ShellHead

So have we seen the retooled spear perk yet? I’m really curious how TFP are going to bring it in line with the other melee perks now that the throw has been axed

I’m looking forward to the new crafting system, it looks like a good blend of the Learn by Doing and Looted Schematic systems. Really curious to see how the perks are going to be rebalanced now that the crafting aspects are getting stripped out.

Hey all! Been a while. I got a question: Now that A20E is out, how are the traders doing? I know there were some changes to them from A19 and i was wondering what the scale of them was.

I agree with all of this, and i’m not saying that 7D2D is hard to mod in general or anything like that. What i’m talking about is making sure that modding in All of its forms is made as easy as possible, a huge number of the mods for FO and TES are retextures and new models in addition to mechanical changes and new systems.

I wouldn’t say that it is less of one but rather one that appeals to those who want to tinker with mechanics under the hood as opposed to largely visual changes that don’t change underlying mechanics. It’s more about easy access to a variety of modding “spheres” for lack of a better word. I’d have to ask @Matt115 but i interpreted that as talking more about what he felt 7D2D should add to help the modding community grow rather than talking about what has already made the community as strong as it is. That was just my reading of it though, his more doom ‘n’ gloom language struck me as more rhetorical hyperbole to emphasize the point. This point exactly. When comparing 7D2D to TES and Fallout, everyone is missing a critical difference between them. Those games are fully launched games whose mods came after the launch; though in the case of Fallout 4, mod support occurred even after the release with Bethesda making changes each time they updated their mod store forcing some mods (Like FSE) to have to be updated. 7D2D is in an Alpha state being pre-Released. That means things change as the game changed over time, and how mods interface with the various code in the background has changed. Once 7D2D is in its final release form, maintaining mods will become much simpler. As for lore, with the work being done on bandits, lore for the game will be developed further for the final release. We should know more about what caused the world we are surviving in to occur, and who exactly is this mysterious Duke we heard about. Some of the beliefs that Matt has (and some others) is they are looking at where the game is today which is only a snapshot of where the game is today in its current state. The final version will have these elements in it when they are ready for it to be released. Getting the mechanics down right is what the team is working on today, the fluff will come later. While it is definitely true that 7D2D’s alpha state makes maintenance more difficult and also does not actually show the game in its entirety, my point was about the sheer scale of the changes made in the mod being daunting for people who are just dipping their toes into modding. Mods like UL and DF are some of the highest end mods it’s possible to make, massive in impact and scope, newbie modders (which are critical for long-term community health) aren’t going to try to make their own versions. The issue is “what mods could they make on the path towards making the next Darkness Falls?” Which brings us back to entry points, but there is an additional factor: Visibility. XML changes have robust mechanical alterations but the game has little visible change, not everyone wants visible change more than mechanical change but as it currently stands, modders who want major visible changes have fewer easy options than modders who don’t care as much about visibility. I wouldn’t say that 7D2D is doomed by any stretch of the imagination but questions should always be asked “can we make this even better?” The game shouldn’t be judged as a final product yet but this is also the time to bring up points of concern, it’s up to TFP to determine what is of concern to them.

I think you’re misunderstanding @Matt115’s point, it looks like to me that he’s saying that lore and model replacements/retextures create good entry points for modders who want to add something to the game which were major things TES had in its favor, i don’t think he’s saying the only mods worth making just so happen to match his personal preferences. Darkness Falls and Undead Legacy are fantastic mods and they add a great deal, including their own lore, but they were/are difficult to create and maintain, too difficult for all but the most dedicated to do. TES and Minecraft have thriving modding communities not just because the scope and scale of how they can be modded but because there are many good entry points to get into that modding scene. Most mods for both of those games are far closer to new zombie models than Darkness Falls in their scale. We can argue about whether or not 7D2D has enough of its own good entry points to sustain the community in the long term (XML mods are incredibly easy to do which is definitely a good entry point in my book) but let’s get clear on the argument first. Models matter to some folks, mechanical changes matter to others, still others like adding new stories. A healthy modding community has all of these and more, regardless of the opinions of the rest of the community, because the more people feel free to make the game their own, the more robust and higher quality the community becomes.

So what are the things you all are most looking forward to in the upcoming dev stream? I’m looking forward to more details on the new gear progression myself.

“Hi there, I’m Bear Grills”

In all honesty, i’d guess the next major step for 7d2d after gold is a sequel but definitely not right away. A sequel would allow for a clean start tech-wise and for features added at different times in the original to be built into the sequel from the beginning. DLC strikes me as less likely due both to high mod-ability/free post-launch content handling the stuff that can be done without heavy changes to core code and a sequel being more convenient for major core changes than DLC would be. just my thoughts on it anyway.

Plus the shotgun’s short range is an important offset for its sheer stopping power, giving it range equivalent to a high end 9mm or low end AR would make it insanely powerful as well as mess up its multi-target. i very much agree about the spear though, as it stands the damage on the regular attack isn’t enough to properly keep pace with the other options, the reach and armor piercing aren’t quite enough to make it worth using.

Just have it made entirely of metal and treat repairing it like the blade trap. Basically just metal spikes on pistons.

