[We need night loot bonus]

I'd say it should get a buff at night, IF the zombies are set to run or higher at night within the settings.

 

There is 0 reason for nighttime itself to just buff the lootstage if the zombies are the same as day. The argument could be made that there are more ferals, however they are still slow when set to walk.

 

Otherwise you can just go through a POI like normal and have bonus loot for no real reason. There needs to be a hedge to get over.

[What am I doing wrong?]

Put one point into "cardio" so you can nearly run forever. Outrunning bears and wolves has never been easier, especially at night time. Just have to wear cloth armor and not be any form of encumbered that way you have the fastest movement speed possible.

 

Learn to cheese doors and other blocks. I personally build doors in a 3x2 for the bases I build, not the POIs I'm clearing. The middle 2 blocks are a door, the walls beside the doors are poles with the angled base. It makes it so I can shoot out and melee all without being hit or risking creatures waddling through the gap. Repair the door and blocks when they takes damage the best you can.

 

Don't take over any POIs on day 1 unless you're sure it's a tier one. Otherwise you'll get dogs and ferals some of the time, which is just enough to kill you before you have guns.

 

If you're unsure if it's a tier 1, build a base on stilts 4 blocks high. Then build a bridge about 9 blocks out from the door, with a ramp leading to the bridge. That way zombies are forced to path to a cheesed door. It's a tower defense game, build a tower and defend it for the night!

 

Dark Souls is a time-based game where you simply dodge and parry at the right times or die in 2-3 hits, this is not Dark Souls. You can't outrun your enemies in Dark Souls lest you want to die tired. You can outrun wolves (both dire and non-dire) along with both bear types. Don't be afraid to kite a bear away from home then take the wide way back with being seen.

 

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't struggling at times myself. It's a very combat heavy game now so buff combat perks. I find pipe shotguns and their ammo most abundant so I keep 3-4 on my hotbar, it's the only way to live if you're cornered. Unless you have a pipe machine and ammo for it. In which case you don't need multiple pipe shotguns or other types of guns.

 

With all that said, these are not nearly the only ways to play. These are how I've adapted my playstyle so far. It's going back to being the easiest game ever, but slowly. You just have to learn the ins and outs of weapons and go from there. They give us so much ammo in quests, 80-100 most of the time. You can't be stingy with it when you need it to survive.

 

The main reason why A20 is so challenging, is because every single new POI has a trap with at least 3-5 zombies that don't make ANY noise. So it's literally impossible to know they're there at times. It's incredibly irritating more than anything else. I'm popping a bandage nearly every POI unless I get a weapon.

 

Get better at nerdpoling upwards when you're forced to fall into a room from the ceiling. Or to run away and throw a hatch down in front of a door, then place a 1/2 block above it. Until every POI can be properly balanced this is what we've gotta do. I didn't have to do this method since A18, but it's making a comeback in this alpha.

 

Balancing combat is this games heaviest weak point by far. They created trap POIs to prevent stealth and make them far more difficult to get through. Even a zombie in a 8x8 room can be a challenge. Especially if they decide to go on their hands/knees then back up instantly so it's virtually impossible to hit their heads while being hit 2-3 blocks away.

 

You have to throw off the imbalance by door cheesing, falling trap cheesing, and hotbar cheesing by having multiples of the same weapons on the hotbar. The pipe weapons themselves would've helped the balance in A19.6 very perfectly, then they added more zombies, more traps, and tons of ammo. Now it's needed to have multiple pipe weapons instead of just one.

 

 

[Corona Wipes Billboard - REALLY?]

2 hours ago, Adebar said:

Fun Pimps, really???

In times where the whole world suffers under Covid-19, aka Corona, you have to put a billboard (Corona Wipes) in your Alpha 20?

In times where this topic divides nations?

 

It might've been funny about 2 years ago when there was a shortage of toilet paper, but today, after hundreds of thousands of people died because of Corona, with no end in sight to this pandemic, putting that billboard in the game is more than distasteful.

Ever heard of a dark joke before? It could also be taken as an essential oil joke. "One corona wipe a day keeps the disease at bay!"

[A20 impressions - lots of good, lots of "it's still not improved since forever?"]

28 minutes ago, RyanX said:

Don't hold your breath for anything to get optimized with TFP.  Spawning has been bad for ages.  The last time I died it was because I was in a closet and a zombie pop spawned between me and the way out.  It's terrible.

That's a leeper volume assuming you're in a closet. I'm specifically referring to in-world spawning.

