The direction this game is taking is disappointing.

The issue does not lie solely with the removal of jars, but with many other system changes over the years, i.e. the removal of many building materials, gun varieties, mods, clothing etc. Jars are simply the latest offender. A large portion of the player discontentment lies in the continuous overhauls of systems. We want to see incremental improvements, not drastic overhauls of beloved systems that have worked for years.

The removal of jars fundamentally breaks our sense of immersion. And no, the issue isn’t “where did the jar go? did I eat it? The issue is it’s not terribly hard to imagine one’s self to go out and boil some river water. Why would I as a survivor pass up on this obvious opportunity? Removing this feature, feels so counterintuitive and strips away our immersion.

You can make obtaining clean water harder and have it be immersive. Add back jars but make river water polluted, not murky. So, if I grab a jar of it, I’d immediately see “oh…I guess the putrefied zombie guts everywhere have polluted the water, I shouldn’t drink this!” It doesn’t stop players from trying to collect water. Its much more subtle and grounded. This nuance changes the dynamic from “the devs are stripping things away from the game that are realistic to make it artificially harder”, into “oh this world is more perilous that I previously thought. How can I work around this?” Do you see the difference?

Then make polluted water turn into purified water in the chem station so its locked further down the progression path. Players don’t want to be presented with a gamified system just to be difficult…you need to justify the challenge with something the player can attribute to immersion and world building.

Loot

Unbind loot stage caps so if you get incredibly lucky early you can find a late-stage piece of gear. Ask any player, there was magic about it. That randomness added to players enjoyment, and many people would build their character around an early find. It made each playthrough different and gives us a small amount of hope behind every box you open in the early game. This hope is gravely missing now. The current system is too predictable, too benign.

600 Quality System

I think we can all share in the excitement you feel when you find an upgraded version of your gear. Upgrading from a T1 to T2 weapon provides a dopamine hit, but the game is limiting this to just a few instances per piece of equipment at most. Back when the parts could be swapped out, every little incremental improvement made us feel like we were getting stronger. “This stock is 40 points higher, ill swap it out and now my guns average quality is at 404, so I’ve earned an extra equipment slot!”. After nearly every POI, id see my gears’ quality creep up higher and higher. It felt like we were making progress. The 6-tier system simplifies this way too much. “Oh, great another T2 pistol… guess ill scrap it”. This is part of the magic that’s been lost over the alphas.

It also solves one of the V2’s biggest issues…disappointing loot from early weapon bags and crates. Opening a bag to find nothing but a wooden club and a spear feels terrible and like it wasn’t worth it at all. Nothing in there makes us feel like we are progressing. If it dropped instead even one weapon component, players feel like “okay I may not have a gun yet, but I’m 25% of the way there.” Its progress and pushes us closer to completing our goals which respects our time.

The 600-point system also encourages players to loot well beyond where they do now. Getting T6 (perfect) gear is way to easy, and players lose interest in looting and the game shortly after. Let the completionists grind for the 600 levels and make getting a 600-quality gun unlock a special bonus.

Town Hall

Players want more moments like this to voice their thoughts on the direction of the game and offer suggestions. Interacting with chat is critical for it to be a productive conversation. Much of what was said during the townhall was great and I’m glad some things are being rolled back and changed but more needs to be done. The problem isn’t isolated to the storms update; players have issues with the game in general and most of these issues stem from beloved features being removed over the years. Things that break our sense of immersion should never go live, i.e smoothies and badges. The clothing system should be reinstated, and storms should be reworked to be much more rewarding.

Ambience

The world doesn’t feel as alive as it once did. Streets used to be filled with the undead. Sleepers eating up most of the zombie spawn cap makes the game way less scary. We want to be overwhelmed in cities. Even within POI’s there needs to be more roaming zombies and significantly less pop-up spawns. The current system makes the sneaking system pointless, and if every zombie is a jump scare, we just grow to expect it, and it doesn’t feel novel or frightening.

