AtomicUs5000

Valheim was probably one of the worst choices to use as a comparison. There is plenty of debate that it should even bear the survival tag in the first place. I personally don't consider it a survival game. If you can sit still in a game without maintaining any aspect of your being, it isn't survival in my eyes. My friends and I flagged the tag right in the beginning, but kids these days think just staying alive in a game means survival... which is basically 99% of games.

I hate that. If LBD was a portion of the skills and you lost a chunk of it upon death, nobody would do it to the point of annoyance.

I don't think it's that great either, but at least it does its job.

Just goes to show that both the food and water systems for this game isn't the best it could be... I mean, if Valheim can pull off the necessity for food without hunger, something's not right here.

I can't think of a good way to answer. I prefer to use what I think makes sense at the time. The type of base I set up for the blood moon also changes what I would use the most. In some cases I'll use whatever I happen to have the most ammo of, and in others I'll try to melee as much as possible to reserve ammo. In a POI by myself, I'll try my best to be quiet using bows, but if a greeny gets in my face I'm gonna pull out the shot gun.

Probably, but I guess quite a bit of this doesn't really apply to me personally. - More zombie variants: You won't hear me complain about more variants, but what I really want is that those variants have different behaviors with ways to mitigate with more kinds of base offense and defense. Before the new models came out, they said they were working on ways to make most of the basic zombies appear grungy and generic so that it doesn't look like you are being attacked by clones. Then they showed the models with each zombie having bright clothing and very distinct characteristics. I don't feel that being attacked by an Arlene, a Marlene, or a Darlene matters at all. - Bandits: I'm honestly not looking forward to it, at least not initially. Once those bandits go in, this game is going to really change. Just based on the AI for the zombies, it's not going to be an amazing addition right away. Bandits will likely take several updates before reaching a decent/acceptable AI. All of these iterations of skills and balance over the past several alphas will go in the toilet because the game is just going to change too much. - NPCs other than traders, with quests and small trading opportunities: Again, you won't hear me complain about this one, but really in my mind it doesn't matter to me. I've never liked the gradual transition of the game to put so much focus on the trader. Have you ever seen the original 7D2D trailer? It shows a man doing all he can to prepare for what is to come. If that were redone for modern 7D2D, all it would show is a visit to a trader. So, taking some of the importance off of the trader and giving it to some other NPC doesn't really change what I dislike. However, it would remove a bit of that "same old" feeling. - More POIs: What are we up to now? Over 4,000 I think. I won't complain if they add more, but I also won't complain if they don't. - Upgrades that go beyond steel: Not interested. I don't want to start dealing with space-age materials in this context. I wouldn't mind if it took longer to progress into each stage though. What I really would want is that even if there are better materials, there is always good reason to use the others. For example, negate explosive damage from Demolisher by adding a layer of dirt or sand in between your walls. Maybe wood is stronger than steel against acid. - Maybe some kind of main story: This is something I think they really need to get going on, yesterday. Many of the features and design decisions that people have a problem with might make more sense with some actual context and backstory. Things that would not have made sense, might make sense. By waiting until the end to establish a story, you have to build that story around all of the little design details you have put in place, making it far more difficult. They might even have to change things several times again just to make things align with whatever story comes to fruition.

Hmm. No matter what, it’s only going to spawn in a certain number of zombies alive at one time, so it might just mean that you and your group are just killing them faster, allowing more to spawn in total throughout the night.

I’m uncertain if it is still a possibility these days, but a few alphas ago, this would happen to me. It turned out that it wasn’t screamers spawning as I was arriving back at my base, they were spawning near my base just as I was leaving and I just didn’t see them.

Yes, then I can jam a silencer in that slot!

Someone will have to walk around with the heatmap debug display on and see if they can find the problem POI and report it, if this is indeed the case.

I appreciate that balance, coming from a permadeath player.

This almost sounds like a bug that happened a few alphas ago where some POIs with torches and candles were contributing to the heat map. From this description it sounds like the heat was already high before you got there and killing just a few zombies was enough to bring it past the threshold and trigger a screamer.

The asparagus went willingly, but as for the cows, madmole put them there because apparently even the thought of consuming dairy will give him man-boobs.

Ever since LBD was removed, I have seen that mixing core survival attributes with specializations causes problems... regardless of the method used to obtain or distribute skills and perks. Separation may be even more important than the method but there isn't a way to know because we've never seen that yet. It's just my theory. Certain things everybody wants no matter what type of character you build. Here are probably most of them: - Max stamina increases. - Better stamina recovery. - Max health increases. - Better health recovery. - Increased overall attack speed. - Increased overall damage against enemies. - Increased overall defense against enemies. - Increased overall damage against structure. - Increased disease resistance. - Increased ailment resistance. - Increased mobility. - Increased stealth. - Increased collection of resources. - Increased efficiency of hydration. - Increased efficiency of satiation. You take all that and build a core skill system where every player has the opportunity to improve all of these aspects to some reasonable arbitrary maximum value. LBD, LBR, LBP, LBAPPLESAUCE... it doesn't matter. All that matters is that any player can easily build these up for basic survivability. Now, you add in specialization. Trees and perks must be carefully chosen regardless of the method used to progress. Besides adding some specific traits, each specialization may increase a couple of the core aspects above a little more but is always tied to the specialization in some way. Each specialization may even be a small detriment to a couple of the core aspects above. However, when comparing one possible specialization to another, the core aspect increases and/or decreases are fairly similar in overall character survivability. After you master any specialization you unlock the ability to choose some really special perk. For example in stealth, choose either - damage against enemies using stealth weapons has a 10% chance of being critical. - no noise or stamina penalty for stealth sprinting. This doesn't even have to be a one time choice. Perhaps for each specialization you get a different choice of perk at mastery levels 3, 7, 12. Just as an example. This not only allows for a character to take on some role, a player can build their favorite role in slightly different ways for several playthroughs. The number of different specializations a character can possibly decide to fully master in a single playthrough is up to a design decision, but even if it was just one, it should not be an unenjoyable experience because your overall survivability was handled outside of the specialization.

Speaking of, plant growth is another natural process. Shouldn’t farms add to the heat map under the same logic people are using to justify the dew collectors?

Yeah… provided that you empty them, it very well could be the easiest screamer farm to maintain yet.

Hmm. I see that now. I guess because of that there is no way to know. The realization that it was missing for the others could have come about while adding heat to the dew collector. The deliberately chosen values for the dew collector indicate that at the very least, they did think about the impact of giving it heat. It wasn’t just a copy and paste.

That's ok because we'll have learn by dying.

let's not mix up things making sense with realism. I don't want the fact that this isn't real life to mean it's ok to craft a spaceship out of duct tape and live in orbit with all of the cows and asparagus.

The fun comes from having to do this initially until you progress and come up with a better solution (like most things in games with a character that progresses)

That would make sense if the heat came with it originally and wasn't added in today's experimental. It is a response to something.

Patience. They'll let us know each time a better explanation is thought of.

An NPC announcer with a microphone should pop out of the bushes and yell out: You thought you had it bad before, lootin' and shootin' through tier four. Get the goods and stay alive. Welcome tooooooo... TIER FIVE! (canned cheering)

Pfft. I knew it. Amateurs.

The player activity and your forges, benches, torches etc not only adds heat to that chunk, but that heat seeps into neighboring chunks. Bases too close together will definitely cause problems. Bases too close to quest POIs can also be a problem.