Note to The Fun Pimps: Long time fan here, unhappy with Alpha 20. Future alphas need different priorities.

[Mankybus]

As you may be able to tell, I am very unhappy with alpha 20 thus far and judging from looking through the threads here it seems that I'm not the only here who has noticed the massive dip in performance between alpha 19 and 20. This seems to be a recurring theme I've noticed as alpha 19 ran incredibly well after my horrible experience with alpha 16, at least from my experience with rarely any frame drops and hitches. But since I came back to the game today after hearing about alpha 20 I was excited to jump back in and lo and behold the performance is absolutely god awful yet again with some insane frame drops, constant hitches and so much more that caused me to drop my settings from high down to low-medium.

Why exactly does the game keep flip flopping from running great to running terribly literally on a dime in a seemingly cyclical pattern like this? As far as I can tell the visuals have barely changed, made even worse that I had to deliberately make the game look worse and unless there's a ton of things that have changed under the hood then I am constantly baffled by how this keeps happening. I'm well aware I don't have a very high end rig today and that game development is hard but most other games I play that came out in recent years tend to run just fine on high settings with little to no fuss.

At this point the alpha excuse is completely unacceptable and doesn't fly anymore as the game has been going for nearly a decade and has been on sale for almost just as long, you'd think being sold as a product the devs would make sure that keeping the game running as smooth as possible would be the highest priority but evidently that doesn't seem to be the case. I get that an alpha is unfinished and there is still content to be added but it keeps coming at the cost of basic performance even after said performance improves in previous version only to get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ again and new bugs like the TAB UI breaking which forces you to restart your session just compounds these frustrations more and more.

Worse yet we still have some glaring faults in game mechanics that were introduced long ago that were never made better such as the absolutely atrocious random chance status effects when hit by a zombie. I'm sorry but randomly getting infected, dazed or massive bleeding from the first zombie ♥♥♥♥♥ slap you come across is not good design and infection I find is especially common even though curing it is a pain in the early game especially when your stamina regeneration goes down the drain, you're better off just killing yourself to cure it since there's no penalty at all until level 6 and that's just awful game design.

Guys, your game is one I truly love and I criticize it so harshly because I love it so much, because I am so damn sick of things breaking in the next alpha where they were already resolved in the previous one, it's a constant cycle and it makes being a fan utterly exhausting where I dread what will mess up in later releases these days rather than be excited for what they bring.

Just STOP adding new content for the time being because the game has a crap load as is and players find a ton of ways to keep themselves busy for tens or even hundreds of hours already, stop unnecessarily changing things around especially when they're things that don't need changing and settle on systems and mechanics that compliment each other as much as possible and just in general focus on getting the fundamentals right first and then expand from there. Make sure it runs as solid as it possibly can at all times because the current performance is beyond unacceptable when no other game hogs as much as 12gb RAM as this one does, fix that stupid RNG BS status effects zombies give you for something way better and more interesting that relies on the player's skill instead of RNG, tighten up the melee combat to be more enjoyable, physical and visceral because it's still very dull even though the ranged combat is pretty good so far. Once all the fundamentals are nailed down, then start adding more content and polish that up to a shine along with each release.

Sure I would love to see tons more content and enemy types and items and even VR support in the future, I mean who wouldn't want that? But I value making sure everything runs great before getting more stuff and I definitely do not want the game to be a constant unstable mess all the way through its development especially when its been money is being charged for an incredibly unstable product. Please, please, PLEASE start prioritising the fundamental problems like I mentioned before working on everything else from now on because 7 Days to Die deserves better.

I apologise if this is long winded but I had no other means to air out my frustrations and criticisms I've had with this game for years, I imagine a lot of people will disagree with me but the alpha excuse just isn't going to cut it anymore.

[Mankybus]

Messaggio originale di JoeSloeMoe:

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

Why exactly does the game keep flip flopping from running great to running terribly literally on a dime in a seemingly cyclical pattern like this?

At this point the alpha excuse is completely unacceptable and doesn't fly

only to get ♥♥♥♥♥♥ again and new bugs like the TAB UI breaking which forces you to restart your session just compounds these frustrations more and more.

Just STOP adding new content for the time being

I dont want to be that person but you seem to have lost sight of the fact that you are playing an Alpha - we are testers, the target is an end product, they will change the framework as they please to achieve their target release. Some of the things you have said are out of order, all of the answers to the above demands you have made are that the game is in Alpha.

