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

[DerAlex]

2nd Alpha 13 preview video is here:



I still don't like the health-bar-on-everything-approach they are taking, but I imagine that is something you can shut off, ether by in game options or by modifying some .xml or .ini, so I'm not that worried. I also hope that water is WIP, that doesn't look finished at all. Dismemberment makes me happy thou, in combination with their new zombie animations, I'm looking forward to bashing some heads again, I skipped alpha 12:D

Edit: Watching it again, I realized I totally forgot the first thing they show, being able to upgrade throu every material simply by having all the resources is a fucking stupid idea. I don't even think it's the usual problem of cartering to your players despite better judgement, I can't really imagine that anybody has asked for this.

This would be not a real problem since upgrade stages will most likely be moddable, but in my opinion it's still a really stupid decision to have in vanilla. I always liked that building stuff in 7DTD was always more tedious than in for example minecraft. I realize that the nailgun is end game, but conjuring together a house with your magical stapler like that looks boring and unrewarding.

[FlowerChild]

I still don't like the health-bar-on-everything-approach they are taking, but I imagine that is something you can shut off, ether by in game options or by modifying some .xml or .ini, so I'm not that worried.

Yeah, I hate that as well.

I also hope that water is WIP, that doesn't look finished at all. Dismemberment makes me happy thou, in combination with their new zombie animations, I'm looking forward to bashing some heads again, I skipped alpha 12:D

Oddly, I still think the old zombies look better. Will have to see what these are like in play, but something just feels off about them to me.

Edit: Watching it again, I realized I totally forgot the first thing they show, being able to upgrade throu every material simply by having all the resources is a fucking stupid idea. I don't even think it's the usual problem of cartering to your players despite better judgement, I can't really imagine that anybody has asked for this.

Yup, I feel a heavy-duty dumbing-down occurring here. Madmole mentioned something awhile ago how he sat down with some new players and they were totally confused by how everything worked, and I think they've been trying to "fix" that ever since.

I also disliked the whole thing in the video about abandoned houses with no zombies to make it easier for players to get an initial base. Lame.

[DerAlex]

I also disliked the whole thing in the video about abandoned houses with no zombies to make it easier for players to get an initial base. Lame.

I wanted to say here that I don't have a problem with that, but then I remembered that in vanilla, you have access to planks on day one, your stone axe is an upgrade tool, and in a13 you can apparently upgrade everything into everything, so now I'm just sitting here, nodding in agreement

In BTGB for example, I would not have that much of a problem with that, those walls propably can't take that much damage, and only give you an illusion of safety without being remotely safe, which could lead to interesting nights.

Something else to note is that those abandoned prefabs spawn without loot according to a blog post, so you have to be in a pretty desperate position to even go there, e.g. nightfall, and I kinda like that. What breaks the whole thing for me, at least in vanilla, is this upgrade sorcery, old and new

[FlowerChild]

Something else to note is that those abandoned prefabs spawn without loot according to a blog post, so you have to be in a pretty desperate position to even go there, e.g. nightfall, and I kinda like that. What breaks the whole thing for me, at least in vanilla, is this upgrade sorcery, old and new

Well, that's the thing man: you really don't need much to survive a night in vanilla. Even those water-towers that saturate the map (you might not have played with them if you skipped the last release) will get you through a typical night. There's really no reason to worry if they'll keep you alive for a 2nd night, as you can just move to another, and IMO, that really decreases the tension of wanting to make sure that you have appropriate shelter for the night as it can be found pretty much anywhere.

There's a big problem right now where any elevation keeps you alive. I really wish that they'd focus on addressing fundamental gameplay issues like that instead of worrying about minibikes, dismemberment, and dumbifying the resource system. Right now, there are core gameplay mechanics that aren't really working right, and I think it's rather ass backwards to be worrying about all these bells and whistles before establishing whether or not the core gameplay issues can actually be resolved.

Anyways, to me, staying alive through the night is a non-problem that really didn't need an additional solution, and particularly not one that's even easier to make use of than what's currently there. When I see those abandoned house prefabs my immediate thought is along the lines of "why the fuck does this need to be any easier than it already is?"

[DerAlex]

you really don't need much to survive a night in vanilla. To me, staying alive through the night is a non-problem that really didn't need an additional solution. Why the fuck does this need to be any easier than it already is?