Honestly you could do the wall-axe trap in 7D2D, just make it out of scrap metal and obvious mechanical parts. it’s basically the mixture of the blade trap and robo-sledge.

As far as i can tell, the only real difference between the robo-sledge and the pusher trap in Orcs Must Die is area of effect and the fact the robo-sledge is easier to place and replace. So I don’t necessarily see more kinetic traps overburdening CPUs more so than what’s already been implemented. I’d love more variety in traps and defenses, maybe even more utility focused traps that do little or no damage but provide strong crowd control to help setup killzones for your damage traps. Leaning more into the Base defense/Tower defense aspects would be fantastic and i hope TFP is planning on doing that in a later alpha.

While i can see what you mean in the context of yield/loot bonuses, I disagree but i do think they should have more of an offset. that last statement though is ridiculous. Impact is not a yes/no factor, that’s literally the core principle of the entire concept of game balance. We can argue about whether those bonuses should be there or not (i’d say that as is they shouldn’t be implemented but they likely look much different now than when announced) but everything an attain a healthy balance while having a noticeable impact.

So because the stats are possibly over or under powered, they should be scrapped entirely? that’s a completely useless standard, all stats can be too high or too low. we don’t know whether or not the stat bonuses add anything of merit because we have no idea what they’ll look like outside of the very earliest concepting.

Yeah, i’m thinking that people just haven’t asked that question yet under the assumption that the designation of T3 hasn’t changed.

I’m still not actually certain this is still INT’s T3 robotic line, it’s very different from the rest of the line and arguably isn’t an actual weapon. It’s possible that the robotics perk get dramatically overhauled so it can apply useful bonuses to the drone but given that the drone’s base function is as a flying storage chest, the perk would have to have a wide array of bonuses to be able to be useful for both automated turrets and the Heli-Pack™️ I’m guessing it’s another tool/utility item that might not actually have a governing perk.

What kind of changes do you think would make it more fun to use for you to use Xbows do have unique ammo types and the T3 Xbow has good stats especially when perked out, but the T1 probably could use a bit of a range/velocity kick to make it a more compelling alternative to the pistol. I have the sneaking suspicion that a larger issue is that the bow/Xbow line lacks a T2 option at the moment which creates a major deadzone in the progression. Thankfully that should be fixed in A20. Yeah, that likely should be turned down so you only bust through blocks that you’re trying to destroy, probably should require at least 4 pellets to land for a block to be destroyed since you’re likely not going to do that accidentally.

I’m interested in what the new armor sets are going to bring to the table and it looks like the intent for the set bonuses is to help support playstyles the player had already chosen, not force a player into one. That being said, i’m not entirely certain that set bonuses are the right direction to take the armor system, at least as they being conceived as of the last time we heard about it. But i also doubt the system looks the same as it did in the announcement, i think we’d have heard more about it at this point if it was going to be exactly like the announcement. Regardless i trust TFP to make the new armor system a blast to use and give players interesting options.

Could have the locked doors lead to side loot rooms, toss in a few extra zeds in a cramped space and it’d give the player an option to make the POI a bit harder for more loot. Basically just storage closets but a bit bigger. It’d require a bit of rebalancing of the POIs and would likely be a non-choice for clear em out quests, but it might be fun and could give more of a decision in how a player wants to approach doing the POI than just “finish it or bail out early”. Also would be a decent anti-nerd poleing measure.

I’m curious what everyone’s thoughts are on how the weapons (including their associated perks and perk books) are balanced. my personal thoughts are that the club, knuckles, and AR all could use nerfing and the spear and knife could use a buff, but i’m really interested in hearing which you all think need tweaking and in which direction. thanks in advance!

I’m glad to hear the new gear progression is going well, i’m really looking forward to it! Also curious what other system changes might come with it, like if the perks and weapon stats are getting tweaked or something.

Oh, absolutely. There are lots of good combinations available. My position was always about making sure the power allocation for the Baton and Turrets was within a reasonable margin of other options, which was why i was focused on the idea on-perk INT builds. If you want to go hard into direct combat while also being specced into INT, you absolutely are going to go off-perk with weapons, but INT’s weapons are designed for indirect combat and i just want to be certain they are as powerful at their specialization as other perks weapons are at theirs.

I agree and you can’t completely design around all skill levels, which is why you try to look at it from both a relative balance perspective and a skill floor/ceiling perspective. Exactly, not every trait a weapon has can be modified by difficulty. Take your stun baton example, because more of its power is in its stun rather than its raw statistics (damage, stamina cost, etc) the baton is less directly affected by difficulty level but the stun becomes more necessary to survive as enemy damage increases and player damage decreases, making it more useful on higher difficulties and as the gamestage increases. Same with the spear’s long range and armor penetration, less useful when enemies are weaker and have little or no armor but more useful when they do more damage and have higher armor rating. Since armor rating isn’t a part of difficulty modifiers, the spear also isn’t as affected by difficulty. So difficulty isn’t overly useful a metric for weapon balance but can be useful to reveal where weapons power allocations are distributed and whether or not those allocations are within a reasonable margin of each other.

A21: established zombie AFL-CIO