[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Am I the only one that gets the feeling that slower progression in the game is mostly achieved/caused not by all these fancy changes in game mechanics,

but just because I spend most of the time at night with staring at all these cool little details on the workbenches instead of organizing things to craft?

Really this is cool, excellent work, so much love for detail!❤️

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

if he never can craft a better weapon than he has, then there is zero point in buying or searching for magazines.

Speaking of zero point:

 

My main weapons are both ones from the trader, because they are better than the crafted ones.

My quality4 compound bow which I got as a reward from a trader quite some time ago, has slightly better damage and the same amount of mod slots than the quality5 one I was finally able to craft, after finding the necessary magazines.

Not the greatest moment I had in the game 😐

 

Btw is the amount of modslots in weapons and armor a fixed value for each item?

Can anybody provide a list where I can look up how many there can be for each weapon/armor type and quality?

Couldn't yet figure out any consistent logic behind it.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

...but...

A21 Official Release Notes | 7 Days to Die

 

...yeah whatever, TFP are known to be overly optimistic sometimes. 😀

And I guess we all agree quest rewards tend to be not-that-ensured-to-be appropriately balanced,

regardless of that some players think it isn't that bad, whilst others call it a complete misfit.

 

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

@mstdv incsorry I didn't even realize this was your own vid. I thought you found that on youtube and wanted to know if that really can happen.

 

Well funny thing it did happen.

I know that falling trees do a little bit of damage (since A20?), not sure though.

Maybe the zombie that died had very low HP already (maybe was fighting a wolf before or so)

 

And then it was just a hilarious incident that you were filming yourself chopping trees at that moment.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

fast travel is not a thing right now, but will obviously be implemented eventually.

It seems rather obvious to me how it will work.

I strongly assume you will be able to call in a heli via interacting with the radio equipment tables which are positioned next to the pads,

and then you are - maybe at the cost of some amount of dukes - teleported to a desired location which can be chosen in the "radio menu" (probably just to other traders)

Maybe there's some "incoming heli animation" and then you're just teleported.

During one of the dev streams Rick even said the word "teleport" instead of "helipad", and for me it's obvious that this wasn't a blooper that he mixed up the similar words.

It will "heli-teleport" you around, maybe already in a coming alpha.

Just a guess though of course. Things still change a lot and fast in this game.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

I would guess that was staged.

Maybe he got a few hits on the zombie with the axe before (or with any other bladed weapon),

and then timed it to made it look like it was the tree falling on him, but he just bled out.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

24 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

[...] meager uninspired [...] should be more then enough I hope...

...and what does that say about you and your work as a member of the dev team anyway? 😀

 

I'd like to say "good job", but "good luck" seems to be more appropriate 😛

 

Here's what I came up with:

Just attached a platform at the backside of the box factory. (inside "engine room" just added/filled up as a whole "staircase scenario"

 

 

fighting position held up fine for day 7 and day 14 horde so far (day 7 just as a wood platform with the "stair case entry choke point")

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

7 minutes ago, NekoPawtato said:

I could be wrong but I think the forgetting elixir is actually a lot cheaper now. Personally once I have certain magazines maxed out from the INT tree (workbench/vehicles) I plan to re-spec and put those points elsewhere

Ah yeah right, that might actually be the intention of the devs.

I saw the cheap princing more as a temporary approach, to make it easier for the player to change his mind while trying around with the new skill magazine system.

But you might be right, it could also be this exact solution and therefore stay like it is.

So when you reached a certain point when you don't want to progress any further, this is a way to adapt the probabilities.

Good idea!

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

23 hours ago, Teezer said:

+ Spanish sentences in French translation

I can top that.

There's a funny typo translation for one of the trashbins into german.

These lil thingys are literally translated as "cursed trash cans" 

I assume the origin typo is "doomed" instead of "domed".

But I will not report it as a bug, it's just too hilarious......never searched one of these though, too afraid it might like bite my arm off or whatever when I try to loot it 🤣

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

8 hours ago, Sephiroth87xz said:

After all developers already acknowledge the balance problem situation and will resolve it in future.