That's the thing, surviving the night is not a problem in the game right now, so I see this more as increased variety and not lowered difficulty. I'd rather stay the first night in a decrepit house which can be easily overrun by zombies if you are not careful, rather than scaling a water tower where you are out of range of the AI sensors, for immersion reasons alone. About a week ago the devs discussed a coming feature (after A13), bandit NPCs. Apparently they are implementing a system in which bandits occupy and fortify houses after no player visited the POI for X days, so the additional POIs with the new "abandoned"-theme are propably also a prerequisite for this coming feature. On that topic I also hope that the bandits are actually dangerous and something you have to scan the horizon for in order to not get killed, and not just loot pinatas.

I just read the last 40 pages of the A13 thread in the official forums, and for me the hype train for this game as a whole slowed down quite a bit. MadMole in particular keeps using the word "fun" as if would be the opposite of "complex". I have the strong feeling that they don't realize that time is a resource as well, one that has to be managed by the player. He keeps mentioning how tedious it is to remove a wall before upgrading to a different material, seemingly without realizing that that could be concidered an important part of making the whole thing rewarding, and making planning ahead required and rewarding. I might be a bit on the extreme end on this, but for me, ideally, building your first comfortable little house (about 5x7 or so) should be a multi-in-game-day project, I really like how Project Zomboid feels in regards to building. That might not be everybody's cup of tea, so as long as everything stays moddable I'm happy.

I get the decision of streamlining the crafting system away from a Minecraft-like crafting grid to a list-based system like Don't Starve, but this whole block upgrade stuff has me worried that their vision for the game is very much different than what I was expecting from the game (more "Project Zomboid" in 3D, less "Minecraft with zombies"). They keep adding more systems while somehow decreasing the overall complexity. I have to reserve judgement before I've played this update myself, but as of now I'm about 90% sure I'll mod upgrading blocks throu all the tiers out for my SP and MP games by reintroducing the different tiers that can be upgraded in themselve but not into a whole different tier.

I really wish that they'd focus on addressing fundamental gameplay issues like that instead of worrying about minibikes, dismemberment, and dumbifying the resource system. Right now, there are core gameplay mechanics that aren't really working right, and I think it's rather ass backwards to be worrying about all these bells and whistles before establishing whether or not the core gameplay issues can actually be resolved.

A tripple "amen!" to that. That's mostly why I skipped A12.

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Another thing I read that might be of interest to some is their rough dev roadmap. After A13 they are planning one additional Alpha update 14 in 2016Q1, one last Alpha update 15 in 2016Q2, beta status mid-late summer and gold around christmas, with 1 or 2 DLCs in 2017.

[DerAlex]

New A13 video, 40 minutes of gameplay:



Some things I like, some I don't, but most of all I reeeaaally want to play it...

[FlowerChild]

Some things I like, some I don't, but most of all I reeeaaally want to play it...

Was there any kind of ETA mentioned? Would like to give it a shot too, but don't necessarily want to descend into the forums for additional info ;)

[DerAlex]

Was there any kind of ETA mentioned? Would like to give it a shot too, but don't necessarily want to descend into the forums for additional info ;)

No ETA, sadly, apart from "really soon" and "final stretch" and "only minor bug fixing left" and stuff like that. They started temporarily banning people who continue to pester them about a release date :D

As a side note, this video was originally planned to be released over TG-weekend if they couldn't get the game done before TG, so they seem to be only days away from release for a few weeks now :)

I do hope they don't falter from the community pressure and release it half done, they seem to be really proud of this release and I'd hate for them to get shit on by the very same people wanting a release right now then complaining about bugs

[DerAlex]

I finally got to play the update, or to be exact hotfix 6, over the holiday weekend, and I've enjoyed my time with it immensely. Here are some thoughts after 13 in game days (25% loot, no loot respawn, 1h days, 200% zombies), in no particular order:

There are some pretty big problems right now, in one of the hotfixes they screwed up the terrain gen so that towns and citys are not given the proper biome tag, which leads to spawning.xml not working, almost no zombies in cities and towns. Even with 200% zombies, I took a stroll throu the hub city yesterday without any problems.

