[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

Will there ever be a mode where you can play traderless? I know you can do that with discipline but I'd really like it to be a game/map type.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

On 5/20/2022 at 12:43 PM, ArchonMal said:

I have to admit: the crafting overhaul makes me pretty nervous. The current system works great because the majority of the key recipes (basic weapon for your tree, forge, bicycle, wrench, first aid bandages, etc) are all easily accessible and you can grab them with minimal investment. This means that with zero luck / RNG, you can get the basics set up. I always start a place from scratch in every new world and this is critical to me. With a minimal amount of luck to find a couple components to make the forge, I'm all set in a new world.

 

I'm afraid that the new system could potentially fall into the "progression blocked by RNG" trap where you can't make a key item because you haven't been lucky enough to find it. I still have war flashbacks to the A15 era Calipers. I distinctly remember a world where it was day 150+ and nobody on the server could make any bullets because we never found them. We were swimming in materials but no calipers to actually make anything with them. Our server admin eventually stepped in to give everyone some from the creative menu. 

 

How will the new system work to prevent this from coming back to the game? 

The current system is honestly terrible, do you really use crafting beyond a few points in the game? I don't. I play on delete inventory on death and looting and questing is still the only way to play. Crafting is nearly useless currently so unless you just hate crafting in general, it is not great. Not to mention using your abilities to unlock recipes feels like a huge waste when you can find the same recipes in looting right now. Considering the 100 skill levels for crafting stuff, I doubt you'll end up rng blocked with the abundance needed for those numbers.

[Alpha 21 Dev Diary]

New crafting system looks excellent, much better than the current system. 

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

8 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Maybe you didn't understand. Allowing BM zombies to spawn on player blocks would also fix the first problem.

Basically, the BM horde would spawn on top of the platform.

Wish I thought of this, next time I'll make bedroll zones tiny to encourage me to build my own base. I normally just hijack POIs.

On 2/4/2022 at 1:35 PM, Blake_ said:

Fun fact: There's no video game out there with a vanilla non-scripted general-purpose bandit AI that seeks cover, surrounds, throws grenades, heals/retreats when damaged, communicates between each other, targets and follows the player through a Multiplayer voxel world in a believable manner.

 

Most advanced ones just move to the player and target him/her while following him/her with significant glitches, like Empyrion. There are also scripted ones , that have a bit of brain but within a very limited area. Some non-voxel games do achieve some of those features, like Rust, with scripted and area-limited NPC AI working in Multiplayer.

Yes this is why I worry on the bandits. In a voxel game like this, it would be a feat of achievement to programming to get the ai done. Not that I doubt it could happen but with the desire to release 1.0 eventually, it may be extremely difficult to get bandits working without just using similar ai to zombies. 

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

This alpha is ok. There is a lot going for the game but it really needs some sort of push. The story and bandits should help, and there should probably be some additional endgame content or reset mechanic for gold. The fact that zombies scale to gamestage mostly makes it so that a good player can rush out and clear tier 5s by week 2 or 3 at the latest. Once you do all of those, there isn't much more to do.

 

Maybe lootstage could scale like it does now and zombie scaling could be time based? It doesn't solve the problem but it would give you incentive to see how far you can go and survive without encouraging afk.

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

Wonder how the AI for bandits will be handled. Adding a more intelligent enemy to this kind of game really hasn't ever been done before.

[Hardest tier 5?]

What is it? 

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

7 hours ago, Demonoid74 said:

So far the only oddity in random world generation I have come across is this...

I remember when Moses was in the game

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

On 1/15/2022 at 5:03 PM, pregnable said:

Hey, is anyone else missing the max alive zombie count setting? 

 

I am playing 64, and while I know the number does not jump up super fast, my last video was only like 8 zombies, when I was expecting at least 12...

 

Then I go and look and I no longer see the max alive zombie setting...

 

Is it gone now or did I miss something?

It is gone, you have to edit it in the files, I am sad about this as well 

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

7 hours ago, Perspective out of focus said:

Ok you removed fall damage from zombies this is true for dead flesh but why don't they get the debuff from fracture why don't they slow down?
Another nuance, why do zombies run around mines and other spikes?

