Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

@madmole

 

just a little question. when im picking the juniper tree (treejuniper4m) from creative menu and want to place it, no tree get placed...just an invisible block(i cant place another block on that same postion after placing. is this a bug with missing texture or did you guys just deleted this treeblock?

 

have a nice day

 

I have no idea, don't use CM except for experimenting.

[madmole]

If you create the possibility to include soil types in the painting menu ( brush ) the problem would be solved.

 

You can't paint soil only opaque atlas blocks. You still haven't really said the use case.

[Gazz]

Perhaps add number of pellets a separate stat that is impacted by mods or special shotgun ammo types. 😎👍

Yes. Look at shotgun ammo types.

[madmole]

Interesting, I thought black beast had that in the bag.

 

Part of me was *hoping* Diaz was just about to turn it up in round 4, he tends to do better late in fight .....shame he robbed the opportunity.

 

I always liked Wonderboy but during the first Woodley fight we named him Crumpleboy, — so we dont call him Wonderboy anymore lol

 

I don’t even wanna talk about walker. I don’t even know WTF to say about that fight. .

 

That russian took down Black beast several times and landed a lot of shots. He had a lot of ring control and more volume I thought.

 

Masvidal has reinvented himself and trains with Yoel. He's a whole new fighter now I figured he would man handle Diaz who is the same fighter he was 10 years ago.

 

Walkers ego of "going the distance" was stupid. Like when Ngannu froze in the Stipe and Beast fight. He has the tools to destroy, but you have to pull the trigger.

[canadianbluebeer]

Grats all! 36K barrier broken!

[madmole]

Is there any chance future RGW will include some sort of a highway on the map? Like a bigger road, maybe a single branch, and going through the entire map? Maybe it's separated by a barrier, etc.

 

Maybe after we get basic roads working properly.

[madmole]

The bulletproof glass doesn't look very pretty, is it a problem of graphic settings or did someone else encounter this weirdness ?

 

 

Mine looks fine, just don't rotate it or you get visible seams where they connect.

[TSBX]

Not yet but maybe it could be done in the future. At least it's an idea instead of complaining. 😎👍

 

Or we could go back to A17 distant terrain which looked almost as good with much better performance and without neutering another aspect that wasn't hurting anything, but just became another victim of "The Artist's Curse".

 

At least it's a real solution instead of just keep toeing the assumed company line and slurping up whatever MM says.

[madmole]

Because some people like things that you now think are useless but were around for 17 alphas. Thats why its so important. Sometimes it appears like you just dont like something and no one else should either. World building was a heavy focus at one point in this game, I know that has shifted recently but that does not mean those who loved it just stop loving it. I know streamlining is a huge focus now but its important to remember some of the things that brought all of us to your table in the first place. We already lost maple and plains, couldnt the deco fans out there keep SOMETHING they like around?

 

You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

 

Yeah unfortunately after 6 months of developing splat map terrain I get handed a problem, we can only let players add 3 blocks, which ones shall it be? So we went with adaptive, dirt and gravel. We could swap gravel for asphalt perhaps if people would rather make asphalt roads (I know I do).

[Guest Piratenking]

And we improved these quite a bit, they howl before they attack now, before they were just stealth biters. Some people complained were dumbing it down lol. They are still super nasty.

 

just dont over dumb them, one of the several things that made ATLAS a failure was that they made animals behave as if they had alzheimer after people complained, i can understand his frustration but this is a survival afterall

[madmole]

For me it's just weird that MM took over a "design" role but all that he's done is cater to his particular gamestyle (Run and gun and loot) and any fan resistance to the deficit of other roles and playstyles has been met with.

 

A.) Handwaving away by MM which can largely be spelled out with two words, "Business" and "Streamlining". This is very similar to taking credit to a past administration's successes as your own. Business decisions and lack of streamlining were part of the formula that brought up this game for 17 alphas and made it successful. Going away from this trend will bring in more sales, probably, but the sales will be directed at the generic game players typically only seen on consoles and casual "Make more Chocolate" games and future gameplay WILL suffer for it. You're diluting your playerbase and alienating the people who have been here with you for 6 years.

