Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[KingSlayerGM]

Thoughts on the new Skill/Perk system

 

Hey guys,

since MadMole's new video is out, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the new Skill/Perk system.

 

First of all let me start by saying that I got a good first impression of it and I can't wait to give it a try. Perhaps my opinions will change after they'll release it, perhaps not. However I like the fact that now you can play the game as different classes, which implicates different play styles. These classes are supposed to be self sufficient and you shouldn't need to perk into more than one class at a time. On paper this sounds great.

 

One more thing I like is the removal of level gates. Maybe. Because you see, there are no more "you need to be level 30 to do this" rules, however in order to buy a perk you need to have enough skill points, in other words enough levels. This is way better than before though, so I'm glad.

 

Now let's move on to the things I'm not really happy about. For starters: why some perks can be bought and some magic ones can only be learnt from books? I get that this is a gameplay choice. However is there a meaningful difference between the types that can be bought and the other ones? Like for example some are skill based and other are more unnatural abilities? It would annoy me if there was no clear separation between the two.

 

Now the most important thing I don't like: why have classes in the first place? Why sniper rifles must go with spears and shotguns with clubs? Why construct this artificial binding that limits players? I like machine guns and clubs, well if I want to play with those, I need to spend more points then someone who takes shotguns and clubs. Why force this onto the players? This also applies to any other combination of skills that are not int the same class. If I want to be a scavenger hunter it will cost me a lot more than if their two main perks where in the same class. Why is that? That is just random. Many skills don't have anything to do with each other, like archery and blades? Why are they even in the same class? Or explosives and sniper rifles, and I could go on and on.. These classes to me feel artificial and restricts the players. Many games let's you create your own class, I wonder why is that? And if you think, well just buy perks from 2 separate classes, here is the answer for you. 1) it costs more 2) then why have classes in the first place, if you allow cross-perking?

 

I would suggest having no classes, having each skill independent and leveled by LBD, and those levels allow you to buy perks. Sounds familiar? Yep, it's kinda what we had before and what a little game called Skyrim had. Ever heard of it? Maybe that game got it right, why reinvent it? With such system any player could level any 2 or more skills that he desires, with no restrictions nor penalties. Worried about spam crafting and grinding? Just take appropriate coding steps to prevent it.

 

One more thought: the class with "lucky looter" has a clear advantage over the others IMO.

 

Sorry for this long post. Any thoughts?

[Sirillion]

Awesome. As long as there is a pathway to spoilage available for modding I'm happy. I don't want others to be forced into playing an actual survival game.

 

I do think that one "balancing" change could be (if possible) to simply make the % chance for food to make you sick increase each day. So it doesn't disappear or change into "rotten food". All that happens is its food poisoning stat changes each day to a higher percentage.

 

This could also introduce food conservation where the player has to make cans and jars in which they can preserve their food for a later time. Would also be cool if the self made conservation method could have a random chance to fail and as such self preserved food could potentially make you sick.

[madmole]

LOL at that video! Bears in jean jackets that fall out of the sky onto your base - there’s a mod that our descendants will tell tales and sing songs of for 1000 years.

 

Squidbillies was so funny I can't resist linking that video every time someone mentions bear hordes.

[Sirillion]

Mountain lions too. Cats are scavengers.

 

Don't forget the biggest and baddest of them all, the bear. Bears are known for their sense of smell and can even go into camp sites looking for food.

 

So if you reintroduce smell please consider removing zombies as a threat because of it and rather use the wildlife.

 

EDIT: It could also be a cool feature if/when you get bandits into the game if they react to your stockpile the same way as screamers react to heat. If there is a "rumor" going around that you have a vast stockpile of food and ammo it could trigger a bandit attack.

[madmole]

That will make safe cracking the Vault at the Bank a lot better with a Turret watching the doorway. /cheer

 

I didn't realize that they shut down after a certain distance and that makes sense. Imagine sneaking into a coop territory and dropping 20 of them right outside a base?

 

We'll probably define a limit if we already haven't based on your perk rank.

