Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Let me try to help.

 

Usecase:

 

As a player, I want to be able to trade items directly to another player, so that in dire situations we can switch items between eachother with relative speed and ease without dying.

 

Yeah staring at a menu waiting for both players to drag and drop items and both click I agree when zombies are coming is a speedy way to do it lol. We're not adding easy ways to do stuff you can do already which actually heightens the experience IMO. Chasing the bandage down the hill in a frantic moment is what this game is all about.

 

Sorry we're not adding any new features until we go gold with the planned features we actually need. A lot of our steam reviews are negative because we're in alpha for too long and the performance is bad not because of the lack of a trading interface.

[madmole]

Oh my God! I want it, I need it, I want to taze people!!! Please!

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

Can we please please please get a drawbridge that is an odd number wide? 3 or 5? OR a door that is 2 blocks wide ... either would work.

 

I put in a ticket for that a while back.

[madmole]

And why we're naked. I really want to know why I'm naked in the middle of nowhere. I mean, I like to think that I have enough sense that if there's a zombie apocalypse i'm not going to run out of the house in my underwear carrying a jar of water and a can of chili. I'd at least have shoes.... And where those air supply drops come from ... obviously there's someone still alive out there who's nice enough to make air drops .... why aren't they coming and picking me up and getting me the heck out of there?

 

You obviously didn't pay the dukes protection fee so they beat the tar out of you, took your stuff and left you for dead and one of Noahs couriers found you and put that note on your body (haven't you read the tutorial), and gave you some supplies for when you wake up. Obviously they weren't giving you the shirt off their back.

[madmole]

I believe he gave you a serious answer to your post. He was quite correct, Mining, Harvesting Resources, Farming ... all give GOOD experience now. Killing zombies isn't the only way to get experience any more. No, you don't get 600 xp for killing a single stone ... but you can kill a lot more rocks and plants in a short time than you can kill zombies, especially in early game.

 

No, you're not going to get experience just from walking from point A to point B ... but if you loot containers and chop down trees or rocks while you're walking from point A to point B you'll get much needed resources AND experience.

 

The point of this is that people don't HAVE to just kill zombies to be able to progress ... if that's what you LIKE to do ... then go for it. But they've given a viable alternative to support players. And I'll be completely honest ... it takes a bit of time, but once I get my garden up, and get a few ranks of the farming perk ... I make MORE experience harvesting than I ever did from killing zombies. I've made 200 levels doing almost nothing but farming and mining and building. And I **LOVE*** that.

 

I'm sorry you're not able to find the balance you want from the game. Maybe you're just not giving it enough of a chance?

Yeah I don't think there is any problem with the current balance for xp distribution. You can gain xp doing whatever you like now in decent quantities.

[madmole]

Hey Fun Pimps, I was wondering if there is going to be an updated character customization system. Character customization in this version only allows you to customize size of body/face without changing eye types, nose types, mouth types, etc. Thanks for all the hard work and dedication to make this game what it is now.

 

You can change eye color and change nose width and whatnot.

[madmole]

Meh, I don't really care that I cant take the traders farm. I really do not like the punch mechanic though because it is far too easy to target seeds rather than the plant you want to take. It just creates random annoyance without any gains.

 

I would be happy if seeds had to be picked up like crafting stations though. Hold e to 'dig' your plant back up.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

Racist

 

I kid I kid. Made me do a double take.

Aim higher.

[madmole]

In regards to player spawn state (naked) and airdrops, you guys are looking way too deeply into things. Spawning naked is a simple mechanic that gives the player a sense of progression as far as getting some gear together. Plant fiber should have more downsides though, like an itchy buff that makes you stop and scratch every now and again to encourage the player to either take some anti-histamines or to find some dead guy's Wranglers.

 

Airdrops are an event that makes the player stop what they are doing to go after a sudden goal. Airdrops in my opinion, should be randomly based as far as time of day goes (Imagine having an airdrop spawn in the middle of the night, suddenly you have to weigh risk vs reward. That's good) and the gear inside should be a lot more varied.

 

The air drops are Noah spreading the good will to survivors so they join his cause against the Duke.

[art1336]

The air drops are Noah spreading the good will to survivors so they join his cause against the Duke.

 

Is this going to be canon in the game?

[Ouch Quit It]

Madmole ....any chance we will ever see wind power to generators in game...I think that would be more attainable in game as a starter....then eventually being able to build a solar system??.....???

