Uncle Al
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Posts posted by Uncle Al
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17 minutes ago, meilodasreh said:
Thx for your kind replies.
I will try your ideas, but in general I just suggest that it might be taken into consideration that bow aiming should be slightly more accurate in the future.
I am talking about situations like this:
https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkxm55_c6t85SimsmasL9gcKLtq1IJAO-Xq
No need to tell me that his aim is a bit off, especially for the second shot.
But this actually is what I'm talking about. These "just a little bit off" shots with a bow seem be to much more likely to result in an actual miss then with guns.
And with guns (especially the lower tier ones), the aim should be just as "wobbly" (at least by assuming that the laser pointer "shaking" always is the actual spot where the bullet would hit)
I
The big difference between bows and guns is velocity. Guns hit when the trigger is pulled, so shots will hit so long as every single bit of the cross hair is filled with target. With bows that's not necessarily true as there's a delay between firing and hitting the target. Along with projectile drop, you have to lead moving targets with a bow but you don't have to with guns, and head shots are distinctly more risky as the zed may twich their head out the way of the shot in the time it takes the projectile to hit the target.
I notice a polymer string mod, especially on a compound crossbow, makes the bow behave far more like a gun, at least at short ranges, because your projectile velocity is through the roof and the hit delay is almost irrelevant. With lesser bows and no polymer string, bow accuracy is definitely inferior because shot velocity is a real problem.
Your video link actually shows this really well. Look at how the zombie's head is positioned not when he releases the shot, but when you hear the clunk of the arrow hitting the wall a moment later. It becomes unsurprising he's missing all his shots as at impact time there's often barely a wafer of target inside the crosshairs.
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1 hour ago, meganoth said:
And that is why I don't like this boost being tied to perks. It means I have to consider meta reasons when spending my perk points. I may want to be better and faster at cooking, but no, that would dilute my weapon perks bonus!
I'm am noticing this problem with vehicle magazines. I've played a game with a build that's heavily perked into salvage, with also a couple of points in Miner 69er. Unfortunately, passing gas crates contain four possible magazines: harvesting tools, salvage tools, forge ahead and vehicles. Passing gas crates are pretty much the only commonly available lootable item that weights decently for vehicle magazines.
What that means is strength/perception builds are absolutely awful at crafting vehicles...
I really wish the perk weighting had been done as it was originally described, where perks grant a chance at extra magazines rather than changing the weightings of loot. Something like (2% x container magazine weighting) chance per perk point of an extra magazine every time you loot a container. That way you'd still never find magazines outside of their proper containers (as the weight chance is zero) but having a perk would never slow your progress in any crafting line. It would mean high level characters find more magazines than low level ones, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
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I'm fairly certain something has changed with A21 so all weapons fire continuously if you hold the mouse button down. It's REALLY noticable with the double barrel shotgun as it has a crazy rounds per minute stat. It always did, but being a semi auto weapon in A20 and earlier it would only fire one barrel no matter how long you held the button down. In A21 I'm finding unless you click the mouse lightning fast you'll fire both barrels in quick succession.
That fits in with the trigger mods not working quite right, as you get one single shot/burst but then get continuous single shots afterwards if you hold the button down.
I shall go check the bug list.
And....the shotgun is a known issue plus there's a general note that:
Most weapons have some sort of issue related to reload/firing/swapping/canceling timings in the animations, leading to things like the gun not moving during reloading, ammo/hand desyncs, etc. This will all be solved in the soon future, no reports needed on that.Which I guess probably covers the issues with trigger mods.0 -
There's a lot of good commentary above on the issues with quest reward vs. bought items vs. looted items vs. crafted items above.
I thought I'd chip in with some thoughts, which also summarise some of the stuff that's been raised.
First observation is the four different methods of loot acquisition scale off different things:
Quest reward appears to scale solely off quest tier
Bought items scale off level, quests completed and daring adventurer ranks. The key scale factor is level as DA is a flat bonus and trader stage is a multiple of level.
Looted items scale off level, biome and POI difficulty but the key driver is level
Crafting scales off magazines found
In order to achieve better balance, you really want all four loot sources scaling, to at least some degree, off the same thing, which realistically is level.
