Gazz
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Posts posted by Gazz
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At this moment we can't have it both ways.
We would like to have certain POI "work" at a higher gamestage so that a shotgun messiah factory would maybe have +100GS and you could find the cool loot in it.
But then you'd have to survive getting there.
At this time it would just be a freebie where the awesome loot is defended by GS 1 enemies. So nope.
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If you don't get hit a lot padded armor is awesome. 😃
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You CAN make them stackable but then you'd have to pay attention to not stack your high QL spear onto a low QL one and it would always dupe all installed mods.
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Man, you're gonna beat us to b17 at this rate!
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Not for a long while.
My "real life" job is keeping me busy as hell so I can barely keep up with my game dev ahh... hobby.
And I know that if I did, I'd start "fixing stuff"... which I really don't have the time for. LOL
Just some days ago there was this report about an overly sneaky cactus which turned into a several hour bug hunt with several code fixes and ferreting out similar cases in the game data.
(also, "Ext3dModel" now listens to the ModelOffset property)
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Ahhh, the joys of cleaning up the game data after an alpha release! =P
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Nah, no time, sorry. Getting frayed on all ends here. LOL
Just doing my duty of taking potshots here.
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Sounds like an ochre jelly.
Be careful, they have 6 hit dice.
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Whatever could be done or might work... Telltale would have to initiate and fund a project to make it happen. That's how this works.
All the "wouldn't it be nice" in the world does not guarantee higher sales and that's what publishers are interested in.
It was already kind of a risky game to begin with. There was no game like it on consoles and if nothing else, you gotta give Telltale credits for having the balls to try something new - which publishers basically never do.
Given the hardware limitations 7DTD will never work well on consoles. It may even be cheaper to rewrite the game specifically for consoles which means much smaller maps and so on. The map/biomes on PC were designed to work well and look good - not to fit into console hardware and Microsony's rules and limitations.
(e.g. a game is not allowed to use all the HDD space it wants even if you were okay with it)
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Pen vs Paper.
The art of making up stuff.
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This thread was billed as a "PVP Mode" and ideas were pitched by you and Gazz to achieve those ends. What the "mode" actually meant in terms of server execution was not really communicated.
Well, that's because it's more about exploring ideas and concepts. =)
A separate PVP mode (pretty much what we have now) can be adjusted more easily but means developing 2 branches which is always extra work.
PVE + PVP on the same server with the ruleset to make that possible is the other option. Call it soft PVP or training wheels - but it would be a way for hardcore PVE players to dabble in PVP because otherwise you really have no chance on getting them interested in PVP because what is efficient play for some is griefing and douchebaggery in their eyes.
IMO the server browser needs to be a better way to display a server description. Right now you have space for like 20 words to do that.
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Where does this notion come from that all of this would be hardcoded caps?
Have claim stone size and modifiers (as far as they work =) not been configurable?
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I was thinking that too... but then how to you stop the "younger" players from griefing the older players? Maybe have them only raidable by players that are also raidable themselves?
Raid them with what? Stone axes and no mining skill? =)
Just an idea. No idea on the exact scaling.
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Claim blocks could even be structured so that once it "grows" past a certain level the kid gloves come off and the base becomes raidable on a PVP server.
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As it stands i can't say enough good about the game. Hopefully TFP will make good improvements. Please don't ruin my favorite game. I could list for you all the great games ruined by listening to poor players who can't figure it out. Thanks.
For the hardcore PVP player that may be fine and dandy but if TFP want to promote open world / sandbox / PVP then there needs to be a way for the somewhat more softcore to test the waters. =)
Bicycles were not ruined forever by the invention of the training wheels.
There are no weekly team meetings on how to best ruin the game. (these are all private meetings)
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But I don't know where a lot of these new ideas and "problems" derived from (a separate PVP mode, invulnerable claims, perk claims, protecting griefers etc). Many of these problems aren't problems to begin with that have been vocalized by PVP players.
Very likely from "the type of players that has stuck around and still plays the game". =)
You know that the game has a large PVE following, right? How do you get them interested in PVP at all when all they hear are horror stories about what is clearly "griefing" in their world?
You may consider a lot of those issues "training wheels" but there is a reason why training wheels exist.
The "hardcore PVP player" can not be the only consideration when thinking about PVE/PVP changes. You're not that special.
And when some people blow a gasket hearing about "invulnerable claim stones" - they should consider who is saying these things.
Developers often look at edge cases first because when you get those working, the middle ground balancing pretty much falls into place.
Also, are invulnerable claim stones and "PVE + PVP on the same server" such a horrible idea?
If you want to promote PVP then you have to allow players to "just dip their toe in" without asking them to completely go out of their comfort zone.
Sure, that leads to other well-known forms of griefing like an "invulnerable" PVE player MMO-training a PVP player. But you're so hardcore, what's the worst that could happen? =P
Singular claim stones open up sooooo many possibilities. Imagine a "PVP zone" extending around your PVP base.
Every PVE player who enters becomes a target after x seconds. You could actually have PVE players parttake in "raids"!