 

Regards

 

Ouch

[ogre92]

Aim higher.

 

 

Just an idea but how hard would it be to make it so you can't pick up something that is in a "growing" state without a hoe being equipped. That way I can get my farm where I like it and only pick up seeds if I have a tool equipped.

 

Also I resubmit my request that pigs and deer attack farms, we should have to defend those resources from the evil herbivores that are trying to keep me from making stew!

[madmole]

That has not been my experience, at all. It is still much faster to level up by killing zombies than it is to do anything else, especially looting and harvesting. In my experience, roughly 3-4 days harvesting and looting is equivalent in XP to one day of killing zombies (in-game).

 

This was far worse in earlier A17 versions, and has definitely been improved in A17.2, but it's still unbalanced in favor of zed-killin'.

 

Having said that - killing zombies puts you at a far greater risk of death than looting or harvesting, so maybe that's appropriate. No risk, no reward. So if TFP don't rebalance this again, I'm not going to be too upset.

Ok now lets get technical. Are you comparing unperked killing versus unperked gathering/building? I'm feeling that you perked into combat and got a lot of xp because you like doing that and perking into it makes sense. If you have high quality tools, and the construction/gathering perks the amount of XP you get building is fairly OP. So I think it is fairly balanced and your use case is a fighter dabbling in construction.

[madmole]

Killing zombies is riskier but should the reward be greater xp? Isn’t the reward a cleared and safe area or loot that was guarded but is now available? If you are just out hunting zombies to farm xp that seems counter intuitive to survival unless it was a job assigned to you by the trader for a valuable reward. IMO, no xp reward simply for killing zombies is best. Xp for completing a mission to clear them yes. Otherwise the reward is removing them as an obstacle to your objective. Nerfing zombie loot was a good step. Now xp needs to follow.

 

No xp for killing zombies? Thats a horrible idea. What if down the road we get options to disable traders? I want to play an all snow rwg world with no traders for a hardcore play through and I'd need my xp from killing zeds.

[madmole]

That's your opinion, here's mine:

 

I think zombie exp is fine and here to stay and I also think there should be more zombie loot. Back when this game was more survival horror I would have agreed with you but that changed when this game became more RPG. This game is now closer to Skyrim/Diablo than Resident Evil/Project Zomboid and all this exp shelling is the bed The Fun Pimps made when they went in their current direction. Now people want to level up and unlock cool perks, and have gotten accustomed to being rewarded towards that endeavor by doing almost everything in the game.

 

This game has had a mini identity crisis for a while and seems like it didn't really know what it wanted to be until recently. So I say go full tilt and give us more ways to get exp, a lot more zombie loot, better looting game, scarier dungeons, more diverse biomes and etc. Expand on what we got now instead of trying to change the game again, especially this late in it's development.

 

It never had an identity crisis, we let one guy squat on AI/VEHICLES/BUFFS/AUDIO for way too long with no progress. Buffs were an integral part to doing the skill system we always wanted to. All we could manipulate then was health and stamina, now we can manipulate anything. What we wanted was A17. Its not balanced yet, but its getting there. We got Faatal and the AI and vehicles rock now, and we had robert redo the buff system, and a new guy for audio. We hired a guy to do the perk system and it was supposed to have been done in June and then he quit in September and I got handed the mess and redesigned it and implemented it in 2 months. So I did a 6 month system in 2 months, so no wonder there was some backlash and balance issues.

 

It was also designed during content lock so that was really limiting in what I could do with it. We didn't want to break saves any more so the big rebalance is coming for A18 and I feel like it will live up to our expectations a lot better. More specialization, new weapons to fit attributes, better balance, incentives to loot and more clearly defined player archtypes should be a lot better.

[RipClaw]

More specialization, new weapons to fit attributes, better balance, incentives to loot and more clearly defined player archtypes should be a lot better.

 

Please also give some love to the tools. In my opinion, these have not been given enough attention in A17.

[madmole]

Quoting this because every time this is brought up, there is never an answer, only crickets.

I have always felt that the bad parts of LBD were the results of how they were implemented in the past in this game, and not inherent of the concept itself.

