Roland
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Posts posted by Roland
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On 6/17/2023 at 8:43 AM, boban said:
as fighting zombies head on seem to be current intended play style.
It's not. The intended play style is to have a variety of experiences. In most POIs you can still do most rooms stealthy-- especially if you clear them at night and if there are no light sources shining on you. But the devs do intend for there to be jump scares and they do intend for you to fight head-on more often than not in the final loot room.
What I don't understand is the sentiment that is often posted that if you can't stealth 100% then it might as well be removed from the game. That's just ridiculous. I enjoy stealth gameplay and I get plenty of it every playthrough but there are also times when it is a head-on fight. The game isn't a dedicated stealth game just like it isn't a dedicated survival game or a dedicated crafting game or a dedicated RPG. It combines elements of many different genres.
The character build is Agility not stealth. There are some perks that help with stealth and that often require agility in order to run and hide and get into shadows in order to restealth after zombies have spawned from a trigger. It is true that in previous more rudimentary versions, you often could 100% a POI by killing every enemy while it was sleeping but that was never the intended design. But that doesn't mean the intended design is to 100% POIs by direct guns blazing head-on action either.
If the OP and others feel like stealth perks are not worth taking as part of the Agility build then don't take them. But there are still plenty of people who are happy to mix things up and stealth through a great many portions of most POIs and also scramble to fight off ambushes and also to wake everything up and kite them outside and kill them, and also chop through walls and locked doors rather than follow the defined path, etc etc.
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15 hours ago, RipClaw said:
And there is already a mod for those who want to have it. Unless there is a huge run on this mod, I assume that the desire for item degradation among the player base is not that big.
I can pretty much guarantee that if item degradation is ever added to this game it would only be as an option that players who want it can enable. Maybe TFP will do it from the start for their next game but this one is almost done and they already had it implemented at one point and intentionally chose to cut it. Finally, as you point out, it is a majorly divisive feature. I won't say which side is the majority but let's pretend it is roughly 50-50 but also very polarizing about how people feel about it. There's not much "meh" regarding it. It tends to be either love or hate and that's risky to add when your game is sitting in the top 10 every weekend and courting 100k players for the first time ever-- and degradation isn't part of the game.
Degradation is better as an official option or an unofficial mod, imo.
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I actually just finished my degree in International Diplomacy. My thesis was on how Poutine maintains the peace on the USA northern border. You may refer to me henceforth as Doctor Roland or Professor Roland.
Traders still have development work to be done on them and I have no doubt we will hear forum rants in the future about why traders were overhauled again when nobody asked for that to happen and that the changes erased whole swaths of the community's preferred playstyles....
If there's one thing you can bank on it is the livid reaction of somebody to any change. (Trust me, I'm a doctor!)
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14 hours ago, KennyLives said:
I don't know what is wrong with TFP. Why every next update has to prolong progression by another 100%? Why they can't just add more stuff to the endgame? We played for like 30 days and I can't even build a proper base, because I can't make a generator, because I can't find 25 magazines anywhere.
The game is all about getting progressively stronger over time. If you don’t like the progression journey and want to get right to electricity and a “proper base” then enable the creative menu and take 50 of those magazines. One of the reasons for the magazine design was to extend progression which is why the very first major adjustment they made for stable was to reduce magazine generosity because the progression was happening too fast. Your desire for faster progression to the good stuff goes completely against the plans of the developers.
Also, they won’t be adding expansionary content to the endgame until after the base game goes gold.
14 hours ago, KennyLives said:What if I get bored of one type of weapon? Now I have to pack my points into maces PLUS another perk to use less stamina on maces? Stupid.
You worded this weirdly. I think that what you mean is that you don’t like that you have to actually perk into each individual weapon to get stamina reduction for those weapons. You liked a single perk that globally affected all melee weapons and tools. Is that correct?It’s not stupid. It’s just more of an emphasis in specializing which is a legit philosophy in RPGs. And what’s wrong with spending those extra points in a different weapon? You get a lot of nice bonuses in addition to stamina reduction.
Finally, a purple tier steel mace is fun and satisfying whether or not it is perked or unperked. By time you get bored of your primary melee weapon you have a lot more stamina to spend and the weapon cuts down enemies faster. If you were happy before using unperked weapons then the stamina use can’t really be that big of a factor unless you are trying to power attack all the time.
14 hours ago, KennyLives said:You removed jars because you added a water collector? Another stupid idea. What if I don't want to make a base and I just want to travel all the time?
