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Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!


madmole

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!  

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  1. 1. Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

    • A18 Stable is Out!
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Hey madmole,

so quality now determines damage, but a brown pistol could do more damage than a yellow one? Maybe I am not understanding this correctly. However it seems very odd to me. Whats the point of having colors at all then? They don't give any useful information, you still need to check the stats.

 

He didn’t actually say a brown pistol could do more damage. He said it may be superior. I think that means other stats are randomized as well, so while the yellow pistol will usually be better, the brown one may sometimes have a combination of stats that is better for some situations and/or play styles.

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If I remember this right, 3d6 is the first bell curve you get. (2d6 won't do)

 

However - in a game with so many angles of freedom it makes no difference at all. A linear random range with an offset and you're good.

It's not like entity damage is the only stat on an item and the end result that the player notices is "a random number". Sources say that 99.7% of players will never know nor care about how the number became the number that it is.

 

so true and i am one who cares less about numbers, levels, bar colors and graphs.... all i want is a club and a head to place it against for that subtle crunching sound.

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If I remember this right, 3d6 is the first bell curve you get. (2d6 won't do)

 

However - in a game with so many angles of freedom it makes no difference at all. A linear random range with an offset and you're good.

It's not like entity damage is the only stat on an item and the end result that the player notices is "a random number". Sources say that 99.7% of players will never know nor care about how the number became the number that it is.

 

2D6 would still give you a bell curve. There is nothing about having only 2 dice that would make the rules of statistics change. It would be a very clumpy looking bell curve if you tried to plot it but that is because there are only 11 possible data points on the X axis. Since dice rolls are discrete instead of continuous there is never a smooth "curve". It would always be "lumpy" for lack of a better word. We still just call it a a bell curve because it works the same(ish).

 

Edit: Fixed my idiot x-axis remark. Lol

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They're not going to like discovering that they can't craft a gun because they bought a perk and now the same materials they had aren't good enough.

 

It would be nice, then, if you could still make lower quality items if you needed to.

 

Very true. The most simple UI way to deal with this (without changing the mechanic) would be that you always will build the best quality you have materials for and the color/quality number you would craft is shown on the build menu.

 

That would be a strategy for how the player can deal with a counter-intuitive melee combat system, but it's not a strategy to make the system intuitive. No thanks. Aiming for the head should feel good in a zombie killing game, not like something you merely tolerate and work around.

 

I don't see where the combat system is counter-intuitive right now. Care to explain? EDIT: Nevermind, I guess you mean that you can miss so easy in melee although swinging a weapon (except the spear for example) is almost guaranteed to hit.

 

Aiming at the head must be more difficult, otherwise everyone would ONLY target the head. Risk<->Reward. You could argue that it was too difficult to hit the head atm (which I wouldn't agree with but that is highly subjective). But aiming at the head shouldn't be always the best option. If the zombie is down, pinned or just slow, aiming for the head is good. If he is actively dancing before you or you are moving yourself, trying for the head should be a risky move.

 

Just to be clear, I think the glancing blow feature is a very nice feature, especially as a counter-weight to the enraging zombies.

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Guest Rassilon
so true and i am one who cares less about numbers, levels, bar colors and graphs.... all i want is a club and a head to place it against for that subtle crunching sound.

 

thats the spirit :) One reason im eagerly waiting for a certain christian themed Game to let my inner Deamon out.

If 7 Days gets a bit of that(with the announced melee changes), i will be happy as hell.

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Players won't notice sound effects alone and need an obvious visual indicator. Proof: you’re not even sure if there’s a bleeding sound effect in the game now. :)

 

I know there always where. Before the ultra aggressive visual effects that are in right now that was my main indicator that i was bleeding, now my brain doesn't even need the sound effects anymore...

 

Anyway, i'm all in for visual effects when you're bleeding, but please! let me keep fighting until there is not 1000 vultures shredding me apart.

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He didn’t actually say a brown pistol could do more damage. He said it may be superior. I think that means other stats are randomized as well, so while the yellow pistol will usually be better, the brown one may sometimes have a combination of stats that is better for some situations and/or play styles.

 

I think color should affect accuracy and reliability but not damage done. A 9mm round fired from two of the same guns with different quality should do the same level of damage I would think. It's still a 9mm round.

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My dad used to have one.. Then again; he started to go bald after I was born. Pure coincidence, of course..