The game plays very VERY slow now. I didn't visit a town until day 6 in preparation for the horde (I don't like them to fuck up my home base), and I was grinding my weapon skill and my tools skill for a few days to get them up to confortable levels. If the zombies would spawn correctly, it wouldn't be advisable to engage that many zombies with basic weapons. Breaking stuff takes a long time, too. Harvesting as well. A few posts up I accused the pimps of not counting time as a resource, in response to the lets-upgrade-everything-into-everything-controversity, and I can safely say that I judged too early. Almost everything takes way longer than before, in a way that's hard to describe. Also, POIs have way more "nothing" inbetween them, possibly balanced around the minibike, so traveling takes longer than before, too. Because of all this, I set day length to 1h as opposed to 40m, or it is noon when you finish your first tree.

The new "HD"-Zombies look alright, I don't think necessarily better or worse, just alright. The mocap animations change it up a bit thou, there can be quite a bit of tactics involved. Even some walking animations make headshots way harder than before. Zombies have way more health now, but even in the beginning, it is very easy to take out a single zombie, who you arrow to the ground and then viciously beat with your wooden club until he is dead. It really feels like in the beginning, your weapon is shit and you don't know what you are doing, they nailed that feeling, but I don't think everybody likes that as much as I do. Taking on more than 3-4 Zombies at the beginning is ill advised.

On the other hand, combat is actually easier now, because for the first time ever, when a zombie punches you, you get damaged at the end of the animation, and no longer at the start of it. No more unfair hits, you can dodge most of the attacks way easier than before (hint: sprinting works backwards as well). As a result of this, I've never died in this game, but as I said, cities are severely underpopulated (Hordes still spawn normally. I got around 200 zombie kills now, so it's not like the world is completely empty).

I got lucky and found a minibike book early on, and completed building it at around day 9, which totally opened up the world for me. I only found a low quality motor up until now, and it seems to take a lot of gas. Gasoline doesn't seem like it is properly balanced yet, a minibike fueltank can store about 750 canisters of gas, and that lasts about a day of POI-hunting. One barrel of gas gets you 600 canisters of gas, so filling a whole barrel of fuel into the minibike without even filling it up completely seems a bit excessive.

Skills are in! And I like them! In my opinion, there are too much ATM, for example there are separate skills for crafting clothing, leather armor, and iron armor, which seems a bit redundant, especcially since every weapon (apart from guns) seems to be in the same category "weapon", and all tools are in the category "tools", why not have every armor in the same category as well? That makes increasing the skills for better armor really hard. You level up your skills by doing stuff, i.e. crafting a stone axe increases tool crafting skill, building and ubgrading structures levels up the building skill and so on. There are still proper "level ups" as well, netting you 5 skill points each time, with wich you can upgrade your skills in a very weird way: Skills go from lvl 1-100, and upgrading a skill from 1 to 2 takes 2 skill points. Upgrading it from 59-60 takes 60 skill points, or 12 lvls. But they are not claiming that it is balanced correctly, alpha is alpha.

I'm rambling way more than I should, I really like this update, this is the first proper game of 7DTD I am playing since before the minibike was a thing, and I'm loving it. This is still one of the best early access titles I've played, I love the "slow and hard"-approach to balancing they are doing right now, and I honestly think the finished game will be amazing. Even if they somehow fuck everything up in the future, they keep opening up new systems and possibilities for modders, and there is always somebody out there to un-fuck it.

[FlowerChild]

I spent some time with it right after it came out (I think I played up to day 21 or 28 on default options, no loot respawn), and my reaction was pretty "meh" overall. Don't like the new monochromatic claymation zombies or overacted anims, although I agree that it does make targeting headshots more interesting. Otherwise, didn't encounter anything which made much of an impression on me, other than disliking the looks of the new mobile-app UI which is probably one of the most soulless ones I can remember from any game. Also thought the body temperature/clothing system was interesting, even if not particularly prominent past the first day or two other than slightly adjusting clothing based on biome now and again.

Alpha 12 was probably my favorite release so far though, and other than visuals, I don't think anything significant has really gotten worse since then.

[DerAlex]

I'll continue the tradition and post some news from the devs here. They seem to be well on track to beta status and are in cleaning and bugfixing mode. The latest devlog reads as follows:

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I’ve been working with Gazz from our community to completely rebalance the game and fix every XML bug known. We’ve renamed every block and item in the game to a standard naming convention, so as a builder or modder the creative menu is like a dream now. All related items are in order and can be easily found. All blocks have a naming convention like color material blockshape and further description.