The suggestion that quest rewards, at least for levelled items, should be far more dependent on trader stage seems like a good one. Quantities of unlevelled items, ammo and resources etc. could still just scale straight off quest tier. My own feeling is quest rewards at the maximum tier you have unlocked should give rewards slightly better than what that trader has for sale. I.e. the trader stage used for rewards should be equivalent to the trader stage you're going to unlock when you finish that tier, if you're questing at the highest tier you've unlocked for that trader.
I do feel quest tier has too little impact on trader stage, and daring adventurer way too much. For a level 100 character, 3 ranks in daring adventurer gives the same benefit as unlocking quest tier 6. It's way more dramatic at lower levels. That seems totally out of whack. Something like +0.1 (player level) trader stage per quest tier (not the current 0.05) and an extra 0.1 (player level) per point in DA (rather than flat +10 per point) looks a lot more sensible to me. DA would still be a huge benefit for INT players, but it wouldn't have the insane impact it does currently at lower levels.
Equally the impact of levelling up a particular trader is currently rather small. Until you reach very high levels, where level gain rate has slowed right down, the rate you're gaining levels is going to have a much bigger effect on ALL traders than raising your quest tier level with individual traders.
Level impacting crafting skill has some merits, but that's a fairly radical change. It would ensure crafting stays more in alignment with other loot sources though.
It definitely seems like the current systems work and give players meaningful choices regarding how to gear up. We just need some fine tuning to ensure those choices are meaningful and there's not one single strategy that always performs better than the others.
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50 minutes ago, meganoth said:
A possible solution to tool block damage would be to add a random value to every hit and an early visual indication like the block flashing when the next hit will remove it.
That would actually mean that the higher the damage of your tool is the chance for removing a block earlier would increase. The visual indication would allow you to stop hitting when it was only this block you wanted to remove. At the moment more damage means nothing if it doesn't result in less hits for a block to be removed, with the random damage modifier your chances of early removing a block would increase steadily with your damage.
(That you often don't want to hit the block behind that one is also the reason that moving excess damage to the next block would probably be an unpopular solution)
Example: If now you have a tool that does block damage 100, it would instead do random block damage 60 to 140 with every hit. That is a big enough range so that removing that block earlier (or later) has a good chance even though the average is unchanged.
Yeah I've always thought the only real solution to the extreme impact of damage breakpoints in tools (shovel is 100, 125, 200, 250 for example, no other numbers matter) is to randomise damage. That way every single point increase matters, as it will increase your overall speed of material removal when taken across multiple blocks.
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4 hours ago, H7dek7 said:
That's exacty my experience. From 3 berry bushes planted by me I've got 0 seeds. But, from 20+ mushrooms I've got seeds from all but one. That's when I began checking skills and found out farming skill isn't connected to the farming magazine LOL. It's still LotL, which I haven't invested a single point in. After investing all points in LotL my farming progress is almost none. After 2 rounds of crops gathering my field would be the same size if not for cattle food bags (corn seed) found on one of the farms in the village. Farming is pointless at this point. I usually play with my wife and 2-3 online friends and I'm usually the farmer of the group. In previous versions after 2-3 weeks we were self-sustaining thanks to our big farm. Now we all have to hunt/loot/buy food to stay alive.
You've also got a bug if you're losing progress now you've got LotL 3.
The chance of getting a seed back isn't affected by LotL OR magazines, but you get such a big yield with LotL 3 it's literally impossible not to get back more than you planted even if the RNG hates you with a passion.
If you're remembering your data correctly, don't have a bug and you're not succumbing to confirmation bias, the RNG does really, really hate you, by the way. The chance of getting less than 2 seeds back out of 20 plantings is 0.002%
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9 hours ago, meganoth said:
Mmh, I am not convinced either, I thought it was 6.
You were both close, it's 6.5 at maxxed LotL.
Averages are 4 with 1 point, 4.5 with 2 (4 + 50% chance of an extra 1) and 6.5 (6 +50% chance of an extra 1) with 3.
Note that this is for crops you planted yourself. For wild harvesting, including raiding the fields of POIs, it's 2, 2.5, 3.5.
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4 minutes ago, CapnCookie said:
I'm not sure if it's changed, but I haven't gotten a single seed back for any of the crops I've planted in A21e.
