Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Seraphimus]

Been trying to get along with the attribute system since it's launch, sometimes feel like I'm fighting the system to build my character. Find a sledge first few days I'm eager to go Str build, but it has no survivability. I mean Str weapons are just as close quarters as Brawlers, actually all melee is close quarters cept maybe spears, but Brawler gets most of the survivability. Heavy Armor+Cardio = no stamina worries, getting massive damage reduction on top of Pain Tolerance and Healing, yikes.

 

For solo melee it's hard not to go Brawler build. Possible, but on harder difficulties you gotta spend points well for when those greens show up.

 

Run n Gun and Cardio feels like they should be swapped too. I mean I get Cardio pairs well with Heavy Armor, but being agility based feels it should make you run further? Also SMGs are super rare compared to ak47, harder to proc Run n Gun with pistol/magnum.

 

ehhh, Cardio is much more endurance/fortitude based than agility based in real life, trust me on that one. Where as run and gun would be being quick and accurate enough with your hands to reload without slowing down from a sprint., which is very hard to do without practice.

 

Also a note for solo it's much more viable now to splash 4-5 points into fort for durability stuff and still play a strength melee character. at 5 points you can have 3 in all the important stuff, like heavy armor and natural healing and that's actually enough. Also get a cigar for the +1 strength saves you 3 points on maxing str you can spend on anything else instead.

[meganoth]

SexRex doesnt do anything for running around. You cant run 10 feet in full armor without perks.

 

Sure, but SexRex makes power attacks cheap so that you can use more for running. With the same argument the FORT guy can't do power attacks without SexRex, in theory. Practically it may need balancing, I can't say anything about that

 

If you are going to snip my quote, keep the main points there, it is not like you did it for space. Just to leave out the main points of the post to suit your reply.

 

I do it so it is clear what I'm replying to. A few others do this too or use Bold text instead (maybe I should use Bold too?). It isn't to discredit or remove your points, I assume people have read your complete argument before if they follow the thread or can klick on the small icon near the title to go to the original post.

[Seraphimus]

A crawler crawled towards me by my motorcycle and completely damaged it 100% in like 2 seconds.. and worse, it would not repair using repair kits.

 

I chalked it up to a bug and just replaced it. I'll use the broken one as a lawn decoration...lol! Thats why the game isn't gold yet.. $hit happens.

 

yep. it's an alpha bugs are expected esp. in the experimental builds. The Creative menu is a very useful tool.

 

Speaking of tools has anyone else noticed that the wrench perk seems to be not affecting mechanical component gain anymore?

[Seraphimus]

@MADMOLE:

 

You had talked about adding it as a perk or book in the past for players who prefer it....I never even craft and rarely even use found ones because they are just too iffy to target well. I'd say I've wasted at least 1/2 of them trying to guess range. They cost a lot of resources to make, so it ends up being a big waste of them with the current system.!

 

I know it's not necessarily the solution you want but you CAN throw explosives without Lighting/pulling the pin first. Me and my boyfriend spent ~30 minutes practicing and getting a feel for the range at different throw strengths that way. That said it would be nice to have an indicator

[wolfbain5]

Since I was giving exactly the same answer in my post without making you understand, which seems to happen to my posts quite frequently; Is it my general use of english that makes me hard to understand (I'm not a native speaker) ? Too long sentences, too complicated phrases maybe?

 

your example pic showed a split away while his was a single line daisy chain. think it was a combination of the pic and phrasing that didnt convey your meaning.

 

sorry if you meant the same thing. happens to me too alot.

[Kalex]

The issue is looting things that are useless for survival. Its not an issue currently as dye is destroyed when you scrap the shirt it comes in. Someone was asking for it to eject the dye into the inventory when you scrap it, I say no I don't want that clutter. If someone wants it, they can remove it before they scrap the shirt.

 

Agreed 100% with this.

[madmole]

ehhh, Cardio is much more endurance/fortitude based than agility based in real life, trust me on that one. Where as run and gun would be being quick and accurate enough with your hands to reload without slowing down from a sprint., which is very hard to do without practice.

 

Also a note for solo it's much more viable now to splash 4-5 points into fort for durability stuff and still play a strength melee character. at 5 points you can have 3 in all the important stuff, like heavy armor and natural healing and that's actually enough. Also get a cigar for the +1 strength saves you 3 points on maxing str you can spend on anything else instead.

 

Yes I wear nerd goggles with a cigar for lower entry level to what I need.