He completed my mission of extending all blocks from a master block. This means all balancing and bug fixing is done on about 10 master blocks and the nightmare of manually editing 1000′s of blocks is finally over.

The block upgrade path is now fully balanced and we’ve added adobe so you can build a decent fort in the desert now. Also each weapon has been rebalanced from scrach with all weapon archtypes having a unique purpose. For example the pistol might not be uber powerful but it is now quiet so it would be useful to dispatch a few zombies quietly without alerting the entire wasteland. We’ve resolved the issues where you could do 1400 points damage with a single shotgun blast because of stacked skill bugs.

Ryan F is now working on chunk occlusion. We don’t have much occlusion now only LOD and models disappear at a distance. An occluder will hide hidden chunks like caves or when you are inside most of the outside will no longer render. This could yield some serious performance gains so I’m really excited about this. We’re fixing bugs like maniacs and A14 is the last new save you will ever have to start. We’re committed to save game support from A14 forward.

Source http://joelhuenink.tumblr.com/

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Additional news:

NPC Shanty Towns
New Shaders an Performance Fixes
New Crafting Stations

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Additionally additionally, here are some random dev posts from the forum:

3 weeks ago:

14 is all about performance and bug fixing. We are already at content lock for code, and only small content additions are allowed at this point. This frees Joe up to fix the minibike falling through the world and other lingering problems that have gone on for too long. This doesn't mean its going to drop any time soon it just means we need a nice block of time to fix bugs and optimize and we can't do that when new code is constantly being added. Literally hundreds of bugs have been fixed this week.

2 weeks ago:

Alpha 14 also has many new perks and improvements to our skills system, a great new damage and death system where zombies feed on your corpse, an introductory basics of survival quest, repeatable quest note challenges, a radiant buried treasure quest system for infinite digging for treasure fun, many new improved world textures and block shapes, a major rebalancing of block damage, leveling and XP, some good optimizations, random gen improvements, and so many bug fixes. We’re making great progress on it folks so expect it to drop in February.

1 week ago:

We're at a good place now A14 will be in your hands sooner than later, and it's shaping up to be a very beastly update with over 4 pages of perks, most with 3-5 ranks. Hundreds of new recipes, new spawn effect, new death effect, quests, tutorial, huge world update, performance gains, massive bug fixes... it's going to be epic.

[DerAlex]

Alpha 15 dropped a few days ago, so I'll rez this thread

Anybody still playing 7DTD? For me, even thou it's still far from perfect, and may very well never be, it's one of the few games that sucks me in every couple of months and I no-life it for a week before moving on with my life.

The biggest selling point of Alpha 15 are traders, who, at this point in time, don't fit the world at all since you are he only living person apart from the traders themself. This might be changing in the future, since they plan on adding bandits as an added threat, and you can even see their fortresses in the world, but with nobody in them yet. As it is, the traders seem out of place to me, I don't like the feature as it is.

The rest of the update is mainly consisting of balance changes and technical improvements. I'm able to 1080px60fps the game the first time ever, with everything on ultra no less. They also added distant terrain, which makes the world feel much more huge and open. A new world gen algorythm also generates more interesting terrain with in some cases more extreme height differences. The game is just nicer to look at. (as a side note, many reviewers criticize the game for it's graphics. Everybody forgets it's a voxel game, I think what they did with it is phenomenal from a graphical standpoint).

My biggest problem with the game right now is it's melee system, and I don't really see them even admitting that it is a problem. Combat just feels terrible. No weight in the punches, really bad sound effects, no reaction from the zombies, "floaty", it feels almost like Morrowind's melee, just without the constant misses. I really hope there is something coming down the line, I think they are losing a lot of sales to the terrible fighting in the game, and I really think they would deserve the sales.

In my opinion, the game is so much better than what reviews and sales are showing, even if I think they move the game in a direction that I don't really like with stuff like the trader and the bandits and so on. Still, at it's core, it is by far the best single player base building survival game to me, by a wide margin.

[FlowerChild]

I lost interest a few releases ago. I forget what it was in particular but the game just became very "meh" for me at some point. Was around the switch to the sterile interface, which I didn't like, but which wouldn't have been enough for me to bail.

