[This is the kind of point of view that makes me go facepalm about some reviewers.]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

"you will notice more ... shotgun parts appearing in the world".

 

This is quite a clear statement of parts appearing more often, while nothing has been said about crafting being made harder. Naturally we have to guess about the end-result, but how idiotic would it be to make parts drop more often but then invalidate this change by making crafting more difficult again?

 

 

 

That's why I'm scratching my head about the water change: If water is made into a much more scarce resource this also means that player-crafted glue and duct tape will be a very limited resource. So if they wanted me to be able to craft my Q1-Q5 wooden bow myself I would have to have 25 jars of water to spare to make the glue and duct tape in that recipe.

So either water surival will not be such a big issue (since you have water to spare for crafting) or crafting will have to take a backseat again, since the immediate surival needs are the more pressing matter.

 

So increased drop rates for glue and duct tape or lowered amounts of these items in the crafting recipes could still be needed to make the magazine/crafting and water change work out.

[Wondering Horde Oddity, maybe?]

I think it's normal behaviour if the wandering zombies haven't spotted you and they just head towards a random spot near your position.

 

However I had also cases where I was on top of my base where I saw random hordes change direction towards my base ( that was with feral sense on day & night), but when I jumped down to combat them, quite a few passed by right next to me and gave a block close to my base entrance some whacks. Only after a few hits they retargeted to me and actually attacked me as a player instead of the base.

So my impression is, that zombies in A20 hold on to a once chosen target for quite a bit longer than in previous Alphas.

[I loaded my exploding crossbow bolt and said, "Go ahead make my day." BAM! Why is my hit points falling?]

Had something very similar happening, when I thought it would be a good idea to keep looting a wasteland POI past 22:00, because what could possibly go wrong. right? 😉

 

Well, this decision resulted in a bonus horde night out in the streets in front of the POI, with me firing explosive bolts at a horde-sized glowing and screeching ball of zombies chasing me. While kiting them a cop managed to time his spit just right to hit the bolt the moment I fired it - took me down to single digits HP - fortunately I had my flying Lydia with me to patch me up imediately, otherwise probably this would have been the end of me.

Lesson learned: next time bring the rocket launcher 😜

 

[I Finally Tried the Drone]

On 6/24/2022 at 5:21 PM, Rotor said:

 

 

 

BTW, quick question, is each items probability rolled every time or in the Genesis the RnGeezus saz "Thou shalt not find wheels this palythrough"?

 

The quick answer would be : Probably both 😉

 

The more detailed one:

When the game tries to fill a loot container with items it is done the moment you open it. It calls the RNG several times for a random number and depending on the range this number falls in, a certain item from the loot list is chosen. Typically the RNG generates random number between 0 and 1 and the range for items is calculated from the container loot list. So for example if the range for wheels in a Pass'N'Gas crate is 0.47 - 0.5 and you roll a 0.4833 - you get a wheel in that crate.

 

Regarding your destiny in the book of Genesis:

The 7DTD RNG seems to be using an initial seed that is based on the world seed - that means all numbers that the generator will generate can be calculated / predicted.

So indeed your fate is already fixed at world creation - but the good thing is that you don't know yet what will happen. Also as a player you also have the freedom to perform random actions (do I loot this container first or the other one?) and so change your fate. 😉

[I Finally Tried the Drone]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

There is no goal to ensure that you can craft items at a better quality than you can find them or buy them. It just so happens that for some things— particularly what you perk into, you often can craft at a better level than you can loot in A21 than happens now. 
 

But if you play in a way that jacks up your Lootstage such as going to the wasteland straight off then you probably will find more stuff at a higher tier than you can currently craft. There is no mechanism in place to increase magazines to keep your crafting abilities always ahead of your looting stage.

 

I think the question that I'm trying to ask is: In which biome does crafting your own gear become obsolete, because the item quality you loot - even while focusing on magazines - does surpass the quality that you can craft?