 

Generally speaking guys with beards have higher DHT levels than beardless guys, and DHT causes male pattern baldness. Its rare to see a bald guy who can't grow a decent beard. On the flip side if you can't grow a beard you probably won't go bald. Some people are not susceptible to DHT , it depends if your hair follicles are receptive to it.

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Hey madmole,

so quality now determines damage, but a brown pistol could do more damage than a yellow one? Maybe I am not understanding this correctly. However it seems very odd to me. Whats the point of having colors at all then? They don't give any useful information, you still need to check the stats.

 

The color has a range of how good or bad it could be, so generally speaking they are better. They also dictate value AFAIK, and are used to roll the loot out. You sir get a brown one, you sir get a pink one, etc. It would be rare two colors down is better but still possible, but most likely better in only one stat not every stat.

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Well, orange is between yellow and brown. So orange, in this fake scenario, would have lets say 15-30 range of damage. So, if you had:

BROWN pistol with range of 10-25 and rolled 25

ORANGE pistol with range of 15-30 and rolled 27

YELLOW pistol with range of 20-35 and rolled 20

You have a brown pistol that is better than yellow one but still worse than orange one.

 

That or i might understand it completely wrong, in which case Madmole needs explain himself :D

 

This looks fairly close, but I don't know the exact ranges.

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@madmole, adding on to what the others are on about quality. I'm assuming that main difference regardless of the item damage, is that the higher quality weapon will have more mod slots? That is if, I'm actually reading right what you mean by quality.

 

Yes generally better stats and more mod slots. Only 4 mods max now.

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Generally speaking guys with beards have higher DHT levels than beardless guys, and DHT causes male pattern baldness. Its rare to see a bald guy who can't grow a decent beard. On the flip side if you can't grow a beard you probably won't go bald. Some people are not susceptible to DHT , it depends if your hair follicles are receptive to it.

 

Hair Loss DLC confirmed

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2D6 would still give you a bell curve. There is nothing about having only 2 dice that would make the rules of statistics change. It would be a very clumpy looking bell curve if you tried to plot it but that is because there are only 11 possible data points on the X axis. Since dice rolls are discrete instead of continuous there is never a smooth "curve". It would always be "lumpy" for lack of a better word. We still just call it a a bell curve because it works the same(ish).

 

Edit: Fixed my idiot x-axis remark. Lol

 

Yes, it's lumpy, but even if you smooth out the lumps 2d6 gives you a triangular distribution, it's not a curve at all.

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Please take this as a "consider the following" comment, and not an "oh no, this is the whole picture so the sky must be falling" comment.

 

Players really don't like feeling penalized for making progress. They hated when upgrading to steel tools wiped out their stamina. They hated when improving block damage meant fewer resources per block. They're not going to like discovering that they can't craft a gun because they bought a perk and now the same materials they had aren't good enough.

 

It would be nice, then, if you could still make lower quality items if you needed to.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

 

Woohoo! ;)

I had zero problem with this in Ark. I found a really awesome sniper rifle schematic that did 400+ damage but it took 4k of ingots to craft. It helps balance economy because prices radically go up when you craft better quality stuff, so scaling costs are good thing IMO.

 

The problem is we don't have a one handed steel pick. So you went from a 1 handed to a 2 handed and felt the difference. We'll either unify it or add two handed iron picks so you realize its a choice to use two handed, more damage but more stamina cost.

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This looks fairly close, but I don't know the exact ranges.

 

Since damage IS the most important stat by far, I would guess the stat range might be too big if it were like Shine posted it. The consequence would be that color would loose just too much meaning.

 

Naturally we have to wait for a chance to play A18 to really see the consequences, this is just my predicition after looking into the crystal ball. And I would suggest less range for damage, but possibly keep or even increase the extended range for all other stats.

 

Reason for this: Color would then be a fast and rather accurate way to judge damage. In cases where other stats are important too you would check them out, otherwise not tediously waste your time to check each and every weapon you find (and trust me, you finally get to the point where it becomes tedious if you have to look at every weapon in detail)

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I think color should affect accuracy and reliability but not damage done. A 9mm round fired from two of the same guns with different quality should do the same level of damage I would think. It's still a 9mm round.

 

Its a game, without progression it sucks. The game is crack now random stats is the best feature in years. I'm usually bored three weeks into the game and quit by the 4th week for sure. I'm super engaged right now with over 200 books/schematics to find and specialization working nice, and random stat gear to give me micro-progression every session I'm addicted and all my free time is playing 7 days. RIP Skyrim and Minecraft lol.