 

I can't go as far as you can to say they won't ever fix it. It was perfect in A16.4 since sleeper volumes weren't necessarily a hindrance. There was a lot less zombies per POI and they didn't move, just slept on the floor completely still.

 

They do the sleeper volumes for 2 reasons, one so the zombies spawn at proper times since only 64 zombies can be active at a time. Ever run through a giant POI during bloodmoon which is set to 64? As you kill the hoard the zombies spawn in.

 

The other reason is for auto wake-up so traps can work properly and you can't fully stealth unless it's nighttime. Which could use tweaking, but it's a different conversation for another thread.

 

As for in-world spawning which is what we're referring to, I feel that it's buggy and creatures aren't despawning or getting removed as they should. Further exploration on the matter doesn't do much since there is so "spawning_log.txt" for us to see how the system is handling it.

[Hos is this suppose to be fun?]

29 minutes ago, ~Kevin~ said:

Almost back to my base, hit a zombie a few times with my club, stamina is out, feral zombie runs up to me, hits me several times and I die.   I can't run nor can I fight back because I am out of stamina.  I respawn, go back to my pack, and there are the zombies guarding my pack.  

 

Rather than making the game more fun and enjoyable pimps has turned it into a grind of frustration.  I play games to be entertained, to pass the time, and not for the frustration of it.

 

From my steam account - Play time 1,552.9 hours

 

Screw this, I am going back to Alpha 16.

I find the best way to manage stamina is to stop running all over the place, adjusting difficulty, learning how to use melee weapons and figuring out how specific zombies move so you don't miss your target.

 

You get bonus points if you put perks into sexual tyrannosaurus like you're supposed to for melee weapons. As well as the weapon your using. If you're seeing ferals on day one at nighttime, have you tried running away?

 

You also have access to pipe weapons, you should try using them and everything else the game offers. Like coffee, fortbites, skull crushes, and anything that buffs your character of which you'll find use for.

[(Rant) This game has never been as anti-multiplayer as it is now.]

The loot is my major concern as of now. I joined the developer testing server on day 88 i believe to help out by doing what I always do. Then I asked if it was PvP enabled after I heard someone shooting guns near me (which I didn't have at the time) and I was told yes. So instinctively I left, I'm not gonna get mowed by someone who has more time on the server than I do. Especially when there are 6 bases by the trader.

 

It's a real shame since this game isn't great for PvP, it's a much better co-op game where survivors work together or independently. Not against each other, the last thing I need is to go offline for 9 hours, come back and my stuff could be destroyed by someone bulk crafting dynamite, it's just a terrible thing to play PvP, especially when we NEED bases late game for horde nights.

[Did the trader jobs/quests increase in distance for A20?]

1 hour ago, Brabbelbeest said:

I have been playing A20 experimental since it was released and liking it for the most part so far. But there is something I noticed. I always hated having to travel greater distances to POI's for the trader quests/jobs. And with "greater distances" I mean over 2 km.
But with Alpha 20, it seems they actually increased the distance a job can spawn at. So at one point all my tier 4 jobs were ranging betweem 6,5 km up to 8,4 km away. Even the tier 3 jobs were all at least 2 km removed from me. 

Is it possible to put a max to the distance a trader can spawn quests, because traveling over 8 km for a job seems ridiculous to me... that or give you the option to reset the jobs traders are offering.

It highly depends on the world. I've gotten some 50m away, and others 1.4km away from the same trader.

 

If you're still early on, make a new seed that you'll like

[Parts?]

On 12/20/2021 at 6:15 AM, Pernicious said:

Thanks. For now we're still playing vanilla, and I have to get a consensus among all players, but will keep it in mind. What's your mod called?

https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/1437

 

I didn't get to test it for A20 yet, but all it does is add recipes to the tool and weapon parts. There's no reason it shouldn't work unless the devs renamed them, which I don't see happening.

[Parts?]

I've made a mod that makes the parts craftable if that is something you're interested in.

[A20 b233 - Exclamation marker does not spawn at POI mission.]

4 hours ago, xboxxxxd said:

Well, the first time it happened was on 218, and it has happened earlier today for the second time on 233, so it's a continues issue in my eyes, i took note of this the first time as i was watching the livestream's of PartiallyRoyal, which it has happened to him once, altho understandably he had no issue because he was playing multiplayer with his friends and one of his friends shared the task to him, it occured to me he missed that marker too.

anyhow, if it happens again and/or i notice it on a fresh new save or so i will update on it.