Yes it is oviously a "sender/receiver" problem after all.

All faatal said was that balance is a subject to change until gold, not that they acknowledge that you have identified a balance problem, and have it fixed in the way you like better.

But anyhow, no pun intended, I apologize if I have misunderstood your talking,

and I hope the game balance will be adjusted according to what you want.

 

I still think though, there always has to be some grade of "luck factor" within this system, e.g. I have not invested points into mechanical engineering, so I will progress very slowly in vehicle crafting.

Right now I'm at day 23 and have way under 20 "vehicle magazines", so still in the "bicycle age" and there's very low hope to get to crafting the gyro at all.

So my intent is to buy it some day from the trader, when it's in stock and I can afford it.

If that wouldn't be possible, it would be bad balance because one would have to invest into vehicle crafting just for the sake of being mobile in later game stages,

which is obviously a very important part of the game to be able to get to far away locations fast.

So there has to be a chance that the stuff you didn't invest points into, still is available for you at the traders.

Seen from the perspective of a player who actually invested points into vehicle crafting, it of course then seem odd, because he will also be offered this stuff.

And then he's like "why am I being offered stuff that I also can craft, and sometimes the offered one even in better quality"

 

Maybe the "trader loot tables" could be adjusted in a way that they will not offer you stuff that you perked into, or at least not often, but "concentrate" more on stuff you didn't invest points.

Don't know if that's possible, but I think this would help preventing the situations you described (if I finally did get you right? 🤔)

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

33 minutes ago, Sephiroth87xz said:

You should read better.

yeah and you should write better.

Maybe we should call it all just a big misunderstanding after all 😀

53 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Sometimes when I kill zombies, they simply disappear (no death animation).

To me it happens very often that I literally punch zombies half into the ground with my club when they die.

Maybe same thing to you, but they completely fall through the ground?

Have you checked by digging a bit? 😆

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

6 hours ago, Sephiroth87xz said:

And from weapons class i don't have any perks.

Then I guess this is the main thing why your crafting may not at all keep up with trader supplies.

Now with the new magazine system, you will find more magazines according to which perk you invested in.

 

So now you basically don't "adapt/act according" to the new progression system, so you can't really complain that it is not balanced 🤔

Perk into guns and knifes, and you will progress faster into better weapons because you find more magazines.

 

Independent from this, balance will be subject to further changes for quite a long while.

In fact we're out of an experimental alpha for only a few days, where a new progression system was first introduced.

Of course it isn't already perfectly fitting.

It is still an alpha, which really does say "not at all finished/polished" by itself, even when none of the devs would have mentioned it now.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

31 minutes ago, Sephiroth87xz said:

The trader offered me a .44 magnum quality 2, when i still crafting normal pistol quality 4, with quest level 3 which i can clean them easily with only a hunting knife level 2.

Stuff will start to show up in the trader's inventory when you reach a certain gamestage.

Balancing this is a problem because of all these modifiers like biome, candys, glasses, books,...so yes you can regularly get lucky to get a very good reward for your quests.

Though the example with the magnum, I'm not quite sure if this is really a big jump 🤔

A tier4 pistol should have one more mod slot, and also a bigger magazine capacity. So damage output over "longer time" (not just per bullet) should not be that "outpacingly lower" compared to the magmun. And taking into consideration that you should be notoriously low on magnum ammo also, I guess you wouldn't say "oh now I've got a magnum, great, I will only use this from now, what a gamechanger"

The pistol should be the thing one would normally stick to for quite a bit, and save the magnum just for "oh sh$%" situations.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

9 hours ago, Laran Mithras said:

crafting progression is being outpaced by the progression in gamestage mobs.

So, IOW, T1-2 weapons vs T4 mobs.

Weapon tiers were never intended to match "opponent tier".

In fact what was intended is, that the game should be harder in A21, which is achieved by - amongst many other things - slower progression, considering also your armament.

I have to say this is one point I like very much in A21.

I don't see it as "now it's too slow", but "it was too fast before".

 

Yes of course one does feel somewhat "limitied" in A21, but that's just because you "insist" to play A21 how you're used to play A20.

