more towards recipe and loot adjustments.

[DerAlex]

Heeey, you guyz! I just had the best idea EVAR!!!!11!12 You guyz! seriously! Guyz?

So... I took my new settings for a spin yesterday, and... short answer is NOPE

While it does cause everything I predicted it would, it is simply too hard, for all the right and some very wrong reasons.

What works:

There were times where I was too scared to leave my camp in broad daylight, which I consider a win, since thats what I wanted it to feel like. I wanted a kind of playing-DayZ-for-the-first-time-feel, where you are afraid of every step and scan the horizon constantly (in DayZ you are afraid of other players, not the zombies, but that's not the point). With my new settings, the game is hard as nails. But....

What definitely does not work:

The whole idea behind it was to make 7DTD some kind of stealth game (That's why I called the setings "Sir, you are being hunted"), and the whole idea falls flat on it's face because of one big and one somewhat smaller problem:

BIG Problem:
Sneaking barely works, and as far as I can tell, sneaking DOES NOT AFFECT DETECTABILITY, at least not in a measurable way. Sneaking does not help with staying undetected. As I said, this means that the whole experiment failed. The game becomes hard, but not fun-hard.

Smaller but equally annoying problem:
If one Zombie goes into attack mode, from the moment it sees you (going from "yellow" to "red" on the minimap), ALL his friends and extended family join him IMMEDIATELLY, even throu walls and whatnot. They seem to communicate telepathically. Every Zombie in about a 50 metre radius goes into sprint-and-destroy-mode at the same time. Hard, but not fun-hard.

These 2 problems make raiding anything worthwile (houses, cities, tents, ...) impossible without using brute force, which is the opposite of what I wanted. There is also the "small" Problem, which I knew from the beginning, but Gunplay is really sup par. Unnatural running patterns, jerky animations and unreliable hitboxes make aiming (and hitting the target) harder than it should be. But that's in no way gamebreaking.

In conclusion, I will keep playing like this for a while, the challenge somewhat makes up for the frustration, but, as it is, I can't really recommend these settings. I don't even think it's really possible to play like that from scratch, if you don't have a somewhat established base and basic supplies. If it's fun it's actually really fun to play, but... NOPE

[FlowerChild]

So... I took my new settings for a spin yesterday, and... short answer is NOPE

Yeah, that was kinda the impression I had about what would happen with always run zombies: it would cross the line between fun difficulty and annoying difficulty.

It's kinda the same feeling I have with HP adjustments for added difficulty in games. Usually such things just wind up making things feel distinctly "unnatural". Things don't die when you hit them repeatedly with a spikey thing for example, to the point where it just winds up feeling like you're playing with nerf toys. In the case of block durability here, I get the feeling it would wind up making zombies feel like Chuck Norris punching through brick walls, and make the whole world feel less solid as a result.

The thing is when balancing HP values in games it's usually not just about difficulty: it's also about hitting the sweet spot where it feels right when you're playing. Thus, boosting the values just for the sake of difficulty is ignoring half the problem.

You'll notice I very rarely touch HP values with my mods as a result. I much rather implement new behaviors that provide additional challenge in interesting ways. The one major exception I can think of is the block durability changes I made in BTW to put increased pressure on the player's time in the first day and up the pain value of death, but as you can see, I was going for secondary effects there rather than just a straight up increase to HP values.

First thing I've noticed: I REALLY have little patience for new players lol. "I can punch things, that's nice." "A building that's getting airstriked..." I had a little rage there, sadly. I'm not really ashamed to admit it though. I just want to pop in and be like "Look man, here. Stop. Just. Stop. This is what you need to do." DON'T USE TAKE ALL YOU FOOLS! Sound triggered hordes... Learn the system before you stream, jeeze people... Use the damn friends list to see eachother on the map! THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SCRAPPING AND FORGING! It's the same amount of metal no matter how you slice it, just look at the weights. Clay is found in sand and dirt as a rare drop. I'm really not fit for teaching, I get frustrated, heh...

I wound up thinking a lot about each of the above items you mention last night, and the sad part is that in each case, I realized that knowing them made the game less fun:

-Clay from any dirt: this was one of the few things that still had me traveling a small amount to other areas for resources. Now I'm just going to dig up the backyard wherever I happen to be. One of the things I used to love about 7 Days is different biomes contained different resources that you needed to make certain things like concrete. Now you guys seem to be moving more and more towards "you can get anything from anywhere" as exemplified by yucca juice which actually makes it *easier* to get a more powerful beverage in the desert than in any other biome, which in gameplay terms is turning your biomes into monochromatic gruel. And now you're telling me I don't even have to find a body of water to get some clay which is a rather crucial element in the tech progression? Lame.