[Drithyl]

I would suggest having no classes, having each skill independent and leveled by LBD, and those levels allow you to buy perks. Sounds familiar? Yep, it's kinda what we had before and what a little game called Skyrim had. Ever heard of it? Maybe that game got it right, why reinvent it? With such system any player could level any 2 or more skills that he desires, with no restrictions nor penalties. Worried about spam crafting and grinding? Just take appropriate coding steps to prevent it.

 

One more thought: the class with "lucky looter" has a clear advantage over the others IMO.

 

Sorry for this long post. Any thoughts?

 

I wonder how many times must LBD be rejected by the dev team before people stop bringing it up again.

 

It's fine disliking the perk system they came up with and some of your points are fair, but suggesting an entire overhaul of it *again* at this stage is not great. Eventually a system will be settled with (and considering how far in we are I'd hope it's this one), and some people will like it and others dislike, inevitably. We can't be suggesting a complete revamp of it every single time.

 

There are ways to make it more flexible without undoing it all:

 

- Keep the actual attributes as their own thing, without governing any perk directly, while still giving passive bonuses. Maybe even make them give passive bonuses to weapon classes as a whole, i.e. more strength gives more melee damage, more perception gives more ranged damage, more agility gives faster reload speed and swing speed, etc, so that attributes are still somewhat oriented to certain weapon categories without forcing you to use one specific weapon of a specific type of weapon.

 

- Or make them govern the non-weapon perks so there are still classes, but leave weapons on their own so players can have their attribute class but still get to pick weapons freely.

 

-Or many other solutions, really. But the best at the end is to make the perk system highly moddable so that modders will be able to implement their own choice of RPG system, be it LBD, perks with classes, perks without classes, etc.

[madmole]

I can put stacks of 6000 wood on a campfire

 

So load some more fat in your torch. Rust has candle lights that burn on animal fat, I think they are pretty cool tbh.

[Tete1805]

... LBD ...

No offense, but I think you lost madmole there.

[Survager]

uh....

 

 

 

So Raytracing when?

 

Add physics to Minecraft and see which PC can handle it)

[SnowDog1942]

So load some more fat in your torch. Rust has candle lights that burn on animal fat, I think they are pretty cool tbh.

 

Ok cool i was under the impression that we had to fix or replace after it burns out.

[Sirillion]

And about the death penalty, Anarchy Online had an interesting way of doing it back in the day, when you died you lost all the XP you had earned since last you leveled/saved and had to earn it back.

 

What if you introduced that as a death penalty? Upon death all your XP since the last time you leveled is moved to a pool and you now earn that pool back when earning XP moving forward. So you would make more XP for a while until that pool has been retrieved, so you never really lose it but your progress will be slowed down.

[RestInPieces]

Give players a better reason to get out of the stone age.

 

This - gradually improving the players' QOL with technology and having more things to look forward to, like additional electricity incentives, is one of the things that I would be looking forward to. QOL not only in the form of damage, legendary weapons etc, but also QOL that gradually changes the player's schedule and priorities throughout their playthrough.

 

lol...this proves EVERYONE has their spoilage tolerance line.

 

LOL! Well it's more of a pros vs cons situation in my mind and like the building material spoilage suggestion, I think it might be more trouble than it's worth in the general sense of the game. The way they are implemented can make a world of difference as well. Like torch light becoming visibly faint at, say, 20% and all the player has to do is just right click with some fat in hand like MM said. Personally, I would mod these in anyway, because I would kill for more electricity incentives.

[Lanadon Conners]

Squidbillies was so funny I can't resist linking that video every time someone mentions bear hordes.

 

Can you imagine the lump in yer Britches if you were finishing off a POI 5 and looked down and saw a Horde of 5-6 Zombie bears heading towards you? LMAO

 

"Frack it! I might as well just Jump!" LOL

[madmole]

Hey guys,

since MadMole's new video is out, I thought I'd share my thoughts on the new Skill/Perk system.

 

First of all let me start by saying that I got a good first impression of it and I can't wait to give it a try. Perhaps my opinions will change after they'll release it, perhaps not. However I like the fact that now you can play the game as different classes, which implicates different play styles. These classes are supposed to be self sufficient and you shouldn't need to perk into more than one class at a time. On paper this sounds great.

