7 days to die

Subnautica. No zombies, but a much more polished and cohesive solo survival/builder experience.

I don’t really do a lot of survival games because I don’t enjoy them alone, but some of the others have stories and things like endings. 7 Days, you just play til you die. There is nothing compelling you forward.

I heard The Forest, the Long Dark, Subnautica are good.Don’t Starve (I’ve played MP and SP on that one).

I think 7 Days is great for what it is. Don’t get me wrong there. I’ve been playing it off and on for a few years now. I jut think if someone asked for an SP game in the survival flavor, I’m not sure I would recommend it. I might say they could join our sporadic group but boy not only did some zombie spawn in a starter home, my start home! (they need to fix that), we were supposed to play last night and 2.5 hours later a toddler too excited for Christmas to go to sleep thrawted that attempt. heh.

I’m just saying that 7 Days is just a build and fight until you die game. Sure they added dungeons and vehicles and too many freaking vultures, but I’ve heard some of the other SP focused ones sprinkle in maybe a little more discovery or even a story of some sort.

I have all those. just wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything :)

This game was updated? I heard it was abandoned. Maybe there is hope yet.

It certainly is not abandoned. something did happen though as there was a development hiccup this past year.

The console version is in definite limbo with the Telltale disaster, but the PC version is now at “A17” on their main branch…

Fundamentally, this is a fantastic game. It just still needs a lot of work.

So my tiny little group has been heavy into this game, again, and we’re on A17 experimental. I might be mixing some features from this version and the previous ones so apologies in advance for that. We started over with A17.

Some things I like.

Bikes are awesome, no not the little mopeds but pedal bikes.

Dungeons were there before but still awesome. I love the idea of going to some place you know will be packed full of increasingly difficult challenges and it really is and there’s lots of stuff.

Party System and sharing XP. This is really helpful in keeping the group together in terms of level because we have heavy hitters, those who don’t kill nearly as much and I’m usually between the two. You can still get someone super high though if they travel far and use an item to give them bonus XP.

Quest System, this really does get you going all over the place just at a chance to get something cool, and if that’s the intention it works and adds variety, just like the Dungeon system.

Navezgane - It’s Huge. I mean it was big before, but it feels like a lot was put into this map and there are interesting and natural looking places all over. there is this manor at the top of a snow mountain area… i kind of want a vampire to be in there but I know, wrong game.

Modifying Items how do you take the oh look another shotgun and make it really feel like it’s your shotgun, dye it green of course! Oh and that dye adds bonuses. Seriously though find modifiers, getting your “perfect” weapon combo and then having to resort to some other gun, and you suddenly realize you really did make that green shotgun yours.

Item Compare… it’s great they’re trying but this needs work. It’s just not right. MHW does this a lot better, albeit it’s a different kind of game. I like that they’re trying this, but why is it so unnatural and cumbersome feeling to do?

So So

  • Survival System, great you an overeat and over drink for bonuses or something. Must eat to get your health up but it nags you about low food and health when you’re mostly just fine. Stick all the points you want in recovery but it won’t matter if you don’t constantly eat. It’s in the so so because it allows you to kind of stuff yourself if you know you will be out for a bit.

  • Backpack space. So it’s nice there’s more slots but now it’s part of the RPG point system I hate. I am sure someone thought they were being really clever by making you choose between adding more points in packing things around so you don’t move like molasses when you have stuff or adding points to something else like not freezing to death but really it’s just not fun.

Hate

  • All things that have to do with the skill system. They turned it into an RPG. You don’t get better for just doing it, you constantly stop to apply points attributes and to skills that only lead to disappointment when you realize… see below.

  • Schematics and Recipes - so much requires these stupid recipes and schematics, and schematics stick around and take up space and get destroyed if a zombie takes out your box… probably never see that again. I hate everything about this new system. Most the time i don’t even like it when I get a schematic. It’s just an exercise of juggling it around to see who can use it and then you find out you’re still missing something.

  • Buffs. These are stupid pieces of paper that take up your inventory space and you don’t want to carry too many around with you or you lose slots… yuck

  • Weather It’s terrible. In theory having just basic numbers like heat and cold resistance sounds great. In reality, sometimes i go into the snow and I play in there for a good 30 minutes before getting cold, wearing flannel, a coat, lots of stuff and then I go back and I am freezing in 2 minutes. I hate this system all together.

  • No loot from zombies. Okay, so it’s no longer exciting to kill zombies outside of getting XP to get those points to use in the point system I hate, so that means when you look at containers, even the ones hidden in the walls and crates are just awesome right… no. I still get a lot of empties, and the dropped crates are often worse then the crates you open up in the buildings.