(they may still not be able to attack blocks because that would be pretty one-sided =)
Perfectly doable with "singular but more powerful claim stones". When I say more powerful I'm not talking about the block durability modifier. That's just one number.
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That's exactly why I hate PvP in survival games, it turns people into huge A-holes: They'll kill a stuffless dude just for fun, they'll raid you AND completely turn your building into a pile of destroyed stone for fun, the map will look like a real warzone: holes everywhere, sometimes the richest group will destroy every important loot containers to make sure no one can hurt them, if people can't have something, they'll destroy it
That's the downside of an actually persistent world.
If you blow up something it stays blown up.
All the PVP-centric survival games (Ark, Conan, Rust...) have static maps and everything respawns.
The Biggest ♥♥♥♥ Clan may still block resource spawns with pillar/foundation spam to make sure everyone else remains no more than a moving target. I guess there's not much difference after all. =)
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I can agree with a lot of that, too.
The newbie zone... that would take a lot of design and content to pull off so I doubt that will make it.
Somewhat scaling back all that progression is what I've been saying all along. To which degree? Hard to tell.
Individual weapon parts... right now add zero gameplay value or choice.
There is no choice between a QL 350 receiver and a QL 400 receiver. You use the 400 and workbench-combine the 300. Always.
I could dump all the parts and make weapons drop as functional items with a QL and nothing would change.
Until we get weapon parts with different abilities or bonus features at the same QL, the parts system does zip.
With a more powerful claimstone / claim interface and the "whole prefab placement" feature the game could know which blocks were destroyed and repairs could be performed by NPC hammering away at virtual blocks until all blocks have been restored... while repair supplies last.
Or you "repair" the claim stone and block after block is put back into your walls - so you don't have to work with scaffolding up and down, don't have to carefully rotate and align blocks... that sort of thing. Heavy damage would still take longer to repair and that's what matters from a balancing POV.
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If there is one claim block. I (and others) will remove it and destroy the entire base every time. At end game, I often don't care what the loot is inside the base. I'm raiding it to disable my enemy.
By being able to craft them and protecting your base appropriately, it becomes unfeasible to find them all. This prevents raiders from dismantling the base. It also makes it a very costly exercise to try and search for hidden chests. This provides some event of survivability to your loot/resources in the event you get raided.
Yah, but there's the rub.
The current workaround of spamming claimstones everywhere is just that.
By making it a single claimstone we have all the options for making it very powerful.
No finished design - just throwing some ideas around...
- The claimstone itself is invulnerable. No one can destroy it or undermine it to make it fall.
(it would be an entity and not really a part of the "block" system) - The damage multiplier is dynamic.
If you destroy x% of a fortification the protection multiplier goes up y%.
And I wouldn't rule out that it can ramp up into complete invulnerability.
So even as an attacker on a giant concrete fortress with 100000 blocks you would want to limit damage and cut a tiny path into it to keep the protection multiplier down. So a raid instead of razing the walls and salting the earth.
However, you're still dealing with A Giant Concrete Fortress so... for values of tiny. And you have to expect traps, surprise pits that you have to backtrack around, hidden switches and motion detectors that may alter the path... fun stuff.
Some guy with a stone axe breaking into a small wooden hut would not have to deal with a lot of auto turrets but the damage multiplier may make complete devastation impractical.
0 - The claimstone itself is invulnerable. No one can destroy it or undermine it to make it fall.
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With only one land claim allowed, the griefing problem will become much more of an issue within the game's current framework.
No, it's the opposite.
Multiple claim blocks - and it doesn't matter if they cost 100000 duke coins - prevent a lot of cool features like "free remodeling inside your claim area" or complete invulnerability of an area.
If claim stones are limited in number they can be a lot more powerful.
You can see what complete (building) invulnerability of a potentially large area does on PVE Ark / Conan / etc servers. It's trivially easy to grief with invulnerable structures and admins have to do a lot of large-scale cleanup work.
(Except on Ark official PVE servers. There are no admins so SUX2BU.)
Right now (trader) invulnerability can not be allowed because even admins have no good way of fixing exploits with that and therefore cheesy offline raiding is all the rage and that leads to players logging in and having the uhh... exciting PVP experience of finding their base reduced to rubble when they couldn't do a thing to prevent it.
Admins / players restoring a map area is only a sign of how unsatisfactory the system is. =P
If a claim blocks costs 10 small rocks but you can only have one then a newbie can get a tutorial quest step to craft and put down a claim block. Dieing and losing that precious block is no trouble at all. If you place a new one then old one will poof or have 1 HP.
If a claim block were a single entity it would be easy to track even in unloaded chunks. The "block" itself can be always invulnerable and you only interact with it through an action / radial / whatever menu.
Raiding could work like:
- The location of the claim block is obvious either on the map or by the big honking clan flag over the spot.
- Destroy what you need to get to the enemy claim block in the most efficient way.
- Interact with the block to prove that you "have raided the base".