The night needs to be dark, debilitating so, like in the old alphas. The night used to be scary. Seeing zombies only by torchlight was genuinely frightening. You’d hear them growl around you but be unable to see them as you’d book it back to base. Bring this back. It makes base building and lights way more important.

Progression

7dtd has seen countless shifts in direction in regards to progression, perks, & crafting recipes. I’d suggest reinstating the learn-by-doing system alongside the current learn-by-reading system. The learn-by-doing skills can be on their own tab after the other skill attributes.

The following activities should be governed by learn-by-doing: looting, cardio, mining, scavenging, harvesting, farming, weapons, medicine and bartering. The more you do these things, the better you get at them. The learn by reading system can govern most of the other unlocks including crafting recipes and perks. This way you can’t abuse the craft 100 clubs in one-night strategies.

Zombie AI

Players want some randomness and unpredictability in the zombies. In A16 for instance, the pathing was haphazard and chaotic. It felt like the zombies would mull around and get distracted. The unpredictable nature of them added to the horror. You didn’t know when they would attack next. This also ties into a common complaint about the ‘structural engineering’ zombies. Players want the zombies to be effective, yet inefficient.

Base Construction

Base building with quality materials is very punishing when a block is misplaced. Players should do significantly more damage to blocks with mining tools within their own land claim. To prevent players abusing land claims in POIs, make the recipe to craft a LCB more expensive again.

Players also miss having more variety in materials, i.e reinforced concrete and stainless steel. Wet concrete also had a tangible impact on how players approached building. If you waited until the middle of day 7 to do your building, you ran the risk of them not being dried by nightfall. This is yet another realistic feature that was stripped away.

Players struggle to make visually appealing landscapes with the diamond shaped grass & road voxel blocks. The edges of these blocks when adjacent to a full block have gaps along the side. We should be able to craft grass blocks with 90-degree edges.

Features & Options

More realistic zombie model varieties. Option in the menu to disable feral and rad variants for a more grounded experience. Option to disable traders. Options to disable trader quests. A return of the clothing and smell systems. Food that spoils if not refrigerated or canned. More vehicles, ideally one that can be entered into like a rv that could act as a mobile base. Add some level of animal husbandry. More mods and attachments. More gun varieties. More inventory space. Sustainable farming. Clothing that’s visible on the character model including the new respirator etc.

I don't know what The Fun Pimps are doing with this game...

I don't think they know what they are doing with this game either.

The devs spend most of their time nerfing or removing content that people enjoy—sometimes out of spite—rather than adding to the game. They blame delays on the players to avoid accountability, don’t understand why people play their game, and when they do add new content, it often limits sandbox gameplay by forcing players into a single, predefined playstyle.

"Look how they massacred my boy"


-Vito Corleone

Apparently, we, the players are at fault for 6 years of delays on bandits, because of feedback towards the things they keep changing needlessly and breaking stuff. Game funded by players, yet disconnected from the players almost entirely.

Oh boy, after almost 2k hours I finally get to rip into The Fun Police deeply and share the frustrations I've had for years without getting crucified for it.

I joined in 7 Days late, roughly a year after Alpha 19.6 went stable. My first impressions were pretty good on the game genre idea despite arriving so late. The skill point system was straight forward, build what you wanted with no hassle.

The multi-slot clothing system worked, punished you slightly for not wearing the right stuff but also doubled as a way to show off how you wanted to look in the world. The jank of weapons and some old models was a bit jarring but it added to the weird charm.

Game loop was pretty fun for about roughly 90 hours, until end game happened and I ran out of things to do. Then I exposed myself to the modding scene and wow there was there alot to go through.

QOL mods, Darkness Falls, Undead Legacy, massive gameplay changing things or adding custom vehicle models. They greatly added way more playtime and in essence would slowly overshadow the vanilla game as playing with mods is still the superior way to play today.