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Since damage IS the most important stat by far, I would guess the stat range might be too big if it were like Shine posted it. The consequence would be that color would loose just too much meaning.

 

Naturally we have to wait for a chance to play A18 to really see the consequences, this is just my predicition after looking into the crystal ball. And I would suggest less range for damage, but possibly keep or even increase the extended range for all other stats.

 

I disagree, you are overthinking it. Chances are if you find some nice brown high damage weapon, its going to have poor degradation, range, etc leaving the player with an interesting choice of using that rusty piece of crap that breaks down on you frequently, kicks like a mule, but it got its nickname ol' painless for a reason.

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I had zero problem with this in Ark. I found a really awesome sniper rifle schematic that did 400+ damage but it took 4k of ingots to craft. It helps balance economy because prices radically go up when you craft better quality stuff, so scaling costs are good thing IMO.

 

True, in Ark it's not a problem because you can still craft the default sniper rifle. the better one is just a schematic. so in Ark you can have infinite different schematics to chose from and still be able to craft the default one.

 

in 7 days, if your crafting level is tied to your skill, there's no way to revert that and you might just have enough resources to craft the quality below, but not the one you just invested your skillpoint into which could create frustration. i too would like to be able to craft the lesser quality level still. or maybe just default (level 1) AND the actual level of your craftig quality?

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I disagree, you are overthinking it. Chances are if you find some nice brown high damage weapon, its going to have poor degradation, range, etc leaving the player with an interesting choice of using that rusty piece of crap that breaks down on you frequently, kicks like a mule, but it got its nickname ol' painless for a reason.

 

Maybe I'm not thinking enough.

 

In A17 at least breaking down of weapons doesn't matter much as I have enough repair kits (too much oil to find in the game maybe?). I don't notice weapon recoil at all since I prefer single shot even for the AK which is enough to stop even a group of glowies (maybe I'm constraining myself here but it feels like any well placed headshot is always better than a spray of shots into the body of a zombie). If I shoot burst in close combat I usually try for the body anyway and then recoil doesn't maater much again as the body is big enough.

 

And as a further tidbit: I am absolutely sure that most players will subjectively judge a weapon mostly by damage, even if that would be objectively wrong

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Generally speaking guys with beards have higher DHT levels than beardless guys, and DHT causes male pattern baldness. Its rare to see a bald guy who can't grow a decent beard. On the flip side if you can't grow a beard you probably won't go bald. Some people are not susceptible to DHT , it depends if your hair follicles are receptive to it.

 

Great game and Education as well!?! nice :) so Biker Zombie is bald under that helmet?

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The color has a range of how good or bad it could be, so generally speaking they are better. They also dictate value AFAIK, and are used to roll the loot out. You sir get a brown one, you sir get a pink one, etc. It would be rare two colors down is better but still possible, but most likely better in only one stat not every stat.

Thanks for the explanation, sounds good :)

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True, in Ark it's not a problem because you can still craft the default sniper rifle. the better one is just a schematic. so in Ark you can have infinite different schematics to chose from and still be able to craft the default one.

 

in 7 days, if your crafting level is tied to your skill, there's no way to revert that and you might just have enough resources to craft the quality below, but not the one you just invested your skillpoint into which could create frustration. i too would like to be able to craft the lesser quality level still. or maybe just default (level 1) AND the actual level of your craftig quality?

 

Very few would craft a crappy one IMO, they would grind a little more and get the good one, go buy something at a trader or use one of the backup guns they have. The scaling isn't too crazy. 5 parts more per rank. Weapon crafting isn't a thing anymore IMO, loot offers the random ranges and is the best of the best. Crafting is for when you can't find what you want.

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Very few would craft a crappy one IMO, they would grind a little more and get the good one, go buy something at a trader or use one of the backup guns they have. The scaling isn't too crazy. 5 parts more per rank. Weapon crafting isn't a thing anymore IMO, loot offers the random ranges and is the best of the best. Crafting is for when you can't find what you want.

 

Sounds really good! How often do you get a gun from containers, etc? Please make guns a pretty rare drop! In A17 you find guns everywhere! Make buying from a trader a viable option (I have to say, A17 is freaking cool anyway, I'm always trying to find Dukes to buy things, so you're on the right way IMO) :)

The thing is, i'm on day 23 and i have all my gear in maximum tier (Smg, ak47, spiked club, shotgun, pistol, steel armor)

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