 

Melee and ranged combat are the easy ones. What about heavy armor, crafting, disease resistance, metabolism, cooking, bandaging, etc etc etc. There are too many activities that lead to a spam to win scenario. Don't you see it already? "How do I raise my heavy armor skill?" "You die 5000 times with heavy armor on, or go teabag a cacti." The current system isn't broke, its just not balanced yet. Have some patience we'll get there. I can go on with 1000 stupid spam to win or counter intuitive solutions on LBD skills systems. Get sick to raise fortitude. Get hit to raise armor skills, run, jump, fall to raise athletics. Starve to raise slow metabolism skill? What if you just can't find enough ammo to raise your favorite gun skill due to bad luck, or bad aim prevents you from raising your gun skills? That player can never gain enough skill to buy enough perks to actually get specialized and good.

 

At the end of the day you guys haven't sat around and thought about all the flaws with LBD like we have. Its a casual thought and emotional impulse to you guys. It was mostly a placebo effect in A16 to be honest the meatier gains were in perks and gear you got; the skill that slowly improved didn't have that much influence. We could probably put in some achievements that make you feel the same way, like walked 10k miles and get a popout, hell maybe even a free perk might pacify some players for some LBD achievements. But limiting my perk buying ability by a LBD activity always leads to a spam to win scenario.

 

Did nobody here play fallout 3 or 4? FFS, great games. No LBD, just gain xp by killing, questing and building and cooking. Worked fine, I never once raged they removed LBD from Oblivion when they made fallout 3 in 2008. I was like hell yeah, I can play this without mods and enjoy it. The problem is change, not that the new system is bad. No new players come in and say WTF this skill system is crazy. Its just not the case. New players like it just fine. It just needs balanced better.

[madmole]

The "Shoot-n-Loot" game play style is a popular format for many games. But because of the fully destructible environment, 7D2D could be much more involved than most games and could make it easier for realistic playstyles.

 

However, for better or worse, I think TFP will leave a lot of that to mod'ers.

 

There are 256 shades of cool greys

[Roland]

Madmole, please ignore this loon.

 

No xp for killing zombies? Thats a horrible idea. What if down the road we get options to disable traders? I want to play an all snow rwg world with no traders for a hardcore play through and I'd need my xp from killing zeds.

 

Loon neutralized....

[DarlingCows]

@madmole

 

I know melee is now specific to class. Will armor be too? Sorry if said previously.

[Damocles]

The air drops are Noah spreading the good will to survivors so they join his cause against the Duke.

 

... Supports me in my opinion NOT to have a storyplot and lore in a sandbox gameworld..

[robnar]

Just some simple quality of life suggestions for map view: Differentiate the map waypoint icons a little more. Right now you have a cave, an X, and 8 icons for buildings/houses. We don't really need icons to distinguish between a log cabin and a modern house, for example, when we could use the waypoint name for that. Something along the lines of the following would help make scanning the map at a glance a little easier:

 

1) Cave/mine

2) House

3) Skyscraper

4) Castle

5) Safe icon

6) Food icon

7) Gun icon

8) Tool icon

9) Med kit icon

10) $ icon

11) ? icon

12) X icon

 

Suggestion 2: Add a way to toggle waypoints on/off so they can be in map view but not on our compass, which gets cluttered up and unusable pretty quickly.

 

Suggestion 3: Add more automatic icons besides land claim, vehicle, and bed. Ideally traders, workbenches, mixers, etc. would show up on the map but could be toggled off and on as needed.

 

Just some ideas for consideration. I love this game!

[AtomicUs5000]

Melee and ranged combat are the easy ones. What about heavy armor, crafting, disease resistance, metabolism, cooking, bandaging, etc etc etc. There are too many ... snip

We understand all of that. Truly. We are just looking for a little out of what is easy, feasible, and makes sense. Especially what makes sense. Such as the easy ones you mentioned above and not the other bad ones you mention above.

The descriptions of specialization for A18 seems like it will help some. However, another guy with the same number of points can choose to skill the same way as I did. If I am known to get say 8 out of 10 headshots and the other person gets 1 out of 10 on average, that person could still kill me just as quickly as I can kill him with a lucky shot. If LBD, perhaps I would have a real advantage because I have literally skilled myself and the game rewards me for it. Bad aim prevents from leveling up in that area? Of course! It means you suck! Since when is it up the game to fix that for someone? So, specialization should help with this a little and I look forward to that... and I suppose that’ s going to have to do.

