Going back to 16.4

[bjjorick]

I finally updated to version 17, and, I don't know, the game seems so much easier. I can't figure out the point of looting POI anymore, i get my base and then the game just sorta feels done. Like without the loot, I just doing trader runs, I don't feel there's any point in 17, and the POI aren't really interesting anymore.

I like the gardening upgrades where I don't have to replant everything, but it feels a touch unbalanced (crops should deffinately take much longer then they do to grow), and somehow, the game feels more MP, like the SP feeling is dead?

I guess I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Every change, you'll have people who love it and others who hate it, and there's a lot of good added, but the change to zombies not dropping loot, the lack of bodies to harvest, etc, I adapted my playstyle but everything feels easier, there's less work to survive.

Also, imho, hate the new death mechanic. I liked the old version where you die and you lose max health/stamina, the death mechanic is just a waiting game, nothing you can do about it, it feels very 'gamey' and i keep expecting a pop up to say something like, 'half the amount of death sufffering by paying $.99' or something.

Some of the changes feel good, like the combat changes, but the weight of the game feels gone somehow.

Am I doing something wrong? I loved a15/a16, but a17 feels like i'm playing an arcade game.

[bjjorick]

also, one small thing that i'd like feedback on, in the past alphas, you had to find books to learn how to do things, like find a book to learn how to craft x. Now, the character just instantly knows everything, no outside knowledge needed. This feels so generic to me, again though, wondering if I'm doing something wrong or playing the game wrong, lol

[󠁳]

Steam --> Library --> Games --> 7 days to die --> Properties --> Betas --> (Select the beta you would like opt into) --> alpha16.4 - Alpha 16.4 Stable --> Close your eyes and wait a little bit...

[󠁳]

But if srly, game developers just throw this game with all optimisations and most with all game mechanics and better ideas, cuz this game can't "shoot" again and looking like this game just developers hobby.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by bjjorick:

I finally updated to version 17, and, I don't know, the game seems so much easier. I can't figure out the point of looting POI anymore, i get my base and then the game just sorta feels done. Like without the loot, I just doing trader runs, I don't feel there's any point in 17, and the POI aren't really interesting anymore.

I like the gardening upgrades where I don't have to replant everything, but it feels a touch unbalanced (crops should deffinately take much longer then they do to grow), and somehow, the game feels more MP, like the SP feeling is dead?

I guess I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Every change, you'll have people who love it and others who hate it, and there's a lot of good added, but the change to zombies not dropping loot, the lack of bodies to harvest, etc, I adapted my playstyle but everything feels easier, there's less work to survive.

Also, imho, hate the new death mechanic. I liked the old version where you die and you lose max health/stamina, the death mechanic is just a waiting game, nothing you can do about it, it feels very 'gamey' and i keep expecting a pop up to say something like, 'half the amount of death sufffering by paying $.99' or something.

Some of the changes feel good, like the combat changes, but the weight of the game feels gone somehow.

Am I doing something wrong? I loved a15/a16, but a17 feels like i'm playing an arcade game.

I personally prefer some of the current changes.. The death mechanic for example. It doesn't seem game-y to me..Old death mechanic was very much like the curse debuff in Dark Souls before they nerfed it, where dying several times while cursed left you with like, 1/16th of your full hp and if anything hit you, you would die instantly; Because you lose a chunk of your health and stamina each time you die in A16, if you die several times before being able to recover your max stats, it makes it that much easier for you to die again. It was very easy in A16 and earlier to end up in a downward death spiral in which you end up with basically no HP, a single zombie hit kills you, and you've lost a lot of your gear out in the wilderness that you now cant reclaim because..well, a single zombie hitting you kills you.