 

B.) The sycophants that agree with ANYTHING that MM puts out or says. Guys, come on, we all love this game, and MM can be a positive infulence for sure, but when he says that the sky is green and you agree emphatically but everybody else looks out the window and says, "Yeah still blue here...", that's a "you" problem, not an "everybody else" problem.

 

Forming an army about a wrong opinion says more about the army than the contrast of ideas. Get your ♥♥♥♥ together, forums.

 

As usual you add nothing positive to the conversation.

 

FYI, I designed most of the game play on every alpha except for 17. The guy who did that quit before we shipped so I deleted his abomination of a perk system and jammed something in 6 weeks. You can't make a good perk system in 6 weeks but a lot of it stands today. For 18 I designed 100% of it on paper and then the team molded that paper design into what we have (not many changes really, just a few things were not easily done so we changed a few book perks etc).

 

That said alpha 18 appears to be the best build yet, so I would say you guys are in good hands now. I'm still playing and continuing to balance, because I care. New peak concurrent players, its selling very well and review scores are rising.

 

I'm trying to stay humble and stay in the trenches with you guys, identifying problems and finding solutions and balance.

[HungryZombie]

People are only mentioning it now because the masterpiece is indeed in the first 24 hours of play. But once you settle in and have your base is where the fun USED to begin for a lot of us.

 

Surely you understand that TFP's goal this Alpha was to polish those 24hrs of play. Without that further development is more difficult. From everything I've seen them post I think they will be adding more stuff to make the next 24 hours or whatever time you'd like of play better in future patches and updates.

 

This is a game in development, not a finished product. They got a great start to hook players in. Now they will season the game for longer playthoughs.

[madmole]

I agree that it is very weak, but early game I always used it as oh♥♥♥♥zombieinmyfacegoawaynow solution. Its quite fun when you unload both barrels and see him fly

 

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From what I heard, he started this whole project to create a game HE would love to play. I think that is his vision and I can respect that. I also do it like this for my projects. But I do agree that it would be nice if he listened to feedback and actually thought about it in depth. I feel that he takes it on very surface level. Usually the player feels something is off, he tries to identify it and report it.

 

However most players are not good at identifiing the key underlying issues so they will tell you: T2 bow should be craftable without parts. But real issue here is that it is hard to get into stealth gameplay because of rarity of weapons to go with that playstyle. Here lies the question: Is understanding player needs in Designers job description? I would think so. I like that MM takes time to react for many posts here. That is good. But I would like it if he thought a bit about what the poster tries to actually say. Otherwise there is failure to get idea across, and it creates devide between him and some of his playerbase.

 

And yeah, I really dislike fanatic fanboys that downplay any valid criticism. Game can be pretty awesome but still has its problems, especially in early access

 

I might sound dismissive, but then my subconscious doesn't let go of what was said and it sits there and I might experience it myself or hear of it again, and eventually I come around to agreeing to some point or land on an improvement tweak where we land on some middle ground.

[HungryZombie]

Hi gaz, I think it's a simple xml edit? but could the stat display for shotguns show the dmg x 8 next to it? I know it's a minor thing but would be a nice touch.

 

OR

 

Perhaps add number of pellets a separate stat that is impacted by mods or special shotgun ammo types. 😎👍

 

The damage shown on a shotgun is really Damagex8? one for each pellet? I never knew that.

[Seraphimus]

I think its possible. I ocassionally get double headshots with duckbill mod

It is doable for sure hard to line up though and when you're fighting tougher zombies spreading your damage out like that across multiple targets doesn't pay off a lot of the time. and a lot of people say "Use slugs for those hard targets" which is valid, Slugs are great for those tougher zombies, but they are too costly to use as a primary ammo type and the switching interface is kinda clunky and hard to swap on the fly in a panic situation. also I kinda feel that if I wanted a hrd hitting single target weapon I'd use a marksmans rifle anyways

 

I agree that it is very weak, but early game I always used it as oh♥♥♥♥zombieinmyfacegoawaynow solution. Its quite fun when you unload both barrels and see him fly

 

However most players are not good at identifiing the key underlying issues so they will tell you: T2 bow should be craftable without parts.