-Lossless scrapping of metal: previously this provided a tradeoff for me in that I was considering things like whether I wanted to make increased damage weapons now in the early game, or save the metal for forging later. Now I have one less thing to consider in the early game, which is also lame.

-"Take All" creating hordes: this strikes me as uber-lame. It's an interface shortcut for Pete's sake to avoid a lot of annoying drag-and-dropping of individual items. Yes, I consider whether you are sneaking or not when you search a container creating more or less noise and taking more or less time to be cool. But man, once the container is open and you're just clicking to move stuff around, it's really crossing the line between in-game and meta-game that the manner in which you drag and drop the items has an in-game impact. It's not intuitive, and it's promoting GUI busywork over a nice little interface shortcut for no good reason. Frankly, this is so lame that I'm probably just going to ignore it and deal with any hordes that may result.

-Finding friends on the map: I already hate the map (and mini-map) with a passion due to it being the magical GPS that I so loathed in Minecraft, and that was without knowing it's even more powerful than I originally thought. Icy and I were having a good time coordinating our positions and planning out rendezvous points, so I don't feel the game gains anything by knowing the above.

So maybe the "mistakes" I was making with regards to how I thought game-systems were working based on wishful thinking about how I *hoped* they work. Thanks for making the game worse by pointing out I was in error :)

[Ethinolicbob]

DON'T USE TAKE ALL YOU FOOLS! Sound triggered hordes...

I really regret coming to this thread and reading that post. It has killed some of the magic for me.

After watching FC and Icy get into this together, a mate and I decided to do the same (him never playing it, me not playing it since original release)

Now every time I loot I will know about that... my friend does not know yet and I am leaning very strongly towards keeping him blissfully ignorant to it.

One wee tidbit that I came across has me bothered is the sequence to crafting a wood block. I couldn't work out how to craft it until I visited the wiki.
Make a frame then use a wrench or stone axe on it 3-4 times and the block can be 'leveled up' with the right matts in your inv. Continue doing that with the right matts to 'level it up' until its stronger.
I'm not sure I would have worked that out in-game

[kjbrona]

Alpha 9 is starting to look like it will definitely add more challenge.
* Fog of war on the map - Of course I would like it if you would have to craft it before you could use it
* Doesn't seem to have the Zombie radar
* Minimalist compass - Of course I would like it if you would have to craft it before you could use it
* bunch of new debuffs
* random map gen so you don't know where all the good sites are at the start of the game

Dev Blog: http://joelhuenink.tumblr.com/

[Taleric]

Oh man lost my shit XD

Spoiler

Show

The random generation and touchup looks great though!

[Dralnalak]

Oh man lost my shit XD

I don't know. I look at that armor and think, "Man, that's gotta chafe!"

[lostone1993]

after watching Flower and icy play, It has got me back into playing here are some my thoughts so far, keep in mind the last time I played was before crossbows

Options- too many, I mean I am left unsure what the defaults should be. Don't hate some of them though
I enjoy being able to adjust the loot to suit my taste a bit more

smooth terrain- it looks nice and I will give them credit for that however unless you don't have to modify it while building it works, the moment you have to dig it up it goes weird. An example would at the moment I am working on an underground base, I have just cut rooms out of rock thus far it looks fine until I start putting in stuff like the campfire, at the moment it is lodged half in wall. It reminds me heavily of garry's mod where things just don't sit quite right

Another instance of it failing would be near my entrance I went for wooden mine shaft kind of thing except where the wood is and ground is quite a few
Cracks/gaps where I can see the outside even though when placing it should be none

The final problem I have with it is, I've found it really hard to judge how much I am digging up, most time id carry a block just to guess where I was and what the size of the room was

Spider Zombie - kind of nice I enjoy the extra building challenge

Zombie Dogs- Have not really encountered enough to make an assessment, but seem a tad over powered

Crossbow - needs to be more expensive I think, I have not used it enough to say for certain but even with amount of time i used I felt the need for guns much weaker

That's it so far

[Dreambolt]

Ha so got back into 7 days to die and I cleared out the police station near the NW school looking for a cure to the plague, put up a torch and immediately took huge damage. Running away I realized some how I had triggered a building collapse, I'm figuring it's a glitch given the build was was in good condition, but oh well I don't need worry about dieing from the plague :). Though re-spawning at night is rough, I already spent a night shivering outside in the cold tucked away in the external corner on a school. All the while crouched watching rabbits and deer jump off a building's roof while zombies chased the smarter deer located on the ground. Okay maybe the game has some tweaks let to do ;).

