7 Days To Die: Fallout edition

[Lizzard]

I have no problem with them adapting game play ideas from great games like that, Only problem is, they went from being Fallout 2, over to being Fallout 4 in the past 5 years. Anyone familiar with that entire franchise knows what a huge difference that is!

At first this game was a blocky, disjointed mess that didn't even believe in right angles. I barely played it more than anything but a tech demo at that stage. Luckily, update after update, improved upon that and soon it was a playable game. albeit still a mess.

It was probably about Alpha 13 or 14 that I settled into playing this game to any serious degree, but I would stop and come back after a year or two to check in on it. I now just started again and I find myself in a state I think a alot of the Youtubers in this game and recent players don't realize exists.

The one thing almost all of the recent Youtube channels have in common is that almost everyone playing, plays this game primarily as a FPS. At first I thought, they were just "really good"! Because to get to the point where you could throw caution to the wind like they do now, USED to take a massive investment of time and skill. After playing through Alpha 19 for a while now though, I realize the hardcore survival portion of this game has vanished and it is essentially the "Fallout 4" version of itself.

Here are some habits I developed as a player in those early versions that are entirely pointless to have now.

Right at the start for the first few days there was this routine:
Stockpiling leather
Hoarding iron pipes
Gathering clay
Searching for the bellows/forge schematics

Very little else mattered since if you couldn't build a forge, you were ♥♥♥♥♥♥. So you needed to keep track of exactly what materials you had, what you looted and what books you read. It was entirely up to the rng if you found some key items, like that pipe and the schematics since you couldn't craft the pipe without the forge and they weren't that common to loot.

Then there were the general survival habits I formed and lessons learned:
Farm, hunt, and cook!
Keep you hunger at bay
ALWAYS opt for a cooked meal over canned junk
Use the actual skills you wanted and level them up through that use
Don't die... EVER
Make the mistake of walking around with raw meat on you once, only once.
Watch your back when you're walking down a city street and don't get swarmed
Bees hurt... A LOT
Avoid melee as often as possible to start
Invest some time into using archery
Antibiotics are worth more than gold
Farm
Build build build and BUILD some more

I now play Alpha 19 and... yeah... pretty much all of those things are moot. I feel like I got pretty far in my last couple games, but the problem is, I shouldn't have.

I stopped cooking, I carelessly fight toe to toe with zombies. I'm swimming in antibiotics. I eat junk food to survive. I'm basically homeless 6 days a week and only have a basic "murder hole" for a hoard base. I haven't cooked a single meal over a campfire. I've barely used any mining tools or skills. I just murder zombies, finish quests, sell loot and gain levels.

I see these videos and guides saying "Get XYZ in 4 days!" and think "How the ♥♥♥♥ is that a thing?". Then I realize every path is predetermined and open up right at the start. Gain a level, get a perk, get the recipe, build the item. You're guaranteed to always have everything available to you at predetermined parts of the game play. No more using skills to level them, crossing your fingers and praying you acquire the schematic in the wild, or do without. The game is now handing you a linear path you can go down and then gives you the chose to do an "Oppsie" and redo that with magic potions.

WTF happened to this game?!

[...👑 JOST AMMAN 👑...]

You just need this overhaul mod: Ravensheart
https://7daystodiemods.com/ravenhearst-mod/

[Crater Creator]

We should acknowledge that experience is one factor here. The version of you that plays Alpha 19 today may have hundreds of more hours under their belt than the version of you that played Alpha 13/14. I know I do. Hence there’s a trove of working knowledge details you’ve picked up - like that sinks are a good source of wrenches, or the drop rate of an arrow - that you may not consciously think about anymore, which allow you to play more efficiently and aggressively. They actually set the default difficulty one level lower than it used to be, based on their assessment that the game had gotten harder.

I do agree that 7DtD’s standing as a survival game has lost a lot of legs, and I hope to see that restored so long as it’s billed as the survival horde crafting game. But for getting away from that throw-caution-to-the-wind, first person shooter style, try adjusting your settings, or mods as Jost Amman suggests. If you play on 25% loot and no loot respawn for instance, I don’t think you’ll keep ignoring cooking.