As to the zombies not being lootable, 80% of the lootable bodies in A16 were empty anyway, 15% more were junk items that the vast majority would probably ignore anyway, and 5% was stuff you maybe wanted. -- The way they changed it now was largely for performance reasons, as the persisting ragdolls, and the corpseblocks they turned into added a LOT of calculations to the GPU and CPU; Timers for each rag doll to turn into gore, and for each gore to turn into the next stage down, the way the gore blocks interacted with the terrain forcing recalculations, and breaking blocks/other gore blocks, all the added render space being required added up quick and on horde nights especially it was easy to dip down into single digit framerates. Now, the ragdolls disappear very quickly so theres little lag, and any killed zombie has a chance to drop a bright yellow loot bag that always has some kind of loot in it, usually the useful kind even if its only food or water. I myself have gotten a lot of good things from these yellow bags; And I haven't had reason to not pick something up from one yet as opposed to what I did in A16.

As for crop growth time, Pretty sure they take a longer time to grow now in A17 than they did in A16? In A16 i remember having to wait like, a day, to get my crops to full, in A17 it takes around 2 or 3...But i suppose I could be misremembering. I agree that not having to replant them is nice though.

As for A17 not having the recipe booklets, that is something I miss a little, but, at the same time, it was so very easy to have terrible luck and literally -never- see a recipe book that you need. The Minibike book was notorious to me for this. I spent a good 200 hours in A16-16.4, and never saw a single minibike book. So I was stuck walking -everywhere-. I also had rather terrible luck finding the recipe for crossbow, and for the auger. It got to the point that on our RWG world I found 5 different crackabook libraries and drove from one to the next in a big circle looting them again and again (we had loot respawn on 7 days, took about a day to loot each building, a day total of travel time from place to place to place, and a day total of dropping loot off to the main base so i never had to stop looting that specific building)....... So I tend to prefer this perk system where I have the choice of buying the capacity to craft a certain item.

TL;DR:
Overall, A17 isn't exactly perfect. But, It's been a huge improvement to me personally, and A18 will improve on that even more.

I would appreciate having book recipes back from A16 and before, for example, but.. Not at the expense of being able to buy the recipe with a perk point when I have zero luck finding the book, and having both systems in place without careful balancing would be a quick way to have the player max out their perks at a much lower level than intended.

Edit: To answer the sensation of 'arcade-y-ness' you're experiencing.. Try playing a world without buying into the INT stat and its sub skills, and you'll find yourself desiring and even needing to go out. Not having the capacity to craft everything you need makes a huge difference in this regard, and is perhaps one of the big failings of A17; It's too easy to just spam INT and its skills and end up in Q6 gear of any piece you want.

[|MW|TIBA666 丹麦人]

a17 new ai for zombies is way better then in the old one. but yea i also miss the old days when blocks in this game was cubes like in minecraft xD lol

[vgifford]

Nostalgia is good, as long as the game keeps improving.

[SylenThunder]

Originally posted by vgifford:

Nostalgia is good, as long as the game keeps improving.

It's funny though, people also forget what a buggy mess a16 was compared to a17. I have an a16 server up, and I have to work on it to repair or replace bugged information/blocks/vehicles every couple of days, while my a17 servers run along without much of an issue.

[vgifford]

That may be true, never used a server. I'm sure there are parts of older versions that all long time players miss.

[|MW|TIBA666 丹麦人]

Originally posted by SylenThunder:

Originally posted by vgifford:

Nostalgia is good, as long as the game keeps improving.

It's funny though, people also forget what a buggy mess a16 was compared to a17. I have an a16 server up, and I have to work on it to repair or replace bugged information/blocks/vehicles every couple of days, while my a17 servers run along without much of an issue.

i just hope they dont keep changes the skill in this game kind of hard to get use to a skill system when they chages it all the time :p

[bjjorick]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by bjjorick:

I finally updated to version 17, and, I don't know, the game seems so much easier. I can't figure out the point of looting POI anymore, i get my base and then the game just sorta feels done. Like without the loot, I just doing trader runs, I don't feel there's any point in 17, and the POI aren't really interesting anymore.

