Roland

I believe that has been fixed in A21. At least I haven’t run into any huge overlaps like the one you mentioned. Even so, that STILL doesn’t negate the fact that you won’t have an auger to use while waiting to find enough magazines to make a Q5. That was the original point—having to go without for most of the game if you couldn’t find the schematic

There is feral as a setting that makes all zombies more sensitive to your presence from a lot further away and then there is feral as a zombie type. "Disabling ferals" does not remove the zombie type from the game. It simply disables that mode so that all zombies have regular sensitivity.

Exactly the kind of tough decisions that make a game good. Scarcity of resources means making a choice to make a Q1 or wait for Q2 or Q3 before doing it. Regardless, you'll have an auger of some kind until you can somehow acquire or craft that Q5. As I said, some people will hate that they are using a Q2 auger for longer than 5 minutes. But it is still an important distinction that you will have an auger of some quality whereas before when there was just one rare schematic drop to find you went completely without.

Sure, its going to be different for each person. My point was that intentionally looting repetitively with the intention of quickly moving up the shotgun magazine ladder (for example) is going to quickly reveal itself as an exercise in futility for most min/maxers and as is their nature they will turn to more effective and speedy methods of acquiring the best shotgun they can get. So I'm not saying that the act of looting itself can't be grindy. I'm saying that going for a specific magazine can't effectively be accomplished through grinding. Most who care about efficiency and effective activities will just naturally abandon that tactic as their means of gaining the specific things they want.

Another important difference is that back then you had to live without an Auger at all until you could find the schematic but long before you get to 100 magazines you will be able to play with augers you crafted yourself that get progressively better until you eventually gain the recipe for a Q5 Auger. Its not the same "all or nothing" feature as before. Now, if a person refuses to craft a Q1-4 auger because they can't stand playing with sub-optimal gear then the result will be pretty close to how it was by their own choice.

I don’t know if this helps or not but in my experience the new system doesn’t feel like a grind at all. A grind requires that you have control over the outcome of an action and through repetition of that action you can determine the outcome you want. So you can grind on a safe with a stone axe because you know by repeating that action you will eventually get into the safe. You can grind skill points by finding the best action that grants xp and then repeating it to rack up the points. You can grind the trader by finding something to sell and repeating the action of getting that item to sell and make money and of course you can grind the quests. It’s all guaranteed. You quickly will realize that there is no way to choose a specific magazine title and grind for that. It’s random and because of that there is no incentive to focus on one magazine to grind it out efficiently to get to the top. Even with your perk bonus you still tend to find a wide range of magazines. You can mitigate that a bit by being selective in which POIs you enter and which loot containers you open but it is still random. You don’t know and can’t control which magazine will be in any crate and you intuitively come to realize the futility of this as you play. (MP will be different as teams can funnel specific titles to their specialists). Now, if you are the type of person who only likes to play with the best gear and can’t stand the inefficiency of lower tier stuff and have always maximized the grinds to get to top gear as quickly as possible, then you probably won’t like the crafting change. BUT chances are that you never crafted your own gear anyway in A20 and so you probably won’t in A21 either. You’ll just grind your Lootstage up quickly and visit biomes with a Lootstage bonus to find the high tier gear as quickly as you can. You’ll grind your quest tiers up as fast as you can to get the top gear rewards as quickly as you can from the trader. Just because you can only craft a yellow pipe shotgun doesn’t mean you can’t still use to full effect a purple auto shotgun you got from a T5 quest reward and that gameplay loop probably feels pretty much the same as A20 and below as far as results go—always getting in loot or trader rewards stuff that is better than you can craft. So in summary, recipe learning is random again like it used to be and can’t really effectively be grinded. You simply make do with what you have which will be a really nostalgic feeling for a lot of old timers. However, if you want the best stuff there is a min/max grind fest option still available to you that hasn’t really changed. Use the trader and quests and grind up your Lootstage and you’ll get your top gear goodies more quickly than those who like a more slow progression and who like to mostly craft their own stuff.

That isn’t a complete list. Once the devs start their dev stream to show A21, there will be some lengthening of that list. Personally, I can’t imagine myself going back to A20. Everything about A21 feels more refined.

He's talking about their souls.