Alpha 20 came out and shoved in a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of more building blocks, introduced early game pipe weapons which are okay at best and provided a robotic drone which is very likely still buggy to this day. Some zombie and character models also got updated, looking a bit better than before but maybe we won't be focusing too much on model and texture looks over the coming years(Spoilers, they were). Game is still needing some optimization since zombies have structural engineering master degrees despite being undead and can pin-point exactly how to get to you, which is hard on the CPU. Moreso if you're not bothering to tell the other four cores and eight threads on your average six core CPU to greatly assist.

Now like most of the long term players, I waited just as long for when Alpha 21 finally dropped. Felt like it took forever. But, that next alpha release and preview snippets of it was when I started to notice something wrong with how The Fun Pimps do work. TFP also seemed to favor streamers/content creators, badly. TFP also love them cause the streamers/CCs don't talk bad about the game and enabling TFP to keep doing their anti-community involved changes. I'm sure this won't have future repercussions.. (Shout out to IzPrebuilt on Youtube. You're a real G with a set of balls that stood up to TFP and risked your creator program access being stripped after massively ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on them. Of which TFP deserved it well.)

Alpha 21 due to playing so late was possibly the 2nd worst update I ever experienced. Gone was using the skill point system to do what you wanted. No, *now* you have to pray and bend over to RNGesus for "skill magazines". This massively slowed down progress and ultimately turned ♥♥♥♥ into a slog while restricting player freedom in a *sandbox*.

This was also when empty jars got the axe. Instead here have this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ dew collector system to artificially inflate survival difficulty by slowly churning out water.. in jars... where did the empty jars come from if they were removed..? Does the dew collector yank them from another universe?

It literally did nothing besides waste more time. And for the experienced players water still became no issue cause idk, looting murky water still existed to boil or the actual good drinks themselves? How about just simply buying your water needs from our new OP vending machine models? Plenty of Red teas, Yucca juice smoothies and Learnin' elixirs, oh my! Why bother saving things to craft them now when you can just buy? They were alot less common in shared machines in older game versions.

Alpha 21 vending machine change was so trivial to water, I had to go and create a mod that made them restock every three days like a trader and have *way* less supplies. Over more than half gone at the very least.

But oh no, I'm probably just being a moron and playing the game wrong by not just using only a dew collector for my water needs to make the game "harder". Clearly I'm not playing it as intended, as I'd probably be insulted about by the various uptight and ego driven moderators who openly defend TFP or any slop update/change that comes out. God forbid you don't defend. I guess the worthless "moderator" status is that precious to you guys. I won't single any out, but you know who you are.

Roughly a year passes in-between Alpha 21 and the next game version. Turns out whoops, The Fun Pimps is "releasing" the game out of early access. Uh, what? Excuse *me*? How? This ♥♥♥♥♥♥' ♥♥♥♥ isn't *nowhere* near ready yet for a "1.0"(Alpha 22). I learned of the kickstarter goals. Where's VR? Where's bandits? Story? Uhhhhh, we have a problem. Big problem. The game price is also going up substantially following "1.0"(Alpha 22) release, cause "LoL".

Now for "1.0"(Alpha 22), we're updating the player models and completely shafting the clothing system to just making you use four armor slots without making sure it's 100% okay with everyone! Um. The ♥♥♥♥? Who designed this system and how can they be fired? This was a big step back to what was there before.

Sure the ancient player models were janky and old but it was alot more expressive in how you could make an abomination, and cloth up how you wanted to look. Now no, dress up how we want you to by tying extra stat buffs to them or ♥♥♥♥ off. This is *our* game now that we, The Fun Pimps, think is the best course of direction now. Not you, the long standing community, ♥♥♥♥ all ya'll. "xd".

Learn by "reading" is also still in the game, so feedback for that to be reverted was completely ignored. Oh yeah, The Fun Police *love* ignoring customer/kickstarter backer feedback and gaslighting you. Y'know, gaslighting the same people who got your company where it's at. Where would it be without them? Oh yeah, nowhere and probably would be dissolved by now.

"2.0"(Alpha 23), mmmm the negative feedback is so juicy and deserved. Frankly the worst update to have come to light, and of which has sparked the long awaited fire under TFP's asses.