Might give it another go. Performance improvements would probably make it more palatable. I've never been keen on the NPC idea either, and they were talking about doing that years ago. Personally, I think they should have focused on polishing what they had and turning it into a finished game rather than expanding it into what I suspect will never be convincing AI.

I suspect the NPCs may wind up having a lot of parallels to MC wolves.

[DerAlex]

I suspect the NPCs may wind up having a lot of parallels to MC wolves.

They are planning tameable wolves, I shit you not :D

But yeah, the AI thing is what I think will break it, too. The good thing is, they have opened up much more systems and subsystems to modding, so removing NPC bandits will be easy if they turn out bad.

If you're serious about giving it another go, I think you're in for a treat. Since you've last played, they overhauled... everything. I won't spoil any specific stuff, but the whole game plays much better in my mind:

* You need rediculous amounts of resources for everything higher than wood, which I feel makes finally obtaining high level equipment or a good base much more rewarding
* The progression- and level system feels like it is in a decend place now, after they fine-tuned it for at least half a year (If one likes that sort of stuff. I do, in this specific case, but some people are turned off by the whole skinnerbox issue of this school of game design. I feel like they hit the "getting this enables me to to x" - mark and not the "not getting this prohibits me to do y" one, if that makes sense)
* The tech tree is starting to come together, with the main path being gated by time- and resource investment (skills and different workbenches), and the branches and high-level stuff being gated by RNG (skillbooks) on top of the normal time- and resource investment. (Finding skillbook x still means you have to have stuff like the workbench or the chemistry table or even the forge to actually build the thing you unlocked)
* Biome-specific resources and -difficulty is in the game now. Stay away from any area that looks dead.
* The (RWG)-World just looks beautiful, even if the new distant terrain feature is still a bit rough around the edges (it doesn't show buildings, for example)

I could go on with minor stuff, but that's the big ones for me. It takes me about 30+ days to be "done" with a world in terms of progression, and it feels much better than it did even 6 months ago. (I play with 1hr days, 25% loot, no loot respawn, and enemy spawning on "very high", rest is default)

[FlowerChild]

AH! Your mention of resources reminded me of what it was that turned me off: was the combination of unique resources into generics (sticks and planks into just "wood" for example). Absolutely hated that with a passion.

I can understand the desire to streamline, but I found the game lost an unreasonable amount of texture and immersion in the process.

[DerAlex]

I understand the concern, in fact, I was in the same boat when that update dropped, but after playing around with it, I see what they are trying to do, and I even think they made the right choice here.

They removed the difficulty of understanding how the game works for the hypothetical person who never played a game like this. In the old versions of the game, and especially BTGB, you spent a long way on the bottom of the tech tree, and it sped up the farther you got to the top. In the currrent version of the game, you start out progressing way faster, but it slows down in the end. To be honest, I like that way more after spending some time with it. BTGB was very much better than vanilla at the time, because it didn't feel like they had a clear idea or even concept of how everything should work at the time, and the mod very much had. But now, I think, they made it work their own way.

The whole game got very grindy and slow now, and while both of those words are negative, I mean them in a positive way. Yes you can build a house on day one, but they nerfed block durability and buffed zombie block damage, so that house won't stay up long. For every higher tier of block you need increasingly rediculous amounts of resources, but not so much to be unfair. They very much went away from, for the basic tech progression, gating content behing RNG, and torwards gating content behind time investment. You need time to gather resources, of which there are much more than in the past. For the crafting bench, which allows you to make steel tools (if you have learnt to make steel, that is), you need a resource called mechanical parts, which you get from harvesting something like a car, a shopping trolley, a electical box and so on, so you can grind torwards it, you know where to find it, but you have to invest time to get the parts.

Time is now the most important resource in the game, which I love. Crafting the best club, for example, takes about 3-4 minutes. The better forge recipes are gated behind 2 tools/forge upgrades you have to find in loot (RNG), and 3 levels of the steel smithing skill (Time). The forge is really slow as well, and works a bit different from when you've played before. It basically stores iron, clay, lead, copper, glass and stone now. Smelting the resource into the storage takes time, smelting something usable out of the forge takes time as well. In my current game, I decided to move my forge, and it took way over 24 in game hours to even empty out the old one.