That's definitely sounding like a bug if you've done significant farming. I'm seeing exactly what I'd expect, with no change from A20. I usually plant in fives solo and I'll get 1-4 seeds back per harvest.
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59 minutes ago, CapnCookie said:
LotL gives an average of about 6.5 crops per player-placed plant (base of 2, then triple harvest plus 50% chance for an additional crop). Seeds cost 5 of whichever crop, so you net an average of 1.5 crops per plant. Not a crazy net yield, but enough for it to be self sustaining.
Making seeds effectively costs 2.5 crops per seed, as you get the seed back 50% of the time, so you get an average profit of 1.5 per farm plot at LotL 1. LotL 3 does average 6.5 yield, but that's an average 4 profit per plot, and guarantees a positive return every harvest.
There seems to be this totally false perception that it's only worth farming at LotL 3, which is nonsense. I've found LotL 3 is only needed if you're farming for a largish group. Solo or duo, 1 point is absolutely fine.
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The problem with making the helmet water filter require a higher loot stage to find is that it then the helmet filter probably wouldn't be relevant by the time you find it.
I found one on day two in my last playthrough. It's very handy in those first few days. Before the end of week one I'd found the Wasteland Treasures book that allows making pure mineral water. That means every single murky water I find, or each water produced from a dew collector, now gives 60 hydration, rather than the usual 20-24 for water or teas. Once you can make pure mineral water then hydration is a total non issue, so I basically never need to use my helmet water filter.
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10 hours ago, theFlu said:
True, at least partially. They do make for the easiest of targets. But assuming only that the current volume-spawned zeds would get up and start wandering upon being loaded in.. none of the current jump scares could be designed, and you could still clear a room just by adding a couple extra pebbles on your toolbar. Lure them into a corner and start throwing bolts. Or pineapples at that point. Heck, I've started to use pipe bombs for stealth in A21 vanilla. Can't quite the headshot behind the kitchen counter? The arc above is usually free... sneaky AF
It definitely feels cheesy, but rather than pipe bombs, might I suggest using explosive arrows/bolts. Somewhat surprisingly, they get the full (3.5x + 0.5 per hidden strike rank) modifier to sneak damage which makes an explosive arrow out of stealth the most devastating alpha strike in the game.
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2 hours ago, doughphunghus said:
- helmet water filter: i found one in my first day in loot. Yeah "i could have chosen not to use it" but i do feel looting it (and early) should be nerfed somehow. I think it should be "buy only" and/or crafted only and nerfed as a mod so its not 100% safe to drink with. Maybe 5-8% dysentery chance.- murky water: i found a lot of this on loot. I just started drinking it without boiling and got quite a few in me (like 10?) before dysentery kicked in. I feel that the dysentery "chance" should be upped a little, to discourage drinking more, but its been that way for forever so ... maybe make it like meat where its 5 bottles of murky water boils to 1 boiled water?
Funnily enough I've found one on day 2 in my latest playthough. All it's really meant is I haven't bothered building a dew collector yet, and I'm on day 6.
It's worth noting that murky water only gives about 12 hydration, rather than 20 for water and 24 for teas, plus their other benefits, so it's useful having the filter to top out your hydration but it's still useful finding water and making teas and glue.
In fact I've recently found the wasteland treasures book that allows making pure water, so the filter is going to be mostly redundant as pure water's stamina regen and efficient digestion buffs are too good to pass up. At 60 hydration a bottle, hydration is a total non issue once you find that recipe.
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33 minutes ago, Thaledwyn said:
- Before the 317 patch we could buy a crucible from a non quested Bob for 15k on day 13 (both players at about char lvl27 on insane, normal loot settings).
Just had exactly the same in my last game, which I'm abandoning due to the patch. Felt VERY strange to have the crucible available for sale with zero quests done, no points in daring adventurer, and level in the low 20s. I'm over 50 books away from crafting a crucible, and have a point in advanced engineering.
Finding a Q6 iron pickaxe in a snow biome car at level 20 also seemed a bit early, although I could already craft Q5 by that point. Likewise getting a Q3 iron crossbow for a Tier 2 quest reward. Especially now crossbows are ranked way above their bow equivalents in crafting. I do quite like that change though as it means crossbows can be just straight up better than bows, balance wise, which they always were.
