Late/End Game

[algame]

I am interested to know what compels people to keep playing once they have most of their equipment upgraded in this game?

I finally decided with version 1.0 to do a proper 'Vanilla' game, as I have spent nearly all my time in 7DtD playing a heavily modded version. This is actually the first time in 400+ hours that I have ever played far enough to get the final tier of weapons, and one of the few times I have ever built a motorcycle (I usually play ironman, no traders, and vastly more zombies and hordes so I die alot...)

Now that I have mostly BiS weapons and equipment I have lost all motivation to keep playing, there is no point to exploring, no point to do quests, I have piles of water and food, I do not particularly like Horde Night, I find it rather gimmicky and lame. I guess that is the only reason to continue, try to do harder Horde Nights? But then isn't that 'meta' solved, you can virtually build AFK bases now and there is nothing particularly compelling to me about building a tunnel of death for literal brain dead AI to run into over and over and over.

Its not really a complaint as I can go back to mods and likely get 100s more hours out of this game. I am just curious what motivates other people?

[CatPerson]

I stopped caring about typical "end game" concepts or continual power-creeping/advancement a long time ago. This is largely just a giant sandbox for me now, including doing my own .xml editing at times. Sometimes I spend a few hours editing the rwgmixer over and over, making maps, looking at said maps, repeat, wondering what weird maps I can do etc. :P

I think people who want some kind of constant/never ending end-game loop to use with their pumped up end-character, won't find that here, outside of difficulty or more spawn or giant overhaul mods.

You either like to start over repeatedly/do it all again or do weird things like clean up/rebuild entire towns cosmetically, or build a giant pyramid, or ...

It's possible bandits (whenever they finally get put in, ahem) could help for those that like "end game" things to do. Who knows tho.

[algame]

Yea thats definitely me "start over repeatedly", I love that early game when its actual survival.

Good point on bandits, that could potentially be for 'end game' dungeons.

[Undefined]

Originally posted by algame:

I am interested to know what compels people to keep playing once they have most of their equipment upgraded in this game?

Nothing. I end up quitting once I reach T6 quests and do a few of them. There's not much to do after that and it's very possible to survive forever if your intent was just to survive because all you would need is food and water.

Originally posted by CatPerson:

I think people who want some kind of constant/never ending end-game loop to use with their pumped up end-character, won't find that here, outside of difficulty or more spawn or giant overhaul mods.

Yeah, this game is definitely not it (not sure if there is any game that there is, to be fair), and I'm not impressed by any overhauls aside from Afterlife, which plays a lot like Project Zomboid.

Originally posted by algame:

Yea thats definitely me "start over repeatedly", I love that early game when its actual survival.

Yes, the early game is the only part of these Zombie Survival games that actually have a lot of things to do. The devs of this genre (not just TFP) don't put much thought into late/end game. Personally, I see so much potential with what could be done in the late/end game and it's a shame that I can't find a game that delivers on it. I'm keeping my eye out for other games to see if they deliver, like Vein and HumanitZ, or just hoping that Project Zomboid adds NPCs eventually (it's been 11 years since they promised it, though LOL).

[JimmyIowa]

I enjoy horde night with no cheese structures (no hatches, drops, weird openings, loops, tunnels, pits, jumps, gaps etc). So sometimes I set insane nightmare horde to be more and more frequent until I am overwhelmed, can't produce beer and medical bandages fast enough during the day, and finally defeated for the first time that game. The end.

Try different non-hide non-passive methods of defeating the insane 64 horde. Yes, often they are silly, which is the point. Like one of my favorite successes was just a simple set of parallel straight walls a few blocks apart on open ground. lol And I would keep jumping over them. The horde would spread out and take a few seconds to run around the wall after me. So I would punch the first few zombies to reach me to death, then jump again before I got totally mobbed. They never attack the walls because I was in the complete open on the other side of the wall with a very clear path to me. Easy simple insane horde rout, using very few resources. Though not as many kills as I would like.