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

As far as I can tell the visuals have barely changed,

You are right, the game looks exactly like A19 down to a tee, nothing new to explore or experience.

You seem to have lost sight that we aren't being paid to test the game, we don't exist purely to test their product for them. We are customers first and foremost and it's the developers' job to make sure it's as playable as possible for new and old players

Seeing people stubbornly defend early access as if a game in an incredibly rough state is something that's perfectly okay is absolutely baffling to me, because DISTANCE and DUSK were early access and they were superbly well made and considered experiences from start to finish that ran very acceptably all throughout. You bought the game to play and enjoy - have some quality standards for goodness sake. Of course I'm going to get infuriated. because as soon as it's on sale it has launched and it launched nearly a decade ago so yes it is fair to believe this performance is unacceptable. No ifs or buts about it.

Messaggio originale di Kaos:

Yeah but nobody else has a game like this. You can't judge it by standards you would apply to other games.

Yes, you very much can. No Man's Sky released buggy and broken because Sony pushed it out a year or two before it was finished, it was very fair to criticise it then because the game launched and ended up making one of the most amazing comebacks ever and is now one of my dream games. That game is bigger in just about every way compared to 7 Days to Die with similar goals and not too dissimilarly sized teams. They bounced the game back in just a few shorts years entirely out of their own pocket.

7 Days to Die has launched nearly a decade ago in a similarly rough state and progress has been steady but the performance has ranged from nothing short of abysmal to just okay the entire time, early access isn't an excuse to deflect criticism be it from fans or developers. I believe it's fair to expect to game to run okayish to decent, settling for absolutely terrible is something I am not going to do. We might be testing the game but we are customers first and foremost and foremost and it's only fair to expect better - that's a stance I refuse to budge on.

[Brian9824]

Gotta love when someone thinks their uneducated opinion trumps how the world works...

Rationalize it all you want, the devs aren't going to go against common sense and do what you want because you THINK it should be done without having any clue how it works....

[Mankybus]

Messaggio originale di Trooper Bri:

You aren't a customer. You're a gambler, as are all of us in Steam Early Access. You agreed that your $20 (or whatever) bought you the current version when you plonked your money down. That's it....
No guarantees of performance, updates, or even a finished product. <---- That's the part that everyone gets wrong. Zero entitlement allowed.

Gambling would be throwing your money at a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ asset flip shovelware game expecting to get a few cheap laughs out of it. 7 Days to Die is an amazing game but an amazingly talented team that are capable of great things and you should expect great things. Early access isn't an excuse to defend anything less from something that's already launched rough and still is rough. It's capable of great things so you should expect that from the devs.

[Brian9824]

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

Messaggio originale di JoeSloeMoe:

I dont want to be that person but you seem to have lost sight of the fact that you are playing an Alpha - we are testers, the target is an end product, they will change the framework as they please to achieve their target release. Some of the things you have said are out of order, all of the answers to the above demands you have made are that the game is in Alpha.


You are right, the game looks exactly like A19 down to a tee, nothing new to explore or experience.

You seem to have lost sight that we aren't being paid to test the game, we don't exist purely to test their product for them. We are customers first and foremost and it's the developers' job to make sure it's as playable as possible for new and old players

Seeing people stubbornly defend early access as if a game in an incredibly rough state is something that's perfectly okay is absolutely baffling to me, because DISTANCE and DUSK were early access and they were superbly well made and considered experiences from start to finish that ran very acceptably all throughout. You bought the game to play and enjoy - have some quality standards for goodness sake. Of course I'm going to get infuriated. because as soon as it's on sale it has launched and it launched nearly a decade ago so yes it is fair to believe this performance is unacceptable. No ifs or buts about it.

Messaggio originale di Kaos:

Yeah but nobody else has a game like this. You can't judge it by standards you would apply to other games.

Yes, you very much can. No Man's Sky released buggy and broken because Sony pushed it out a year or two before it was finished, it was very fair to criticise it then because the game launched and ended up making one of the most amazing comebacks ever and is now one of my dream games. That game is bigger in just about every way compared to 7 Days to Die with similar goals and not too dissimilarly sized teams. They bounced the game back in just a few shorts years entirely out of their own pocket.

7 Days to Die has launched nearly a decade ago in a similarly rough state and progress has been steady but the performance has ranged from nothing short of abysmal to just okay the entire time, early access isn't an excuse to deflect criticism be it from fans or developers. I believe it's fair to expect to game to run okayish to decent, settling for absolutely terrible is something I am not going to do. We might be testing the game but we are customers first and foremost and foremost and it's only fair to expect better - that's a stance I refuse to budge on.