I suppose you are simply advocating for hypothetical nomads since you already stated you like to build “proper bases” as soon as possible…Nomad play is still viable if you actually care about that. Nomad play isn’t just about traveling around looking at trees and bushes. You loot and clear POIs as you explore and keep only the essential supplies you need. You hole up at night in a safe spot and move on. You will find plenty of water and vitamins to keep yourself hydrated. You can still make a few dew collectors and use your claim block to pick them up again when you move on. If you stay in a city for a few days with 3 collectors you could have a stash of 20-27 water by time you decide to move on down the road.
It’s perfectly fine that you don’t like these particular changes but they aren’t stupid changes, they don’t make nomad play impossible, they emphasize specializing in your character build, and yes, they prolong the progression because that is a design goal for the vanilla game. Thanks for your thoughts. You aren’t alone and I’m sure the devs are taking note.
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3 hours ago, faatal said:
I am not sure how many places in code/xml would need to change to just get a stub.
Just make the twitch integration “confetti” a top menu option for anyone who doesn’t want gore for whatever reason.3 -
I craft when I have the materials even if I'm close to the next quality tier. I don't craft every tier but probably every other or maybe every third tier so it doesn't really matter to me if I craft an orange just before I find the mags for yellow. I'll just stay on orange until green. I could wait until I find that one last mag for yellow but then I'd stay on yellow anyway until blue. The main thing I don't do is craft gear to try and hit each and every quality step. There's no need since we don't remain at any one quality level for very long anyway.
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This is a test server for TFP and they stated that they need people logging on and logging off. Coming and going and goofing around a bit doing different things on the server but logging in and logging out. They aren't testing PvP so it is irrelevant to this particular server. It began with PvP enabled but it wasn't set up to be a PvP server.
If you want to really help then the best thing to do is to log into the server and give a little rant about it not being PvP and then log out instead of giving your rants here. There has already been one warning given by an administrator and this is the second warning.
No more talk in this thread about PvP.
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I don't think we will know whether mods or popularity of mods is an actual indication of anything until the majority of the playerbase is participating in those things. Right now players who play mods are a minority faction of the player base and players who author mods are a smaller minority and players who author overhaul mods are extremely tiny. If there was no barrier at all to modding or playing mods so that everyone could do it we would likely have so many variants on the default version so as to see there really is no consensus at all about "fixing" anything.
Options are a good place to look for "voting". If 95% of the playerbase always adjusts their options to play 75% loot or less then that is a powerful vote that something is wrong with the loot balance. If 95% of the playerbase always enables feral sense every time they play then that is a strong vote to the devs for what the default version should be. Options are easy for everyone to participate in.
Just because a mod is popular among those who play mods doesn't make it a strong vote that the default version of the game needs to be changed in that direction. I also don't know at what point the devs would want to change a popular options to just being the default version of the game. If 90% 80% 70% of the playerbase always defaults to that option? What is the cut off point where that option would be viewed as a "fix" for the current default version? And if it is tough to know for such a clearcut action that is universally accessible like enabling an option then how much tougher is it to determine that based on authoring or playing a mod?
In the example brought up in this thread, item degradation is a very polarizing idea. I'm all for it but others would see it as breaking the game instead of fixing the game. If TFP ever adds an option for item degradation it would be interesting to see what percentage of the player base actually votes that the lack of it currently is something that is broken and needs fixing.
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I went on for a bit. Navezgane is a lot tougher to get started than RWG. Sheesh...
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Gammy is such a PvG gamer....
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3 minutes ago, Kalex said:
We always were interacting with the zombies. It's gone from us looking forward to blood moons to dreading them to players asking if it is possible to turn the blood moons off completely. These aren't newbie players either. The least experienced still has hundreds of hours in and the most experienced has thousands of hours in and has been playing since Alpha 2.
You can tell them that not only is it possible but it has been for years. Top Menu option: Turn off Bloodmoon and/or extend the time between them so they happen less frequently.
The fact that some players look forward to them and others dread them and yes that some have shifted from looking forward to them to dreading them is exactly why the option exists. 7 Days to die existed for years before the bloodmoon event was added and can exist now for anyone who desires it without a bloodmoon event. I don't even know why this is a topic of discussion when the option to modify their significance in the game has been in play for ages.
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2 hours ago, Scyris said:
TFP just feels like they got no interest in making it more to me
How can one person be told something as many times as you and you still just can't allow it to penetrate into your understanding?