Sorry, I'm rambling. After the update where you stopped playing, which I played only for a bit because the game balance was all over the place since they introduced many new systems at once, I realized that the game moves in a direction I did not anticipate, and a direction I initially disagreed with. But with the next alpha, the game sucked me in again, and I now think that their vision, while not my own, does work in its own way.

[FlowerChild]

Ok, 42 days into my current game, I'm not sure if I'm going to play any further, so I figure it's a good time for a little analysis. I've built all the various workstations (workbench, cement mixer, chemistry station), found a trader (meh), and don't really have anything else I want to accomplish in my world. Guess I could work on building a minibike, but that never really interested me.

I played 25% loot, no loot respawn, random gen, everything else default.

My observations:

-I like the performance improvements. It runs quite smoothly on my aging rig, much better than previous versions.

-I like the high value "permanent" crafting stations. Makes base building and defense a higher priority, but that's unfortunately still undermined by the ability to just run off to a POI during hoard nights so that your main base doesn't sustain damage.

-POIs seem (hard to tell for certain if it was just my world) smaller and less abundant, which is definitely a good thing, but some are still a tad large for my taste. I ran into huge swaths of wilderness in some locations too, which I thought was awesome as it mixes up the gameplay and emphasizes player construction more.

-I did not observe anything that seemed to relate to what you were saying about location specific resources. Sand I guess, but deserts were everywhere, as were dirt and clay in just about every biome. Desert biomes still seem massively fucked up to me as well, given they seem to contain some of the most valuable vegetation in abundance (yucca and aloe), and are also the easiest places to stay hydrated (just constantly grab yucca in passing).

-I did not really observe the grind or time based progression you are talking about either. Ok, fine, it takes some time to craft certain objects, but with the exception of fertilizer it was never long enough to be a real gameplay consideration. You seem to be talking more about what you hope it potentially becomes given the systems they've implemented rather than what it actually is. Sure, some of those systems are interesting, but I wouldn't say the gameplay is there yet.

-They claymation zombies didn't bug me as much as last time, but I think I still prefer the old ones.

-Same for the unified resources. I still don't like it, but it didn't annoy me quite as much. I don't think it represents a significant simplification for new players either btw: if you're dumb enough that you couldn't figure out the old system, I don't think you're going to have an easier time grasping this one just because they've abstracted stick and logs into miscellaneous wood. So, while I can understand what the Pimps were aiming for with that, I think it amounted to the old "faulty solution to a non-existent problem" that wound up just making the game worse for no real gain. And btw, I did think they had too many distinct resources in the past, and some served next to no purpose, the thing is, I think they went way too far in trying to resolve that.

-I find the elevation-based world gen to be dull as dirt. No real surprises or significant variations going on.

Anyways, guess the best I can say about it is I enjoyed playing it again, which wasn't the case with the last version I tried. I don't really feel that it's progressed significantly in a positive direction since last play through, more that they just repaired some damage done, but at least it's not bad. I'll probably give it another go with their next major release, probably returning to "always run" to mix things up.

[DerAlex]

My post was witten at about day 12 or day 14, something like that. I stopped playing my game a few days ago, for the same reason you did, funnily enough at day 42 as well. My position changed a bit on some issues.

...Makes base building and defense a higher priority, but that's unfortunately still undermined by the ability to just run off to a POI during hoard nights so that your main base doesn't sustain damage.

This is a big concern for me as well. Another problem is that the minibike drives faster than zeds can run, so having one further trivializes the horde night. I wonder if and how they adress this problem in the future, in my opinion the whole predictable-horde-thing is a flawed concept in itself, it's much to easy to cheese

-I did not observe anything that seemed to relate to what you were saying about location specific resources.

I was talking mostly about the ores, which are now biome exclusive (coal -> burnt forest, potassium -> snow biome, ...). But in my opinion, which I only really formed torwards the end of my playthrou, the new ore distribution they introduced here ruined mining, at least for the purpose of resource gathering. Or rather, the stones that are everywhere on the surface are much more efficient than a underground mine. The best pickaxe with every related perk or skill on max needs 2 hits for a stone, but the surface stone things, they break with one swing. And you get a small amount of every ore plus potassium and coal, they are so much more efficient to gather resources it's not even funny. Additionally, for normal mining you now need 2 hits with a steel pickaxe for each block of stone, and you need 2 hits with an iron pick as well, but it swings faster. This results in mining being 30% faster with the mid level tool than it is with the high end tool, which is just wrong.

