7D2D A18 First Impressions: When the Professor Got Lucky.

Something unprecedented and serendipitous happened in the life of your humble Professor this weekend past.  I gained access to the A18 launch a day before the general public, which filled me with monumentous joy. I was still after those blessed Streamers who were graced with a code on Friday, but even this mere 24-hour lead was something to celebrate.

I immediately dived in full assumptions about how they adjusted things based on their dev log.  My experience was of an update far better balanced than I anticipated, with much to love and a few things that made me apprehensive about the long term experience ahead.

Let's Explore Its Weak Points First

A18 Has Greater Optimization?  Perhaps For Some.

A18 hit my robust gaming laptop (16G, 6 processor, 4G GPU) like a ton of bricks at first.  The initial load in showed me a beautiful landscape that chugged a bit more than I had expected.  Some minor tweaks to the graphics settings (of which there are more than previous, it seems) had it running smoothly with only the occasional hitch.  This experience seems to be echoed across the community.  Periods of exceptional performance punctuated with odd lag spikes and jerks on even the strongest machines.  Ultimately it became hardly noticeable, with a quick freeze sneaking up only once or twice an hour.  The Fun Pimps are aware and are working on it, so kudos to them.

The Looting Is A Bit Monty Haul IMO

When I started looting one of the first things that caught my attention was the sheer prevalence and variety of loot.  While loot seemed to scale as you advanced in A17, A18 had me in possession of numerous lockpicks (More on these later) a steel sledgehammer, two iron sledgehammers, and 3 stun batons in a matter of moments.  The first four items were found spread between one of the new sedans, and one pile of road garbage less than 6 meters from each other.  This monty haul of early game loot only continued, with me amassing a couple hundred pistol ammo, two hunting rifles, and a few dozen ammo for that.  By the end of my first day, I had looted a junk turret in the house I opted to spend the night with.  

For this avid survivalist, this quickly made good loot become blase and the excitement of finding something neat quickly wore off.  I could reasonably surmise something better was around the corner.  I'll definitely be playing with the loot turned down after I give it a solid go in full vanilla.

Of Feathers And Ammo Caches

Now I want to come back to this aspect of looting.  Nests appear half as often and don't seem to have as many feathers in them as previously.  The one exception to this was the nest in which I found 105 feathers, which has yet to be repeated.  Other than this one fluke, feathers in quantities sufficient to sustain my love of bows were far too few in number.  Ammo, on the other hand, seemed to rain from the loot caches.  This may be an attempt on TFP's part to rebalance weapon usefulness and distribution, but I don't see it is an improvement.

Sprains/Breaks Seem Less Frequent, And Less Logical

I'm one of those 'devil may care' types when it comes to sprains and breaks.  I'll hop off tall buildings to get away from a fight, drop into basements that are inadvisably deep, etc.  Following my earlier behaviors, I didn't experience any of the issues with sprains and breaks that I did before.  Even when coming off the top of a pawn shop.  I don't know if this is intended, but I sincerely hope it isn't.  My ability to survive falls unscathed seems neigh on superhuman.

What I Love About 7 Days To Die A18

Combat and Zombie Spawns

Now that I've gotten most of my bitches out of the way, let's get on to the things that I fell in love with.  They've added a few new weapons, a few new ammo types, and have changed how zombies behave and their spawning habits.  All of this comes together to create a far more challenging experience than I had in A17.

Spears...  How I love thee.

Spears are easily my favorite addition to A18.  They stand in the middle between the melee centered combatant and the ranged specialist.  While they don't stack I found it easily worth it to lose a couple of inventory slots to the spear.  The spear has a decent range and tends to cause a little bit of knockback even in melee attack form.  Throwing the spear, on the other hand, creates a beautiful experience that may even be a bit OP.  You can throw a spear by pressing R, resulting in a steadily building strength meter that indicates how far it will go and how hard it will hit.  At point-blank range its a damned fine way to knock a zed on its ass and get yourself some much needed breathing space.

My current policy is to head in with three spears on my hot bar and do my best to handle zeds one at a time.  Three spears and a poke in the face is enough to take out your basic zeds.  Also, you can easily retrieve the spears even in the middle of combat, which means you can just keep the hate coming.  Part of me wants to see the spears nerfed a bit, but I wouldn't want them to lose their unique role in combat.

The one bad point about spears?  They sometimes pass right through the torso of a target without causing damage.  A glitch I'm hoping TFP will be on top of.