Zombies are a car rushing straight without a driver - this is a blind thirst for killing all living things, and you made them damn geniuses who, after an improved block by you, switch their attention to a weak block. Are they telepaths? Why didn't they create a new civilization with such intelligence, because their IQ is clearly no less than yours!
Crawling zombies damage the player through closed doors, frames, and blocks.
That's not what you guys do.

I dont like that they focus on weaker points if that is true, but I'd prefer that they did have more chances at destroying structural integrity than they do now. I witnessed in A20, zombies focused on attacking the building next to the one I was in, instead of bringing down my tower. No damage done to my tower at all, they nearly destroyed a nearby building though

[It is too hard, it limits new players]

15 hours ago, ungkor said:

For those of us that have been playing this game for years, we know what is "coming up" and we can plan for it accordingly. 

 

I feel like any new players are basically going to hate this game. 

 

But even if you are a experienced player, alpha 20 seems like a a build that is designed to just frustrate people.   I'm on day 15, I have a 9mm pistol with a mod, a pipe shotgun, and a pipe machine gun.   I have a few pieces of a armor. 

 

I start a "fix the generators quest".    I roll up in my bike, and I see a bear in the distance.   I shoot it the face with 2 clips of 9mm and it kills me.  Ok, great.  Maybe I missed a lot.  

Don't fight a bear with a 9mm, that goes for real life too, it will kill you in real life if you try that too

[Zombie Horde Pathing - Discussion]

On 1/8/2022 at 12:07 PM, minisith said:

I think the current ai pathing is good for tower defense, what is in the game's description on the store.  I see a lot of players not liking tower defense.  But it is tfp game, which the game is complex for what is all planned to be put into the game.

I strongly disagree with this one. If it was good for tower defense, they would have a sense of attacking structural points.

I want ai pathing to knock down buildings more often

I am not sure how the current pathing is "tower defense" when I stand on top of a building they all attack the building next to it and leave my tower untouched.

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

How is progress on coding generic bandit AI going? This is my biggest worry for the game, as no other game has been able to pull off such a thing correctly. 

On 1/7/2022 at 8:35 PM, LastTugBoat243 said:

• Current 10 armor/clothing slots reduced to 4 slots for outfits that will merge both clothing and armor values. No more clipping issues of wearing clothing under armor. Better balance on number of mod slots available to use with outfits.

It feels like the game is changing and not all the changes are good. There have been weird removals of items such as Grain alcohol , Hoe's for land tilling , smell mechanic , cave systems , blunderbuss , Hub City , snowberry , separate animal meat , moldy bread , wood cutting bench , zombie looting ,  log spike traps , sliding jail doors , barbed wire , and the simplification of building tiers used to be Wood --> Reinforced Wood --> Iron Reinforced Wood --> Flagstone --> Cobblestone --> Concrete --> Reinforced Concrete --> Steel --> Stainless Steel This was a great upgrade path it wasn't that complex and it was rewarding upgrade slowly towards stainless steel in the end it was replaced by the current path Wood --> Cobblestone -- Concrete --> Steel. even farming has been simplified before you could till the land with a Hoe to plant crops and you could create fertilizer to speed up the process. Now you just use a farm plot. Another thing the new clothing system we have to wear limiting outfits to increase stats and completely toss out character customization. Sorry dude you can't look the way you want to anymore because you have to wear this specific outfit that you might not like in order to boost harvest percentage or be able to harvest crops effectively. You said in your post that the new system would fix armor clipping through clothing. Well it really doesn't. Removing clothing all together isn't really a fix, its a removal. NOT A FIX a removal you didn't wanna take the time to fix it. So you you removed the system entirely removing diversity in character customization. You could probably just add additional armor sets for mining farming etc and try to fix the clipping issue. But instead your removing all of them POOF and substituting it with this limited armor system. I love this game and want to be a fun like in previous alpha's.

 

If you do decide to remove all clothing do you think there's a way you could keep the clothing models for the Modding community. There are people who will want make mod's to bring them back. 

Sorry if a lot of this didn't make sense.

 

They should do what a lot of other games do, and they probably will. 4 slots for actual stat clothing, 4 slots for cosmetic overrides.

