Roland
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Posts posted by Roland
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It should also be noted that it depends where your quest is. I received a clear quest in the downtown area of a city and ended up running out of ammo because I couldn't keep up with the respawn rate and with feral sense on I was drawing zombie after zombie after me. After awhile it became almost impossible figuring out which zombie in the huge crowd was the red dot I needed to kill and because I could only use melee it became the most challenging Tier 2 clear quest I ever did....but fun.
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10 minutes ago, Matt115 said:
@Roland you mean by horror scary ? If yes this change a lot because for me game with horror setting don't have to be scare to be good- frankestein new army , nza or dying light are for me good example about that
Sounds to me like "horror" is going to be nailed down and quantified about as well as "fun" has been in these forums.
Uh....Don't tell me how to have horror in my own game....
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12 minutes ago, Boidster said:
I have a Hotmail account?
It is listed as your registration email for our forum...lol
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1 hour ago, PoloPoPo said:
"Fear of unknown", as meganoth called it, is a pretty good definition of horror I think. The more you play the more you know the less is unknown and therefore the horror gets less and less as well. No music, weather effects or whatever can compensate that.
I feel this sense of horror and fear whenever a POI requires that I drop down through a hole into a room below without being able to see what enemies are there. That horror is much greater during the first week than it is later once I have better weapons and armor because during the first week I really don't know if jumping into that room will be my death or not. Later I am pretty certain I can survive whatever might be in that room so there is not much fear.
I will say that just the other day I was in the wasteland and I walked out of a POI I had just finished and I heard a really loud wind noise and it totally freaked me out. I ran around looking in all directions ready to die and my heart pumping and then realized it was just the wind. Bravo, TFP. I don't expect to be freaked out by that sound going forward but it was a fun moment.
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3 hours ago, Matt115 said:
Well What mean LBD?
Learn by doing. Instead of spending points to improve your skills, they improve incrementally as you perform an action. So craft 20 stone axes and your ability to craft stone axes goes up. Hit rock or ore with a pickaxe 20 times and your skill in mining goes up. That is the type of character progression people refer to as LBD. Like Valheim.
In A11 for the first time we were able to improve the quality of tools and weapons by crafting them. The more we crafted them the higher the quality of those items would be when we crafted them with a random plus or minus modifier. That was the start. From there we had a variety of variations and experimentations. Crafting progression through learn by doing ended after A15 and skill progression through learn by doing ended after A17.
3 hours ago, Matt115 said:in 2016 we get A16. And if i good remember bandits were added too ( as test enemies) so..... 7dtd was almost completed in 2016.
Bandits have been on the "next alpha" menu for years. They have not necessarily been the sign that development is over. They were always just one of the unfinished features people were looking forward to. Since they've repeatedly been punted NOW they have become the sign that the game is almost complete. But back in 2016 there were still other features needing to be completed in addition to bandits. They started the process-- not to finish the game but simply because they felt like it was time. Turns out it was not.So, no, I would not consider Alpha 16 as the almost done version regardless that they experimented with bandits.
3 hours ago, Matt115 said:This video "say" what i mean- this looks like horror game in ps1 or 2 style. and i expected something similiar in future- survival sandbox horror game. now we get... mad max with zombies.
That video of someone creeping around the biomes slowly moving sideways sometimes and looking around at nothing is what you were hoping for? Jeez....go edit the xml and cut zombie populations in half of what they already are and you can have that video right now. All that video proves is that the nostalgic memory of a world full of zombie hordes definitely doesn't apply to Alpha 11...
I read your posts a lot complaining that the horror is gone compared to the past and I really don't get what you're saying and I don't agree at all. I'm sorry that the devs aren't focusing on the things you want but if you are playing the game like Mad Max and you'd rather play it like a spooky silent hill then don't use vehicles and start crouch walking everywhere while turning a lot and looking at the sun through the trees. Turn off distant terrain and up the fog if necessary. I really don't play the game like Mad Max myself and I've moved into the wasteland in my game and I get creeped out by the sound effects all the time. The forest isn't a lot of horror but the wasteland certainly is.
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33 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:
Correction. 8.8 is still in the list. 🙂
Stop shutting me down!!
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15 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:
It was released in late 2013 as Alpha 8.