The effect of perks on magazine finding is a lot stronger than I expected. By day 14 I'd completely maxxed out spear and salvage tool crafting (75 magazines each), with 4 points in both skills (and only added the fourth skill point for the last couple of days). For crafting lines that I have no perk investment in I'm barely into double figures in most cases. Skills with one point I'm in the teens to twenties.
10 magazines for no points, 20 odd for one point and 75 for 3-4 points is a massive variation!
Couple of minor other observations:
Fruit and vegetable prices seem very high. I'd expect those prices for 5 of berries or whatever, but for 1 it's extortionate and pretty much never worth spending the money. Almost the same cost to just buy the finished foodstuffs. Fruit and vegetables used to sell in units of 5 and now sell singly, so it's possible the prices weren't changed to reflect the smaller unit quantity?
I thought parts were too rare and expensive, until I saw the new recipes! One part per quality level is a superb change. Slightly ameliorates the 'not worth crafting Q1 or Q2' for guns at least. For tools and melee it's still better to stay at T5 iron then jump to T3 steel, but I happily crafted a T1 lever action rifle rather than a T5 hunting rifle because not being single shot is such an improvement and the lever action rifle only cost me 1 rifle part which I can get back when I scrap it, as my crafting skill improves.
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1 minute ago, Roland said:
Without water there can be no kraken. Think about it.
That's when you release the walktapus instead.
All that tentacly goodness with bipedal locomotion on top.
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5 hours ago, Vaeliorin said:
(I conceptually hate the stamina changes in A21 because I normally don't spec into weapons until late game, so the stamina buffs being tied to weapons is awful for me.)
From what I've seen, the stamina reduction for tool use will be rolled into Miner 69er, in the same way the reduction for using a particular weapon skill is included in the weapon skills. You're probably actually better off in A21 if all you were taking Sex Rex for was tool use, as you will presumably being putting points in Miner 69er anyway.
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13 hours ago, meganoth said:
... and then there is the big guy at the drum providing the work rhythm.
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8 hours ago, SnowDog1942 said:
Not true. Roland yelled at me one time for saying there should be naked bandits that look like Burt Reynolds, with lots of chest hair. Long long time ago, but I remember
. Maybe back in A16 days.
He rightly yelled at you because the sexy chest hair bandit should be modelled on Sean Connery, not Burt Reynolds:
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1 hour ago, Philipp said:
Since I'm just a silent reader, I'd also like to share an idea and ask what you think of it. Imagine there are areas where there is some kind of "gas" or "fog" where it is not possible to breathe. This requires a breathing mask with a tank on the back that has a certain capacity. For example, if a zombie hits the player, there is a 25% chance that the hose will be damaged and need replacing before the player dies within 30 seconds. The equipment cannot be crafted, only found. The zombies in the area do double the damage per hit. I'm not a programmer and I don't know how difficult it is, but my naive thinking says: define the area for the zone, let zombies do more damage in this area. The item with mask and oxygen tank or filter, whatever, is of course also needed. And that's all. Tadaaa
There's certainly merit in the idea of time pressuring the player in certain areas (the tank capacity in this example) but I think existing systems could do that perfectly well without adding new elements such as toxic gas.
Radiation is the obvious one, and we may well see something of that nature when the clothing overhaul comes in. I'm rather hoping the weather/environment update brings in similar concepts: That the extreme biomes are unsurvivable indefinitely, in the open, without very high end and hard to source outfits. Something like a 'core temperature' value that means you have to get indoors and warm up, or under shade in the desert, regularly while in those areas. It would make the higher tier biomes feel very different to the forest, and should be able to be balanced so it adds excitement to gameplay rather than just being a chore.
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1 hour ago, eciggy said:
Do we know if the majority of the perks will still be mostly the same as they were in a20? I saw Sexy Rexy was removed, and I read over the 1st post of this topic. Just curious if I missed any other updated perk screens. Trying to plot my a21 build of course...
There are definitely perk changes to compensate for the loss of recipes from perks. Some perks had almost their entire value in the recipes they brought, so they should have been tweaked.