Also agree that clearing a building should be about interacting with the world and not your HUD. Clear the building using good effective searching instead of asking for more blips to appear on the compass. We don't need to make quests practically guaranteed to succeed. The lighted path should just be the way to eventually reach the loot room if followed to the end and not be a crutch to finding every single zombie without fail. I think the simple notification on your HUD that you've found all but the last area is sufficient. Keep searching until that comes up or give up and go home with a failed quest if you'd rather. I'm all for improving the balance of time/risk/ and reward for T5 quests but adding more hand-holding (unless as an option that can be toggled) is not the way to go, imo. If I was in charge I would remove all HUD notifications but make a drone mod that when installed would add them back. Then those who want those HUD helps could have them as an option by crafting/finding them and installing them into a drone and taking their drone with them. Alternatively, there could be a scanner mod that would have the drone seek out and "point" at any zeds within a 15 block radius. That could help you find the missing zeds if you use the tech.

Once you have a lvl 6 steel club you need to stop hoping for a better club no matter where you loot.

Remember that it isn't simply for our pleasure. As professionals and artists, they also want to offer up a technical masterpiece as their finished product.

I'm not against a background color change or a filter category but I think the blocks that have that attribute are simply any that don't fill the entire voxel volume so that water fills in all the visible space not used as well as flows past them. It may be completely intuitive which block shapes will allow water to flow in and through them. Don't mistakenly build your underwater base walls out of bars and arrow slit blocks....

I don't think anyone has claimed the game is done and sound is finalized. Rather than voting for whether it needs to be done, how about everyone simply list the sounds that are unacceptable in your ears as some have already done. Striking metal would be my big desired change.

I’ll come outside in California and beat some pots together to steal a few spawns from you guys.

What was that? I’m sorry but the wind factor way up here is so powerful it makes it hard to hear you way down there gup! Let me drift down a bit to where Laz is and see if he could make out what you were saying….

There is going to be a problem if you don't use the trader and you want explosive bolts for horde night. Period. I can tell you that right now. There may even be a problem if you don't want drinking water be a survival struggle for your entire playthrough. I can also say that choosing to play without traders is a choice that is going to bring certain challenges and limitations. The devs are not obligated to try and balance the game for those who choose to ignore a portion of the game. Their assumption is that players are going to use the elements in the game that are present and if a player chooses to ignore a part of the game then it is to challenge themselves and so any subsequent imbalances that occur would be part of that challenge. It would be like a player resolving not to use any vehicles because they strongly believe that the vehicles in the game are unrealistically easy to craft with the tools and workstations present in the game. So they don't use vehicles but then complain that some quests are 2km away because that is too far to go on foot to make it worth it. And then they complain that the devs are forcing them to use vehicles which goes against their preferred playstyle. I'm 99% certain that those who want to be able to find enough filters to mass produce glue and to progress beyond the hydration struggle but also play without traders are going to have to mod the loot tables to increase the chance of finding filters.

Well, it only exists in my brain as an example of the type of things Joel is thinking of for “legendary” items. But when he starts adding such things I’ll be sure to mention 0l’ Sodbuster!

The problem right now is not that purple tier items are loot only and so that invalidates the blue tier items you crafted. The problem is that purple tier items are so common that you can be entirely kitted out with them. That was the mistake, imo. If you could only get 2-3 pieces of equipment or armor total in a play through of highest tier then everything you crafted would stay relevant and the few things you found would be special items. Legendary items are going to have various tier levels but they are going to have a permanent mod attachment that cannot be removed and that will provide an awesome ability not available in any other way. So, yes, that legendary shovel, Ol’ Sodbuster, might be a yellow tier steel shovel with a non-removable mod that increases attack speed for every clump of grass you destroy with a 10 second window so that you can clear all the grass in an area blindingly fast. Stuff like that and you probably won’t get very many in any particular play through and they won’t be necessarily meant to be the next tier up that you would try and obtain for every weapon, every armor piece, and every tool.

Speculation. We don't know whether the zombies are being sent by the Duke or not. From the interview tonight it seems that the two factions are Noah and the White River Settlement and the Duke and his casino dwelling bandits. The story looks like it will be told and progressed using the quest system. In the original kickstarter, we were told the story would be progressed by finding notes that would lead to new notes. The quest system replacing that first proposal seems like good news and should make for a better story telling device-- not to mention that there would potentially be two stories to experience depending on which faction you decided to follow. It explains where all the empty jars went. One jar for each hair which is why there are none left for the game.

Or to put off for a bit longer the pulling weeds, finishing honeydo's, or completing homework that needs doing in the real world, amirite?

Crossplay is definitely on the roadmap for this game. They plan for the XBOX, Playstation, and PC versions to be able to play with each other on servers. In fact, they have begun the process of developing the networking code to facilitate just that which has caused some growing pains and negative reactions in the PC community as some bugginess has been the result in the Alpha 20 version for playing multiplayer. Their goal is to have these things all sorted out so that everyone can play together regardless of the platform they chose to play the game.