 

The double barrel is good for that, I'm not even tryin to say it's bad or weak. It's problem is that it's bad and weak for a Tier 2 weapon. Compared to basically any other t2 it just doesn't hold up. But it would be real solid for a tier 1 weapon. Just like the pump feels bad and weak for a t3 weapon but is a really solid t2. The problem with shotguns is I always wind up feeling like I am playing Catch up with everyone else. Always a weapon tier behind. Especially on horde night When a weapon with splash like the shotty should shine.

 

And TBH the T2 bow either *SHOULD* be craftable without parts or be a more common drop. there are currently technically 5 bows (3 bows 2 crossbows assuming I haven't just not found a primitive crossbow equivalent) and two other full sets of agility weapons (3 knives and 3? Handguns. does the magnum count as a handgun?) and that makes it really hard to find/buy/loot a decent bow at any game stage because it's competing with so many other weapons. Especially if you sit in "Likes bows but not crossbows" or "likes crossbows but not bows"

 

Yes. Look at shotgun ammo types.

As someone who has found this info and used shotguns almost exclusively for a while now, I can still say it would be nice if there was a way to display this info in the weapon tool-tip. Especially for newer players who may not realize the ammo has separate but still relevant info about their damage. I mean I've been playing since late A15 and only just found the place in my stats section that shows my perk modified damage with a weapon. I always thought I had to figure that out myself.

 

No it isn't fine. It serves absolutely no purpose when you know how to melee or unless you refuse to melee. Either there's 1 or 2 targets on you and it's an easy melee kill, or there are more targets and it's a terrible weapon choice because of its mag size and effective range. Even for the odd dog or wolf encounter it's subpar because it is totally unforgiving if you ever miss your bullets. It's just worse than an AK in every way unless we look at raw damage per bullet.

Birds for me. It's always the birds I miss with it, or if there are more than one I'll hit one miss the other and get "bleeding/infection" and even with raw damage per bullet it fails beyond ~3-5 blocks range if you don't use a choke because most of those pellets will miss/hit another zombie. Which is okay early but the moment you run into ferals and irradiated zombies it means none of them take enough damage to matter.

[Onarr]

I might sound dismissive, but then my subconscious doesn't let go of what was said and it sits there and I might experience it myself or hear of it again, and eventually I come around to agreeing to some point or land on an improvement tweak where we land on some middle ground.

 

That is encouraging to hear.

[HungryZombie]

It is doable for sure hard to line up though and when you're fighting tougher zombies spreading your damage out like that across multiple targets doesn't pay off a lot of the time. and a lot of people say "Use slugs for those hard targets" which is valid, Slugs are great for those tougher zombies, but they are too costly to use as a primary ammo type and the switching interface is kinda clunky and hard to swap on the fly in a panic situation. also I kinda feel that if I wanted a hrd hitting single target weapon I'd use a marksmans rifle anyways

 

I really agree with this. Shotguns could use some kind of quality of life improvement for swapping ammo and the slugs are really expensive to use in general situations.

[Onarr]

It is doable for sure hard to line up though and when you're fighting tougher zombies spreading your damage out like that across multiple targets doesn't pay off a lot of the time. and a lot of people say "Use slugs for those hard targets" which is valid, Slugs are great for those tougher zombies, but they are too costly to use as a primary ammo type and the switching interface is kinda clunky and hard to swap on the fly in a panic situation. also I kinda feel that if I wanted a hrd hitting single target weapon I'd use a marksmans rifle anyways

 

 

 

The double barrel is good for that, I'm not even tryin to say it's bad or weak. It's problem is that it's bad and weak for a Tier 2 weapon. Compared to basically any other t2 it just doesn't hold up. But it would be real solid for a tier 1 weapon. Just like the pump feels bad and weak for a t3 weapon but is a really solid t2. The problem with shotguns is I always wind up feeling like I am playing Catch up with everyone else. Always a weapon tier behind. Especially on horde night When a weapon with splash like the shotty should shine.