[Seraphimus]

Yer I'm spending points in different trees too for a more balanced character. Rigid is probably what I'm trying to say, Brawler gets a lot of survivability and sneak is Agility. Atm my starting characters is either one of these two trees. The other trees aren't really my playstyle.

 

I think the problem for me is weapons being under attributes. For example if I started a new game with a friend, we both like to be tanky, say I wanted to be a tanky spartan, I'd have to earn more xp just to be as tanky as him just because the spear is in another tree. I'm having to spread my points and the annoying thing is I don't actually want anything else in Perception, I just want to be a tanky spear guy.

 

And it's the same for any weapon combo that doesn't follow 1 attribute.

 

This i kinda agree with. I sorta wish weapons were separate from stats but then they'd probably have to level gate the perk levels for weapons again and that's messy.

[Kalex]

Na, people need to pay attention. Warning pop up boxes are annoying and in a game like this where there is no pause in menus it can get you killed. We could make stuff with mods unscrappable, that sounds like the best solution. Who would want to scrap a mod, let alone a gun with a mod in it.

That would be great as long as dye being on the item didn't block scrapping the item.

[madmole]

or can klick on the small icon near the title to go to the original post.

In Peter Griffin Voice "I did not know that".

[madmole]

That would be great as long as dye being on the item didn't block scrapping the item.

 

It doesn't afaik.

[Moleander]

Done

[meganoth]

your example pic showed a split away while his was a single line daisy chain. think it was a combination of the pic and phrasing that didnt convey your meaning.

 

sorry if you meant the same thing. happens to me too alot.

 

Thanks for the information, I need to work on my phrasing. Probably I forgot to mention that I was standing on the middle of the three trigger plates.

[Kalex]

True, but don't expect to be living in a place like this in the post-apocalypse. Lol

 

 

Over time, everything rots. Houses decay, the roads will crumble, the world will reclaim what was once lost to nature, back to its natural green self. Cities will collapse, windows will shatter... It doesn't have to look ugly. But if you're used to living in a comfy modern or Modern home, it's not going to look pretty after a while.

 

The thing is we don't know how long it has been since the zombie outbreak; a few months; a few years; decades.

[wolfbain5]

Thanks for the information, I need to work on my phrasing. Probably I forgot to mention that I was standing on the middle of the three trigger plates.

 

when I get the chance to play again, I am almost done building the next little bird cage adaptation. I will post a video on it. took some inspiration from Laz. still need to gather mats for concrete tho.

 

bird cage with the lowe half opened and ramped with blade trap at the base of the ramp electric fence down the side hallways to slow them down and 3 trigger plates down each the left and right hallways for the dart traps. a second interior cage for using the shotgun on anything that makes it through. I will have a use for the double barrel.... maybe

[ZehMatt]

Any plans to give the jar back when cooking things like corn? I mean seriously, where is the jar going? Might explain all the food poisoning when theres some glass cooked into your food.

[Seraphimus]

Loss is part of the game, and makes it better. Replacing lost stuff gives you a sense of purpose. Stop cheating you might have a lot of fun dealing with issues instead of playing I dream of Jzeanie.

 

Back pack glitched? Role play someone took it, tough ♥♥♥♥ dude. Scrapped your modded gun? Well you might want to pay attention better, not paying attention IRL and in a fake zombie apocalypse is dangerous. Not paying attention because your trusty Jzeanie is there to grant your wishes lowers the adrenaline and reduces the intensity of moments, robs you of sense of loss, revenge and satisfaction rebuilding that loss and overcoming adversity.

 

Don't have a problem with loss and challenge in the game never once cheated back something I lost because of game play. Do it for things that are crazy buggy, it's honestly a very rare thing, like 1-2 times in a 180 day play through with 30+ odd deaths. Y'know like with the minbikes in A16? was it, phasing through the ground, the first one we remade, the 4th one I cheated back because it wasn't fun to lose another minibike to an ongoing bug, again. or in a17 when a bird glitched through a solid wall for me and destroyed our storage chests on horde night. there is a point where loss because of a broken game is frustrating not fun for me and I'd rather fix that then play it out.

 

And please don't take offense to that, 7days is probably my favorite game ever. but it IS in alpha which means there are gonna be points where stuff is broken, sometimes really really badly, I'll use creative to smooth out the occasional unintended gamebreaking bug.