- Only then can you open containers in that area. Before you get to the claim stone you can only destroy containers without getting loot.
A respawn option at your / the clan's claim stone if you die - I see no problem with that. It may be teleportation but it's quite limited by having only 2 very specific locations tops.
Yes, does not allow players to protect ginormous mega-structures... but I suppose that's only a matter of how big the server setting for the claim area is.
Even then, a much weaker "outpost" claim block is still an option. Zero bonus features - just a bit of claim protection.
Mind you, none of this is a specific plan, much less in a ticket for a coder to make that happen.
Just toying with the idea to see how far it can be pushed. =P
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I completely disagree Roland. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The current playing field gives you a force multiplier of like 20, per Gazz's numbers. It shouldn't be 0 (a level playing field) for this game. It also shouldn't be 20 at max tiers vs lvl 1 either. If you were to keep the current skills & perks, then the force multiplier of a maxxed out player should probably be on the order of 5-10. Really though, it just takes experimentation and playtesting to find the sweetspot.
Basically this.
Progression is a part of the game's character and it's fun. If I mentioned "tossing it all out" at some times it was more in jest and to get a reaction. =P
But it cannot stay a factor of 20. That's ridiculous.
Now that I got a small improvement to the skill cost progression code I can make the cost of high perk tiers ramp up dramatically.
Once we get some more weapon diversification going (so that a sniper rifle isn't always best) it would be okay to have a player be very good with one weapon... just not with all weapons/skills at once.
This can be a lot more lenient in PVE and the problem with that is that it has to be a very much separate mode.
Or at least completely separate "PVP skill points" that can only be used on a low number of "PVP skills".
I reject the notion that PVP needs to be a separate play mode. This would break apart the playerbase further than it already is. If you don't want to PVP, then play on a server with a PVE ruleset. I think there is plenty of room to mathematically adjust certain skill/damage/health/armor modifiers/zombie damage/zombie health to calibrate a rewarding PVE and balanced PVP experience in the same realm.Ultimately, each skill that rewards % armor, health, damage, and damage redux need to be ranked for effectiveness in a PVE environment and then for a PVP environment. Gazz already did the force multiplier calc for most of this already. It really just boils down that calculation to get this right, and a lot of problems people have with dueling disappear.
Many "PVE" MMOs have optional PVP and it tends to take them years to "get it right"... with a much much bigger development team.
They usually have the same core problem: Massive vertical progression.
One common approach is to have completely separate "PVP items" like armor. Regular armor is purely decorative and offers 0 protection in PVP. You must acquire this armor through PVP means. In MMOs this is easier because you can have instanced arena battles. That doesn't fit into 7DTD very well and "natural" and regular PVP action is difficult with a game world of this size.
Mixing PVE+PVP on the same server has advantages but it may turn out to be a half-assed PVP mode. I dunno.
Some ideas had be thrown around in the "land claim" thread I linked way above.
If a player / clan has one land claim (that grows over time / with clan size) then we have a lot more options for making it "work well".
Complete "trader" immunity while offline is then very doable with a cooldown so you can't just log out and make your base invulnerable the second someone gets through your outer defenses.
There can even be a "PVP switch" so everyone starts with a completely invulnerable "PVE" base and noobs are automatically protected.
If someone wants to switch to Big Boy PVP mode or back, a cooldown has to run out first because it can be exploited both ways.
Then we have players/clans that are completely untouchable and cannot damage other players or claimed structures. And the others. =)
The problem with completely mixing those 2 "modes" into one is the progression inherit in the environment.
Zombies, loot, items, skill - everything is geared towards a slow and steady progression.
"Only" adjusting a few skills doesn't work because you still have a lot of gear progression and stats like HP/wellness.
And what I said about perk cost progression also doesn't work so well because in a PVE setting you will be able to pick far more perks and try more things without greatly imbalancing anything.
Just slashing the numbers to where the "PVP effects" are cut down would feel like a lot of grinding for very little effect. But it's doable in code. If (you = PVP) {player skill mod factor = 0.15};
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Also see this one.
https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?41502
Awesome. I will get these merged. -- Roland
Edit: That thread turned ugly...I will selectively glean...
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Actually most, if not all, of the seeds on PC don't carry over to console. But I'm REALLY in need of some seeds man I ant find any
Yah, even subtle differences in the biome setup will get you a totally different world and the console worlds have to be different (and smaller) because there is no way to fit a "PC world" into the available RAM and HDD space.
I checked on my server and the "savegame" there is close to 6 GB.
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The game is constantly changing so who knows.
The massive multipliers on all skills have always been a pain to balance. Weapon skills/perks have already been nerfed to half the effect they originally had. =)
And note to self:
Auto-kicking for high ping. That solves a lot of cheat issues.
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Now that You have played Alpha 19, What do you like or dislike?
in General Discussion
Posted
That's because we can not yet have a POI "work" at a higher gamestage all around.
If the shotgun factory was +100 GS and you were to encounter feral and radiated, the good loot wouldn't be free.
(assuming of course it wasn't easy to cheese, either =))