Hey you remember being able to just.. go to any biome you want at any time? Well screw you, you play how we, TFP, want you to now. Again. Through tedious and boring challenges for a biome "b A d G e", as well as "storms" that promptly spells out "sit your little ass down and wait in timeout". The ♥♥♥♥ is this, kindergarten?

Stop ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ causing everything to be even *more* of a slog and further restricting player choice in what was supposed to be a "zombie sandbox" game and work on actual game *CONTENT* instead of removing or reworking mechanics that don't need to be touched, you directionless bastards. Biome smoothies and ♥♥♥♥♥♥ linear progression, LMFAO. What is this worthless trash, get it out of my sight and blow me HARD.

And I don't want to hear the argument "y O u C a N t U r N i T o F f". It's the fact time and money was wasted on such bad mechanics to begin with which could've been used somewhere else. I don't think TFP know what to do anymore besides yanking ideas from other mods- hoo ♥♥♥♥ wait a minute, they're actually doing that and trying to pass it off as game content? Yeah no, truly clueless.

Make sure to buy the overpriced armor skin DLC, because that wasn't predicted or anything when "1.0"(Alpha 22) released. Got your priorities right guys, being a Mr. Krabs in real life.

♥♥♥♥ you TFP and I hope the reigns get yanked away from those in charge. Clearly there needs to be some big changes at that office if things are to do a full 180 into a better light. Modding community understands this game concept better than the actual developers, so we have them to thank at least. Show that scene all the love, and none to TFP until things change.

DEVS: There's only one solution that will save this game!

7 Days to Die is in turmoil right now. "Recent reviews" on Steam have turned to "mixed" from the backlash of negative reviews. This trend is likely to continue unless a proper solution is implemented that can meet everybody's wants & needs. The current solution of taking half steps to undo some unpopular mechanics will not work. Why? Because you're going to end up with a game that is 50% sandbox & 50% RPG, and nobody wants that. Players will continue to leave negative reviews because they won't think they're being listened to, and the developers will resent the customer base because they fail to see all the hard work that has gone into the game. The end result will be a slow, agonizing death of a game that many people love.



There is a solution, however, that can actually make everybody happy. Everybody gets what they want, and the game continues to grow and prosper. And I don't need a long list of things that need to change in the game to make it better. That's already been done. The solution is actually quite simple... Create 2 different game modes for the game: Sandbox Mode & RPG Mode.



Sandbox mode: This is the mode that players are asking for right now. In a nutshell, Alpha 16 mechanics, but with improvements from more recent alphas--such as better graphics, a better selection of POIs, etc. Unfortunately, the developers see the various play styles that people like as exploits--such as glass jars, non-digging zombies, and driving around in your vehicle on Horde Night. The mindset of the developers is going to have to change if this is going to work. You have paying customers who are telling you exactly what they want, and all you have to do is give it to them. This is what's known in the business world as a high-quality problem. In other words, it's not a problem at all.




It's up to YOU as developers to see this as an opportunity, not a threat. If your customers want non-digging zombies, then give them non-digging zombies. This isn't cancer, it's a video game. Nobody's going to die (irl) from a change like this. Sandbox mode is where the players get to do what they want and play how they want. So don't give players 20% of what they want or 50% of what they want. You need to give them 100% of what they're asking for, and “Sandbox Mode” is the way to do it. Besides, you still get to develop the game the way you want in RPG Mode. Just don’t forget to keep giving us toggles to turn features on and off.


RPG mode: This is the great part of RPG mode: The developers currently have absolutely no work to do here whatsoever. They just leave the game in its current state, and continue to develop the RPG elements of the game as they have previously planned. They build the game as they have envisioned without affecting the sandbox players in any way, shape, or form. In other words, no more backlash in the future when more RPG elements are added to the game.


END RESULT: Players who want back the sandbox game that they once loved get what they want, and the developers get to continue building the RPG game that they have as their vision. The negative backlash ends, and people get to enjoy the game however they want: Sandbox or RPG. In addition, a third mode of gameplay will be added (known as "story mode") at some point in the future--according to the developers. This will give players three different ways to enjoy the game.