Zombie Rage...  Take Care

The new enrage mechanic can turn a manageable fight into a very bad situation pretty quickly.  When a zombie becomes enraged it suddenly moves faster, even if it's the middle of the day.  This left me wondering if they hit harder as well.  More playtime will tell (I prefer the experiential route for this kind of learning), but so far it's had a noticeable effect on how I clear a POI.

More Animals... Everywhere

So the balance in this instance seems to have changed as well.  The first POI I cleared had three dogs in it.  This isn't something I'm used to seeing in the early game.  There were also wolves and coyotes out in abundance, and they can seriously screw up your day if you aren't careful.  They do run now, but don't trust them.  They're certain to come back and ruin your day if you haven't killed them.  This I find a bit onerous.  If they run, let them run and not come back.  Having them run only to later aggro on you again seems disingenuous.  For the record, from wolves to pigs, these little bastards seem to hit harder too.

Lockpicking

This aspect of the game adds a fun new element, but there's no minigame or anything involved.  My only complaint is that it's not usable on doors.  Safes, boxes, and Gun Safes are all open game though.  The way they work is every time you use a lockpick, it starts a timer on the object.  The timer counts down until you break your lockpick.  You can then use another lockpick on the same object, and the timer starts from where it left off.  My first gun safe took me three picks to open, which seemed an acceptable amount of resource investment.

One more issue: These things seem really prevalent on the loot table, and have a reported value of 160 Duke Coins each...  A bit too rich for my tastes for something so common.

Getting Sick Can Be A Serious Issue

We see the return of the infection in force in A18.  Getting hit by a zed is far more dangerous than just having to deal with the damage.  They also give you the infection which will kill you in a matter of a couple of days.  Honey is out in the world, typically found in stumps, and will be your first antibiotic.  After that, you better hope for some good antibiotics or vitamins (Which give you immunity to disease). 

Food Sickness? Better be careful with this too.  You're playing a dangerous game when you eat food that can give you food sickness.  If you get sick, you'll vomit, losing half your remaining hunger.  In most cases, this makes your situation worse.  I loved the extra challenge this took, and how it made desperate measures a real experience.

No More Dysentery From Canned Foods

This is definitely a plus, especially given how much more dangerous food sickness is (even though it is not directly fatal).  When you find canned foods in the wild, you can safely eat them without fear of getting sick.

The Parts I'm Ambivalent About

Getting Clean Water Is Easier... Kind of

So boiling water no longer needs a pot. I'm pretty ok with this particular addition, especially since bottled water now has a 3% chance of giving you dysentery.  Only mineral water, teas, and other prepared drinks restore water without leaving you with a risk of dysentery.  I think I'd prefer the pot be involved, but that could easily be nostalgia talking.

The Perk System

It's changed, and I haven't nearly enough experience to say whether it's for the best or not.  More playtime will be necessary.  I do love that leveling is harder than it used to be, but only because it appears there are fewer levels to go through.  Again, I can't really comment on my overall feelings about this yet, though I will say it makes me less likely to plug in the 25% XP setting.

Overall

Overall the new version is a lot of fun, and the parts I dreaded aren't as bad as I thought they were going to be.  It's a wonderful new development and I'm looking forward to spending more hours of my life on it.  I also want to hear what everyone else's experience is, what they love and hate, and how the game is going for them.

Feel free to follow along on my twitch channel to follow along as I play through the new version, and spend some time with A17 as well.  Thanks for reading!

Seven Days To Die, Four Days To Complain - Alpha 18 Releases Monday

So recently my household has taken up playing 7 Days To Die.  This isn't the first time I've played the game, but it's been long enough that it was definitely a new experience.  My reintroduction was enjoyable enough that I have not one, but two servers that I pay to have hosted.  One is for the pack of intractable reprobates I call friends and is set to more or less Vanilla settings. (120 minute days, Zombies walk at all times of day, including horde night.)
The other is set on something I find a bit more interesting, and a bit more challenging.  More on that later.
The point of all this is I've been having a great time with my friends and family. As a result, started developing some opinions about the game, and a fondness for the game I was experiencing in its Alpha 17 state.  They have announced that Alpha 18 will be being released on Monday.  Updates are usually a cause for celebration... and I certainly was interested in what they were going to change.

Then I read the Alpha 18 Official Release Notes.

That's When My Excitement For Seven Days To Die's Alpha 18 Release Waned

Let's be honest, it's got some great stuff in it.  Even some of the stuff that doesn't look so great turns out to be alright when you look a little further into it.  I'm going to touch on some of the things I love about Alpha 18 first.