Also…It was added to Steam Early Access in December of 2013 as Alpha 5. It had previously been available to play from when the Kickstarter ended— August, I believe, by downloading it direct from The Fun Pimps using the Kickstarter code. So some people actually played Alphas 1-4 before it went to Steam. It updated to Alpha 6 before the end of December and then Alphas 7 and 8 were about a month apart in early 2014. From Alpha 9 onward the update cycles grew longer. Alpha 9 is the earliest one still available in the beta opt-in list.
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12 minutes ago, Viktoriusiii said:
It was released in late 2013 as Alpha 8.
So if that game wasn't pumped out in under a year, I think 10 years are a fair estimate... or did I miss something? Pls correct me if so
Sure. Late 2013 + 10 = late 2023We just started 2022 so 10 years is still about 1.5 - 2 years in the future.
No need for estimates Vic. Just add 10 to late 2013 and you’ll quickly surmise we aren’t there yet
But that wasn’t even the crazy part of his post. He said it has been ten years and that is way too long for sweeping changes like LBD. So he was lumping in the LBD change from over 2 years ago with a ten year anniversary that won’t happen for almost 2 years from now.
I call that bad estimating. Show me where I’m wrong.
If he had said “We’re a little over 8 years in development which I believe is too long. When the LBD change was made 2 years ago at the 6 year mark, I believe that was too far in development for such a sweeping change”
I would have had nothing to correct him about. He is completely entitled to his opinion about how long dev time should be and that the LBD change should not have happened. I’ve got no problem with that opinion.
BTW, I fully expect you guys to call it 15 years by time we get to the end of 2023…
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22 minutes ago, RipClaw said:
No, but you shouldn't assume that the players have the same knowledge base as you moderators.
Maybe you should explain to people in more detail what the reasoning behind the changes was and what kind of consideration process preceded it.
Well I do explain it over and over again. I’ve explained that we just finished 8 years of development and we still get people saying 10+ years because it fits better with their complaint that development has been too long.
When I explain early access and alpha and why changes are made, these people don’t thank me for the insider communication. They declare that I’m trying to shut down their opinion.
So if my tone seems like I’m not taking into consideration the perspective of players not in the know, please forgive me. It gets old. I’m not perfect and probably need to reset my patience setting. Tbh, though, it doesn’t really seem to matter to some people. They want to believe that changing LBD was a half-assed lazy and arbitrary change and they are not willing to let go of that belief regardless of evidence or insider insights or anything.
I’ve never told anyone they should just shut up about LBD but I have corrected people on their wrong speculations about why it was changed and how it was changed. Me clarifying the actual history of development is not a judgement statement about LBD itself and whether it should or should not return.
I’ve probably explained why and how farming was changed a dozen times recently and yet it is ignored— often by the same person I explained it to. They will start up another thread spouting the same exact misconceptions that I already cleared up as though I had never posted.
39 minutes ago, RipClaw said:For you it was a 10 year development
LOL… no it wasn’t. That was a joke because it won’t be ten years until August of 2023.
The LBD change was released over 2 years ago which was year 6 of development. Now we have someone arguing against the LBD change because 10 years in is just too late to make sweeping changes.
If I correct the time line I get accused of stifling conversation. Even you latched onto the 10 year comment even thou we are still more than a year and a half from 10 years.
It’s not really that big of a deal to me whether a feature was changed in year 6 or year 10 or year 15. It’s the fudging to cast a more negative light to bolster an argument falsely that I don’t like.
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7 minutes ago, Maharin said:
So... angrily extruded? Like constipation?
I’m an information laxative.
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9 hours ago, RipClaw said:
First of all you, are a moderator. So you get a view behind the curtain that a normal player don't get. We only get the outside perspective.
So should we be silent when we know that a particular post is a faulty guess at developer motives? Why would we want false information to continue and gain traction?Should we just all agree that LBD was changed suddenly at the 10 year development anniversary since it was an outside view and nobody should be shut down?
I think most users are grateful to read insider insights and observations because most users just want the truth. They don’t want to push a narrative that the game has been in development for decades or that the player progression change was done as a sloppy last minute patch on a problem the devs were too incompetent to properly fix and due to them caving in to a small but loud faction of the player base. These are myths that angry players rely upon to bolster their arguments but the context is contrived and fabricated.