Sometimes I try to set personal bests for speed clears of T5 and T6 buildings. But...that was more fun back in A17 before triggered POI virtual spawns. So not as much anymore.

Experiment outside my comfort zone with other weapons I consider not great, especially tier 1 and 2 weapons, like the bolt action or lever action rifle.

Try making various mods. Like arrows with a bleeding effect. Zombie run speed faster than the player (much faster than nightmare speed).

[optOut]

Still trying to learn about the different builds. Working on PER atm and boy does it suck early game. I'm looking forward to finding out if a T6 sniper rifle makes it worth while.

[Xandor]

Not much to do once you get the good gear and you get it really fast.

In ~14 ingame days you likely have a full set of Quality 6 armor + Quality 6 melee weapon. At that point you likely don't yet have a Quality 6 endgame firearm but around day 21 you should have it.

Then the only thing you can really get from looting is ammo or traps.

It also makes me feel like "why would I make a base before I have good tools but once I have good tools why would I make a base since I already have everything".
The same thing with food/water, "why would I want to make dew collectors or plant crops or even cook food when I get twice as much food as I use from looting and 5 times as much water as I use".

[Raythered]

To each their own, some people the goal is the gear, that seems to be you, other want to do it to challenge higher difficulties, hit the Tier 6 trader missions or conquer the large dungeon like POIs, not for rewards but just to defeat them.

[MoistGamer]

Originally posted by algame:

I am interested to know what compels people to keep playing once they have most of their equipment upgraded in this game?

I finally decided with version 1.0 to do a proper 'Vanilla' game, as I have spent nearly all my time in 7DtD playing a heavily modded version. This is actually the first time in 400+ hours that I have ever played far enough to get the final tier of weapons, and one of the few times I have ever built a motorcycle (I usually play ironman, no traders, and vastly more zombies and hordes so I die alot...)

Now that I have mostly BiS weapons and equipment I have lost all motivation to keep playing, there is no point to exploring, no point to do quests, I have piles of water and food, I do not particularly like Horde Night, I find it rather gimmicky and lame. I guess that is the only reason to continue, try to do harder Horde Nights? But then isn't that 'meta' solved, you can virtually build AFK bases now and there is nothing particularly compelling to me about building a tunnel of death for literal brain dead AI to run into over and over and over.

Its not really a complaint as I can go back to mods and likely get 100s more hours out of this game. I am just curious what motivates other people?

My late game content is switching to one of the story ARK maps I never played or something that actually has tangible content to find while also being fun and sandboxy. Finding the explorer notes made me go oh yeah this is what content is

This game has been removing content for 6 years and goes as low to pinch paint textures from the map because they built a voxel game (just because). It has no purpose, and ruined some of this games potential. You can do structural integrity without voxels. Nobody cares about the 6 wasted km of map space being fully destructible. What a waste.

[Nerevar]

start the next run. longterm play is not rewarding in 7 days. there is better survival type games out there for that type of play currently.

[Professional Gamer]

I get it into my head to dig a long canal, or build a new stretch of highway. Then about 10 hours in, I decide I never want to look at this game again. (At least not until the next minor update with shiny thing.)

[Trooper Bri]

Since it's a sandbox title, it's popular with builders.

The Godfather of terraforming and mega-builds is probably Z-Nation FFS.
He's done some insane stuff over the years, and inspired me to build even bigger than I already had been.
J.C.'s Channel is still active and doing mega-builds. Grand Spartan is another good builder. Especially when it comes to horde fighters.

[Serious]

I care alot for questing and exploration while other things like survival or building are just side things for me.
So for me a map is "finished" when i don't have anything more to explore, no more POIs, uncovered most of the map.
To make this process more interesting i don't speed run through trader quests and always choose the highest available tier with just retrieve missions, but i stay at lowest tier till i can't find anything new here, then i switch to the second lowest and so on. I also don't loot "cheesy" POI just for the sake of magazines, when i get them as quests from trader ok... but i won't loot them otherwise.
This increases the length of both early and mid game a lot.