I like the gardening upgrades where I don't have to replant everything, but it feels a touch unbalanced (crops should deffinately take much longer then they do to grow), and somehow, the game feels more MP, like the SP feeling is dead?

I guess I'm wondering if I'm missing something. Every change, you'll have people who love it and others who hate it, and there's a lot of good added, but the change to zombies not dropping loot, the lack of bodies to harvest, etc, I adapted my playstyle but everything feels easier, there's less work to survive.

Also, imho, hate the new death mechanic. I liked the old version where you die and you lose max health/stamina, the death mechanic is just a waiting game, nothing you can do about it, it feels very 'gamey' and i keep expecting a pop up to say something like, 'half the amount of death sufffering by paying $.99' or something.

Some of the changes feel good, like the combat changes, but the weight of the game feels gone somehow.

Am I doing something wrong? I loved a15/a16, but a17 feels like i'm playing an arcade game.

I personally prefer some of the current changes.. The death mechanic for example. It doesn't seem game-y to me..Old death mechanic was very much like the curse debuff in Dark Souls before they nerfed it, where dying several times while cursed left you with like, 1/16th of your full hp and if anything hit you, you would die instantly; Because you lose a chunk of your health and stamina each time you die in A16, if you die several times before being able to recover your max stats, it makes it that much easier for you to die again. It was very easy in A16 and earlier to end up in a downward death spiral in which you end up with basically no HP, a single zombie hit kills you, and you've lost a lot of your gear out in the wilderness that you now cant reclaim because..well, a single zombie hitting you kills you.

As to the zombies not being lootable, 80% of the lootable bodies in A16 were empty anyway, 15% more were junk items that the vast majority would probably ignore anyway, and 5% was stuff you maybe wanted. -- The way they changed it now was largely for performance reasons, as the persisting ragdolls, and the corpseblocks they turned into added a LOT of calculations to the GPU and CPU; Timers for each rag doll to turn into gore, and for each gore to turn into the next stage down, the way the gore blocks interacted with the terrain forcing recalculations, and breaking blocks/other gore blocks, all the added render space being required added up quick and on horde nights especially it was easy to dip down into single digit framerates. Now, the ragdolls disappear very quickly so theres little lag, and any killed zombie has a chance to drop a bright yellow loot bag that always has some kind of loot in it, usually the useful kind even if its only food or water. I myself have gotten a lot of good things from these yellow bags; And I haven't had reason to not pick something up from one yet as opposed to what I did in A16.

As for crop growth time, Pretty sure they take a longer time to grow now in A17 than they did in A16? In A16 i remember having to wait like, a day, to get my crops to full, in A17 it takes around 2 or 3...But i suppose I could be misremembering. I agree that not having to replant them is nice though.

As for A17 not having the recipe booklets, that is something I miss a little, but, at the same time, it was so very easy to have terrible luck and literally -never- see a recipe book that you need. The Minibike book was notorious to me for this. I spent a good 200 hours in A16-16.4, and never saw a single minibike book. So I was stuck walking -everywhere-. I also had rather terrible luck finding the recipe for crossbow, and for the auger. It got to the point that on our RWG world I found 5 different crackabook libraries and drove from one to the next in a big circle looting them again and again (we had loot respawn on 7 days, took about a day to loot each building, a day total of travel time from place to place to place, and a day total of dropping loot off to the main base so i never had to stop looting that specific building)....... So I tend to prefer this perk system where I have the choice of buying the capacity to craft a certain item.

TL;DR:
Overall, A17 isn't exactly perfect. But, It's been a huge improvement to me personally, and A18 will improve on that even more.

I would appreciate having book recipes back from A16 and before, for example, but.. Not at the expense of being able to buy the recipe with a perk point when I have zero luck finding the book, and having both systems in place without careful balancing would be a quick way to have the player max out their perks at a much lower level than intended.