 

One more thing I like is the removal of level gates. Maybe. Because you see, there are no more "you need to be level 30 to do this" rules, however in order to buy a perk you need to have enough skill points, in other words enough levels. This is way better than before though, so I'm glad.

 

Now let's move on to the things I'm not really happy about. For starters: why some perks can be bought and some magic ones can only be learnt from books? I get that this is a gameplay choice. However is there a meaningful difference between the types that can be bought and the other ones? Like for example some are skill based and other are more unnatural abilities? It would annoy me if there was no clear separation between the two.

 

Now the most important thing I don't like: why have classes in the first place? Why sniper rifles must go with spears and shotguns with clubs? Why construct this artificial binding that limits players? I like machine guns and clubs, well if I want to play with those, I need to spend more points then someone who takes shotguns and clubs. Why force this onto the players? This also applies to any other combination of skills that are not int the same class. If I want to be a scavenger hunter it will cost me a lot more than if their two main perks where in the same class. Why is that? That is just random. Many skills don't have anything to do with each other, like archery and blades? Why are they even in the same class? Or explosives and sniper rifles, and I could go on and on.. These classes to me feel artificial and restricts the players. Many games let's you create your own class, I wonder why is that? And if you think, well just buy perks from 2 separate classes, here is the answer for you. 1) it costs more 2) then why have classes in the first place, if you allow cross-perking?

 

I would suggest having no classes, having each skill independent and leveled by LBD, and those levels allow you to buy perks. Sounds familiar? Yep, it's kinda what we had before and what a little game called Skyrim had. Ever heard of it? Maybe that game got it right, why reinvent it? With such system any player could level any 2 or more skills that he desires, with no restrictions nor penalties. Worried about spam crafting and grinding? Just take appropriate coding steps to prevent it.

 

One more thought: the class with "lucky looter" has a clear advantage over the others IMO.

 

Sorry for this long post. Any thoughts?

We wanted attributes instead of skills so we could debuff your abilities and make for interesting diseases (yet to come) Skyrim has grinding of enchanting, smithing, alchemy, and literally everything. You have to buy heavy armor training or die 1000 times getting hit to level your heavy armor in that game if you play on higher difficulty and can't sponge a lot of hits, or go let a wolf or mudcrab bite you 10,000 times while you spam heal.

 

Its not intended to only use one attribute. Its intended to cover most play styles and let them feel pretty strong by specializing. You can still grab stuff from other trees just like in Fallout or Skyrim. Think of it more like Oblivion, you have major and minor Skills. Your major skill for a Tank warhammer smasher would be strength and his minor skill would be fortitude for the heavy armor, regeneration etc.

[Aesir]

No the fireaxe no longer gets any benefits from deep cuts. It ok at melee but not what it was, but it does work ok. Its badass at cutting wood though. I've currently skipped sledgehammers and clubs in my strength build and only use a fireaxe. I've already got rank 5 so its damage is max until I find a steel schematic or steel one in loot that is better than my crafted blue one. Its not bad, but again its not super OP like it used to be in 17. A fair trade since you get it with mining perks. If you want to be a cut guy use a machete or knife.

 

I'm cool with that. I was a knife/machete guy in A16 anyway. As soon as I could make a shiv I'd scrap my club and never look back. And you're right... properly perked and modded a fireaxe is pretty OP in A17.

 

I use tab.

 

TAB to get to Crafting Menu.

 

 

Thanks guys. I figured it was already in there somewhere and I was just missing it.

[madmole]

And about the death penalty, Anarchy Online had an interesting way of doing it back in the day, when you died you lost all the XP you had earned since last you leveled/saved and had to earn it back.

 

What if you introduced that as a death penalty? Upon death all your XP since the last time you leveled is moved to a pool and you now earn that pool back when earning XP moving forward. So you would make more XP for a while until that pool has been retrieved, so you never really lose it but your progress will be slowed down.

 

We talked about that a bit. Some people might never get past level 1 then lol. We'll probably do some death options at some point, no one system will make everyone happy.

[madmole]

Can you imagine the lump in yer Britches if you were finishing off a POI 5 and looked down and saw a Horde of 5-6 Zombie bears heading towards you? LMAO

 

"Frack it! I might as well just Jump!" LOL

 

Yeah one makes me nervous.