[pApA^LeGBa]

Cooking has it´s place. +40 stamina is nothing i would simply ignore. Also having to eat tons of cans is annoying, at least for me.

Regarding the antibiotics: That will change with A20, they will become more rare.

[xılǝℲ ★]

I feel like its the opposite lol, there's much more freedom to how you want to start. I do use mods though to tweak the gameplay to my liking. I've been playing since like alpha 7 or so.

You seem to have this mentality of wanting to 'complete' the game quick, that just isn't what the game is about. If you play with easy settings that's not the fault of the developers... You got better at the game and know how to 'end' your own enjoyment faster, also not the developers fault.

[Lizzard]

Originally posted by pApA^LeGBa:

Cooking has it´s place. +40 stamina is nothing i would simply ignore. Also having to eat tons of cans is annoying, at least for me.

Regarding the antibiotics: That will change with A20, they will become more rare.

Being helpful is one thing, but being a necessity is another. I don't know if you played back then, but the only way to increase the max health was through cooked meals. Also, the penalty for death was a decrease in that max health, meaning, the only way to recover from it was cooked meals.

Now cooking is purely a luxury as stamina buffs happen through perks and heath is raised through levels.

[Lizzard]

Originally posted by Crater Creator:

We should acknowledge that experience is one factor here. The version of you that plays Alpha 19 today may have hundreds of more hours under their belt than the version of you that played Alpha 13/14. I know I do. Hence there’s a trove of working knowledge details you’ve picked up - like that sinks are a good source of wrenches, or the drop rate of an arrow - that you may not consciously think about anymore, which allow you to play more efficiently and aggressively. They actually set the default difficulty one level lower than it used to be, based on their assessment that the game had gotten harder.

I do agree that 7DtD’s standing as a survival game has lost a lot of legs, and I hope to see that restored so long as it’s billed as the survival horde crafting game. But for getting away from that throw-caution-to-the-wind, first person shooter style, try adjusting your settings, or mods as Jost Amman suggests. If you play on 25% loot and no loot respawn for instance, I don’t think you’ll keep ignoring cooking.

That could also be true. Even rusty, I know how the mechanics used to work. It feels the PImps opted to alter the world to the player/character and not the player experience around the world.

They have a buggy yet fleshed out world 5 years ago. The atmosphere and ruleset were in place and aside from some flukes, it felt like an actual apocalypse.

I recall creating accidental hoards while running through towns trying to avoid one set of Z's and running face first into another. Now, the outdoors are a virtual ghost town while the Zombies... hide themselves in freakin't coat closets in houses?!

I remember zombies destroying the first POI I made a home in on the first night. Anytime I killed one, I'd draw the attention of 2 more and it just kept going all night long until the house was swiss cheese. Now, I don't have to even bother putting in a door since I only ever get one or two "guests" per night.

Scremaers were regular visitors most nights, when I simply lit a campfire and ran a forge. Now my base has to resemble Times Square before I ever see one.

The 7th Day Hoard were given PhD's in Structural Engineering now, but before, the brain dead ones, in their stupidity would get angry at a tree stump and inadvertently end up digging under a wall in their rage, or get hung up on a corner and collapse a portion of my base by dumb luck. Now they all go straight for the open door and get killed off like lemmings.

Traders are a thing now. If you can't scavenge or craft it, grind some ammo to sell, and buy it.

If you can't find a good haul of books while looting, just get a perk and the recipe you want. Build your workbench and concrete mixer, grind more ammo and buy a magic potion to "forget" and change the perks to what you want.

Even though you can increase the difficulty, that just makes the game tedious, not challenging.

In that way, it feels like the same route Bethesda took when they took over Fallout. First they removed the consequences system from Fallout 1 and 2. Then they handed the entire game on a silver platter by Fallout 4.