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

Finished my first tier 5 in A20, permadeath. Strength is too powerful in my opinion. I don't have any int and never built a workbench. I think they should change sex rex to tools only and have weapon skills affect weapon stamina alone instead of sex rex. It was really fun and there were a few scary times but overall it wasn't really that hard. I am playing with 300% ai block damage as well with run during day and nightmare at night. Overall I think sex rex is too good. Great job designing these maps though, I'll play a few more tier 5 before calling it quits for A20.

 

First tier 5 took me about an hour to clear and looked like a Crack a Book corporate office.

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

7 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

Wouldn't this just rush players to kill as many zombies as possible as quickly as possible? Two sides, same coin.

That's not nearly as easy to rush as levels, especially if death would set lootstage back.

[Beakers. Do they exist?]

My guess is that it's on a high lootstage. I want that system to be changed a bit. What I think currently is that lootstage should scale with kills and be lowered on death. 

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

3 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

Gamestage still works off level + days alive, while loot stage is purely based on level (which is then heavily multiplied by biome, POI tier etc.).

 

Very rapid levelling will actually bring your lootstage closer to your gamestage, as your days alive isn't going up.

 

That said, you'll be in the position where you're getting tougher zombies right now and you haven't had time to actually loot at your new loot stage, so your gear will be outdated for your gamestage.

 

If you're playing solo you could dial down your exp setting before a big build then put it back up again afterwards.  Otherwise, using pre-crafted blocks is probably your best bet.  Even if you use frames for the finesse/aesthetic stuff, doing the big simple blocky stuff, like foundations, in pre-crafted will noticably reduce the building xp you're seeing.  You'll need a fair few workbenches though as concrete shapes take a while to craft and steel ones are absolutely absurd.

Lootstage shouldn't be based on level. I've come to the conclusion the best way for lootstage to be is to have it tied to kills since last death. Like maybe lose half or so of your lootscore on death so that there's progression over time still. Level focus makes the rng feel more rigged than my idea, and makes you want to rush levels early instead of enjoying the world.

[Lootstage Idea]

I actually think lootstage being tied to level really hurts the game. I think it should be scaled to something different that is time consuming, such as time survived (though then you would have to solve the problem of wanting to just afk till your lootstage is up). Maybe lootstage could scale with kills and be greatly lowered when you die? That would increase penalties of death and make the game much more survival oriented. There's too much incentive to jump off a building or get killed when you have too many debuffs right now. 

So in short, to solve 2 birds with one stone, lootstage should scale with kills or something since your last death, and not level up total.

[A20 - Leveling is now pointless]

I think you need to play the game finding lootstage sweetspots to get what you want. I haven't found a beaker but I don't mind the rng. Actually I think progression happens too quickly, or too slowly, but there's never a good in between. I personally would like lootstage and enemies to not scale to level past what the devs expect people to be at on their first horde night for enemies. I think the lootstage scaling to level hurts the game a bit. Lootstage should scale with other activities such as days survived or something. That'd actually be awesome. 

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

1 hour ago, Quantum Blue said:

Who likes or dislikes dynamic music?  I have done with and without.  With does add some 'ambiance' but quite a few times I stop what I'm doing and find nothing.  But without 'allows' me to hear more 'ambient' noise.  Which is ok most of the time, but holy cow, wasteland scares the bejeebus out of me.  (And, a btw, parkour (2) seems to be an awesome perk for the wasteland...)

The game is scarier without it in your opinion?

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

33 minutes ago, Kalex said:

Just a little feedback:

 

As a crafter/builder, I think the XP from upgrading needs to be halved at the minimum. Otherwise if you do a large base build, your game stage will FAR outlevel your loot stage and totally bone you and your group (if you are co-op) on horde night.

 

 

Anybody else noticing normal/feral zombies making leaps that previously only a spider zombie could make and definitely more than any non-parkour player can jump. Last horde night, we were routinely seeing feral Steves jumping 5 - 7 block gaps.

Doesn't leveling up increase your lootstage too along with gamestage? 

It sounds like a good thing that they can now leap far, I have not seen it yet however.