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10 hours ago, Survior said:
That's really the most tiresome argument I hear around here to shut down people's opinions. First of all the game was released nearly TEN years ago so instead of "we are going to completely scrap an entire system and redo it" you would think it would be all about refinement and balance at this point.
Second, since the game is in alpha players should be encouraged to speak their minds about changes and purposed changes, not shut down.
You are trying to push a false narrative which is why you feel shut down when the truth is posted and contradicts your narrative.
You say that it has been 10 years in alpha and so a mistake to completely overhaul a system at such a late stage. However the truth is that we just completed year 8 in August and when the changes that you reference were made it was at about year 6. Why not represent the timeline accurately? Because you have an agenda that the game has been too long in alpha and you’re willing to fudge the numbers to bolster your agenda and that drives your opinion.
Players opinions are welcome as long as they have a basis in the true context. As an insider I am going to give a correct accounting of what is going on to diminish the false conjecture and speculation made by those on the outside. Why would anyone want to have their opinion have a basis in false speculations rather than fact?
9 hours ago, RipClaw said:First of all you, are a moderator. So you get a view behind the curtain that a normal player don't get. We only get the outside perspective.
So you want us to be silent when we know that a particular post is a faulty guess at developer motives? Why would you want false information to continue and gain traction?Should we just all agree that LBD was changed suddenly at the 10 year development anniversary since it was an outside view and nobody should be shut down?
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12 hours ago, Survior said:
Well everyone has an opinion I guess. The game is in alpha, players should point out what's wrong with the current system (again, opinions), your advice in essence goes against the very nature of a game in alpha to suit what is your apparent preference for play style.
I don't mind that I don't find a beaker in the first chem lab I hit, I mind that I hit hospitals, chem labs, drug labs, basement meth labs, corporate pharmacy pois and can't find a beaker. You don't care, but a lot of people think this is silly.
My advice is simply a workaround for those interested in getting a solution now while the game is in development. It was not meant as a conversation ender. You can still push for changes you want and while waiting for those changes to occur you can use workarounds like my suggestion or mods to tailor the game to how you like. It’s not an either or scenario to modify how you play and also give feedback for changes you want. As I said, everyone has fun differently and if getting a beaker is critical to having fun for someone it is entirely okay to get one using the creative menu.0 -
11 hours ago, Marinxar said:
In some things, he has a point.
TFP applied a lot of quick fixes, that don't make a lot of sense.
Demolisher
Learn By Doing removal
Farming Plot block
These come to mind now, I am sure there are more, but these changes make no practical sense, but drastically changed the way the game can be played if you play vanilla.
Im not certain what you mean by “quick fix” but none of those three things were quick. The Demolisher was a new boss enemy that was added to create new challenges. It wasn’t added to fix anything. Maybe you don’t like what it does or how it was implemented but it wasn’t something thrown in quick and without thought and planning. There was quite a bit of work involved comparable to any of the new zombie models added to the game.LBD was a process and not an event. LBD was already on the way out in Alpha 15 when they removed LBD crafting. In Alpha 16 they still had LBD skills but they also had skill points that could be earned to purchase perks. Finally in Alpha 17 the LBD skills were removed and everything was purely by purchase. The removal of LBD was a two-year long process. A17 was cooking for 1.5 years behind the scenes during which the current system was developed internally. There was nothing quick about it.
The farming plot went through about three changes internally that you guys never saw before it landed where it is. When the microsplat tech for terrain textures was adopted it necessitated a change to farming. No longer was the farming texture supported in addition to the overall biome texture. They tried a few different ways of doing it that were a compromise between what we have now and what we originally had but finally decided to do what we have now. It was not a quick slapped together thing. People tend to forget how long of a time between major updates there is and think, “In A16 it was this way and then suddenly in A17 it was completely different”
In that case “suddenly” equaled 18 months of development.
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14 hours ago, Survior said:
While there is some argument to made that zero perks doesn't mean skill less, zero in stats is described as various ways of pathetic in every attribute. Every character starts mentally as an oblivious blockhead who is physically fragile, clumsy and weak. With three more ranks of degradation to go before they can be considered average.
There’s a lot more than just “some argument”. There are feats of strength, fortitude, agility, and intellect that our characters can do on day one with zero skill points spent that even the most rugged midwesterner would be hard pressed to match.
