(free the spears) are devs getting rid of spear throwing? Keep the spears throwing!

[Good4U]

its a great throwing weapon for skilled players and only want more like knife, saw blades.

[ElDudorino]

Spears are almost universally reviled. The devs are making them so more people will want to play them.

Currently a lot of mods give spears a non-throwing power attack. I'm sure you can do the inverse and mod throwing back in if you want.

[xycotta]

Throwing spears is the worst, seriously, why would you throw it? The whole point of it is a melee weapon that you can keep the zombies outside arm reach with. You want a throwing weapon get a stack of javelins or axes or use the bow.

[Mithrandir]

Never seen a reason to throw a spear... if I want to hit something out of melee range, I'll use bows or guns or explosives ... why should I discard the melee weapon I'm proficient with ?

[ElDudorino]

Also, for a weapon to be really good, you want to put mods in it. Throw that spear, you're out a weapon with mods. So are you gonna have like several modded spears on your hotbar? It's woefully inefficient at best. Plus, spears can't be retrieved for like 10 freaking seconds after you throw them. And on top of everything there's the bug where if you throw a spear (or fire an arrow) at an enemy from point-blank range it can spawn behind them without hitting them, which means you'll have thrown your spear for nothing if an enemy gets too close before you get it out.

Sure, if you're a "skilled player" you could make it work but it's just imposing a handicap, really. You can still accomplish largely the same thing by carrying a bow with only 1-4 arrows.

[Cash Siiide]

Yea throwing a spear is horrible. Never kills in 1 go - you gotta get close enough to the zombie to grab it again. I can't see why it's even a thing accept for hunting rabbits maybe early? Not sure why anyone would be upset about this lol

[Tahnval]

Spears were usually a melee weapon in real life because that's what spears are best at.

There were spears designed to be thrown, but they weren't all that common (unlike melee spears, which were arguably the most common weapon for most of history) and they were sidearms. The most famous example is Roman legionaries, who at least sometimes carried 1 or 2 light spears suitable for throwing. But it was intended as a secondary weapon, with the main weapon being a sword and shield combo. Fighters are very reluctant to throw away their main weapon in a battle, for obvious reasons. It happened, sure. Not just with spears, either. But not very often. A rank of soldiers simultaneously throwing spears at enemies ~10m away before immediately drawing swords and attacking was very effective. Some fighters throwing their main weapon away in a one shot deal, not so effective.

It makes even less sense in the context of 7DTD than it did in reality, due to the widespread presence of guns. More specifically, reliable multi-shot guns with a high rate of fire and high accuracy.

Bows: Long range, high damage, dozens or hundreds of projectiles available, slow rate of "fire". Extremely quiet.

Guns: Very long range, high damage, hundreds of projectiles available, very high rate of fire (except for pipe pistols, pipe rifles and some shotguns).

Thrown spears: Very short range, low damage, a handful of projectiles at most, slow rate of "fire".

Thrown spears in 7DTD are the worst of both worlds and pretty much useless.

[Thompson]

You know it's bad when a spear has less practical range than a zombie's arm does.

[Shurenai]

Originally posted by Las:

You know it's bad when a spear has less practical range than a zombie's arm does.

Except it doesn't and it's not even close. In hard values, Spear has a maximum reach of about 4-4.1~ blocks, and zombie reach is 1.5-1.65 blocks iirc depending on the zombie type. A players Shortest range is bare handed/most fist weapons which tops out at 1.8m.

There's desync in multiplayer, and somehow some people manage to experience it in SP too. But those two concerns are outliers and not the general experience of the majority of players, and are not representative of how things are actually designed.

[Thompson]

Originally posted by Shurenai:

Originally posted by Las:

You know it's bad when a spear has less practical range than a zombie's arm does.

Except it doesn't and it's not even close. In hard values,

Hard values is NOT practical use. The hitboxes on zombies is 7 levels of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up.

[william_es]

Yeah, I used spears a few times, and immediately stopped. Throwing away your only melee weapon is not a good tactic. Plus, they had a tendency to just disappear.

And a spear as a melee weapon would probably be the silliest thing you can use against a zombie anyways. It's a weapon designed to inflect bleeding damage and organ damage with thrusts.

A zombie would just impale itself and keep on walking. It would climb right up the spear until it was gnawing on your face.

[Dreadstone]

LOL @ anyone who defends spears in this game.

[vonVile]

Spears are great if you know how to use them. They are a short ranged projectile to throw into zombies and instantly retrieve when you don't have ammo.

FP is making the game worse by removing player options instead of adding them. First it was the removal of the blunderbuss and now spears. Instead we should be given more throwing options with knives and axes.

[Thompson]

Wooden spikes have more use than spears do and they don't use an insane amount of stamina or disappear either. They're easy to make and the resources are easy to come by and only take up one slot too (20 wood). Drop down a couple spikes to slow them down and use a melee/bow weapon to finish them off.

[Thompson]

Originally posted by vonVile:

Spears are great if you know how to use them. They are a short ranged projectile to throw into zombies and instantly retrieve when you don't have ammo.

FP is making the game worse by removing player options instead of adding them. First it was the removal of the blunderbuss and now spears. Instead we should be given more throwing options with knives and axes.

I don't think they removed blunderbuss and throwing spears for the same reason though. I could be wrong but I think they replaced the blunderbuss with the pipe weapons in order to give the player the option to choose which type of early game weapon they wanted to fit their particular play-style and the blunderbuss (shotgun option) didn't really fit well with the others.

The spears, however, are a different story. I do think they are removing options for the player as you said and I agree. I think the reason they're removing the throw option is because it's a disaster (exploit) in multiplayer and they don't like exploits (ironic I know). And unfortunately mutliplayer is the only thing they seem to be concerned with right now and single players have to suffer because of it. They don't know how to separate SP and MP and still make it work. Maybe in the future.

[RopeDrink]

I love the spear, honestly. The only reasons I don't use them more often is (a) throwing your melee weapon is impractical - especially when modded, (b) lack of power attack, and (c) prefer to focus on Strength during the early game to get specific perks.

I love the extra reach - even without the range-increasing perks. Nothing more satisfying than hitting zombies right in the eye or the knee-cap at pixel-perfect max-range, which can help make certain locations more practical from a melee PoV.

Playing LMB-only makes stamina consumption far less prevalent, and while I don't know animation times, it at least 'feels' like Spear LMB is slightly faster than some alternatives. It is also one of the most commonly found book lists, but I imagine that will change if Spear gets buffed or altered in the future.

Having said that, it's pretty obvious right now that Spear simply doesn't gel with the game, so we'll see how it gets treated down the road.