[Orclover]

It does feel like the game just hands you everything now compared to how it used to work in previous versions, even on default settings without respawning loot. There is almost no reason to make things other than ammo usually. A bit of trader questing, a bit of buying a bit of looting and you have everything in the game. I fear eventually the trader will even give you a perfect base for horde night so you don't even have to build that.

[Khissi]

I appreciate how some of you hard-core, early alpha guys loved how hard you had to work to play the game, and that's cool. Everyone has a 'fun' place when it comes to gaming. However, I was one of the ones that just couldn't keep up with it... couldn't stay alive, got frustrated, threw my mouse and gave up. I kept trying, though, through alpha after alpha and eventually, in alpha 16, was able to change the settings enough to actually survive long enough to begin enjoying the game. It gave me a chance to learn HOW to survive at harder difficulties. I guess I'm just an old lady and needed to crawl before I could run.

I love the choices you have in recent alphas. You can change the game to fit YOU... and, even though harder difficulties just make the game tedious and annoying for me, if you worked at it, added a few mods and changed a few things in the xml files (which, for me, is just the epitome of perfect gaming, when the developers trust you enough with their baby to let you fit it to the way YOU want to play) and you STILL can't find a way to make the game your own, then I'm sure glad they let you download and play those earlier alphas any time you want.

Seems the perfect game to me.

[Lizzard]

Originally posted by Khissi:

I appreciate how some of you hard-core, early alpha guys loved how hard you had to work to play the game, and that's cool. Everyone has a 'fun' place when it comes to gaming. However, I was one of the ones that just couldn't keep up with it... couldn't stay alive, got frustrated, threw my mouse and gave up. I kept trying, though, through alpha after alpha and eventually, in alpha 16, was able to change the settings enough to actually survive long enough to begin enjoying the game. It gave me a chance to learn HOW to survive at harder difficulties. I guess I'm just an old lady and needed to crawl before I could run.

I love the choices you have in recent alphas. You can change the game to fit YOU... and, even though harder difficulties just make the game tedious and annoying for me, if you worked at it, added a few mods and changed a few things in the xml files (which, for me, is just the epitome of perfect gaming, when the developers trust you enough with their baby to let you fit it to the way YOU want to play) and you STILL can't find a way to make the game your own, then I'm sure glad they let you download and play those earlier alphas any time you want.

Seems the perfect game to me.

I do agree to tweaking the files, as I do that often. But seeing features that are hard coded like the Alpha 20 update and the other versions before can't bring back things that were removed. They threw multiple babies out with the bathwater through the updates. Adding the zombies smelling raw meat, for example, can't be done via editing. Adding back in the plains biome, can't be done either. Yet at the same time, I WANT features they'd adding, especially in Alpha 20, so I don't want to have to relegate myself to playing Alpha 15. :(

[Johnny Thunder]

lower player block damage, loot and experience gain to 25%.

Hopefully they add more tweaks but if you think the game is too easy to survive in there are ways to make it harder. Would like to see a permanent infection mode (once you get infected it cannot be cured, only reversed with antibiotics, but it starts progressing again once the antibiotic wears out, vitamins can also temporarily halt progression in this mode) and decoupled food looting from generic looting (not being able to find schematics is not fun).

And Fallout 2 was an awful game.

[Orclover]

Originally posted by Johnny Thunder:

And Fallout 2 was an awful game.

You could save the world, be a porn star, sell your companions into slavery, turn trix. You do not know of what you speak, it was an amazing game.

[Khissi]

Originally posted by Lizzard:

Yet at the same time, I WANT features they'd adding, especially in Alpha 20, so I don't want to have to relegate myself to playing Alpha 15. :(

Yeah, I do understand. I love the things Khaine has done with his Darkness Falls mod. He's combined a lot of the older stuff with the newer, and I really do appreciate the work it took to do that. I'm sure you've tried some of those Overhaul mods. I think the Pimps said they were adding quite a few tools to aid with modding in a20 which may mean there could come a version that's closer to what you're wanting, though.. I dunno about the plains ever returning.