  • Swiss Cheese Base - no seriously, in later games, the green zombies, police and etc. will tear through your base like it’s made out of a paper. This was some sort of misguided attempt to make players feel less safe in well designed bases but here’s the reality. It’s made a lot of people make some weirdo, doesn’t make sense bases, to have them drive around all night in jeeps, or just put all their crafting gear in another zone… and the real kicker here is it’s not necessary at all. The quest system, the dungeons and the buried treasure maps… they already make you want to leave the base so why add this at all?

  • New Stealth System - It’s largely useless. It tells you how stealthy or how unstealthy you are with a visual indicator, yellow bar which doesn’t mean much. I mean you can actively try and reduce anything noticing your presence and see the instant feedback on it but at the end of the day, you just want to know if they can see you or not. I like that you can be super stealthy and do all that but when the horde overruns your base, or the fifth screamer shows up… or in most dungeons, it’s just not useful. It’s like they designed a new skill for how the game used to play and not the swarm them non-stop the game it is now.

  • Cotton Picking- Okay, it’s more than just cotton, but seriously, you don’t need tools to pick cotton. you can do it by hand… remember all the slaves?

  • Daytime Runners. They just seem to add these whereever to add to the danger and surprise but the explanation for them, if there is one really, doesn’t really work. They’re not a specific type of zombie just a fast version of the same ole to make it hard but again… that’s what the Dungeons are for… high risk, high reward.

Overall, it seems like for everything I like that they added, they added 2-3 things I hate. I mean deep level hate. It’s a game about zombies, so yeah, reality was never going to be that high but so much just feels like gamey shit they added for people who wanted a harder game and for some reason just didn’t change their server to give them that (which is not hard to do).

Chugging water all day, eating bacon and eggs and still starving… gamey. Zombies tearing through concrete like it’s made of paper, gamey. Tool and Die sets extremely difficult to find, like way hard, gamey. RPG systems. You get good at mining because you put points in mining not because you’re getting good at it because you do it a lot. Oh and every starter house I’ve started in so far had a zombie in it, a nurse actually. I’ve been playing awhile so she’s not hard to avoid but the spawning on your head thing, like the massive spawn delay can still be a problem.

They posted something about A17 not being perfect. heh, yeah you think? I mean when you feel the need to tell everyone your game isn’t perfect and you’re taking community feedback, that’s fine and all but what they really need to do is sit back in their chair and ask… why am I making this change, for whom, and does it even do what I want it to do. Perhaps they should take a page from other games and start making these settings because I think bases on stilts or no bases at all is not a good outcome.

edit: just slight corrections

A friend of mine and I just started playing this. I had some tweaks to the config files I wanted him to make, but he went a bit nuts and changed a bunch of things.

I do have a question for you, on the blood moon, do hordes of zombies attack your base or attack you anywhere else? In our game, the blood moon happens and no zombies show up. In earlier versions, it said something like you are being hunted, but not any more. Just nothing happens. Perhaps one of my friends changes broke something or maybe the game is just broken.

As for some of your comments:
On your stashes being destroyed by zombies, place them on the ceiling, they will be safe from zombies there.

On my friends server, when he started the game, he set the zombies to only walk.

AS far as the screamers, I hated them in previous game because they would always camp my base and every time I stepped out side, I got a zombie horde. Killing them was useless because a new one would just show up in a few minutes. To solve the problem, I found a config file (one of the the xml files) and replaced the screamer zombie with a rabbit. Its in some group like zombie scouts.

I also do not like the new skills system.

You can pick cotton by hand. Just punch it. Its how all harvesting of plants works now.

I also have not found food to be too much of an issue, but I did start down the survival and farming tree early. I also had noticed what appeared to be road kill all over the place and discovered you could butcher it for meat.

The weather does suck at times. I have no idea why game designers think that if you are wet from rain, you will freeze to death. This is not the only game to have this mechanic.

I hate the POI Dungeons, essentially because almost everything is a Dungeon and they are always linear. For me this spoils the searching aspect of the game, as you know to either raid the roof or the basement to get the best stuff and that makes searching easier and the rewards make you OP. Following lights ruins the immersion as well as you know some dude put them there to guide you. It would be nice to have some, but almost every house?

I agree with most of Nesrie complaints, for every step forward there’s a step back and some of the steps I hate too. I have moved to Conan for the time being but still play 7’s due to a group that still likes it.

Blood Moon hordes are supposed attack you wherever you are. The UI has a simple setting about the size, but as far as I know the hunting you mechanic didn’t change. What is in the horde seemed to change a lot. The only base specific mechanic I know of is the screamer, screecher zombie which they need to address because there’s enough to get you out of the base already.

Part of the fun is making the base and leaving it knowing well you’re exposed when you do. They kind of ruined that in a major way.

This doesn’t always work. We only lost one box, but they will damage damage floors and walls and underground bases aren’t safe either. Of everything that was lost, those stupid schematics are the ones you can’t really get again. Also, when the horde is big enough, and it will get big enough, they will destroy the whole base, pretty easily too.