Yes, you still progress fast through the trader quests and therefore get into the higher tier quests, that are now far more challenging, as you noticed.

But you don't necessarily have to accept these quests when you realize that they "outpace" your current state of equipment.

Do accept them if you like the challenge and are willing to make the effort.

If not, you can always stay to the lower tier quests and pois until you are better prepared for the tougher stuff.

 

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

My impressions for A21 so far (after three starts in RNG worlds, about 15hours in total, last game moved over to stable, day 19 now)

 

-Wow, the world looks absolutely awesome, much more vivid, so much love for detail, just great!

 

-magazine system is fine for me, and seems to work pretty good.

I like the slower progression pace, and there's always that "oh yeah just one more magazine and then I can finally..."

 

-Overlap of weapon/tool damage is still not good I think, especially between tiers (stone/iron/steel)

Now it happens a lot that your new tool, that you may have spent a good amount of resources on, proves to have just a higher impact on stamina use, but still requires the same amount of hits to destroy a block (because after the "last" hit it still has a very few HP left)

Maybe make mods more effective with higher "tier/grade" stuff, to compensate this a little?

 

Or make blocks with just a very few HP slowly degrade to 0 by themselves (like it is so much damaged and brittle that it slowly crumbles away totally).

This would spare the player the last hit, he can get over to the next block and just let the block crumble by itself.

And it would also add a task that the player has to look after the condition of his base more closely (and always have to have an amount of the necessary repair materials ready of course)

 

-new water system with no (empty) jars still does not feel right in my opinion. Too much of a counter-intuitive "workaround", just to address the "problem" that the devs don't like that the players have their storage boxes full of water, whilst totally neglecting common sense.

Yeah right now I live next to a little pond, but cannot collect water from it. So I'm having 6 dew collectors running right next to it, and these are generating glass jars around the collected fluid right out of nothing.

Increasing "cost" of pure water and the main "products" of it (increasing cooking time of water, require more bones to make glue, require more glue to make duct tape,...stuff like that) would have been a better choice if you ask me.

 

Or just the the player have all the amount of a material he wants, if he's willing to invest into it, would also be an option.

Now I bet the people who had their forges running with hundreds of empty glass jars, today they have a huge "farm" of dew collectors running.

Just different, not better I guess.

 

 

[I'm confused...]

sounds like something weird happened.

 

I did start three games in the experimental version, the last one I moved over to stable.

So far nothing wrong for me with roads, they're actually pretty good connecting towns/cities, and also solely pois in the wilderness.

 

Considering traders I had also problems. Once I've been thrown in the middle of nowhere, trader about 2km away, with nothing but barren land between there and my starting point. A new player who doesn't just take off to the trader, whilst easily hitting chickens left and right with the bow, and collect the exact right things needed, would most probably be f$%&ed by this rng situation.

But this was said to be patched out.

 

You described it as "no traders", but it might just have been the case that the trader was too far away to be "viable/recognized" for the starting quest. I remember this was a thing that happened in former alphas too.

So this is also likely to be fixed in the near future, if not already done for your next start.

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

btw is there any special reason why there still is no "inventory slot lock" feature in vanilla?

Such a great qol feature should go hand in hand with all the already included "auto stash buttons" if you ask me.

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

@unholyjoethx for the info, was always wondering what's inside the trunk.

Now that I know it's the next alpha, I will always imagine that scene from pulp fiction when it comes to this theme.

You know these scene when he opens the case, and there's that strange glow and then "are we happy?" "Yes, we're happy" 😄

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

nope, only catched a glimpse of it during what was shown as an example for an infestation quest.

You maybe right about the disadvantage of a "flat" design of the poi.

But still, heat generation is counted up within a chunk (independent from height as far as I know),

so you would trigger a screamer during the clearance of a big poi anyway, regardless of its geometry, when you go loud with your guns.

And the fact that the zeds can't reach you doesn't really matter in the end.

Because a screamer cycle, once it started to go bad, will kill! Maybe not you when you're unreachable high above, but your framerate, making it unplayable either way 😄

 

Maybe try a more silent approach at least at first, using bow&arrow or silenced guns?