I will try one more time. You are correct that TFP is not interested in making the game more with expansionary updates at this time. All updates are developmental and so involve polishing and reworking the existing base game to get it to the gold version they want to ship. Period.
Now deal with it. Stop wondering about how it seems like they don't want to add more expansion to their game. I just told you they don't. There it is. No more speculation is needed.
Go play Alpha 16 and be content.
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1 hour ago, meganoth said:
When I said that, they were more distinctive. Iterations happen behind closed doors and as many have seen with the progress of this game as a whole, sometimes the rudimentary basic version ends up being more distinctive from other things before it is polished and developed up. It's the double-edged sword of talking about stuff months before an update is released. The other quest type was postponed until A22 so all there is for A21 is the current "Infestation Clear" quest which originally was simply called "Infestation".
The problem with going back a year in a dynamically changing game is that information from then is outdated for the current state. Go back far enough and you'll read posts from me describing the new LBD and then look at A22 b324 and wonder why Roland is spreading misinformation.... 😜
But at least those problems will be solved for me going forward as I won't be playing A22 until everyone else does so you won't be getting any status reports or play impressions from me this time around.
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1 hour ago, Vampirenostra said:
And the beginning of this game was - Minecraft like zombie shooter with learn by doing strategy...
Nice attempt at history rewrite. The beginning of this game had nothing at all to do with learn by doing. Learn by doing didn't show up until Alpha 11 and that was in its most basic rudimentary form. It reached it's height in Alpha 14 and then began to decline when crafting was removed from it in Alpha 15 and then further de-emphasized in A16 when skillpoints were added and then completely gone by A17.
So LBD was in only 5 out of 21 alphas and right in the middle of the development arc-- not the beginning.
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1 hour ago, Aldranon said:
Once the bear rug at Joel's place is craft able, I'd say 7D2D went Gold!
You of all people want a bear rug?!? Next you’ll be asking for a deflated blimp to drape across your wall. Oh the betrayal…2 -
14 hours ago, theFlu said:
Ye, no offense intended; not that I think you took any. I do understand your position and disposition, I was kinda just stating the obvious that anyone can be wrong, even convincingly so
Sure. And this is why it is valuable to get thousands of players playing and why balancing still needs to happen even though the update took a year and a half to happen. I’m open to having been convincingly wrong…The problem is in the experience of the individual. The boost might be overwhelmingly obvious after thousands of die rolls but if they nerf it then there will be those individuals who have bad luck and never get the magazines they need.
For a fun game is it better to err on the side of generosity or stinginess when it comes to random chance? With generosity comes the greater chance that efficient and lucky players will rocket up the ladder while unlucky and inefficient players will still have fun because they are finding what they need albeit slowly.
With stinginess, lucky and efficient players will be slowed which will be fun for some but annoying for others while the unlucky and inefficient players are completely stuck.
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On 7/8/2023 at 6:52 AM, theFlu said:
Your first mistake was taking Trolland seriously..
He's always confident and optimistic, and enjoys a proximity to the dev team, so when he's off, he's just convincingly off.
All I can do is give my own experience and when I played there were times when I felt like the boost wasn’t doing anything and then other times where it did seem to be present. I never felt like the only books I was finding were the ones I was boosted in and so my assessment from my own experience was that the boost wasn’t overpowering.
My fear was that people would read about this boost for months leading up to playing and have expectations that didn’t match with what they experienced. I’ve read both kinds of feedback from players by the way- that the progression is too fast because the boost is too powerful and from others that the boost seems nonexistent.
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1 hour ago, ZehMatt said:
The feedback of users should be treated as a valuable input and not something to mock, you may disagree with what is being said but this is not the way to go about it, in my honest opinion.
It can be mocked a little bit and that’s all this is and much tamer than a lot of the mocking of the devs and this change by some who are against it. One funny meme doesn’t constitute not treating feedback as valuable. Sorry if the joke offended.0 -
5 hours ago, theFlu said:
Never have I ever scrapped an item to craft a worse version of the same thing. I don't think. Could I do it? Yeah, I know I could, I've crafted "roughly equal" main things my whole A21-SP experience, and none of the things I've done in game have required excessive cheese yet.
The reason for doing such a thing would be to test out the idea that the trader only gives parts. If you wanted to actually playtest that idea then you would scrap any weapons received from the trader to simulate getting parts instead and then craft the best you could.
So technically it is silly to scrap a better weapon for a worse weapon if you are playing the game the way it is presented but if you are pretending that traders don't give weapons to test out an idea then it makes perfect sense.
