beHypE

No doubt, i'm a software developer myself and given the voxel nature of the game, I can only imagine the can of worms it is, depending on how realistic you want them to behave. That being said, it's been in the "near future" for many alphas now, which is the frustrating part. I doubt they have been all hands on deck for that long, or it would have been shipped/abandoned by now. Oh well, we'll just skip this Alpha and check back in 2025 for A23 !

<quarterly check for announced end-game features> You know the changelog is disappointing when all you did was CTRL+F "bandit" for the past 20 pages... It is what it is, I guess the focus is still on making the game look as great as possible compared to current standards because that is going to attract more steam buys than bandits, and from a business decision that makes sense. For more seasoned players like my group and I, some new textures and animations won't incentivize a new playthrough quite enough. I guess they'll look just as good in A23 (or beyond), see you then ! </quarterly check for announced end-game features>

If i'm being honest the person I remember that gave me hope was you, knucklerubber! 😄 As a player i'm obviously disappointed by the answer, because indeed it seems it's - at least - a couple months away yet. But as a developer I can only praise the mentality of your company, I wish all my projects were driven by quality metrics and not time metrics ! Time to disappear in the cloud for some weeks again. 😅

This might have been answered previously, but I remember that during November there was hope that A21 would get released before Christmas. That obviously didn't happen, but we're close to being in April now. Without going into the "when will you release the kraken" discussion, could you guys explain what lead to that big of a planning delay ?

There used to be an external website that was a devtracker. Don't think it's live anymore, which is a shame. I often connect here just to see where things are regarding the release, and I gotta admit it's not always enjoyable nor practical having to scroll all these pages of loosely A21 related discussions.

Since faatal reads everything, do you guys hire, and if so do you do any Java? 😆 I guess I can get used to .NET if I have to. 😝 Jokes aside, release the krakeeeeen

That's as subjective as it gets, I've played this game so much that the eye candy doesn't even get registered by my brain most of the time. As a seasoned player, I can't help but feel that it has been quite some time since the last game-changing aspect was introduced. And A21 won't change that to be honest, even though I'm still eagerly awaiting starting over with the new LBL system.

Everyone's guess is different but i'm pretty confident it won't be taking too long to get the experimental out. Then again I doubt it happens before the end of January, as they always release with an associated marketing plan (streamer week-ends etc), and that probably didn't organize itself during the holidays. Development wise they probably aren't too far off but it was surely too risky and hectic to get it out before Christmas time. Still enjoying a new playthrough of Valheim and i'm barely into the Iron Age, so take your time Pimps, but don't leave us hanging until Spring. 😄

Definitely the old system. It was poorly balanced because you'd swim in parts after every loot run and the sorting got old real fast, but the constant thrill of upgrading your weapon made it feel like... your weapon. There was obviously room for improvement (there always is), but it felt organic and engaging. Ever since the new system came with the generic parts, that whole subgame was lost and I've never ever felt like my gun was the result of looting and tinkering : "do I have enough parts to craft a Q5 ? not yet, guess i'll keep my Q4 for now. (30 minutes later) screw that, i just found a Q6, i'm set for life"!

That is true when the game's loot system actually provides more parts than fully functional tools. I guess the new system will make it less obvious as to "when" you'll be able to craft a higher level item since it's RNG based and not based on experience/point attribution. That being said if you find steel tools in the loot before you find any significant amount of parts, then we'll be back at square one where i'll have to find 3-4 low quality augers before I can finally craft a good one, and by the time that happens i'll probably have found a good quality one before I'm able to craft it myself. Any changes regarding the balance of finding parts/functional tools ? Other than that I mostly agree that the feature list is lackluster given the timeframe; I guess most developers are currently working on long term A22+ features, while another part of the team works on balancing & assets that make it to A21. Still excited to see how the new LBL system will shake up the predictable progression we have now.

I don't know if that's something that might be revealed but I wonder how the team is split up regarding the development of the game. The new "LBL" system amongst other things seem very interesting but rather small features regarding amount of code involved. As a fellow developer I wonder how much work is being done on stuff that is not on the OP. Specifically bandits which are, I suppose, a nightmare (or dream) feature to tackle properly. Looking forward to all of it, great game that only gets better !

Please let this be the Alpha where bandits or at least some kind of end game content is added. No matter how better the game got overall, these past alphas really felt like more (or a better version) of the same, and the mid/end game still gets stale fast.

Is anyone finding any schematics for vehicles or already made parts ? We have been looting bookstores, post offices, mailboxes and every car shop to no avail, with 100+ lootstage in a big city in the snow biome. Not a single vehicle related item, aside from acid/wheels and batteries. We're still running our bicycles, and would be on foot if it wasn't for the reward you get when you end the tier 1 quests. It's getting to a point where I'll start investing points into Intelligence just to unlock Motorcycle recipes, it's pretty obnoxious to be fair. That's 7-8 wasted levels just to be able to craft 3 vehicles, not to mention it really takes away from the pleasure of finding the schematics, but at this rate we'll be decked out with T6 stuff in every slot before we can ride anything decent.

Can't say Acid is the issue in our game, but we have yet to find ANY recipe for a vehicle on day 25 and still driving around the bicycles we got from completing the Tier 1 quests. Overall if noone plays intellect it feels like stoneage for a looong time, besides being better/good at combat.

