[2021] Crops Need A Complete Overhall

Originally posted by comet_65cali: Its all about how you play the game, TBH.

You can spec into Master Chef/Iron Gut/Living off the Land, and cook/generate plenty of food if thats what you want to do.

You can not spec into those skills, ignore the vending machines and traders, ignore farming, ignore recipes and just base food/water on looting and foraging if you want more of a challenge.

Or anywhere between the two.

7DTD is pretty open on how you play the game and rarely forces you to pigeon hole into one play-style. If you're presented with an option you dislike, most of the time it can be ignored.

Only thing I wish would come back is the smell mechanic.

Well yes, but then, you could not spend your skill points on anything at all, and keep the early game challenges indefinitely. And to give credit where credit’s due, 7DtD is a sandbox that gives you a lot of freedom. It’s pretty easy to keep one hand behind your back, if you want to.

But having to do that goes against the spirit of a survival game, where the luxury of choice is rare, and you must ruthlessly leverage every opportunity available in order to survive. In other words, the fact that the player character can simply not do something isn’t a satisfying answer when someone perceives an imbalance and/or a lack of challenge.

The comparison to Project Zomboid is telling, since most would agree that’s also a zombie survival game and not a farming simulator. 7DtD has gone a long way towards curbing what used to be the unrestrained, exponential growth of crop yields. But I wholeheartedly agree that it’s boring to reach a point of total stability with food and water, just as it’d be boring to reach total stability with the zombies. Threats to crops and food spoilage would be lovely in this game.