You’re not picking it now , you’re punching it. I think this was E before, like opening a suitcase. This matters when you have something in your hand. It’s a mechanic that changed, and not for the better. I think you said you recently started, so that probably isn’t very noticable for anyone who didn’t play the earlier versions.

Yeah I wonder if any of these survival game developers have ever gone camping or spent any time in triple digit weather. You don’t need ultra special gear to be in hot regions. You need water.

I like bigger building because it’s something you can go off and just do. There are also little surprise like going down into some suburb construction site and running into an undead bear. It’s not perfect but at no point do we ever leave that base at 4 and say there is nothing to do; we either go our separate ways to mine, harvest, salvage or we go somewhere together, mostly a POI.

There was some interest in Conan for awhile. Thematically it fits better. My sister is sick of zombies, doesn’t like horror but 7 Days doesn’t look too realistic which is why it’s mostly fine. The way Conan released and the issues around that seemed, well I wasn’t going to pay 60 dollars for that. We’ve had 7 days for sometime now.

I take it that you are experiencing zombie hordes in the blood moon then.

Ill have to talk to my friend about his server settings because we are not getting the hordes at all. We just get the red sky and all that, but no zombies. He did set the night cycle to be very short. That may be the issue. I may have to convince him to blow away all his changes if that doesn’t fix it.

Oh yeah. It’s almost the same as before except well the tear through your base like paper and somewhere around the 20 day mark you start seeing the green ones during blood moon and screamer hordes. The screamer hordes are the bigger issues. The logic of why they can tear through concrete and leap 2-3 maybe even 4 blocks was just, well someone wanted it harder I guess, harder instead of interesting, more fun. I mean they could make it rain knives to make it harder too.

Yeah that is sound broken, maybe I wont have him fix it. These survival designers just do not have a clue about fun. Tearing through concrete like that is ridiculous. In did enjoy the previous version of this game before these changes. Looks like this guy is going off the deep end of stupidity.

I always thought they should have made higher tier blocks have resistances to damage, not just more HP. Realistically, a solid wood block should not be damaged by a a normal zombie, but for game-play since wood is the lowest tier, sure ok. However, stone blocks should be immune to all normal zombies, re-enforced concrete to all but the most super powerful ones, and steel blocks immune to everything.

There is a lot to like about 7 days to die, but there is a lot to hate as well.

If you nerfed the screamer mechanic, then i would try and get Blood Moon back. That’s the more exciting experience, and I don’t think it’s nearly as broken as the screamer mechanic. I i recall it resets at day 49, we got to day 30 before I posted what I did. I gave it a good long run. I think the only server changes I made for our tiny group is I extended the shared XP range to keep us close to the same level at all times, having someone at half level really makes it less fun for them and challenging for everyone else. I also extended the backpack despawn because we’re an adult group, some with kids. if someone dies while dealing with a toddler or a page from work or something, they’ll be back but not always in 20 minutes.

Everything else is default.

Oh, so the blood moon horde was no leveling your base, just the normal screamer hordes? Then maybe I will. However, I am just holed up in a house right now, I do not have the stamina to dig an underground base yet. They really nerfed beer. That used to last a good while, now it lasts like 1 minute. You used to be able to drink grain alcohol too, but not any more.

Try like… five screamer hordes at once. The heat-map thing is… well blah.

The later hordes will / still level chew through your base. The developers definitely wanted zombies to chew through concrete and their “more advance AI” is more like they target when area. It’s like they want a zombie game, but they want their zombies to have coordinated attack patterns which makes no sense so yeah plan on having the later hordes eat through whatever wall, traps, spikes, whatever you have. We had… oh I’d say about 3-4 maybe five fall back points for when they did that.

I still found the hordes enjoyable. The green ones, radiated whatever, they’re probably overpowered but at least they basically glow.

I should add after night 30 I started looking at what others were doing, stilt bases, just driving around all night, like mazes… basically exploiting the AI which doesn’t seem ideal.

Thanks for all the feedback on A17, everyone.

It sounds like TFP are succumbing to “Aged Alpha Syndrome”, especially in that difficulty is based on players who have been playing the game from day 1.

TFP just needs to put this thing to bed. Every major change they’ve made has been two steps forward two steps back.

Some of these things were… overhauls in a bad way, but some of the others should just be settings in the server GUI. If you have a group that wants to swarmed all the time, give them the tools to do that to their server. Don’t Starve Together understands this idea pretty darn well, giving players and server admins a ton of tools to just fine tune their playing experience as they see fit.

One thing that was added recently in a patch was the randomization of horde night. It can now be set as as frequently or as infrequently as you want, along with a randomizing factor to make it unpredictable.

There evidently is some “play testing” of A18 this evening for those interested, per this tweet: