[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

21 hours ago, retrogamingdev said:

Your specific example sounds like an extremely unlucky RNG situation

exactly what I'm saying.

An experienced player's (as I may humbly call myself) survival shouldn't really depend on being lucky or not.

 

What does this do to a new player?

 

I wasn't ranting about the game in its current state, I'm concerned that it lost accessibility for a new player base.

 

TFP often stated that the game still has to be a good/fun start for a new player, when someone of the "thousands of ingame hours forum members" here said that the game is way too easy. They always were like "one's vast experience is no scale to judge difficulty, keep in mind it must stay accessible for a newbie"

I just have the feeling they mgiht have lost that scale themselves a little. 

Newbies act much slower than an experienced player, and have to figure out the basic stuff first, aside from the initial quest line. 

They don't even know how much of a certain material you have to have, and where to get those. Stuff like that.

And maybe they lose interest in the game because they die too often before having things figured out correctly.

Because that isn't fun. It's annoying. At least for me.

Just saying. 

Again, not angry here, but concerned.

 

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

46 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

got its arse beat at first.

Yeah the first days are really a struggle now.

On the second start I was thrown into nowhere in a generated world,

only 2 pois in the vicinity (one tier 1 with really nothing useful, and one tier 3 (+desert multiplier) that was waay above what I could handle at that point.

I had to go almost 2km to get to the trader (nothing but forest/desert borderland on the way)

Having arrived there and spending 1st night on a small roofing for a tractor,

I was literally down to 0 water within the 1st quest, and therefore wasn't even able to raise my weak hand to destroy the block where the quest satchel was hidden behind.

 

I didn't die in the end. Just because of pure luck.

 

It didn't feel rewarding when I overcame it.

It felt like unfair and unbalanced, my survival being pure luck. 

You find enough water, good for you...you do not, meh, just die one or two times at first, who cares, that's life in the apocalypse.

 

As someone with (slightly) over a thousand hours in the game, and therefore more or less know exactly how to get things going in the game,

I'm really wondering what a newbie player must get as a first impression of A21.

 

If I was new to the game, I probably would have turned away and say "no thanks, not a game for me".

I know the devs are aiming for a bigger challenge in survival aspects, but I'd say they got it a lil too far.

 

Maybe add one free dew collector in the lower end difficulty settings, to keep things more accessible for a newbie player would help?

 

 

 

 

[Advanced airdrop idea.]

I think that'd be cool too, though I smell easy exploit (double-dip) when these are inside questable pois.

...well it might be possible to disable them when a quest is active?

[Dew Collector Upgrade Suggestion]

10 hours ago, Slaps said:

The fact that it doesn't is largely unrealistic

pfft. Realism again.

The really unrealistic thing about it is not how it does or does not catch whatever type of water,

but that it automatically materializes a jar/bottle around the collected fluid.

 

Well at least that explains that the filter cannot be just crafted from plant fiber, sand and coal, but is a "find only" thing.

The filter must include some 9th-dimensional molecule converter, that sucks the jar over from a parallel universe, just as long as there's some fluid left in it, and then dematerializes it back to where it came.

 

Maybe that's the yet-to-be-revealed background story to where the zombies originated?

Some scientist tried to invent an infinite source of glass jars by messing around with opening gates to different realms of space and time?

 

...yeah well, I'd buy it. Sounds realistic enough for me, playing a game set in a zombie apocalypse.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

4 hours ago, Quantum Blue said:

Loot Stage IS separate from Game State.  Especially in A20.  And, while there is some correctness about having less time, there is also the opposite, a character with 200% is going to have more perks, more health, more stamina, etc.  They won't need as much time as those without XP bonuses.  Not to mention more bonuses for killing faster, or crafting transportation sooner, etc.  I have tested this myself, and I am easily more prepared for horde nights with XP bonuses versus when I do not.

all your math is correct, but ignores the fact that a player has a certain common behavior which he's "stuck" to, meaning a certain ratio between "how many zombies did I kill, and how many loot containers did I open in the meantime".

During the first week, it especially applies that : kill zombies = gain XP, open containers = get gear.

If you boost up xp you level up fast but still have the same poor gear you would have with 100% xp.

Of course this will eventually "equalize" over time with all the other things within further player progression kick in, workbenches and stuff.

But first hordenight D7 is harder to be prepared for.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

10 hours ago, NukemDed said:

still alive, barely, and staring down the day 7 horde (vanilla settings with 200% xp just to hurry things along a little) badly under equipped and under prepared. should be interesting.

200% xp adds to difficulty, beacuse you level up fast, and so does your gamestage rise, which makes enemies tougher, whilst your equipment mostly won't keep up with that.

In short: boosting xp gain messes up balancing a good bit.

At least the very first horde night is especially tough then. Good luck!

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Didn‘t faatal himself recently confirm that issue here? That it seems to be hung up, but you just have to give it more time?

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

From the known issues list:

Vehicles can catch on fire with burning shaft mod

 

Well that's just my kind of humor 😄😄

If I was into coding I would do exactly those lil shenanigans and then just sit there watching people go WTF, whilst already having a fix prepared 😄

 

I pull my hat Sir, whoever you are (of course you can't reveal your identity, but be assured, I appreciate your work!)

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

2 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

Holy crap, look at those times.

Yeah, but also holy crap, look at those hardware specs...7950x, 64gb RAM, fast SSD, pretty highend there.