Come on now, we all know bandits aren't gonna make it to A21 either. 😏

It feels bad but I also see why they decided it's better than waking up the whole building with one bullet, and then dispatching them all at once and having 'free loot'. It would probably be better having some kind of middle ground, like visible zombies being 'soft sleepers' while closet scare jumps staying 'hard sleepers'. It would feel less gamey at least, and would probably re-enable jump scares if you thought you woke up most of them but some remained hidden and caught you by surprise. As it is, you just know that every room contains at least one sleeper just waiting for you. If you could wake up zombies from multiple volumes, maybe a mechanic could be added so that the more zombies you wake up at once, they tougher/faster they come at you. Some kind of chaos multiplier so that clearing most zeds at once comes with some drawbacks, while being stealthy-ish lets you fight 'normal' zombies.

The version is indeed very enjoyable. The pace is on point, and time management is a thing. We're day 9 and feel like we're really just getting started, it's amazing. One thing I also noticed was that wood spikes do a TON of a damage if you walk through them, and that lighting yourself on fire is no biggie (I think I lost 3 hp over the course of the 5-6 seconds it took me to choke the fire out). Felt kinda weird to be honest, stubbing my toe and killing myself with ~35hp left while turning myself to a living candle and being fine.

I couldn't disagree more. I think it's also reasonable to assume that you can't please every new player but that this is ultimately a game to discover and experiment with. Many very popular games have this same niche where the whole purpose of the game is the adventure of "figuring things out", not getting them done. This one is no different. Unlocking crafting stations is a staple of the crafting genre and you'd just erase all that and have one easy-to-craft workbench that does it all ? Why even bother at that point, make it an inventory only game while you're at it. Just like many old timers I may have some difficulty accepting change sometimes, because the human learns to like what he's used to. But I can understand why certain mechanics and systems have to evolve, change, get revamped because they're obsolete in their current form based on all the surrounding mechanisms having changed. If we can come up with something more logical but also something more rich gameplay wise, I'm all for it. But if the point is simply to dumb down and simplify for the heck of it, you might aswell just focus forces on something else. The issue has blown out of proportion on the forums, I don't think there's any major issue with the forge as it is, even though it could be better - but it always can.

I like those ideas! Indeed the cost seems high for the damage output compared to other, lower tier explosives. And the double gate is usually a bad thing. An alternative recipe that is more expensive seems like a fairly good compromise.

Honestly the rework of gun parts is one of the few, if not the only system that got reworked that I find significantly worse and less appealing than the original. It provided constant upgrading possibilities and every other gun that you found could have worse overall stats but still consist of a part that was an upgrade to yours. It also made your gun... "yours", an item with an history of progress. Right now the crafting part is simply not working, because the whole system isn't granular enough and because crafting now means wasting parts you won't get back, and thus you just almost always save them for a Quality 5 craft, but by the time that is a thing, you've probably moved up a Tier. Upgrading only ever translates through finding a higher level item and doesn't involve any tinkering, the previous version becoming trader food in almost every scenario, once you have unmodded it and moved over your mods to the new gun. Guns simply don't feel special at all, and the whole system seems a bit flawed, which is kind of a shame given how central guns are in the game.

I agree with the issue. Multi-player alleviates the problem quite a bit and we often end up crafting a temporary chest to stack all of our loot during runs. Not only would it be comfortable having more slots but I have been advocating for 3 tiers of backpacks for quite a while. Would make it thrilling upgrading from a basic satchel to a backpack and then a military backpack or something along those lines. Basically a convenience issue becoming a feature.

I'm in software development myself and quite honestly Vapid Actions you should just take a breather and realise the environment TFP's employees work in is the one you wish you were employed in. The worst for everyone is when deadlines are arbitrarily set by some executive who's out of touch with what is going down behind the curtain. Pretty sure TFP's employees are just fine with the "it would be nice if it was released by Halloween but don't stress it" mindset. I wish I had the financial and hierarchical freedom to just finetune every product I work on until I'm happy with the result. You and I both know release dates are either set because there's a tight budget (contract with a client, for example) or because there's pressure coming down for whatever regulatory/monetary reason. They don't seem to have either and that is pretty nice in my book. Also the backlash from a pedantic minority trying to teach them the ropes is probably easier to deal with than a community outlash if the released product is totally unplayable. That being said, release the kraken!

The problem is that I feel that has been the case for a while now. I'm not sure I remember the complete change list of A18, but for sure A19 was already more of a polish then an addition of core gameplay aspects. I fully understand we're at a time where the product is mostly 'done' and we're getting into a shipping state. But bandits to only name them have been postponed for years now, and honestly if you have played consistently it's getting quite redundant at this point. I know you can just 'have some time off' and 'skip alphas' but I've mostly skipped A19 already and I'm kinda disappointed that the only feature I'm truly happy about in A20 is what A19 should have shipped in the first place (tiered biomes). Oh well, maybe I might just love it anyways.

While I don't really mind the 1+ year dev cycle, I can't exactly say that the content has me absolutely stoked. Vehicle mods are a nice plus but don't add much to gameplay, RWG and other HD assets are cool and all but it's really eye candy and I don't play the game for its graphics. Pipe weapons are going to be a week 1 thing so it doesn't add to the end game experience. Happy about the biome game stages as A19 was way too linear for my taste, and I'll finally have a reason to gear up to face snow/desert and its dangers. Regarding POIs well... it's never bad to have more of them but I'd rather have more reasons to loot than more places to find the same old stuff. Will play for sure but I can't help but feel like the past 2+ years have been lacking in terms of pure content for seasoned players.

We got the message, A20 is now in feature lock and each wooden plank is one of them, once all pallets are back together it's getting shipped !