Really great interview. They answered a lot of questions regarding their design philosophy and their goals with the game. A lot of the anger from some people seems to go back to the idea that the community should have a voice in what goes into the game, what gets cut from the game, and what gets changed in the game. The developers were clear that these aspects of game development are not the domain of the community. The community is here to play what is offered and to give their feedback which will help with balancing and adjusting the fun-factor of the features TFP decided to make part of their game. I understand that some may feel that development should operate differently than that model but now that the facts are known straight from Rick, himself, and not just me saying it over and over and over these past years we can have an end to people complaining that they never agreed to a change or that there should be a community poll to decide if a change should occur. That is never going to happen. The community helps through feedback after playing what is offered by the developers. Glimpses and reveals about what is upcoming is not to give the community a chance to change the devs' minds, it is simply to satisfy our curiosity about what is coming and give us time to acclimate how we will adapt to the new meta. Another sore point over the years has been the lack of a public roadmap and they explained why they don't subscribe to that model even though they are fully aware that other game studios do it. That being said they did offer a few core features they see as critical for the full release launch of their game (and shortly afterward) and I have listed those on the first page of this thread. It was disappointing and a surprise to me to hear them say that bandits are not likely to make it into A21. I want to emphasize that it was a surprise to me because up until tonight it was close enough to go either way and it looks like they don't want to put in a partial unfinished version of them that isn't ready and so they are going to be in A22. I know this will cause reactions from the conspiracy theorists who say that bandits are smoke and mirrors and will never be in this game, to the streamer followers who predicted they would not be in A21 and will now gloat that they were always right, to the fans who still believe in bandits and trust that TFP knows best about when they are ready. I'm sure there will be lots of lively discussion on that count. Finally, it was good to see them acknowledge their ongoing preparations for the console version and that they are aware of community desire for some kind of acknowledgement about the failure of the first title perhaps in the form of a discount of the new title by previous owners. They know that the community wants it and are willing to do it if they can get all stakeholders on board and a good methodology for making it happen. It was also good to hear that they are currently working on the console version as they also finish up the PC version. Nobody believes Spring of 2023 for Alpha 22 right? Lotsa knuckle rubs to Rick for saying that....

I've seen this argument made again and again but the reality is that the developers are never going to listen to feedback based upon a partial description of what a new feature in A21 is going to be. It is possible that they will later say "Too late, it's already in and we're not going to change it" but it is also possible that they will take negative feedback and use that to rebalance the feature to make it more fun for everyone. What is definitely not possible is them taking the suggestions of people to adjust or revert it now who've never played with it. They just don't see all these hypothetical fixes to hypothetical problems as being worthy of their time. They want actual data. So while it may be true that they might reject any feedback after the fact because its already done and in, that is really the only window of opportunity that exists. Until that time they debate and consider issues internally on the team. I can say that every concern that people bring up are concerns that have been considered and discussed by the team. So far, nobody has brought up anything that the team never considered. That doesn't mean, though, that the level of importance that they place (on the dew collector footprint for example) will always match the the level of importance that some of the players place on such things and so there will sure to be opportunities for feedback and revisiting certain things. In the end, the final decision rests with the developers. They re-iterated that design philosophy tonight in their interview-- that they appreciate player feedback on balance and fun-factor on implemented features players have actually experienced whereas they retain design decisions for what goes into the game, what gets cut from the game, and what gets changed in the game for themselves. So, if you really think about it, they aren't even asking for our input on things that haven't been released yet which means the community has zero chance of speaking up now to get things cancelled or reverted before its too late. It's already too late once the development team decides a change is going to happen. There won't ever be a community poll for whether something new is going to be added, cut, or changed before the fact. That same philosophy will surely continue into their next projects as well.

November 2022 TFP announces that work is currently being done on performance and optimizations with the console edition in mind Rick says he would like to do a discount program for previous owners of original console version but it will depend on Sony and Microsoft store policies and is something that will involve a lot of stakeholders so no promises as to whether that will happen. Rick states that they are committed to making crossplay a reality though there are a lot of obstacles to be worked through but they will be working with both Sony and Microsoft to make sure their console version is able to handle crossplay between the different consoles and PC. When answering the question about what he is working on, faatal confirms that there is currently a team working on console optimizations and readying the game to work on both PC and consoles. TFP has "console guys" on staff! The newly announced chunk reset timer option came about as a necessity for the new console edition in order to keep the save game files below the limits needed for consoles. Reverting chunks back to their pregenerated state will eliminate tons of save data.

Until legendary gear becomes a thing I don't think there is a chance. If legendary gear makes it into the game (something Joel really wants btw) then there is a chance that T6 could be returned to the crafting progression and the legendary tier becomes the one that is non-craftable.