When you press play on Steam, click the launcher option and ok. After that, go to the tools section and click on all 4 bars. Delete everything in the folders that it opens. When you open the registry, delete ONLY The Fun Pimps folder and close it, don't touch anything else for the registry.

 

After that, verify the game files and let it redownload

[vehicles are teleporting to new locations]

2 minutes ago, Lenny Lettuce Lips said:

Makes enough sense to me, but I don't know jack about programming. 

We got our bikes, went home, logged off then came back the following day and both bikes migrated about 20m each in odd directions. To me it has to do with the hows and whys of vehicle location caching and why that's being fudged. Back in A19xp I came back and my motorcycle was in the sky and I had to nerdpole up to it and pick it up. That used to be the problem was just a massive vertical climb and they'd rest. 

We had the same issues with 4x4s being in the sky, hopefully the issue will be resolved by the time it goes stable. The biggest issue is that this is an experimental build, in an already experimental game. I keep having saves break on me every in game day so I'm currently installing it to a different drive that I know works perfectly

[vehicles are teleporting to new locations]

21 minutes ago, Lenny Lettuce Lips said:

Me and mine have both noted this to a minor degree. Everytime I've played an experimental version this tends to happen and I'm not sure why. 

I could be talking out of my ass, but I think it's because they update the unity engine which is why a lot of it breaks and needs to be written differently to some degree.

[Quicker crafting]

41 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

I remember the perk called quicker crafting and well its pretty self explanatory but it got removed from after a17 and I really miss it will we ever see a perk like this again because certain items desperately need this eg concrete gun powder and steel to name a few maybe not as powerful as it used to be but the maximum could give you a 30% crafting speed Increase? 

If I'm correct, doesn't steel craft quicker if you have perks in advanced engineering. I think the same thing happens with gunpowder if it's made in the chemistry station too.

[Sneaking and its problems (and how to fix it)]

On 12/18/2021 at 9:13 AM, Viktoriusiii said:

Conclusion:

 

TFPs hate stealth. There is no way around it.
Every update something new is implemented to make it less viable. Then players find a way to combat it, then they implement something else and fix the previous countermeasures... to a point where now every poi is made with anti-stealth in mind and 3-4 features working together to make stealth as unpleasant as possible (trashsound, wall/obstaclesleepers,sleepervolumes, loud 'silent' silent weapons...)

Let us sneak in POIs!!! If we go stealth, our advantage is safe looting and lower usage of ammunition.
On hordenight we are much weaker then say a foritude build with an M60; a strength build with an autoshotgut and intelligence with mass stun-steel defenses and traps.
I am honestly not a bad player. And if I have trouble with this, the average player doesn't even need to try.

I don't think the developers "hate" stealth, and the way I see it is that the POI designers are doing what they can to get the sleeper volumes to a very finished state before revamping stealth.

 

There is no excuse for it to not get fixed, the game is still in early access and they have time to make it right before the release. I am not in any way, casting down at Madmole when I say this, but I feel like he doesn't give a @%$# about players. He made a comment the other day about a player not being able to be at day 38 when an update dropped (42-48 hours) i believe before that. He also went on and said something along the lines of "I'm not getting that much loot bag drops so whatever you're doing is off". This was in the A20 dev diary comments if I remember correctly.

 

Not realizing it's a random game, and some players have all the time in the world to play. I've had saves in 19.6 where I've gotten 13 treasure maps before day 7, and others where I haven't seen one for 20 days. Same applies to loot bags. (I've had a lot of worlds, more than I can express, none were the same).

 

TFP cannot please every single player, and that's understandable. "They?" Don't want players to be able to just stealth through an entire building with no threat, which I can understand.

 

But then we get the gray area of stealth needing perks and they aren't useful on bloodmoon. If you really want a full stealth build, then the best we can do is disable blood moons entirely and forget about hordes. I feel it can be negated better if blood moons spawn the same amount of zombies around you and have a toggleable option if you want them to lock on or not, that way you can choose your battles for a stealth build or not.

 

Edit: I want to further elaborate on Madmole, he is a person just like the rest of us with a human body and human emotions. He is a game developer and programmer who is apart of a lead team that we all purchased into. He should think about what his players like and dislike about mechanics, and fully understand what the code is capable of before making such statements.