Edit: To answer the sensation of 'arcade-y-ness' you're experiencing.. Try playing a world without buying into the INT stat and its sub skills, and you'll find yourself desiring and even needing to go out. Not having the capacity to craft everything you need makes a huge difference in this regard, and is perhaps one of the big failings of A17; It's too easy to just spam INT and its skills and end up in Q6 gear of any piece you want.

I love dark souls, so the danger runs for dropped loot was great, honestly.

REgarding the books, I've gone a long period of time wanting and looking for something and not being able to find it, frustrated and it pushed me to move forward, find ways to adapt without what I needed, and it kept me pushing out, looking, trying to find that stuff I needed by was missing. If I have to play stupid to get any sense of challenge out of the game, then the game is flawed. I understand challenge runs, but that's after you've mastered a game, which isn't the case here.

(playing stupid isn't a pun on not putting points in INT, it's just simply that if I have to avoid obvious ways to play, that's just stupid).

I like the item mods, even if there's no enough mods to justify the system. Would be nice if it expands a bit. I didn't see much regarding the zombie ai, they seem to swarm me more even though they have no idea where I am. I prefer stupid zombies since they are, after all, zombies. Their threat should never be that they're smart, just that they out number you, don't get tired, don't rest, etc. Maybe they should stop calling them zombies?

Regarding Nostaliga? Yeah, sure, A16 was buggy and had issues, but it was fun, it was challenging, and I played it like crazy despite it's issues. A17 is technically better in that area, but the game seems very lack luster.

I guess maybe the game is going places where I can't follow? It sucks but I guess as the game vision is realized by the devs, the people who have enjoyed the game will start to fall away as the game loses what made it special.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by bjjorick:

I love dark souls, so the danger runs for dropped loot was great, honestly.

REgarding the books, I've gone a long period of time wanting and looking for something and not being able to find it, frustrated and it pushed me to move forward, find ways to adapt without what I needed, and it kept me pushing out, looking, trying to find that stuff I needed by was missing. If I have to play stupid to get any sense of challenge out of the game, then the game is flawed. I understand challenge runs, but that's after you've mastered a game, which isn't the case here.

(playing stupid isn't a pun on not putting points in INT, it's just simply that if I have to avoid obvious ways to play, that's just stupid).

I like the item mods, even if there's no enough mods to justify the system. Would be nice if it expands a bit. I didn't see much regarding the zombie ai, they seem to swarm me more even though they have no idea where I am. I prefer stupid zombies since they are, after all, zombies. Their threat should never be that they're smart, just that they out number you, don't get tired, don't rest, etc. Maybe they should stop calling them zombies?

Regarding Nostaliga? Yeah, sure, A16 was buggy and had issues, but it was fun, it was challenging, and I played it like crazy despite it's issues. A17 is technically better in that area, but the game seems very lack luster.

I guess maybe the game is going places where I can't follow? It sucks but I guess as the game vision is realized by the devs, the people who have enjoyed the game will start to fall away as the game loses what made it special.

I love me some Dark Souls too; And for the first couple deaths A16 was great. But, if you died again...and again..and again, because for example you're on the hardest difficulty, it quickly became unplayable like unpatched curse in DS1. The current system even still has hints of the old in it; If you die several times you start losing more and more of your overall stats, which does indirectly lower your HP and stamina levels back down towards normal. It's a bit of a waiting game, yes; but you can't get taken down to so little HP that you cant survive at all the way you used to. And while it's a waiting game....technically so was the old system; You had to wait to regain your wellness, either for your hunger to go down so you could eat, or for it to recover naturally, and it took waaaaaaaay longer than it does now.

Sometimes, going without and adapting was great; Going without a minibike in a 16k RWG world for hundreds of days was absolutely painful. There was no alternative, There was no adapting. I just had to walk everywhere. Slowly. For a lot of recipes, yeah, you could adapt, if you cant find the crossbow schema, maybe you'll find the compound bow schema, if you cant find that either, at least the basic wooden bow IS viable. -- Same with Auger/Chainsaw, It sucks to not get them, but, they aren't a necessity. -- But there were absolutely recipes that were basic necessity that you could potentially never find; The gas can recipe, and the minibike recipe for example. But also there were food recipes that you might never find, which kept you from using large portions of your food stock ideally, you could survive through it, sure, but, so wasteful.