 

That said one of my favorite moments of this game was me and my BF both getting infected day 2 and spending almost the whole first 7 day trying to find antibiotics for both of us instead of letting ourselves die to clear it up. That ♥♥♥♥s fun, so is rebuilding my base after a really nasty horde night. (would still kill for steel bars on my windows though ) or rushing through a dozen quests recklessly to get the money for that bike in the shop before it's gone and then realizing we ♥♥♥♥ed up because we have no medical supplies left for horde night.

[meganoth]

Just trying out Alpha 18 stable - I am playing on a dedicated server and noticed that when I'm on foot, everything is working just fine, but whenever I'm riding a vehicle (doesn't matter which one) adjacent chunks are not loaded. I am bounced back when I'm about to enter a new chunk and have to exit the vehicle, so the new chunk is loaded. Then I can board the thing again and go on, until the next chunk wants to load.

 

Just to clarify: I can stand on the next chunk's border while riding a vehicle and wait there just fine, but the chunk still won't load. It will only load when I'm on foot.

 

A friend of mine, who is playing on the same server, says he doesn't have that issue, so I'm assuming it must be connected to one of my settings, but I'm at a loss determining which one. Tried every setting, no change. I thought it would be connected to the viewing distance, but no, that's not the case, apparently.

 

Is this a bug, or can one of you guys recommend something to me which I could try?

 

Check the network connection. Your ping is shown in the group tab of the game. Another problem could be if lots of network packets get dropped, either because of faulty equipment (network chip, router) or because your provider and the servers provider have a congestion point inbetween.

 

One of our players in co-op gets thrown out of the game once every two hours on average. He is the only one using the local cable-TV provider for internet access so we suspect that provider is the problem here.

[Seraphimus]

I have very little experience with the shotgun so I can't give any opinion. I've brought it up to gazz and he argues vehemently that the shotgun is OP already, dealing the most DPS, devastating cripple/knockdown and has full ranged abilities with slugs.

 

I had a good shotgun build going (only had a db) and had to restart so now I'm on fortitude again, but I will drink the elixer once I find a decent shotgun and see how it compares to a fresh fort build.

 

I find that the shotty DOES deal a ton of damage, the problem is DPS needs to account for the fact you need to reload it 2-3 times as often as any other gun at that tier. too much downtime + the armor bonus to enemies means buckshot doesn't feel like it's keeping up mid-late game, ESP. on horde nights and slugs are really just too expensive to use, even if their price is justified by their power, if I wanted to use them with any regularity I'd never be able to do anything but gather resources to make them and cherry on top lower firing rate makes missing (even partially because buckshot) *much* more punishing Especially with the double barrel. In A18 i've yet to find any slugs in loot or the trader (77 days in, 3 traders and level 4 better barter), and maybe even just making them more common in loot/quest rewards/shops might help.

 

I just know that I felt like I was lagging behind in weapon power and functionality until I decided to swap to a machine gun build. Even if the shotgun is technically stronger/better than other builds, it doesn't feel stronger and that's the problem.

[Ayrton]

Madmole, how about this, add these weapons and the legendary ones, the A18 brought weapons and people love them and responded positively to them, it's a zombie game and people love weapons to kill them, what do you think?

 

 

The missing levels already have the game in some weapons so I did not put it in this example

[Callum123456789]

i wonder if we will see like a Barret 50 cal sniper rifle or the dragunov that would be an interesting sniper addition

[Trankitas]

i wonder if we will see like a Barret 50 cal sniper rifle or the dragunov that would be an interesting sniper addition

 

I would bet for the .50 cal, It would be super weird to find a Dragunov laying around in USA.

[RipClaw]

Yes I wear nerd goggles with a cigar for lower entry level to what I need.

 

Speaking of glasses and the cigar.

 

Almost every attribute has a piece of clothing that gives you +1 in that attribute as long as you wear it.

Only for fortitude there seems to be nothing that gives you +1 in fortitude. Was that forgotten or is there something planned ?

[JamesKirk]

I think, it would be a good idea that zombies affected by bleeding through cuts would visually show it. Maybe by spilling blood or clothes being soaked by blood. So you could change your target and let time do its work. More effective combat

[MechanicalLens]

Speaking of glasses and the cigar.

 

Almost every attribute has a piece of clothing that gives you +1 in that attribute as long as you wear it.

Only for fortitude there seems to be nothing that gives you +1 in fortitude. Was that forgotten or is there something planned ?

 

Answer: Sham Chowder.