What's To Love In Alpha 18

• A New Occlusion System - One of the first things I noticed when I started played 7D2D again was just how much of a resource hog it was.  Even though I met the minimum requirements my system had trouble running it at absolute rock-bottom settings.  The new occlusion system should solve some of that by not rendering things in my field of vision that I can't actually see.  Like everything inside a building and what's behind it from my point of view.
• XP Loss On Death - I've always felt that death in a game should hurt, and this new addition should make it sting a little. I'm a tad disappointed there isn't the option to lose levels and their associated perk points by dying, but it's pretty good without it. This change isn't without its issues though.  They also removed the existing Death Penalty, but more on that later.
• Melee Changes - As they mentioned in their release notes, melee has always been a bit of a binary situation.  You either hit or miss.  They've changed this up so that what were misses can now result in glancing blows, and you even have a chance to hit multiple targets based on the swing trajectory of your weapon.
• Dynamic Music System - I'm really interested to see how this system is going to work.  The idea is that the music will change based on the environment, time of day, and current activity.  It won't just play pre-established tracks, but instead will dynamically generate new tracks in up to "750 unique combinations."
• Infection System - During my time playing in Alpha 17 I've never had to deal with the infection.  I have a feeling they either eliminated it for Alpha 17 or set it to be so infrequent I never noticed it.  In Alpha 18 we'll be dealing with a much more active and present infection and given multiple options on how to deal with it.  Hits by zombies can increase your infection level, and the lower your health, the more likely you are to get infected.  Good stuff!  It appears we'll be having to deal with food poisoning and dysentery more as well. I'll withhold judgment until I get a chance to play with it.
• More Melee Options - In addition to changing up how melee works, we'll also be getting new weapons!  Spears, stun batons, baseball bats, knuckle wraps, spiked knuckles, brass knuckles, all goodies to help us deal a little more hand to hand hate on the zambies.
• No Repeat POIs - This one is big for me.  I love that we'll be able to move from town to town and know we won't encounter the same POI (That's Point of Interest, the prefab generated structures in the game) twice in a row.  Nothing to hate about that.
• New Mobs - Coyotes, Mountain Lions, Demolition Zombies, all new friends for us to play with, murder, and eat.

What's To Loathe In Alpha 18

Anyone who knows me knows I'm about to lay down some really unpopular opinions, but I don't much care about that.  Survival games are fun for me, and I prefer a certain degree of challenge to come with them.  I feel like there have been a few steps back in this area with Area 18.

• Junk Turrets - A portable turret that can be picked up, slapped down, and used to watch your back in any circumstance?  You can take that cheese and fucking toss it, thanks.  It doesn't matter how weak or ineffective it is, having my skin crawl because I can only be so certain I'm not being snuck up on.
• Reduced Zombies in POIs - I'm sorry... What?  How was this even a good idea? One of the first things I modded in my private server was doubling the zombie spawns because there aleady weren't enough.  They've done the same thing across all biomes, reduced zombie spawns...  This is one of those where it might not be as bad as it sounds, however.  They also increased the RESPAWN rate, which may be a balancing factor that restores the challenge reducing spawns would take away.
• Schematics Teach You A Recipe - Look, thematically I accept that a schematic can be reused and therefore it makes sense for it to teach you a recipe.  On the other hand, they limited how many of a thing you could make by being fairly rare drops.  Perhaps they've rebalanced ingredient lists to have more individually rare items, but I was fond of the schematic method and am sad to see it go.
• Removing The Death Penalty - 7D2D A17 had a pretty harsh penalty for death.  You'd temporarily lose stats, and their associated perks, for a period of a real-life hour.  I loved this harsh death penalty a great deal, and removing it just grinds my gears.  That being said the XP loss isn't exactly easy on you either, but I'd rather they provided options for one, both, or neither than removing it entirely.  This will be one of the things that I look for a mod to replace following the launch of A18.
• Easier Encumbrance - 7D2D already lets you carry a ridiculous number of resources in your backpack at the game start.  Now they're giving you an additional line of encumbrance free inventory to use when you join the game.  This effectively nerfs the Pack Mule perk and emphasizes the use of clothing mods.  In my opinion, they should have left the Pack Mule perk alone.  Instead, they should have the pocket mods give you additional inventory space that would always be encumbered when in use, regardless of your pack mule level.

I'm Still Going To Play The Shit Out Of It

In spite of my gripes, I'm still pretty excited about playing Alpha 18.  I want to see how my first blush opinions of these changes hold up in the face of actual playtime.  I am a bit disappointed that The Fun Pimps continue to take the path of nerfing things and making them 'easier' (read: boring).  That being said, they've produced a great game that's eaten a fair amount of my life since I rediscovered it.  Who knows, I may just like the changes.