Desert biomes still seem massively fucked up to me as well, given they seem to contain some of the most valuable vegetation in abundance (yucca and aloe), and are also the easiest places to stay hydrated

They could reduce yucca and aloe by 90% and it would still be too much, propably. One could argue that a desert doesn't have to be a hard biome necessarily, but I agree with you 100%. Unlimited aloe in particular just throws the whole gamebalance out the window. Personally, I challenged myself to 4 single aloe for farming, but I could then use all the farmed ones as normal. This didn't really fix anything, thou. Unlimited healing that easily achievable is just bad, I hope they realize this one day.

I did not really observe the grind or time based progression you are talking about either. You seem to be talking more about what you hope it potentially becomes given the systems they've implemented rather than what it actually is.

My perception was totally influenced by the fact that I had a lot of fun with it at the time. Still, I might mis-remember the gameplay of A10-A12, but to me, I'd still say the progression is much slower than it was before, and if I compare my day 40+ world with a day 40+ world from a year ago, I also accomplished much less in terms of a base, and was forced to compromise much more, especially in terms of iron / steel top level structures. I was planning my days until the next horde night 3-4 days in advance (I made a rule for myself to always face the horde in my home base), always had a checklist of stuff I wanted to do, and never enough time to do it all.

I did think they had too many distinct resources in the past, and some served next to no purpose, the thing is, I think they went way too far in trying to resolve that.

I might be mis-remembering things, I think I have to load up an old alpha again, because AFAIK, the wood-change (sticks/logs/boards -> wood) and different stone resources are the only area where they condensed resource groups. What made me hate the update in question, the one where you stopped playing, was the new resource gathering and block upgrade system, not the missing wood items. In the current version, I was running out of space much faster than in earler versions of the game because of new resources like plastic/electronics/mechanical parts, new tools, the new weapon part system and so on, and this was the first version of 7DTD where inventory management was a real concern for me at times. This is the only point where I absolutely disagree with you.

I'll probably give it another go with their next major release, probably returning to "always run" to mix things up.

I tried that once. I will absolutely try it again once (or rather if) they ever implement a functioning stealth system and a local "I found you"-trigger on every zombie instead of a global one, but going into a city, silently taking out one zombie with a bow or crossbow or whatever, and then having 20+ zombies from the whole city sprinting torwards you was not really enjoyable for me.

A general observations about the game, or rather my biggest problem with it at the moment:

Farming as a whole is "OP" IMHO because of the exponential returns and the very little time it takes to grow stuff. I have 200+ meaty stews on day 40, food stops being a problem after day 1, as does water, even on 25% loot. Because of the overabundance of everything, food/drink survival becomes trivial way, way too soon. For my next playthrou, I'll take grown vegetables out of the loot tables, replace them with seeds, and remove the vegetable -> seed recipes so that I can only plant every plant once for every seed I find. This would propably also make fertilizer worthwile. I have no idea if this solves anything in the long run, but I find the idea interesting enough to try it. I'll also heavily reduce the amount of meat you get from animals, remove the recipe for the "good" bandage, remove blood bags from the loot tables and remove the ability to smelt glass jars. I always stop looting normal houses really soon and only go for shops and stores, and I really want to not be able to do that.

I'll propably buff firearms damage a bit and give myself 10pts instead of 5 for every level to balance things out.

[FlowerChild]

I might be mis-remembering things, I think I have to load up an old alpha again, because AFAIK, the wood-change (sticks/logs/boards -> wood) and different stone resources are the only area where they condensed resource groups. What made me hate the update in question, the one where you stopped playing, was the new resource gathering and block upgrade system, not the missing wood items. In the current version, I was running out of space much faster than in earler versions of the game because of new resources like plastic/electronics/mechanical parts, new tools, the new weapon part system and so on, and this was the first version of 7DTD where inventory management was a real concern for me at times. This is the only point where I absolutely disagree with you.

One additional note on this: I could be wrong, but I think they shrunk the inventory down, which may have something to do with it. Because yeah, I agree, inventory management is more of a concern now than it used to be, but when I noticed my hotkeys only went up to 8 instead of the standard 9, I assumed that was the reason why :)

Grass to fiber was another area they abstracted the resources as well. I'd have to think if there are any others, but that fiber thing and dropping sticks both bothered me a lot, as I am a big fan of feeling like you're cobbling together primitive tools at the start, and I find the ability to create wooden structures out of a few twiggy bushes to be rather an immersion killer.