[Survager]

So load some more fat in your torch. Rust has candle lights that burn on animal fat, I think they are pretty cool tbh.

 

Torches in Alpha 18 will require refueling with grease, how do fires require wood? Or is it just a guess?

[madmole]

Torches in Alpha 18 will require refueling with grease, how do fires require wood? Or is it just a guess?

 

Torches will not be changed at all in Alpha 18, possibly never, we are just talking about what if.

[beerfly]

Torches in Alpha 18 will require refueling with grease, how do fires require wood? Or is it just a guess?

 

Torches are made from wood anyway. Grease is gives brighter light and longer light time. Just like in real life.

[Frisky Minx]

Thats just a puny sidearm. How about a real battlefield weapon like a halbert?

 

Yeah, go for it. But its not for me.

 

I'd like to go stealth. I have always done that in games whenever it was possible. Thats whya I am really hyped for A18. The Skilltree makes much more sense now.

 

A17 is like going to multiple shops to get the stuff you need. Now you head to your store and get everything. Even cheaper I might say, because you already invested Points in agility for example.

[Frisky Minx]

Oh another Thing... I didn't see that it got mentioned. If anybody knows - I don't want to bother the Devs...:

 

Are the Solarpanels going to get fiexed in A18? The Game gets ultra laggy when you setup Solarpanels to recharge Batteries in the Daytime and use the Batteries for Lights at Night. I use a Timerrelay from 20h - 8h (8pm-8am).

[AtomicUs5000]

I don’t like the idea of animals coming at you after stockpiling meat. It just equals more meat.

[bdubyah]

I also think spoilage would be pretty lame, but I agree that there could be some value to having food-related challenges in the mid-to-late game.

 

Instead of food generically increasing heat for zombies, what about it creating a different sort of heat that attracts bears? So the more food items you have in a chunk, ESPECIALLY raw meat, the more often a bear comes wandering in to check it out. Just like the screamer mechanic.

 

The challenge goes from ‘don’t starve’ to ‘don’t get eaten!’ and instead of feeling like food is a non-issue after a certain point it becomes a different kind of issue, one of abundance = danger.

 

In fact if you had hundreds of meat and food items you could expect 2-3 bears to come sniffing around and more frequent dog pack spawns.

 

This way when you get to the point you’ve got tons of food and forges/cement mixers/chem stations working you have zombies AND animals frequently checking out your base.

 

But this wouldn’t prevent you from questing, exploring, etc. It would just mean there’s a good chance when you come home there will be a bear or two near your base.

 

 

I too like that idea! Could have a bear cub be the screamer. He calls mama bear in and the whole pack follows. Lol.

 

Madmole, you were asking for recipes for the canned foods to give them more uses. I think bringing back smell is something that could also help with that, as they would be safe to carry around with you as opposed to stews and stuff. Keep the stuff you cook at home and use canned goods for exploring/questing.

 

Also, food could probably just use a nerf on the looting side of things. Similar to how guns are currently in A17, food is just way too common. Would also make the supply drops more useful again. Most people I see playing the game usually just check them for weapons/ammo or a beaker. I know I usually just dropped the canned food myself.

 

And then if you add some type of danger for farming, such as plants dying or animals attacking crops, food will have some challenge involved again. Doesn't have to make it a grind or overly tedious, just something you actually have to think about past the first 10 minutes of day 1.

 

 

TLDR: Smell would make canned food useful, nerf food loot some so it's not so easy to find, add some type of crop degradation. Profit.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Torches will not be changed at all in Alpha 18, possibly never, we are just talking about what if.

 

I do like that idea. Maybe make it last one game day before needing to be "reloaded" with fat/tallow.

 

But I would also make it so the degradation stops when it's placed as a block. That was one annoying thing I also had to mod out of ARK with wall and standing torches for my base.

[Gamida]

I was wondering the idea behind tools using more stamina as you get better ones. (Stone>Iron>Steel) I would think you would use less stamina as you got better ones. Wouldn't a stone axe you made yourself at the beginning of the game tire you out more than a nice sharper iron one, and a steel one be even better again . (Keeping it's edge longer)