The only confirmed changes I've seen are:
- Sex Rex being moved to individual weapon skills so having skill with a weapon or tool lowers stamina cost for using it
- An attack speed up skill is being added to all attributes that speeds up attacks with weapons associated with that attribute
- Master Chef significantly reduces cooking times and cooking times have been increased across the board to make the skill more impactful
- Grease Monkey increases the effect of repair kits on vehicles - kits no longer do a full repair and vehicle damage is significantly increased to make the skill more impactful
The third one makes me a bit nervous, as I really don't think it goes far enough to prevent Master Chef becoming a 'never take, ever' perk. I think it really needs significant resource use reduction and/or increased buffs to foods cooked with skill to make Master Chef a viable pick. I'm waiting and seeing on the Grease Monkey change. Depending on the impact of increased vehicle damage and repair kit scarcity (due to water/glue changes) it could be almost mandatory for the careless driver or a 'not really worth bothering with' perk.
Then again I'm still massively hoping for animal tracker being combined with huntsman and other such tweaks to significantly reduce the number of 'I'm never ever going to take this' perks. I live in hope.
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11 minutes ago, Old Crow said:
I'm still curious what the two new quest types are. You can't count Infestation as "new" because it's just a "harder" Clear.
It's more than just an increased spawn count, though. Was mention that the zombies in an infestation are 'faster and harder to kill' so it appears there's a few difficulty tweaks to what you're facing.
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It's fairly straightforward to make mining faster, without modding or using creative, just by turning up player block damage in the game settings. Putting that to 200% or something will make you mine just as fast with poor tools as the speed you're used to with good ones.
Sure it'll mean you'll mine insanely fast if you ever get to top tier tools, but you can always just turn it down at that point. Equally if you hate the process of mining then leave it high and you can tear through blocks without the issues you have with the augur.
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Very enjoyable stream. I was most intrigued by the stuff I had no inkling was going to be in A21: the changes to difficulty scaling that I think are going to be hugely impactful. Having effectively POIs up to tier 8, Tier 5 + Infestation mission + biome dependant spawn scaling in POIs, gives more end game activity options and fixes one of the current major problems with biome scaling.
The current issue is that sure, the wasteland makes POIs harder because of streams of enemies attacking you from outside while you're clearing, but the enemies within the POI aren't really more dangerous even though you're in the wasteland. That means once you have a vehicle the snow biome, especially, is pretty much a free massive loot increase, as you can drive past the dangers and clear POIs with a vastly increased loot stage. Better POI danger biome scaling should make the risk/reward equation much more balanced.
Infestation missions being considered an additional tier is really smart. POIs bigger than existing 5s would probably be unwieldy, but making the existing POIs harder for an extra level of rewards I can totally see working. I'm assuming there will be a tier 6 of trader rewards, which will be entirely tier 5 POI infestation missions, and a tier 6 completion bonus. That also (hopefully) allows moving true end-game stuff (quality 6, top tier gear) into a really hard to obtain category of rewards.
Great job!
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23 minutes ago, Allgudmate said:
Looking forward to the dev streams! Will some 7dtd-youtubers get early access as well?
For all past Alpha releases, that happens the weekend before release of the first experimental iteration. Standard practice is bunch of dev streams, streamer weekend, general release to Steam on the Monday. I see no reason this one is going to be any different.
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3 minutes ago, Roland said:
When is an excavator not a tractor?
When we have an industrial machinery expert that cares posting on the forum...lol
This is why I stopped collecting them.
These days I'm an ex-tractor fan.
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Is ignoring game content the only option?
in General Discussion
Posted
My latest anecdotal contribution is day six of a new game. Went out, did a Tier 2 buried supplies which took no time at all, then while retuning home I got curious about one of the new Checkpoint POIs (A Tier 4) and ended up venturing into it and picking up a fair few things including the main loot. It was bloody hard killing mass soldiers using Q3 ish stone/pipe weapons, but it was great fun.
At this point I've got a mix of crafted and found gear, plus a T1 quest reward or two. Pretty consistently using Q2-3 tier zero stuff. So far so good.
Best loot I find in the hideous Tier 4 checkpoint is a Q4 primitive bow and a Q4 stone shovel. Both useful, great.
Stagger back from the checkpoint mission of death and hand in the buried supplies quest that took me about 30 seconds to complete, he offers me a Q5 iron crossbow and a Q5 iron pickaxe.
That does not seem at all balanced correctly....
I firmly believe quest rewards need to scale off trader stage, and not be hard linked to the quest tier.