Nope again your logic is extraordinarly faulty. 7 days to die hasn't launched, it's still in development. If you want to compare it to NMS it would be like comparing the current version of 7dtd to the version of no man's sky that existed about a year and a half before release....

Just because your involved in the software development cycle before launch doesn't mean the game is launched when you get access to it.

Development doesn't magically shrink when it's an EA title, it still has to go thru all the development phases, and that includes the optimization phase after it leaves alpha and enters beta.

95% of development time occurs during the alpha, your misconception doesn't change that.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

Messaggio originale di Potato:

Please don´t forget that this game is still in development and the ups and downs in porformance what you have described is perfectly normal under these circumstances.

It´s always like that in game development. They optimize as good as they can though every time new content comes into the game all the effort is in vain and things break. You sound like you are expecting a finished and polished product when you compare this game to other finished games.

Furthermore you are comparing a game with a voxel engine with games that use completely different engines. It´s like comparing apples and oranges.

Have some patience, once all the content is in the devs will make a big bug fixing and optimization pass, but for now they are still too busy with shoveling content in.

I did not mention it needs to be on the level of finished, polished products - I never even inferred that. I can let some things slide in an early build as some of my favourite games came from early access such as DISTANCE and DUSK and yet they have been fantastic from start to finish so expecting something reasonably playable if a little rough for something I paid for is not a ridiculous ask and I am firm on that opinion.

The game has launched the moment it started charging money whether it's early access or not - while being aware of the caveats; as the customer my involvement is to simply enjoy the game after I bought it and thus it's fair to expect some modicum of quality standards that allow me to enjoy said game, this is something that just shouldn't even be up for debate especially for a game that's been on sale for almost a decade. It's head scratching to see people still defend that.

I understand that your patience has limits and yes it is true this game has been in development for a very long time. I think part of the reason for this is that this is not the standard rpg, shooter, or jump and run ect. you get what I mean. They try to merge all kinds of genres into this on top of a fully destructable world which is kind of unique in its way and that is definitly a challenge.

Also don´t asume that it runs terrible for everyone. You may have issues with the game right now but there are many people who have seen a great performance gain. It really depends on your pc as well as the settings of course.

I don´t think it is headscratching at all that people defend this, the reason is simple they enjoy the game despite of its flaws, the long development ect. Just as you can´t understand people defending this those very people might not understand you criticizing it, because many of your points boil down to you not wanting to accept that this game is still not finished.

I know it sucks that development for this game takes so long but it is what it is and lets be honest, there is no other game like this. They are really putting something unique together and also don´t forget they didn´t start as triple aaa devs with insane amounts of funds. They started small and relatively unexperienced, tried many things, noticed that they didn´t work, changed them again and again until they found out what they really want this game to become.

It was a learning process for the devs and I think it is great that they didn´t give up like so many other early access devs and that they are still giving their very best.

Oh and sorry for any spelling or grammar mistakes, I´m not a native english speaker.

[Brian9824]

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

Messaggio originale di Trooper Bri:

You aren't a customer. You're a gambler, as are all of us in Steam Early Access. You agreed that your $20 (or whatever) bought you the current version when you plonked your money down. That's it....
No guarantees of performance, updates, or even a finished product. <---- That's the part that everyone gets wrong. Zero entitlement allowed.

Gambling would be throwing your money at a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ asset flip shovelware game expecting to get a few cheap laughs out of it. 7 Days to Die is an amazing game but an amazingly talented team that are capable of great things and you should expect great things. Early access isn't an excuse to defend anything less from something that's already launched rough and still is rough. It's capable of great things so you should expect that from the devs.

Again you would be wrong, it hasn't launched. Your playing a pre launch development version that you have access to aka an alpha build.

It's the same cycle every game goes thru only you have access to play internal development copies while it's being developed. It will not be a finished nor optimized game until launch.

[Mankybus]

Messaggio originale di brian9824:

Gotta love when someone thinks their uneducated opinion trumps how the world works...

Rationalize it all you want, the devs aren't going to go against common sense and do what you want because you THINK it should be done without having any clue how it works....

Common sense would be to make sure each release is in a state that isn't a complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mess but you do you buddy, clearly it's cool to settle for mediocrity in this little kingdom.