[Please stop trying to tell us how to play]

50 minutes ago, Desmondbratcat said:

Ok there is nowhere that I said I didn't want to do horde night, I do horde night, I have horde bases and some of them used to be underground.  Last time I tried building an underground base I dug a ladder to bedrock then a tunnel that was pretty long with doors along it before you even got to my base, I was digging out my base and turned around to have a screamer horde on me.  This is what I am complaining about.  How does anyone do this now without cheating because I seem to have problems. I used to do some really good underground bases.  I also did and still do some really good above ground bases but my location options have been halved.  The block hit points reduction... this is coming back, we all know it and yes we can use different blocks but why??? Just because the FP don't like us using poles on our horde bases?  Because they didn't put them in the game to be used that way?  Ok fine, reduce the hit points on poles etc but also reduce the cost them to reflect the hit point decrease.  No problem I will use other blocks.  The FP don't seem to like killing corridors with wedge tips.  Neither do I, they are boring, I prefer something a bit more interesting but that is just me.  Lost of people love killing corridors but guess what?? Gone. Maybe not entirely but you naughty people out there that do use them - shame on you the FP don't like this.   Someone replied and said I was politicising this.  What I said was I feel like I am being told what to do every way I turn and I don't need it in a game.  I am not asking the FP to do a game for me, I am saying that if they give me these tools and items in an open world sandbox tower defense game I should be able to used these tools and objects as I see fit. 

This is likely because you are not playing things safe. For my underground bases I may hear screamers but I never even see them (in the base) because I use doors and trap doors. If you're just digging an open hole of course you should expect things to get to you easily.

 

I agree with the cost reduction on poles 100%.

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

3 hours ago, RhinoW said:

Just wanted to write down saying that farming is insanely poorly designed. Usually a farm means extra produce of something, in which the yield is profitable. That is not the case with 7 days, unless you have Living off the land....TIER 2! And even then, it's a 50% chance for the farm to literally work like it's supposed to.

Let's take potatoes as a variable for the example:

- Use 5 potatoes to craft 1 seed
- Waste resources into a farm plot
- Put the seed on the plot and wait (no way to speed up the process now as far as I'm aware)
- Harvest the seed to get 5 potatoes.
- Use all 5 to craft 1 seed and literally get nothing at all in theory

So, unless you find a seed (=5 potatoes), or until you get LOTL Tier2+, your farm is by all means, a waste of resources.

Who designed this? What is the point of having a secondary rather major mechanic, only be usable with an UPGRADED perk.

You profit off living off the land 1 actually.
The math
50% chance of seed is approximately 2.5 plants
You get 4 plants with living off the land 1

 

This is an average yield of 6.5, which means if you want an endless farm, you are getting about 1-2plants per plot net gain. Of course with a small sample size your farm may end unsustainable at these levels. So if you insist no fortitude, wait till you have like 5 seeds if seeing your farm dry out is frustrating. 

 

The mechanic is also used without any perks to generate a few plants from seeds you find with no investment (it's not meant to be sustainable with no perk, just a 1 time gig).

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

5 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

Nope. We know rly a small number of information about campaign and zombie - Well i think nobody expect so bad both mods - japanish soldiers with stg in SP  and  even lack of ray gun in zombies was so unexpected

I think zombies started getting real bad by BO3 or so. Multiplayer a bit earlier. Campaign I just hadn't had the time to check out but the old stuff was okay. That is a bigger step screw up than usual but I don't think any CoD release has been good for years. 

I guess if TFP ever went corporate, they'd make us pay for every 7dtd alpha lol, or release DLC before the game was released, or suddenly go out of alpha for the PR with the game still broken.

[Alpha 20 Dev Diary]

6 minutes ago, Matt115 said:

 

2. Well  people usually don't know about game quality before release.

 

I think we all know what quality we're getting when we buy a game that is rereleased every year, or at least should know.

9 hours ago, Khalagar said:

I play almost nothing but survival games, but I still can't think of a single one where food is relevant past early game, for good reason. Stamina is the same way. It's essentially just a limit on how much fun you are allowed to have before the game says "nuh uh uh, take your hand off the keyboard and stand still for 10 seconds before you can play the game again!" , and usually is mitigated as you progress to a point where you can finally actually play the game without playing the green bar simulator. 

This is the reason why I dislike upgraded tools costing more stamina to use, I never stop using my stone axe.