 

And of course avoid resource harvesting in the area before you hit the quest marker.

E.g. when you find a nice ore deposit right next to the poi and collect a stack of iron, or maybe even "double dipped" all the nice cars in the parking lot,

you are likely to trigger a screamer relatively early during your run, because you raised the count pretty good already.

 

[If A POI Has Zombie Dogs, It Should Be Minimum Tier 2]

1 hour ago, unholyjoe said:

be very suspicious

If it was only that, ok.

 

Yeah, it should make you suspicious when a poi is called "Husky something...".

And also yeah, it should make you even more suspicious when you see many bone piles in the attic.

 

But it is still unnecessary to conceal the dog in an invisible compartment behind a seemingly solid, doorless wall.

And there are many other examples.

 

I really don't like that in general, also with zombies,

cause it just feels cheesy to put dogs or zombies into this kind of "boo-effect places"

 

Make them crash through a door or a window when you trigger the volume, that's fine and I'm willing to poop my pants in these moments.

Make them seem to fall/crawl out of ventilation ducts, maybe chimneys and so on, and I'll be happily changing my undies again.

There are many options.

 

But having them coming out of solid walls, for me that is annoying and immersion breaking and not a funny scare. 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

5 hours ago, Lostyouthkhat said:

like 10 screamers started piling up outside over and over again, breaking through and joining the quest. Its a chain reaction, that cant be avoided, since i cant be silent while fighting against 25 zombies in the prison.

Yes, screamer cycles do go pretty bad sometimes (well almost every time to be honest 😄)

But as far as I know there were no changes on how "heat generation" works in A21 compared to A20.

So this could have happened to you in A20 in the exact same way more or less.

 

What might be different is:

Was it an infestation quest? Having 25 zombies spawned in and being after you at the same time seems a lot,

and maybe it wasn't really the normal amount for a "dev intended way" to clear a poi. 🤔

Did you run through a whole area and set off several spawn points at the same time? I mean of course if you go bright and loud you draw lots of unwanted attention.

And in addition to this, with the new magazine system, you might not have been that well eqipped considering your weaponry as you are used to from former alphas.

Which means you have to fire more rounds per kill, meaning generating even more heat.

 

One has to be careful in A21 not to fall for the fact: you still reach higher tier quests pretty fast, just by doing a certain number of quests, like in a20,

but your progression in armament/equipment is dampened by the new system. So you are not as prepared for the higher tier stuff as you might remember and expect from A20.

Well that's part of how they increased difficulty.

 

So what I mean in short: Ask yourself if you really were well prepared for what you started.

And then again, screamer cycles suck big time.

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

19 hours ago, FranticDan said:

Request: Can we please get these stairs with railings?

 

Here you go

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Well I have to assume you didn't even read through my entire post, but stopped after the first sentence to start argue about it 🤨

Whatever, you have made your point, as I did too.

We have different points of view and different understandings about things, which is also ok.

Nobody has to convince one another, or show anything to prove their point.

It's fine.

And one of the devs already stated that it might be a bug that you are thrown into the middle of a barren nowhere (which seems to happen strangely often)

and it's going to be fixed. This is a good thing.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

7 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

Yes, the ones in the game that are called burnt or abandoned are the ones without a chance for an engine to drop.

yes.

I edited the video link into my previous post.

Chances are explained in there.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

I remember Temreki (GN&S) explained in one of his recent content about A21, that there are a few things to consider to choose the right car/wreck for an engine.

Don't know exactly what he said, but there was a difference between the new A21 models and the older ones,

somewhat about their "initial state of destruction".

There were some of them with just no chance to give you an engine.

Must rewatch one or two, maybe I find it again.

 

edit:

here it is (OMG youtube finally lets you create a clip out of longer vids, not just the starting time stamp but a "from time X to time Y" snip!

THIS IS AWESOME! THX youtube!!!

https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxYAW2Bo_2V-XV3sFIUvtvLNOUnHsx9H4X

 

...and THX Temreki for the always great content!