 

And TBH the T2 bow either *SHOULD* be craftable without parts or be a more common drop. there are currently technically 5 bows (3 bows 2 crossbows assuming I haven't just not found a primitive crossbow equivalent) and two other full sets of agility weapons (3 knives and 3? Handguns. does the magnum count as a handgun?) and that makes it really hard to find/buy/loot a decent bow at any game stage because it's competing with so many other weapons. Especially if you sit in "Likes bows but not crossbows" or "likes crossbows but not bows"

 

 

As someone who has found this info and used shotguns almost exclusively for a while now, I can still say it would be nice if there was a way to display this info in the weapon tool-tip. Especially for newer players who may not realize the ammo has separate but still relevant info about their damage. I mean I've been playing since late A15 and only just found the place in my stats section that shows my perk modified damage with a weapon. I always thought I had to figure that out myself.

 

 

Birds for me. It's always the birds I miss with it, or if there are more than one I'll hit one miss the other and get "bleeding/infection" and even with raw damage per bullet it fails beyond ~3-5 blocks range if you don't use a choke because most of those pellets will miss/hit another zombie. Which is okay early but the moment you run into ferals and irradiated zombies it means none of them take enough damage to matter.

 

I agree with everything. Shotguns need some rebalancing. Perhaps a specific niche would be nice for them. Rifles have range and penetration, automatic weapons have firepower, pistols and smg are good all arounder, junk turrets are automatic. Perhaps bigger AoE crowd control might be it. Increase spread, number of pelets, decrease dmg per pelet but keep the stopping power.

 

What I quite like about shotguns is breaching ammo that does big block damage. It is pretty cool concept but currently PoIs are designed to discourage destroying blocks. Perhaps if there were some locked storage rooms that contain bonus loot.

[beHypE]

Birds for me. It's always the birds I miss with it, or if there are more than one I'll hit one miss the other and get "bleeding/infection" and even with raw damage per bullet it fails beyond ~3-5 blocks range if you don't use a choke because most of those pellets will miss/hit another zombie. Which is okay early but the moment you run into ferals and irradiated zombies it means none of them take enough damage to matter.

 

Yes I've tweaked my horde base design to fit my shotgun gameplay and even at only 3 blocks above of zombies, crouching and ADS, the spread was insane, or the damage too low, or both. It didn't always one shot a classic zombie even when I was sure to aim properly, and with 2 bullets per mag that's a huge bummer. It just didn't compete at all with the AK I had at the time, even though I had 5 STR and 3 in shotguns, and absolutely nothing in fortitude. Might just have to be level with zombies and shoot them in the face through some iron bars, but it's gonna be tricky when they go through I'll have to try.

 

I'm thinking more and more about debugmenu'ing some elixir and rerolling an hybrid STR/FORT instead of trying a "pure" STR.

[Seraphimus]

I really agree with this. Shotguns could use some kind of quality of life improvement for swapping ammo and the slugs are really expensive to use in general situations.

 

yeah, honestly even if they made the cost of slugs more in line with AP 7.62's and made them significantly less powerful (because they are insanely powerful, they are expensive for a reason you get what you pay for). I'd be happy with that. as is Switching needs to be easier or faster or we need to drop the blunderbuss, move the Double barrel to T1 the pump to T2 and put in a proper semi-auto combat shotgun for t3.

 

Also don't think i've seen slugs in the trader this playthrough.

[Gamida]

would you consider adding a "landing spot highlight" for when you throw molotovs and granades as to make sure were they will land before latting the mouse button go?? or a "path line" to make sure there is no collision in the way when you throw them between blocks?

 

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wow congrats, thats more than some so called "AAA" games, keep up the good work!

 

Misinterpreted your "landing spot highlight" before I finished your post. Got me thinking though wouldn't it be nice if you could throw out a marker and a supply plane would fly over and drop one of those slow descending flares that would light up a fair sized area on horde nights.

[Seraphimus]

Yes I've tweaked my horde base design to fit my shotgun gameplay and even at only 3 blocks above of zombies, crouching and ADS, the spread was insane, or the damage too low, or both. It didn't always one shot a classic zombie even when I was sure to aim properly, and with 2 bullets per mag that's a huge bummer. It just didn't compete at all with the AK I had at the time, even though I had 5 STR and 3 in shotguns, and absolutely nothing in fortitude. Might just have to be level with zombies and shoot them in the face through some iron bars, but it's gonna be tricky when they go through I'll have to try.