[Dralnalak]

... put up a torch and immediately took huge damage. Running away I realized some how I had triggered a building collapse, I'm figuring it's a glitch given the build was was in good condition ...

It's an issue the devs have been working on.

Not all of the structures in the game are actually stable. You can build prefabs that wouldn't actually stand up if built from scratch. When you do something that updates the nearby blocks, like placing a torch or destroying a light fixture, suddenly it's raining debris all over.

Just walking across the blocks can cause them to collapse too. This is why bridges are very dangerous; they often start falling as you are on them.

It is also sometimes possible to build a structure, but then when you walk on it that's just too much and things fall down under you.

[Dreambolt]

Ya, I'm aware I've built structurally unsound buildings before, however it was the police station west of that school in the NE http://7daystodie.gamepedia.com/Police_Station In the up stairs, it is not an unstable looking building, but it must be made of the wrong materials or something. Also roofs are not a good place for me to hang out. I seem to keep finding the unstable parts. lol.

[devak]

Played it a bit. Thankfully i watched your LP series with Icy as it helped a LOT.

However, torches do not seem to slow down the undead. I checked the wiki and it said so too. I actually kind of like this. Only forges and campfires now slow the undead.

The glass jar thing ("real men smash their jars" AKA "I LIKE THIS ONE! ANOTHER!") is really, really annoying. I get that canned food isn't replenishable: the can is "destroyed" in the process of opening it. But glass jars? it's a matter of removing the lid and putting it back on!

The bees are REALLY annoying. Capitalized for emphasis. I was hiding in my underground...well hole and i head zombies and a horde and that acidic spew and then...a buzz. I actually checked if it wasn't a bee stuck near my window. I nearly died, contemplating how unbelievable it was that i was fighting a giant bee.

I must say i don't find the crossbow so overpowered. Maybe it's because i spawned in the snow biome and i couldn't clear a single house without it. lumberjacks are so plentiful and so damn strong. I must add that it's not that powerful in real dangerous situations. At night, hunted by dogs and zombies i'd rather have a shotgun (and take the sound for granted) to survive. Especially as the crossbow can be quirky.

Finally: i used you settings FC (no loot respawn, 50% abundancy, no air drops) and i wonder what standard must look like. I get all the supplies i need. Even when low on food, i usually have enough time to loot some. I've set up a (primitive) underground base at the lake above dierstown and yet, i can easily scavenge nearby sites, return home for the night and live a comfortable life without being constantly on the run for supplies.

It's a fun game.

[FlowerChild]

I must say i don't find the crossbow so overpowered.

Keep playing man. Once you get used to using the crossbow and your guns start to stockpile and collect dusts in chests, never mind the forging systems for ammo and weapons accumulating cobwebs, you'll see what I mean. I had a heck of a lot more fun with it disabled in my local save.

Also: who says you should be able to clear a house at start anyways? :)

[Ethinolicbob]

The glass jar thing

The glass jar thing is more a balance thing than a 'believable' thing.
I agree it throws you when you down some water and suddenly your jar is gone, however if jars were to persist there would be no point scrounging glass or sand and creating them.

I don't have a problem with crossbow either however I am running George Romero zombies all the time, and maximum increase in zombie numbers. There just aren't enough feathers in the world.

All that aside there are a LOT of things that could be tweaked for a better experience.
Modding for the game is not really feasible for me at the moment. There are a few modders who use IL and there is a couple people working on naming the deobfuscated code.
Also in the upcoming features list the game will support steam workshop modding. (not sure if that is a good thing or not)

[devak]

The glass jar thing is more a balance thing than a 'believable' thing.
I agree it throws you when you down some water and suddenly your jar is gone, however if jars were to persist there would be no point scrounging glass or sand and creating them.

i do know why it's there. It's the immersion that's so weird. I understand the difficulty in designing it so.

Also: who says you should be able to clear a house at start anyways? :)

A small log cabin.. maybe "house" is a bit too generous ;p

I do understand it's whacky insane power. i just don't believe (yet?) that it's so useful in the situations i need it the most. E.g. dogs, house clearing (i prefer to lure zombies out).


By the way, maybe it's me but Pipe Bombs are derpy as hell. I click Right to ignite, Left (hold) to charge up but half the time, i don't throw (on release) and in stead it falls before my feet.