BOTTOM LINE: The Fun Pimps are running a business. The product that they're selling is a video game. Their customers are providing very specific features and mechanics that they want in that product. If the developers fail to deliver, then they don't get paid. It's that simple. Sure, they get to keep the money that they've already made, but nobody is going to want to buy anything from them in the future--like DLCs or other games. The ball is in their court. Let's hope they make the right decision!



There’s still one other thing you need to become aware of. I hope you don't interpret this as an attack. It's nothing more than an observation. As owners of “7 days to die,” I believe you've fallen prey to a very common phenomenon: You've been working on this game for so long that you've grown an emotional attachment to it. It's your “baby,” so to speak. And you have expectations as to how your baby is supposed to grow and prosper. And when others (your customers) tell you that you're being a bad parent, and you need to do things differently… I'm sure it feels like you're under some sort of an attack. But, all we’re asking for is to let this game grow in a more open fashion, and not restrict how we want to play. In other words, let your players “co-parent” how this game develops. Think of it as twins growing up in the same household, but becoming two completely different people in the two different game modes. They can both co-exist—and flourish--without conflict. All you have to do is “let go” just a little… like a parent does when a grown child “leaves the nest.” Create the Sandbox Mode and let the players decide what happens there, and 99% of the conflict that you're experiencing right now will immediately go away.




Everybody wants this game to succeed, but this game is at a crossroads. Please make the right decision to keep it alive and well!


However, until this (or something similar to this) is incorporated into the game to satisfy the wants and needs of ALL the players, my review will remain negative. If you're wondering why I'm still playing this game while so vehemently disagreeing with the developers, I’m not. I'm currently playing Darkness Falls, which is an overhaul mod created by another player.

A once great open world sandbox survival game turned into a broken adventure game.
A kickstarter project, funded by early access and merchandise, independent from publishers, where the studio actively ignores player feedback.

Lacking a proper roadmap, development cycles are not only extremely slow, but also go around in circles, giving the impression that decisions are made on the fly. As an example, learning skills has had 3 completly diferent progression systems, bandidts had been promissed in 2018, now we got told it will be delayed AGAIN to 2026, because of players wanting broken features fixed.

The studio has an atitude of "this is how we want players do play", limiting the open world sandbox aspect and cutting down on realism. E.G. Zombies in this game are professional enginners that know where stability points are in bases so they can better hack them down; stealth mechanics being utterly nerfed so spawns in POIs would trigger; want to play a nuclear winter mode, be prepared to have the same trader around the map, since they made traders biome specific. These are just a few examples, there are dozens more.

With 1.0 release the game felt even more like an Alpha. Changes were put into place without proper testing, constanlty needing patches to rework values on changes.
It also became an adventure game. "Get the right gloves, deal 60% more damage vs undead; have the right hat gain 50% chance to earn 2 skill points instead of 1 when learning a skill; progress enough in the game, now zombies are electrified zombies or infernal zombies".

Not everything is bad though, the map random gen is decent, though modders have made better map generators; as are the new/reworked POIs, though players can make them using the game POI editor, or download community created POIs and import them into the generator.
God bless the modding community that not only keeps the game going, but also are faster to fix what "The Fun Pimps" broke.

Only get the game on sale if you are confortable on adding and using mods.

Once, this was just the best survival open world game. Sadly, with every recent update - and boy are the gaps between updates long - the devs have made it worse and worse. They seem focused on sapping any fun (oh the irony) out of the game.
The attitude of the devs in recent town halls ... they've lost the plot. Arrogant. Ignorant.
And now they're charging a AAA game price on something that is decidedly third rate.
This was once a gem, those better days are long gone; and honestly, I have no faith in the devs to ever correct this course.
Don't listen to their promises; judge them by their actions.

Do not buy this game.

What used to be an exploration-based survival game centred around an interesting and enjoyable concept has been gutted and turned into a generic looter shooter where you may only play how the developers want you to.

If you already own it, then I recommend playing on Alpha 16 or with the Darkness Falls mod installed. If not, then read on.