While you completely overstated our weakness as zero skill characters, the in-game descriptions hugely overstate them for the sake of humor. There is a huge tongue in a gargantuan cheek in all the text, dialogue, and names and signs throughout the world. You can’t take the humorous descriptions regarding our abilities as the accurate truth in the face of our actual unperked gameplay abilities that are just self-evidently true without any need for “some argument”.
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Even though zero is the starting point it obviously doesn’t reflect zero skills. Our characters have quite a few abilities without spending any points at all. I often don’t spend any points for the first 7 days until after the first blood moon and survive just fine (probably better than I personally would in rl). Once I’ve found some schematics and a few books, I feel like I can choose where to start putting points into the areas RNG dictated.
Point is that your poll doesn’t accurately reflect the game state on Day 1 and you are grossly understating the inherent abilities of our Day 1 characters. There are some weird things like being able to construct pipe weapons but not knowing how to cook bacon and eggs but it is clear we start the game with pretty decent survival skills already in place and then develop more specialist skills and improve what we can already do as we play.
Personally, I like the current method of creating your character as you play much better than creating a character as part of a point spending menu before you play.
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10 hours ago, spud42 said:
i have now done the same POI as a quest level 1 2 3 and 4...a bit more variety would be nice.
I agree that more variety will be nice and that will take time for them to hook up additional POIs for quests. In the meantime you have some control over that by doing quests for different traders instead of only doing quests for one trader. I have three traders in my network currently and they each have a different set of POIs for doing quests.1 -
I wouldn't call acid, beakers, schematics for weapons and tools, and steel parts endgame loot. But I also wouldn't call them basic loot either. I also wouldn't call them essential loot. You make do with what you can find and adapt to your circumstances.
Use the creative menu or beg the server admin if you want things to be deterministic. You can throw out mats to pretend you crafted it or throw out dukes to pretend you bought it. People find all sorts of things fun and what frustrates and bores one person is exactly the thing that challenges and delights someone else. There are currently ways to mitigate the bad luck-- particularly if you are playing single player so use those ways if you aren't having fun and move on.
TFP is constantly working on fine tuning the balance and the rarity of particular items and that will continue.
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9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:
Cave systems: caused issues with "stability" as they could be under stuff and you not know it (even in POIs'). I don't know why but I find that a feature and not an issue
. I'm hoping they come back, or are an option to turn on as I loved finding (falling/driving into) and exploring caves, even when they were empty.
Also vehicles. There is a reason the top speed of the vehicles are where they are at and part of that reason is the calculation speed of rendering the chunk ahead of you as you drive so that you don't end up driving off the edge of the existing world. Cave systems add more complexity and would slow down vehicles even more.
9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:- Zombie looting: People felt it as tedious, and I guess the corpse blocks/timers? ate up processing power or something. Maybe it was the "swapping out" of corpses into corpse blocks? anyway, the corpses stick around for awhile in game... it feels a little weird to not be able to chop/loot them for anything.
Also very much engendering a "meals on wheels" mentality towards zombies. Of course, XP for kills also does this....
9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:- Farming: i heard it was am issue with performance or similar, so it was decided to "condense" the farming into a special block, maybe to target its specialness to that block type. I do wish the farm plot could be "upgraded" like other blocks to nicer looking farm plot blocks by using the old hoe/fertilizer mechanic. At least then you could put them in the ground and it would act mostly the same. And make farming a bit more "work" vs "perk"
The microsplat technology they switched to for the terrain carried with it some limitations. Terrain texture is now forced within a biome. If you place snow in the forest it will transform back to forest terrain texture once you leave and then re-enter the area. Therefore, farmed ground texture was no longer supportable and farming had to be done in containers which is why the switch happened.
9 hours ago, doughphunghus said:- Clothing: oh please yes do NOT remove the existing clothes.
In my opinion they should make the outfit pieces all purely be clothing and make armor be mods that can be inserted "under" the clothing. Then there will still be some customizing and choice for light vs heavy armor independent of the outfit types you are wearing. I can wear a farmer outfit but have heavy armor insterted in the mod slots.
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5 hours ago, Boidster said:
What alpha was that for? Zip it up and send it to me, I'll take a look. If it can be done only with XML I might have a go.