[Mankybus]

Messaggio originale di Bo0Mz:

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

I'd rather not make a new account somewhere else just to have my criticisms heard, the fact they're not reading their feedback in their discussion threads on the biggest PC gaming platform on the entire planet is kind of insane to me.

the fact that they dont give a ♥♥♥♥ about people's feedback here kinda implies that their forum is a circlejerk and in circlejerks people that dont belong have their comments deleted and accounts permabanned

I feel you on that one. My jaw has been on the floor as the sheer amount of damage control they paid to do. Early access isn't an excuse to deflect criticism you know?

I must stress I love 7 Days to Die but I feel with this community it's no wonder progress is glacial and this particular alpha is in a state of disrepair. Makes me glad I never got involved with the people around this game.

[Brian9824]

Thought this drivel sounded familiar, same complaints OP made years ago when he didn't know what EA is and he still hasn't bothered to learn

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

Messaggio originale di A 不潔なカジュアル:

They want the game to mirror their mental image of it which can change. Can't rush creativity and get a good product.

As much as I love 7 Days to Die - it has been suffering from severe feature creep from the very start. When creativity constantly makes the developers add more and more ideas to the game and neglect to optimise what's already there as well as the game's performance after 6 years then frankly it's time to stop adding ♥♥♥♥ because it has more than enough already, polish up everything that's there and leave it at that because otherwise the cycle will just continue because that's literally how Duke Nukem Forever and Daikatana suffered through an agonisingly long development and came out with numerous issues because that's what feature creep does to game.

If the game has a crap ton of features but everything is half baked then the game becomes a case of quantity over quality because it's clear that the devs want to add literally EVERYTHING a game could possibly have to 7 Days when it doesn't need everything. It's obvious there was never a clear plan for the game and everything was just thought up as they went along, which is fine if they know when to stop.

I've felt this way about this game for a while now and after jumping back into it recently, I still feel that way perhaps more than ever after having to deal with A18's performance issues. It's a phenomenal game but I believe the game deserves the criticism it gets, being in alpha for 6 years with seemingly no end in sight for everything to be a complete, polished and tight experience is going to get on the nerves of many players, myself included - so when it's being sold for money I'd say let's not just sweep critique under the rug please.

[Mankybus]

Messaggio originale di Potato:

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

I did not mention it needs to be on the level of finished, polished products - I never even inferred that. I can let some things slide in an early build as some of my favourite games came from early access such as DISTANCE and DUSK and yet they have been fantastic from start to finish so expecting something reasonably playable if a little rough for something I paid for is not a ridiculous ask and I am firm on that opinion.

The game has launched the moment it started charging money whether it's early access or not - while being aware of the caveats; as the customer my involvement is to simply enjoy the game after I bought it and thus it's fair to expect some modicum of quality standards that allow me to enjoy said game, this is something that just shouldn't even be up for debate especially for a game that's been on sale for almost a decade. It's head scratching to see people still defend that.

I understand that your patience has limits and yes it is true this game has been in development for a very long time. I think part of the reason for this is that this is not the standard rpg, shooter, or jump and run ect. you get what I mean. They try to merge all kinds of genres into this on top of a fully destructable world which is kind of unique in its way and that is definitly a challenge.

Also don´t asume that it runs terrible for everyone. You may have issues with the game right now but there are many people who have seen a great performance gain. It really depends on your pc as well as the settings of course.

I don´t think it is headscratching at all that people defend this, the reason is simple they enjoy the game despite of its flaws, the long development ect. Just as you can´t understand people defending this those very people might not understand you criticizing it, because many of your points boil down to you not wanting to accept that this game is still not finished.

I know it sucks that development for this game takes so long but it is what it is and lets be honest, there is no other game like this. They are really putting something unique together and also don´t forget they didn´t start as triple aaa devs with insane amounts of funds. They started small and relatively unexperienced, tried many things, noticed that they didn´t work, changed them again and again until they found out what they really want this game to become.

It was a learning process for the devs and I think it is great that they didn´t give up like so many other early access devs and that they are still giving their very best.

Oh and sorry for any mistakes, I´m not a native english speaker.

No worries, I understood just fine. Honestly you're one of the more pleasant folks here so I'm more than happy to extend that courtesy back to you - I'm a hot head but I'm not unreasonable. I still disagree strongly with what you say, being unfinished isn't my issue here but simply that progress is so glacial that it shouldn't have these glaring faults so many years after the fact considering how much time they take to make each update. I'd expect smaller and more reasonable faults for sure, that's fine but rather I see massive gaping holes which each release that should have been plugged up already.