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20 minutes ago, theFlu said:
"Cannot be stopped" Well, the crafting could keep up along the questing rush via the questing rush, like giving books as reward and by looting the quest POIs for more books and the needed mats.. wait, that seems to be the current design, just mildly out of balance?
Sure, that solves part of the problem and I also made the suggestion that the traders only deal in parts and mats or low quality gear to which someone else replied that if the trader never has anything good as rewards then they become pointless so there are definitely other perspectives on what makes the traders fun to play with.
In addition, they just nerfed the book rewards by making them less frequently offered and fewer mags per bundle and that works against keeping crafting ahead as did their mailbox nerf. So there seems to be other things they are trying to balance besides just making it so people who want to craft everything are able to do so no matter how they choose to play.
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8 minutes ago, AtomicUs5000 said:
I thought it was your point that adding a limit to quests was something the devs should not be bothered with and to restrain yourself from quests instead. I'm saying that adding a quest limit may not be the best idea, but it is at least a solution.
My point is that currently player choice is a large governing factor on whether looting and rewards outpace crafting. Sure, there is some balancing that still needs to be done but to guarantee that crafting stays ahead it will require new rules and limits.
Since these rules and limits would push the game into the way I already choose to play, it isn’t going to affect me but it will affect others.
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14 hours ago, AtomicUs5000 said:
I just don't agree with this.
Zombies were made to dig again even though a small subset of players lacked the restraint to not bury themselves.
LBD was removed because a small subset of players could not restrain themselves from doing mundane tasks to level up.
Vultures attack vehicles and vehicles take damage from zombies because a small subset of players could not restrain themselves from using them to avoid the horde.
There are probably dozens of things to add to this list... it would probably be easier to list the things that don't belong to it.
Then why did you just make my point for me? Putting a limit on quests and barriers to the tougher biomes is exactly in line with those examples and is likely what TFP will do if they feel that players are going to ruin the balance by questing too frequently or rushing into higher Lootstage areas with abandon.
The devs want there to be better loot in the wasteland and better rewards for higher tier quests. So the fact that anyone can get better loot than they can craft by rushing the quests and rushing to the wasteland will always be an option that cannot be stopped except by forcing limits to end those options that keep resulting in people being angry that they find/receive better loot than they can craft.
Lethal heat, cold, and radiation are all ways to keep players in the forest until they obtain the needed gear to open those gates. “Sorry, but I have no more jobs available today” is a way to slow players down from progressing up the quest tiers. Some people will appreciate those changes but some will see them as thinly veiled attacks on the sandbox nature of the game.
I’m fine with whatever but I hope the people who do rush the quests and exploit the world Lootstage bonuses and who take trader and looting perks and then complain that they always get better stuff than they can craft understand what they are asking for: Less sandbox and more rules.
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On 7/4/2023 at 12:53 AM, Gazz said:
It's rather the magnum/vulture that have no real niche in the game and were added purely for coolness, bloating the attribute even more. =P
We just need a wrist rocket added so we can have:
Vulture vs Wrist Rocket is coolness vs nerdy.
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9 hours ago, theFlu said:
I know, you Mod the game to fix the issue. You can do that, more power to you; but you're telling people to play vanilla that way, instead of asking for fixes to vanilla... why?
I can think of a few reasons:
1) The job of asking for fixes to vanilla is already being done by several other vocal people.
2) Playing a "fix" voluntarily often gives people more perspective about that change than simply talking about it.
3) It's a fun challenge to play the game in alternative ways and if you can do it voluntarily without actually needing to mod it. there is a lot less effort and learning involved.
4) You can play a "fix" voluntarily while waiting for the "fix" to be implemented officially.
5) A normal player suggesting voluntary "fixes" to vanilla in no way threatens or hurts the chances that the devs will "fix" vanilla themselves so why not?
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Which New A-21 Mission POI's are Overly Difficult for Their Level.
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Roland (see edit history)
There are a few tier-one POIs that have the player face off with a dog. That is almost certain death if you aren't ready for it. I think one is a bar that once clear the inside you step outside into a side yard and there is a dog and another is a house and the dog is in the bathroom. There was one more but I couldn't be sure it didn't just come in from outside like a dog wandering horde might have spawned while I was in the quest.
That one is tough but it is also marked Tier 5 and there has been a lot of feedback that the previous T5 pois while being long were not particularly challenging so if they did one new one that is particularly hard and all about triggered ambushes and parkour battling-- at least it is marked as "most difficult".