[art1336]

Melee and ranged combat are the easy ones. What about heavy armor, crafting, disease resistance, metabolism, cooking, bandaging, etc etc etc. There are too many activities that lead to a spam to win scenario. Don't you see it already? "How do I raise my heavy armor skill?" "You die 5000 times with heavy armor on, or go teabag a cacti." The current system isn't broke, its just not balanced yet. Have some patience we'll get there. I can go on with 1000 stupid spam to win or counter intuitive solutions on LBD skills systems. Get sick to raise fortitude. Get hit to raise armor skills, run, jump, fall to raise athletics. Starve to raise slow metabolism skill? What if you just can't find enough ammo to raise your favorite gun skill due to bad luck, or bad aim prevents you from raising your gun skills? That player can never gain enough skill to buy enough perks to actually get specialized and good.

 

At the end of the day you guys haven't sat around and thought about all the flaws with LBD like we have. Its a casual thought and emotional impulse to you guys. It was mostly a placebo effect in A16 to be honest the meatier gains were in perks and gear you got; the skill that slowly improved didn't have that much influence. We could probably put in some achievements that make you feel the same way, like walked 10k miles and get a popout, hell maybe even a free perk might pacify some players for some LBD achievements. But limiting my perk buying ability by a LBD activity always leads to a spam to win scenario.

 

Did nobody here play fallout 3 or 4? FFS, great games. No LBD, just gain xp by killing, questing and building and cooking. Worked fine, I never once raged they removed LBD from Oblivion when they made fallout 3 in 2008. I was like hell yeah, I can play this without mods and enjoy it. The problem is change, not that the new system is bad. No new players come in and say WTF this skill system is crazy. Its just not the case. New players like it just fine. It just needs balanced better.

 

 

At the end of the day you guys haven't sat around and thought about all the flaws with LBD like we have. Its a casual thought and emotional impulse to you guys.

 

I simply have to disagree since we all grew up playing the same games that had lbd in it. Some poor, some better. Yeah, plenty of people have done modding, and everyone and their grandmother modded Morrowing 3 and loved the skill system. Cheesey, yes, we all complained about it, but we spent weeks and months doing exactly what you just said we didn't.

[unlike them]

... Supports me in my opinion NOT to have a storyplot and lore in a sandbox gameworld..

 

I support you, but I know we gonna lose it.

[Death2gnomes]

Melee and ranged combat are the easy ones. What about heavy armor, crafting, disease resistance, metabolism, cooking, bandaging, etc etc etc. There are too many activities that lead to a spam to win scenario. Don't you see it already? "How do I raise my heavy armor skill?" "You die 5000 times with heavy armor on, or go teabag a cacti." The current system isn't broke, its just not balanced yet. Have some patience we'll get there. I can go on with 1000 stupid spam to win or counter intuitive solutions on LBD skills systems. Get sick to raise fortitude. Get hit to raise armor skills, run, jump, fall to raise athletics. Starve to raise slow metabolism skill? What if you just can't find enough ammo to raise your favorite gun skill due to bad luck, or bad aim prevents you from raising your gun skills? That player can never gain enough skill to buy enough perks to actually get specialized and good.

 

At the end of the day you guys haven't sat around and thought about all the flaws with LBD like we have. Its a casual thought and emotional impulse to you guys. It was mostly a placebo effect in A16 to be honest the meatier gains were in perks and gear you got; the skill that slowly improved didn't have that much influence. We could probably put in some achievements that make you feel the same way, like walked 10k miles and get a popout, hell maybe even a free perk might pacify some players for some LBD achievements. But limiting my perk buying ability by a LBD activity always leads to a spam to win scenario.

 

Did nobody here play fallout 3 or 4? FFS, great games. No LBD, just gain xp by killing, questing and building and cooking. Worked fine, I never once raged they removed LBD from Oblivion when they made fallout 3 in 2008. I was like hell yeah, I can play this without mods and enjoy it. The problem is change, not that the new system is bad. No new players come in and say WTF this skill system is crazy. Its just not the case. New players like it just fine. It just needs balanced better.

 

Speaking of armor perks (heavy and light) I'd like to suggest adding reduce mobility penalty to the perks, the top 3 perk ranks could reduce the 6% down to a 3% penalty, not including mods.

[madmole]

 

EDIT: ...which I'm contributing to, so I'll stop now.

Wise words, I will TRY to follow your example.