The current zombie AI in A17 is the planned bandit AI going forward; The zombies themselves are not meant to be intelligent going forward. It was just a better use of resources to work on the bandit AI by using the zombies as test subjects during refinement. Once bandits get added, zombies will go back to their old AI or something similar to it.

I look forward to item mod expansions myself; and there are absolutely enough to warrant the system, Almost every weapon and tool has enough potential mods for it to fill all 5 slots, some have access to many more than that (The marksman rifle for example has like 14 different mods it could potentially use, but only 5 slots at quality 6.) -- And vehicle mods are planned, just not yet implemented.

I do understand the issue with playing stupid. And i do agree in its current state, the int tree is very...imbalanced and can ruin the fun a bit. You can basically win the game going pure INT, while going pure any other stat is a dangerous game to play. They need to spread the recipes back out over all the trees the way it used to be imo; Food and medicine in the fortitude tree for example, the electronics stuff over in perception maybe, and so on..so that you cant just stack one stat and get all of the recipes; and it would stretch out obtaining everything you need into a much longer game, and force you to improvise in the mean time.

[bjjorick]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by bjjorick:

I love dark souls, so the danger runs for dropped loot was great, honestly.

REgarding the books, I've gone a long period of time wanting and looking for something and not being able to find it, frustrated and it pushed me to move forward, find ways to adapt without what I needed, and it kept me pushing out, looking, trying to find that stuff I needed by was missing. If I have to play stupid to get any sense of challenge out of the game, then the game is flawed. I understand challenge runs, but that's after you've mastered a game, which isn't the case here.

(playing stupid isn't a pun on not putting points in INT, it's just simply that if I have to avoid obvious ways to play, that's just stupid).

I like the item mods, even if there's no enough mods to justify the system. Would be nice if it expands a bit. I didn't see much regarding the zombie ai, they seem to swarm me more even though they have no idea where I am. I prefer stupid zombies since they are, after all, zombies. Their threat should never be that they're smart, just that they out number you, don't get tired, don't rest, etc. Maybe they should stop calling them zombies?

Regarding Nostaliga? Yeah, sure, A16 was buggy and had issues, but it was fun, it was challenging, and I played it like crazy despite it's issues. A17 is technically better in that area, but the game seems very lack luster.

I guess maybe the game is going places where I can't follow? It sucks but I guess as the game vision is realized by the devs, the people who have enjoyed the game will start to fall away as the game loses what made it special.

I love me some Dark Souls too; And for the first couple deaths A16 was great. But, if you died again...and again..and again, because for example you're on the hardest difficulty, it quickly became unplayable like unpatched curse in DS1. The current system even still has hints of the old in it; If you die several times you start losing more and more of your overall stats, which does indirectly lower your HP and stamina levels back down towards normal. It's a bit of a waiting game, yes; but you can't get taken down to so little HP that you cant survive at all the way you used to. And while it's a waiting game....technically so was the old system; You had to wait to regain your wellness, either for your hunger to go down so you could eat, or for it to recover naturally, and it took waaaaaaaay longer than it does now.

Sometimes, going without and adapting was great; Going without a minibike in a 16k RWG world for hundreds of days was absolutely painful. There was no alternative, There was no adapting. I just had to walk everywhere. Slowly. For a lot of recipes, yeah, you could adapt, if you cant find the crossbow schema, maybe you'll find the compound bow schema, if you cant find that either, at least the basic wooden bow IS viable. -- Same with Auger/Chainsaw, It sucks to not get them, but, they aren't a necessity. -- But there were absolutely recipes that were basic necessity that you could potentially never find; The gas can recipe, and the minibike recipe for example. But also there were food recipes that you might never find, which kept you from using large portions of your food stock ideally, you could survive through it, sure, but, so wasteful.