Lastly: Shotguns and crossbow. That's what i use. Even crafted some shotgun ammo. The rest is too rare......(damn...maybe you are right?)

[FlowerChild]

damn...maybe you are right?

Always...

;)

[devak]

There are a couple of more things in 7Days that are cool/weird/annoying

*zombie hordes can be derpy. I'm hiding underground, crouching, not making any noise. Suddenly, zombies (without detecting me!) start digging at my entrance. The entrance is built such that they don't get stuck (so i think) so it can't, or shouldn't, be in the dig-out state. Similarly, when i had a shallower hole the zombies would occasionally detect me for a second (for no reason?) and then not detect me the instant after. So yea, sometimes detection is weird.

*Zombie horde spawning is insanely gamey, for one reason: i stay underground, and i can hear every horde walking directly over me. I get 2-3 hordes per night now, and all of them walk over me with 100% GPS pinpoint accuracy. It kills the whole "zombie death squad" feel to it and creates more of a "the game is fighting me" feel.

*as mentioned, pipe bombs are extremely derpy. I died because i had one at max throwing strength and it dropped in front of me.

*the smell thing is really cool and makes hunting and carrying food more of a conscious activity rather than killing whatever's in sight just in case.

*however, some food has smell (like berries) with a range of 1m. Really? 1m, i'm practically hugging a zombie. I don't think smell matters then. It's weird and confusing and feels pointless.

*the sound system for zombie attraction is awesome, but has practically no feedback. I read on the wiki that crouching and opening stuff makes less noise, but the noise i hear is the same. Similarly, many things make noise (e.g moving things around) but i don't know how loud this even is or if it even matters. Hitting iron with a pickaxe makes more noise than hitting rock, but is that to me, or to all zombies? i would like a more consistent experience here. I can hear zombies shuffling outside the house when i'm raiding one, and opening the fridge is like turning on a ghettoblaster in comparison, but they're not attracted.

*water still holds a very weird spot IMHO. Some recipes require a ton of it like corn (I think corn on the cob is just about the least "worth it" recipe). Drinking it is a necessity, but using water for anything else largely a luxury even when most of the time, it does not even remotely pay off. So basically, there's a weird gap between "using it for drinking" and "using it for anything else". May just be me tho.

*tea doubles the values of water, which is a little too insane.

*unstable auto-generated buildings are actually quite cool in some instances. A bridge collapsing under your feet is quite cool. However, i lost valuable equipment when the whole front of the garage i was staying on top of, fell down onto a gas barrel which i think is a little overdoing it. So basically, it shouldn't just be removed completely and can make for some awesome traps.


overall, it's a fun game and i am happy the LP brought me to it.

oh and:
*why is is possible to remove or speed up the loot and craft timers, but not to slow them down?

*30 minute days seem a little more fun than the standard days. 35% night. i think it gives a bit more contrast to the various moments and activities. I tried 60 minute days with 20% night but it basically feels like you're playing in real time. I did my daily activities, looked at the clock "oh it's still 9 in the morning". Performed the stuff i planned for the next day "oh it's not even past 12". Looted nearby houses and saw the sun go down "zombies any minute. no wait still got 3 hours or so". it makes for an excruciatingly slow game.

The amount of options is definitely overkill.

[devak]

Oh on the blog: http://joelhuenink.tumblr.com/post/9041 ... on-the-way

Another feature we’re doing for A9 is zombie gore blocks. Basically when a zombie dies his corpse will degrade into a pile of meat. Meat biodegrades to bones and bones into dirt. The interesting part here is if a zombie dies near or on top of another zombie, it becomes a gore mesh, which can become pretty big if you don’t clean it up. What happens is zombies can step on each others corpses to get over walls and on your roof, etc. It is a total game changer and players will need to reinvent their defenses all over to stop the zombies. I’m really excited about this feature because I love making the game feel new again and this is a feature people will either love or hate I’d guess. The good news is as long as the zeds don’t biodgrade to dirt they clean up easily. A hit or two with a shovel or axe will gib them out of your way.

This gore block tech also paves the way for a feature I’ve been talking about on the forums for ages. Sometime after A9 we want to take the same tech and when you slaugher an animal for the meat it will leave a rib cage or carcass behind. That carcass will smell of blood for miles and be the main cause for a horde to come your way. So players who are slaughtering a deer had better clean up the corpse or they will be visited soon :) It’s emergent game play like this that I love to see. Cause and effect is a cool thing.

In case that got missed. This actually sounds really good.