7 Days to Die Review (Blinky Dorf)
With each update, the devs are forcing the game to be played a certain way, taking great pains to patch any playstyle they deem an "exploit."
Update: With the changes revealed in Alpha 21, this trend continues.
1. The perk and leveling system has gotten a complete overhaul; total game upheavals are unfortunately a common occurrence in this game. While this came with a much-needed balance shift away from perks in the Strength tree, the devs also decided to force players to have to loot and scavenge to improve the accessibility and quality of tools, armor and weapons. XP gained from your favorite building and harvesting activities can no longer be funneled into combat; you HAVE to go out and loot buildings, or you won't be able to improve your gear.
2. Water. For some ungodly known reason, you will no longer be able to collect water from water sources, such as lakes and rivers, for the purposes of drinking it. You know, a common survival practice for the entirety of human existence? In the past, you would take a bunch of jars to the watering hole, fill up on murky water, bring it back to base, and use it for a variety of purposes... You know, like what water is used for. No more of that! Now you have to find an incredibly rare water filter item and use it to build a "dew collector," which is supposed to give you 3 "pure water" items a day. Or, you guessed it, you can instead loot murky water from specific container types in the world.
3. Traders. Traders were where you could grab quests, which led you to all manner of interesting buildings and POIs on the map you may not have found, fill up on treasure, recipes and materials, and get some good hard cash to spend in their shops to get items you normally couldn't get. Not anymore! Traders' inventory is tied directly to your level, which means that if you can't make or find it yourself, they won't have it. On top of this, they will also have less general goods, and instead have more items towards each one's "theme": Some have more medical items, some guns, some armor, etc.
Original review:
About a year ago, this game was amazing. It had everything you could possibly want from a zombie basebuilder, with tons of options to survive the night, and the monstrous hordes every seven days. It was one of my favorite games for a long time, and the only reason I'm not in the thousands of hours is because I didn't always have friends to play with... And the glaring dev-forced game direction I will detail below.
Now, as the devs have had more and more time to listen to ignore player feedback, they have gone completely out of their way to patch out every single conceivable way to outsmart the horde. It baffled me that a dev team that listens so intently to what their players are up to uses it exclusively to stop them from playing the game a certain way.
Everything from moats, underground bases, death mazes, and even building a freaking helicopter and just flying away have all been "fixed", so that you have to play the game the way the devs want you to play it.
Getting creative and learning the game is a thing of the past. Below are a few examples of what I mean when I say "the devs are getting in the way of their own game."
Farming and being self-reliant? Nerfed. Even completely maxing out the relevant perk tree leaves you with a barely serviceable farm. It would seem the point of farming was to plant seeds you find while looting, and get a little extra back; once the devs sniffed out that players were actually living off of their produce, it was nerfed. Sustainability is practically nonexistent after this change. Farming wasn't even that powerful! A lot of high-tier food in the game still requires materials you have to forage and scavenge for; being able to grow your own food was just one less thing to worry about while you prepared for horde night.
Death mazes? Patched. Zombie AI is equivalent to having a hive mind of architectural engineers working like a well-oiled machine to take down the exact structural support needed to expose you to them. I'm not even exaggerating: No matter how elaborate your base is, the zombies are coded to find the fastest route to you no matter what, and if they can't reach you, will destroy the blocks required to get you into range.
Hiding under 100 meters of solid stone and just laying low? Nope. On horde night, zombies have infinite detection radius , and will dig with their superhuman claws all the way down there to meet you... That is, if you somehow manage to close up the hole behind you, because they can sniff out even the most convoluted tunnel and hatch system you can possibly come up with without even slowing down.
Building a helicopter, truck or other vehicle and staying out of range? No longer possible; there are now flying vulture zombies that move faster than any vehicle available in the game; not even aviation can save you from these things.
It's really frustrating to see, once again, a very particular playstyle being reinforced by the developers of this game. They are hellbent on making sure we play the game THEIR way, and this game would be so much more popular if they just let the players play the game the way they want! I've complained about how hordes are handled, and several people told me that I can just turn off the hordes if I hate them so much. And now, I do, but that wasn't always the case. Years ago, it was fun when it was my friends and I tried different methods of outsmarting the endless hordes to see who did the best; now, it's just us trying to figure out how to hold back this hive mind of architectural engineers with the one particular style of base defense while the devs release change after change making sure we only go about it one specific way: The way the devs want you to play.
TL;DR
This game feels like playing "zombie survivor" in your living room with your 10 year old cousin. No matter what creative and interesting strategy you come up with, the little kid will just say "nuh-uh" and make something up to beat you, until you are playing exactly how he wants to play. On top of all of this, the devs themselves have been openly dismissive of both their players and any criticism that heads their way.
Until the devs can ditch their childish reinforcement of their preferred game style and endless stream of frustrating "overhauls" that turn the game on its head, this game is doomed to be less and less fun.