[DerAlex]

I could be wrong, but I think they shrunk the inventory down, which may have something to do with it. Because yeah, I agree, inventory management is more of a concern now than it used to be, but when I noticed my hotkeys only went up to 8 instead of the standard 9, I assumed that was the reason why :)

I just checked via google image search, and yes, you're right, we lost one column of inventory space. I'd bet money on the fact that they reduced the hotkeys to 8 in order to prepare for the console release, which was only announced at least half a year later.

Glad you had fun with this release :D

I don't know if you (or anyone else who might be reading this) still follow the dev diary, here are some of the planned features for the next alpha:

Spawn and AI improvements
* Create new volume based Sleeper system and sleeper helper points
* Bread Crumb System
* Unify Spawning so Bloodmoon, Dynamic and Sleeper spawns all use partying and dynamic difficultly game stages

Electricity
* Craft generators or use batteries to power electric devices
* New powered traps that chop zombies, burn them, and more
* Run wire from power sources to switches, relays and appliances

Zip Line system
* Attach zip lines and use them for quick escape routes or safe passage down treacherous mountains, Cross rivers and gorges!

Lockpicking
* Allow players to pick locks to unlock doors, safes, etc.

New and redone animals
*Replace bears, stag and pig. (these were generic unity assets, we want our own)
*Replace hornet with zombie vulture
*Add snakes to desert and plains
*Add wolves to appropriate areas.

Redo main menu
Replace old legacy menu with an updated smoother flowing one.
*Clean up old options
*Add new dead is dead mode

New unified perlin worm cave system
Caves in RWG and Navezgane will be ruled by one system. There will be worm like caves randomly generated. They will have fingers of ore you can find and mine out as you explore them. They might replace the current mining system too.

Fat Hawaiian shirt zombie is back!
Ask and ye shall receive! This time he might even have a special ramming behavior where if he cannot reach you he charges in to the nearest block and wrecks the wall. Like fat cops run at you and explode, except he won't explode he'll just do mass damage to blocks.

They are still throwing new systems out and see what sticks it seems, the development seems very chaotic to me. This will be the third alpha in a row where they change mining. To explain some bullet points, the breadcrumb system will be a new way for zombies to track you, you'll leave a invisible trail when you move, which decays over time. Zombies can sense where you've been and follow your path. This would mean that zombies will no longer just attack any wall, but go for the door, because you went throu the door. Sleeper zombies will be zombies who are inside POIs, and who wake up if you make too much noise. It seems to be kinda more than that, because that feature was also announced for A14 and A15, and they couldn't get it done yet, so maybe there is more to this. This feature, combined with the lockpicking, are the first steps torwards making stealth gamemplay work and worthwhile, which is an aspect I'm very much interested in. I love playing stealthily in games that allow it. To be perfectly honest thou, I don't have that much hope, their ADHD style of development is starting to get on my nerves. Ziplines... wtf...

[devak]

*Replace hornet with zombie vulture

so better than nuclear bees? XD

[Equitis1024]

*Replace hornet with zombie vulture

so better than nuclear bees? XD

Hah, if I remember right, FlowerChild recommended this exact change ages ago!

[FlowerChild]

Hah, if I remember right, FlowerChild recommended this exact change ages ago!

Hehe..yeah, I did, but in fairness to the Pimps, if I remember right they were already planning a zombie vulture when I brought it up, even if they wanted to keep the bees as well :)

[FlowerChild]

I just checked via google image search, and yes, you're right, we lost one column of inventory space. I'd bet money on the fact that they reduced the hotkeys to 8 in order to prepare for the console release, which was only announced at least half a year later.

My (rather sad) theory on it is that the UI designer ran out of screen space while working on the current ugly smartphone UI design, and they decided to sacrifice functionality to that end. You'll notice that the left half of the screen is much busier than the previous interface.

The number of inventory squares isn't really my issue with it, but I think chopping out '9' as a hotkey slot in a first person game is in itself bad UI design as it flies in the face of decades of convention. Can't count how many times I mistakenly hit '9' during my last playthrough in order to select my last slot before reprogramming myself.