 

I would be okay, if living in the wasteland also means it' s also a no-crafting playthrough , but if I decided to live in the winter or dessert biome for a playthrough, it would be disappointing if this also automatically means that crafting your own gear isn't worthwhile.

 

So I think that getting the balance between the quality of found loot and the players crafting potential right seems important with the new system. Ideally this would then allow crafting to be a meaningful part of the gameplay for more than just the easiest biome and the beginning of the game.

 

Maybe playtesting a dessert/winter biome only world could give some insights where the break-even point of looting and crafting actually occurrs?

Gonna give it a try, as soon as I get the chance to do so 😀

 

 

 

[I Finally Tried the Drone]

10 hours ago, Roland said:

There are 23 different skill ladders to climb and the game does not manage things to make sure you climb them all at an even rate. That would be a game on rails for sure. You will speed up some and crawl up others and steadily progress in others and that mix will be different each game and you will still be able to randomly find a lucky item early on.

 

I've restarted about five times now since the new system has been in place and every play has felt different and what I could craft vs what I was able to find and use never felt like a bland retreading along the same simple path just like the last restart and the restart before that. 

 

I've recently wondered how the different loot bonuses in the 4 diffent biomes play into this new crafting progression.

If the goal is to keep the crafting progression always slightly ahead of the quality of items that you loot, will this be only true for the forrest biome or will this apply to looting in the snow or wasteland as well?

 

If this applies to all biomes, does that mean that you find magazines more often  and in larger stack sizes in the more difficult biomes?

[I am naming my trader Joel's: Joel, William, Billy, PianoMan, what's next? I have five]

If any of them are in the burnt biomes you could go with

 

Harry Truman

Doris Day

Red China

Johnnie Ray

...

 

😉

[Any way to hook up 2 switches to a generator\door?]

There's a thing called signal passthrough that I know works for powered doors with two motion sensors - one on each side of the door. I guess this would also work with two switches, though i haven't tried it and can't say for sure.

 

So wiring would be like:

 

Generator -> Motion Sensor 1 -> Motion Sensor 2 -> Powered Door

 

and if either motion sensor sees you the door will open.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

4 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

Let me rephrase that.  Magazine stores will be hot targets as well....😆

 

So all the paper we have been looting so far was actually printed, but we just haven't been smart enough yet to decipher it? 😉

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

32 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@BenZ0 You need to put skillpoints in the weapon skill to find more magazines for it. That´s the limiting factor here. I need to be a jack of all trades to provide everyone magazines who doesn´t enjoy fighting and looting. Wich means i can´t play the way i like to play anymore. No matter how you do it, someone has to take the bad pill and do things he doesn´t like to.

 

And no you can´t make it right for everyone, but taking away the freedom of choice for how i wanna play a game is simply bad game design imo.

 

From what I understood, they said that the magazines will also be available from the traders as quest rewards and offer them for sale. For their trading inventory, I would asume, that all magazines are equally likely to appear for sale.

So you could still do your looting / questing / fighting and then after visiting the trader, buy some magazines for your friends skills from the excess dukes you made. Probably the leveling for your friends at home base won't be as fast, but they could still get to the point of leveling their own specialization's crafting skill over time.

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

We try to extend a broad reach across as many demographics as we can so that the game has wide appeal but Cursed People aren’t really our target market.

 

I think you underestimate your power 😉 My guess ist, that just changing the line 'rng = new Random(WorldSeed);' to something more random, could actually lift the curse for those that are doomed to repeat the same unlucky dice rolls session after session. 😀

 

Otherwise I like the sound of the new crafting progression - it seems to me that it would create a better pacing for the progression and make it more of a steady in-game process than a willfull player decision. I also like the fact that the tool parts will be more usefull due to the change to make their drop probabilites - it always bothered me with the old system that I ended up with a chest of tool parts that remained mostly unused.

Looking forward to test the new system in A21.