[Sneaking and its problems (and how to fix it)]

On 12/18/2021 at 11:13 AM, JCrook1028 said:

Thinking you can stealth on the highest difficulty level is your problem. You shouldn't be able to imo. Working As Intended as far as I am concerned.

All the difficulties do is make zombies/animals deal more damage, and take less damage.

[landmines in the wasteland]

3 points in "The Infiltrator" perk let's you pick them up with "E".

[More looting variation in POI's]

14 hours ago, XP_HAVOK said:

So I do love a lot of these new POI's and their puzzles however I think we need some more variation like some that can be found by accident or only at the day or night. Like for example randomly underground there could be a collection of collapsed tunnels that have no entrance you just find it while digging around or maybe a lab that can only be opened at day because the solar panels collect enough electricity to open the doors. Also the possibility of a trap POI were in some of the more risky areas or at a higher level when your near the end or by the big loot a mini horde appears. It gives a more risk element to the POI's and depending on your time or highest gear level depends on how strong the zombie are. In the late stages of the game you can just storm in and take everything and go were this makes it more challenging late game.

Oh we have that alright in the Skyscraper POIs, most notably,  Skyscraper_01 (Dishong Tower). If you're looking for more of a challenge, head there without a quest and try your best at it! Bonus points if it's in a harder biome.

[Ammo in loot in A20]

21 hours ago, rykn0w said:

have a lot more ammo and better quality gear than i did on day 20 and i don't even shoot ammo, i do melee build/melee horde base so i'd guess its pretty RNG based on play style.

 

(you also say you're doing 64 zombie horde, so you probably get more yellow bag drops, they seem to always have lots of ammo)

so again, playstyle.

The 64 zombies is how many max can spawn at a time for a horde night. 8 zombies is too little and can take a lot longer than 64. You've both got a varying playstyle, but I'd reckon the ammo amount would roughly total near the same amount if y'all didn't use any.

[Parachute]

9 hours ago, Gutterputty said:

Dam i wish i had a parachute on top of Higashi building. Completely wrecked from 20 or more spawns(seemed like 50). Lots of fun though, with no escape but be pushed to my death.

We have Oh @%$#z Drops which negate 100% fall damage for 5-10 minutes. Look in those vending machines!

[A20 impressions - lots of good, lots of "it's still not improved since forever?"]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't see much difference to my experience though. Sure, there are lulls around my base especially, but if we are talking about rabbits for example I just need to drive into a random direction, stop and crouch for a few seconds and most of the time I see 1 or 2 of them highlighted in green around me. The difficult question is: Are we seeing the same thing and interpret it differently or is there an actual objective difference?

 

Even if I did now restart the game every hour and noticed more zombies (which I wouldn't be surprised if it happened) this would still not tell us much, because from my viewpoint the game works as expected even if I don't restart.

 

Here is a test maybe if you are playing on a pregen world: Play the game for 2 hours, don't restart. Drive to the center of 2 towns you haven't been before and 2 you already have been, but not in the last 3 in-game days. Write down the coordinates, the time and the number of zombies you saw after standing there, shooting with a shotgun 3 times (once per minute) and waiting for 5 minutes. Also tell us which pregen world, your player level and what armor you have on you.

 

I then do the same and count as well. This way we will see if our games are fundamentally different and we also see what number of zombies to expect in visted areas after respawn and new areas.

 

 

I've uploaded the spreadsheet to Google Drive, the link is here:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PbeV3Yqh918DWQw3f09L-ehRHvOG7rUO?usp=sharing It's a major mess. It got the job done and for video settings I had grass distance set to low, and everything else set to ultra. DoF and motion blur were disabled. I put a note section on the far right which is just a giant blob of text so I wish you the best of luck going through all of it. I took note of everything as I saw it. https://pastebin.com/qBFtuHxZ. From what I've gathered, it seems that the wilderness and POI zombies don't have their information being as backed up anymore. In A19.6, there were times it didn't matter how much I explored, I wouldn't see a zombie for 4-5 in game days unless they were in POIs. Since city tiles are now technically POIs, it doesn't have everything as obstructed as before (at least from what I've gathered and my very limited knowledge).

[A20 impressions - lots of good, lots of "it's still not improved since forever?"]

1 minute ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't see much difference to my experience though. Sure, there are lulls around my base especially, but if we are talking about rabbits for example I just need to drive into a random direction, stop and crouch for a few seconds and most of the time I see 1 or 2 of them highlighted in green around me. The difficult question is: Are we seeing the same thing and interpret it differently or is there an actual objective difference?