 

I am pretty sure my rig will chew a lil longer on that. 😅

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

ask me again around late Mayust / early Junember

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

@KaldaraFox

Also keep in mind that when you want to start a new game with A21,

the first build, which may or may not be released within one of the next mondays,

will be a first version of an experimental build...maybe even a "pre-experimental"...whatever it means...it's the way of the devs to tell you it's even one more level of "not yet stable".

And every new experimental build will surely include the recommentation to start a new game when you update, because new updates might interfere with previous code, making your savegames not work anymore.

The common period of time between first public experimental build to first stable build is at least another couple of weeks.

 

So if you are aiming for a stable long term playthrough,

you can easily give A20 another shot.

 

It's not that A20 stops being fun to play because there's another alpha looming on the horizon.

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

Found the reason why it isn't out yet.

It's stuck in a glass jar.

 

NullReferenceException: ScrewCapJammed 

NullReferenceException: ScrewCapJammed 

NullReferenceException: ScrewCapJammed 

NullReferenceException: ScrewCapJammed 

 

Obviously a MF bug 

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

so there will be people who don't want to watch any of this because they don't want to spoil it for themselves.

And there will be people who suck up every bit of information, watch all the "let's play"s, "what's new"s, tutorials, from every source they can get their hands on.

And there will be those who want to watch this but not that, for whatever reason that does make sense to only themselves.

So what?

Release the kraken!

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

*a wild bug appears*

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

  

On 4/17/2023 at 11:23 AM, Crater Creator said:

Streamer Weekend FAQ

 

Q: When is Alpha 21 coming out, and when will the Streamer Weekend participants get access to it?

A: When it's ready. Don't claim specific dates when hyping the event to your viewers. Some streamers did this in the past, and it makes everyone look bad. Monitor the Discord server for updates. We hope to provide the date the Monday or Tuesday before the event, but sometimes things happen. The public release of Alpha 21 experimental will happen on a Monday. The Streamer Weekend participants will get it the Friday/Saturday before that, so they have roughly the full weekend for streaming (more or less, depending on timezone).

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

that would explain how one gets the impression that water is just working as intended 😄

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

36 minutes ago, DDDX said:

Damn. My shame knows no bounds.

Have migrated the above written to Pipe dreaming, feel free to delete both this and my above entry.

nothing to be ashamed here.

Even lots of "old" members here use this thread to post things like this here, despite better knowledge,

because it just seems to be the better place for getting the ideas to attention...this is by far the most active thread.

 

But as Riamus stated, it can lead to the opposite. Things will get lost very quickly,

at the latest when one of the mods does the regular "flush-away" and stuff gets moved over to the "discussion overflow" thread.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

7 minutes ago, Morloc said:

1) Devote all resources to helping that water sim programmer!

bring him empty jars, maybe that helps testing its behaviour

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

32 minutes ago, DDDX said:

Admins should get rid of off-topic or semi-off-topic essay writers. 274 pages, could have easily been 50 with 0 loss.

A warm welcome to the forum my friend.

 

May I kindly inform you, that the very most content of your post consists of suggestions considering how the game should be,

and therefore belongs into the "pimp dreams" section of this forum, instead of the "news and announcements" section, and/or in special into A21 dev diary thread.

 

One could go as far as saying, the whole thing you wrote is just one big off-topic essay.

 

that said, some nice ideas there.

 

 

 

 

 

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

thank god, now it can be released without throwing the water programmer into depression because his work seems considered as not that important.

You know a company is responsible for their employee's health.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

On 5/31/2023 at 10:25 PM, Teure said:

I have an octacore CPU with lower frequencies and it always bottlenecks me on larger cities. 

 

I've ~700h on PC and it always happened, since my athlon 5 years ago (of course it would) up to my current 5800h... and the FPS drop from stable 60 to 25~30 is a big let down. RWG is even worse because has a more intense voxel calculation all around...

 

Is there any improvement in that regard planned or discussed for A21?

You would have to accept you have to make cutbacks to your quality settings and/or resolution. That will always gain the most fps.

Do not expect any improvements within the game code that magically boost up your fps recognizably, especially in/for "low-fps situations" where your hardware is already bottlenecking.

Yes there will be optimizations, but there will also be more and more stuff implemented that additionally chews into performance,

so one can be happy if the requirements don't get up rather than expect it to get better.

 

I have played 7D2D for years with "ancient" CPU (2013 Intel i5 2500K) and got along well.

Graphics card was an AMD R9 390, and I got fps about 100 with FHD and somewhat mediocre quality settings,

dropping to around 60 in dense areas, so always very playable.

 

Now with a AM5 CPU and 4070 GPU, I of course pushed the resolution and settings up...so same fps as before more or less.

 

 

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

5 hours ago, meganoth said:

Or is your need for safety and security just a bit too much for a **survival** game?

Ha! This!

This is me.

Every time I have to nibble into the last row of full stacks in my storage boxes, I might die of agonal respiration irl instead of hunger/thirst in the game. 😄

 

Btw I hope that hoarder outfit (A22+ I know) will give some benefits like more harvest. Or more inventory slots. Or never encumbered. Or bigger stack sizes. Or special giant storage boxes.

*fingers crossed for the answer will be: Yes, in that order*

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

10 hours ago, zicky said:

I'm hoping more for a streamer weekend this Friday and a release the following Monday.

 

On 5/28/2023 at 5:45 AM, Laz Man said:

No streamer weekend this week. 

 

A21 Release Target Date: May-June 2023  June-July 2023

 

fixed that for you

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

Call me pessimistic but I don't think it will happen next weekend either. Not because of bugs but because of the Diablo 4 release.

 

[Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow]

I bet that lately there have been more people rage quitting the forum than the game