The current zombie AI in A17 is the planned bandit AI going forward; The zombies themselves are not meant to be intelligent going forward. It was just a better use of resources to work on the bandit AI by using the zombies as test subjects during refinement. Once bandits get added, zombies will go back to their old AI or something similar to it.

I look forward to item mod expansions myself; and there are absolutely enough to warrant the system, Almost every weapon and tool has enough potential mods for it to fill all 5 slots, some have access to many more than that (The marksman rifle for example has like 14 different mods it could potentially use, but only 5 slots at quality 6.) -- And vehicle mods are planned, just not yet implemented.

I do understand the issue with playing stupid. And i do agree in its current state, the int tree is very...imbalanced and can ruin the fun a bit. You can basically win the game going pure INT, while going pure any other stat is a dangerous game to play. They need to spread the recipes back out over all the trees the way it used to be imo; Food and medicine in the fortitude tree for example, the electronics stuff over in perception maybe, and so on..so that you cant just stack one stat and get all of the recipes; and it would stretch out obtaining everything you need into a much longer game, and force you to improvise in the mean time.

That's part of it, but I think they should add skill books back into the games, some things should be learned by attempting and failing until you learn it (or via skill points, that's fine), but it shouldn't be difficult to implement something where you find generic skill books, say for weapon crafting, and when you read the book, you choose a skill to learn from the 'weapon class', if you find forge type books, you can choose to find an item form the forge class, etc.

To prevent this from being unbalanced, take a hint from minecraft. You know how to make iron tools, but you have to use iron tools to be able to harvest certain requirements for steel, so that you can't skip a level. Adding additional tiers should also be a priority, imo. I like the WotW mod in that it adds stone, scrap iron, iron, steel, and tungsten, with tungsten being fairly rare, powerful, and late game.

I've never been so tempted to create a mod in my life, lol. I love 7dtd, but the current state is lacking quite a few things that keep the game from being worth the time it takes to play. There were some things about a16 I wasn't a big fan of, but that was minor, and I did adapt in time, but the major overhaul to so much is just.....hmmmm. There's a lot to like, no doubt:

the right mouse button doing something for a change? love it

trying to make unarmed useful, well, that's nice but doubt they can make it balanced and realistic

some things that need to be added, honestly?

serious balance for food systems, the current system is broken, and needs to take a page from project zomboid.

loot needs a massive overhaul.

more animals. I can't believe it's just like 4 animals in the game.

sleeper system. You spawn into a world with sleepers, which is kinda stupid. Honestly, I would implement something like for the first 30 days, all zombies wonder, and it's only after x number of days that sleepers start to show up.

Zombies should never spawn within 1 km of the player.

Bleed is currently broken, so is stun. These should make more sense, and these effects are about the only threat of the zombies.

infection is too rare and too easily cured.

There's a million more things I could say, but I only criticize because i actually like the game.

[JimmyIowa]

I definitely agree, the loot is becoming more and more over-generous over time. Like finding top quality guns easily, and now being able to buy heaps of ammo at the trader for pennies. All courtesy of A17, aka, "who wants to be a millionaire in week 1".

A16 was easier in some big ways though, such as being able to sprint backward while firing/swinging. That made most combat just flat out completely unlosable, let's be honest. :) You had to be literally asleep at the controls to even take some damage in A16.

And like SylenThunder pointed out, A16 had a lot more bugs and quirks - like zombie AI running pointlessly in circles. And just plain implementation messiness. An example of messiness in A16 that isn't actually a bug would be trader prices being wildly out of whack and making no sense at all.

[vgifford]

In A17 I have crates of full stacks of items. In a single player game you can survive by scavenging alone. You don't have to craft much at all.

[Silverbird]

Is it even possible to load a16 if you buy the game currently?