To compare A16 to now:
- Weapons no longer consist of parts that each have individual quality that dictates their overall effectiveness and can be improved by finding duplicates, you must instead simply obtain higher quality copies.
- Everything is now governed by your skill allocation upon level up, including potential loot items and quality so you won’t be finding a tree stump hunting rifle or the fabled toilet pistol any more as a lucky early game boon that must be used wisely. In addition, taking the time to crack open a loot safe without the proper loot-based skill points put in will no longer reward you with a decent weapon such as an assault rifle, only stone arrows or other entry-level equipment.
- Farming has also been dumbed down to rely on skill points and the creation of farm plot blocks, rather than simply planting crops in dirt and the yield determined by that block being tilled and/or having fertiliser used on it.
- Points of interest are all now linear dungeons with an obvious designated end point instead of some being open to freely explore and often contain trigger points that will spawn a horde of zombies and zero them all on you which makes stealth borderline useless, as opposed to before where a slow and steady approach was rewarded if the player carefully engaged zombies via ranged combat.
- Concrete used to be an extremely strong core component to one’s base that required a reasonable resource investment to begin using and time for each placed block to dry but now, zombie block damage was buffed into orbit and they will dig through dirt and even concrete to get to you like it’s nothing.
- “Learn by doing” - which is a bannable phrase on their forums now - has been completely replaced by a purely loot-based magazine system that unlocks all of the skills so you no longer have players becoming better at these skills such as mining or using specific tools by actually using them.
- Traders drown you with repetitive quests that boil down to “go here, do thing, receive brownie points” and their goods are specific to the biome they are in.

Reusable jars are gone, jail doors are gone, zombie corpse looting is gone, the Wellness system is gone, log spikes are gone, zombies smelling food in your inventory is gone, armour customisation is gone, unique models for each food item showing in the player’s hand is gone for some reason and there’s much more. I’m sure many of these things will be changed after the next big update, then the next one and the next and so on but I have long since ceased to care about the future of this game, especially since there are now cosmetic DLC skins to try and wring some extra money out of their rapidly leaking playerbase.

Developer livestreams showed them ignoring all questions during what they claimed was their “town hall” stream where they specifically stated that they would be answering questions. They complain to the players that the time spent on the overhauls they keep doing that they are delaying the official addition of bandits, which was initially promised in 2019’s A18 release and already exists in fan-made mods. They have removed many strategies that all players had the freedom of choice to just not use and called them “exploits” such as digging underground to evade unwanted zombie encounters. They claim they are trying to improve immersion and realism while also adding a zombified yeti and badges you have to earn by doing quests and equip in a designated inventory slot to gain permanent immunity to biome-specific hazards instead of finding and using items such as a puffy coat to withstand the cold of the snow biome. Any form of criticism, so much as asking why changes were made or even posting the dreaded phrase “learn by doing” on official forums is met with the banhammer.

One thing that I detested even in A16 was the Stun effect that caused many extremely infuriating deaths, so I modded out the zombie’s ability to inflict it on me by editing the game's files. The same goes for Infection; zombies often hide around a corner or in a closet and slap me upside the head unexpectedly, putting me on a ticking timer that I only had a chance to stop by looting every tree trunk I saw to devour a jar of honey or just let myself become zombie chow so I removed it. If I was completely incapable of making these alterations then I would have just stopped playing much sooner.

7 Days to Die used to have a niche that was ultimately what made it so beloved in the first place. It was in development for over a decade before the developers rushed out what they called the “1.0” update that hilariously still had the “This title is Pre-Release software” on the splash screen. The game died the moment they set their sights on releasing it on consoles since everything has been - and I hate using these words - simplified and streamlined to cater to what I’m sure they imagine is a wider audience, which is a large part of what is steadily wiping what used to be their expanding existing audience.

It’s no longer a sandbox, it’s an empty pit where if anybody in it so much as twiddles their thumbs in an attempt to have fun then the devs will step in and immediately tape everybody's hands shut.

Do not buy this game.