My argument simply comes down to that early access is not a shield for criticism because at the end of the day you're a customer buying a game you hope to enjoy, if it was any other game I wouldn't care but it's because I LOVE 7 Days to Die to death is why I'm so vehemently critical towards it, the devs and the community. I'm not expecting finished, I'm expecting playable - that's not an unreasonable thing to ask for.

[JoeSloeMoe]

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

You seem to have lost sight that we aren't being paid to test the game,.

No-one said you were being paid, it never came up, it wasnt part of the conversation - where did you get that from?

People who buy and play alpha games are part of the testing strategy, if you didnt know this before thats a may be an issue.

You bought an alpha game, you knew what you were buying or should have. You are in no position to make demands - none of us are.

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

we are customers first and foremost and foremost and it's only fair to expect better

What does this even mean? You bought an Alpha game, whats only fair is that that you realise that you will get alpha updates until release. Customers yes, customers that bought an Alpha game.

It feels like you dont want you arguments to fall to nothing because its Alpha so you start arguing about whether it should be alpha or not according to you. Because only if we say its not in alpha do your arguments make sense.

Regardless, you seem to have drawn a lot of attention so hopefully you get what you want from this post.
Cheers

[Humpenstilzchen]

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

I'm not expecting finished, I'm expecting playable - that's not an unreasonable thing to ask for.

Hmm that is odd, because I think it is very well playable. It runs great on my old rig. May I ask what system specifications you have?

[Brian9824]

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

I'm not expecting finished, I'm expecting playable - that's not an unreasonable thing to ask for.

Fix your broken PC then, it's very playable and nearly 50k playing it right now, so if you can't play it then it's a problem on your end.

I'm not even running a remotely top end PC and I'm playing it on Ultra after the A20 update. Cranked up my settings because it's running far better now.

[Sprocket66]

There are several threads about changes you can make in the settings that dramatically improve performance. Just a few, turn off the dynamic thingie in video options, use the game launcher to turn off the gamesparks spyware and eac, play in offline mode so that the game isn't constantly connecting to Epic, etc. Check out the threads in the support/bugs section if you haven't already for video settings that should give you a smoother and faster fps. It could vastly improve your experience.

[Mankybus]

Messaggio originale di brian9824:

Thought this drivel sounded familiar, same complaints OP made years ago when he didn't know what EA is and he still hasn't bothered to learn

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

As much as I love 7 Days to Die - it has been suffering from severe feature creep from the very start. When creativity constantly makes the developers add more and more ideas to the game and neglect to optimise what's already there as well as the game's performance after 6 years then frankly it's time to stop adding ♥♥♥♥ because it has more than enough already, polish up everything that's there and leave it at that because otherwise the cycle will just continue because that's literally how Duke Nukem Forever and Daikatana suffered through an agonisingly long development and came out with numerous issues because that's what feature creep does to game.

If the game has a crap ton of features but everything is half baked then the game becomes a case of quantity over quality because it's clear that the devs want to add literally EVERYTHING a game could possibly have to 7 Days when it doesn't need everything. It's obvious there was never a clear plan for the game and everything was just thought up as they went along, which is fine if they know when to stop.

I've felt this way about this game for a while now and after jumping back into it recently, I still feel that way perhaps more than ever after having to deal with A18's performance issues. It's a phenomenal game but I believe the game deserves the criticism it gets, being in alpha for 6 years with seemingly no end in sight for everything to be a complete, polished and tight experience is going to get on the nerves of many players, myself included - so when it's being sold for money I'd say let's not just sweep critique under the rug please.

The fact you went searching for that is pretty creepy dude, not gonna lie that is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ weird. But I still stand by my statements regardless because apparently expecting better from a game that's been put out for money FOR NEARLY A ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ DECADE is apparently so venomously evil that I'm now somehow a cartoon villain.

The only people who don't learn is people like you, expect better for god's sake.

Messaggio originale di Kaos:

Messaggio originale di Mankybus:

Seeing people stubbornly defend early access as if a game in an incredibly rough state is something that's perfectly okay is absolutely baffling to me, because DISTANCE and DUSK

I'm going to stop you right there and block you as a moron because you just compared a voxel game with non-voxel games. You're clearly not mentally equipped to be making judgements about development material.

Oh damn the 7DTD police has detained me in the mediocrity prison, how ever will I escape this tortuous hell! Because No Man's Sky, another voxel game much grander in scale surely didn't make a massive comeback with a similarly sized team that also paid out of their own pocket to make it all work. Oh wait.