It was mostly xml but as of Alpha 18 (which was the last version it worked for) there was no hook ups in xml for awarding a skillpoint at the end of a timer. You could make skillpoints the reward for doing a quest but not for just surviving to the end of the day. In Alpha 19, I removed a lot of the fluff things I was adding to the mod and just focused in on the 0xp part but for whatever reason, the coding that allowed the skillpoint to be awarded to the player at the end of each day without any deaths was broken for A19 (and A20).
Sent you an email to your hotmail account with the zipped files.
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19 minutes ago, Boidster said:
I'd contribute to the Venmo account of a modder who built such an overhaul after the game goes gold.
I’d turn over all control and credit for my 0XP mod to a boidster with the skill and passion to fix it and improve it….Oxp Boidmod has a nice ring to it!
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22 minutes ago, Pernicious said:
Tangent, but your post was what gave me the idea... you know, it would be funny if this forum has a "search by latest Alpha version feature".
So you know, when they chang the skilling system, we can go back to see what people thought of the old system when it first came out. Get rid of learn by doing? Go back and see the feedback when learn by doing first came out.
I think it'd be very illustrative.
There was no one alpha when LBD came out. It was a process of development that evolved over several alphas. For example, in Alpha 11 there were no skills at all. There was only quality of tools and weapons and as you crafted them they increased in quality with a plus or minus 50 modifier to keep things somewhat variable. That was it. Then in Alpha 12 - 16 there were alterations and additions made. In some alphas you got xp for killing zombies and then they removed that and then brought it back. They tried a few iterations of crafting to get better at crafting (spam crafting) all the way to Alpha 15 when they changed it to only working in a workstation so people were babysitting their workstations and then A16 they removed spam crafting for higher quality completely but still had LBD for a number of skills. After all this experimentation from A11 to A16 with various forms and hybrids of LBD they decided to go with the more Fallout-esque system we have now.
A14 was probably the pinnacle of LBD crafting for better quality tools before it started diminishing and A16 the pinnacle of LBD skills before it was dropped but there really isn't one Alpha you can point to and say "This is where they turned LBD on"
To be honest, the chatter back then was much like it is now. People unhappy with whatever the current system was would come and post and those who liked it would defend it. There has never been 100% consensus by the player base of everyone being happy with the system. When Alpha 11 hit and tools and weapons had quality that was dependent upon how many times you crafted that tool it significantly changed the way the game was played by many people. So we had a lot of people who enjoyed the grind of making 100 stone axes and we had a lot of people who hated it but did it anyway. There were even some who tried their best to just keep playing normally (normally being how they played in Alpha 10 and below) and just let their tool and weapon qualities advance slowly over time even though the temptation to rush the progression was definitely something new in the game.
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It would be more helpful to see the log of the previous session the player logged out of to see what was happening when he logged out. Was he surrounded by zombies getting hit and logged out really fast? That log would tell us more of the story we can't see from only this log.
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39 minutes ago, Krougal said:
There's been a lot of complaining lately about it not being geared for MP and they even admit it isn't their priority.
To clarify: greater than 8 players multiplayer is not their priority. 2-8 player multiplayer is very much something they prioritize and think about and develop to and in all of my 4-player games with my family on our private server we've had a great experience. Please be clear that when you just say "MP" you are talking about 30 players or more on the same server. There is more than just that kind of MP and TFP does have MP gameplay prioritized for up to 8 players at once.
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Armor system - what do you prefer?
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Roland (see edit history)
It is good for us playing with it as player characters.
It is not good for the devs in clothing the bandits. A single layer outfit applied to each bandit will make those models much easier and get us the update much quicker.
It is not good graphically as multilayers clip through each other and cause problems and don't look as good. Everyone appears somewhat....puffy in their clothing and armor and we can't look very epic with muscular/toned body conforming armor if the armor as a top layer must be drawn to cover all clothing types without any clothing parts poking through in places. Its kind of going to be like when super hero movies went from 100% costumes to costumes enhanced by CGI. Heroes in costumes look way better today's movies than they used to. We and the bandits will look way better once this change happens than we have been appearing.
So from our perspective we may not want a change-- especially if we're willing to forgive some visual glitchiness and are jonesing for bandits whatever they look like-- but from a developer's perspective there are two big compelling reasons out of three for making a change especially since they know that players will more likely than not get used to the change and be fine regardless of any nostalgia they feel for the old system.