 

I'm thinking more and more about debugmenu'ing some elixir and rerolling an hybrid STR/FORT instead of trying a "pure" STR.

 

gonna be honest the LMG that's the new t3 automatics weapon is tons of fun. And just do a Steel block over bars over a ramp for your wall Even the crawlers will move to eye level for you but they gotta break that steel block or ramp all the way before they come through...

 

 

also @madmole, upgrade iron bars to steel bars when?

[madmole]

People are only mentioning it now because the masterpiece is indeed in the first 24 hours of play. But once you settle in and have your base is where the fun USED to begin for a lot of us. And that is when you start missing all the things you used to be able to time sink in. Painting, resurfacing, expanding etc. They have done a great job adding new decos and making this game fun again. No one here is criticizing the effort that went into steering the shipwreck that was 17. But even those new decos are mostly not available for crafting and were put in JUST for poi building, not player usage or with the idea that they will all be available to make your base your living quarters. MM himself called paint and dye junk that no one would care to lose if they scrapped it.

 

Its an ok opinion to have, but it should not be the only opinion. All of these new dumbed down negative reviews is exactly what I expected. You cater more to the casual gamer/broader audience you are now inviting a lot of sales to people who write stupid ♥♥♥♥ like "Hurr Durr this dev sucks he banned me cause i used racist slurs" or some other fortnite level infancy.

 

Which is why I was amused at his anger to people leaving negative reviews. The bubble that exists around this idea that bringing in tons more cash and gamers = positive word of mouth is laughable. All it does is invite toxicity. Mature gamers love 7 days. For 17 alphas we relished it. But mature gamers are no longer good enough. So you reap what you sow. Right or wrong (and trust me its wrong in most cases to see the trash these kids post) its a fact.

I'm not angry about negative reviews. I'm angry that steams system lets the same 10 disgruntled guys "thumbs up" a bad review so it gets anchored at the top of our store page. All I suggested was people if they wanted could thumbs up some good reviews to balance it.

 

We have to be careful what we allow players to craft because some models are expensive and will bring FPS to a crawl, so sorry we're not handing a loaded gun to a baby. Its all on hold because my mind was focused on making the game great again, but we will come back around to building. Building is better than ever overall IMO with new shape menus. I'm always fighting for you guys and your small things you like btw, but some things just have to go, like design inconsistencies and whatnot.

 

I'm playing long games and adding little things as I go.

 

You have a really bad habit of taking one thing out of context and labeling me with it forever. Obviously I love paint, and I pushed for the paint system. If you watch my video I painted my entire base a nice stucco az theme. But do we want to clutter precious inventory space with paint cans? We took it out of loot for that reason, and it found its way back through scrapping.

 

Scrapping is meant to condense space not clutter inventory with cosmetic stuff. Survival is first and foremost and adding barbie doll playing house recipes and cosmetics is something I personally like but can make the game cluttered, menus lag, and be overwhelming to noobs, so we have to handle things that aren't needed for survival very carefully and on a lower priority.

 

So while it might be fun for some guys to get into landscaping simulator, we can't justify having a very ugly terrain shader to maintain that feature that was never planned, gazz just went wild and added recipes for everything without team moderation when we first hired him. It sounded harmless at the time, but everything has a cost so we're reviewing stuff and finding out the use case, and trying to figure it all out.

[HungryZombie]

yeah, honestly even if they made the cost of slugs more in line with AP 7.62's and made them significantly less powerful (because they are insanely powerful, they are expensive for a reason you get what you pay for). I'd be happy with that. as is Switching needs to be easier or faster or we need to drop the blunderbuss, move the Double barrel to T1 the pump to T2 and put in a proper semi-auto combat shotgun for t3.

 

Also don't think i've seen slugs in the trader this playthrough.

 

Might need to try rocking two loaded shotguns each with different ammo. Tool belt slots are precious though but it might pay off.

[Seraphimus]

Might need to try rocking two loaded shotguns each with different ammo. Tool belt slots are precious though but it might pay off.

 

yeah been considering it. be Hard to find another t6 shotty with the near legendary rolls I got though.