 

Even if I did now restart the game every hour and noticed more zombies (which I wouldn't be surprised if it happened) this would still not tell us much, because from my viewpoint the game works as expected even if I don't restart.

 

Here is a test maybe if you are playing on a pregen world: Play the game for 2 hours, don't restart. Drive to the center of 2 towns you haven't been before and 2 you already have been, but not in the last 3 in-game days. Write down the coordinates, the time and the number of zombies you saw after standing there, shooting with a shotgun 3 times (once per minute) and waiting for 5 minutes. Also tell us which pregen world, your player level and what armor you have on you.

 

I then do the same and count as well. This way we will see if our games are fundamentally different and we also see what number of zombies to expect in visted areas after respawn and new areas.

 

 

I can do that, I'll be turning on cheat mode and giving myself a bicycle, a side by side Q1 shotgun, quality 1 stone sledgehammer, and all scrap armor quality level 3. As I don't have a save on a pre-gen world I'll just make one and go from there, it is a weekend after all!

 

I'll take the time to jot the numbers down and see if I can't come up with a spreadsheet

[A20 impressions - lots of good, lots of "it's still not improved since forever?"]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

What does "close it every hour" mean?

 

And I was saying that I would not expect you to do it unpaid. Since I have no beef with zombie spawns I definitely won't. 😉

 

There is a big difference between subjectively noticing fewer zombies and providing hard facts. How do you show zombies "backing up" ? How do you show it isn't just randomness or a group of zombies not noticing you?

 

Forgive me for assuming you meant me and not you, I didn't comprehend that part. I find it relatively easy, on worlds where I constantly explore and don't kill anything i see. Then I see absolutely nothing after 2-3 days other than a random stray. The moment I begin killing anything again though, especially at spawn is where things start getting fixed.

 

Then you have the issue of having explored so far and chunks being rendered to the point it's probably best to restart anyway. I have made threads on this before and the answers I got were "you're not exploring far enough and depleting spawns in your area, or you're going too far out and not killing anything". Thus I decided to restart my game every in-game day at 04:00 and I've never had an issue since.

 

Me and Roland had a tiny conversation about deer, he said they're a night creature (which I don't think we're both sure of). I am sure though that after a game closure and reopen can allow a deer to spawn during the day as I saw a deer within the first minute of spawning, then again at 07:00 the next day (with restarts at 04:00 roughly).

 

As you said though, it's hard to get concrete evidence since the logs don't provide anything, but I can tell it fixes a lot of problems. Many people were saying they didn't see any zombies and maybe an animal without any restarting. Meanwhile I happen to be the one restarting and I can't travel on a road for 600m without seeing and killing at least 5 chickens, rabbits, maybe a boar and a deer. Chickens and rabits are plentiful and I get around 3 stacks of meat by day 3-4.

[Turret/trap experience sharing suggestion]

I agree, we've been letting it slide for A19. Though it's a serious issue when I'm level 67 and everyone else is only 40. If it doesn't get implemented then I'll have to take the time to build 3 different horde bases (maybe 4) for me and my couple friends that play this game.

 

Then I'll have to set them up,, but make them place the blade and fence traps so we can all have our own personal horde base. "Who's the lowest level? .. alright, we're going to stay at your horde base for the next 7 days" is what it'll come down to.

[A20-b231 River generator algorithm is absolutely horrible]

7 hours ago, aspenforest said:

Greetings!

 

As you can see from the included image, the current river generation algorithm is absolutely horrible. 

The rivers should begin from an elevated position, such as a mountain, and meander into a lake or to the edge of the map.

The worst part is, that these generated rivers essentially lead to nowhere, making the usage of boat mods completely useless.

Please fix the rivers and lakes so that their existence would actually make any sense.

 

Read the A21 roadmap, water is planning to get overhauled for A21

[Game crashes when quitting a save and trying to rejoin.]

1 hour ago, Star69 said:

Looks like your save is corrupted. It could have been corrupted when you crashed the first time but that crash isn’t in the log. Every time you start the game it overwrites the log of the previous start. You have 2 options: delete the save and start over or read the pinned topic Support FAQS and there’s a section on how to try fixing your corrupted save. Whichever you do, the next time you crash, move a copy of the log file to your desktop before restating the game so it isn’t overwritten and post that log here.

Interesting. This is a completely new save at day 1. Guess it's already time to start over, hopefully they can figure out why my saves are crashing upon exiting and rejoining them.