Jump to content

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!


madmole

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!  

3 members have voted

  1. 1. Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

    • A18 Stable is Out!
      2
    • :)
      1


Recommended Posts

Its standard industry practice to position something in first person to feel big and meaty, realism fails and makes firearms look weak and underwhelming.

 

I don't understand, this has nothing to do with realism. What's wrong with seeing the spear held from further down the shaft so that the player can tell the actual reach it has?

 

It's very confusing right now because you only see the spearhead as the part that pokes, yet it pokes things that are well farther away than the spearhead itself. This has nothing to do with industry practices, it has to do with the spear having a collider that extends beyond the model, thus causing a mismatch between what the player sees that it hits, and what it actually hits.

 

EDIT: And seriously, who sets these "industry practices"? Because I know of many mainstream, highly successful games that would disagree with this supposed industry practice. Ark has a spear that's held from further below. Mordhau, the most recent first person medieval combat hit, has many polearms being held from well below the head. Hell, Morrowing, since you love TES games (and who doesn't) has spears held well below.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You mean in a game where you start off with nothing and have to scrounge, scrap, scavenge, and craft everything you have... some people see reaching a point of self-sustainability and surviving safely as a goal?

 

Heavens to Betsy... Why would anyone ever think that surviving is the goal in a survival game?

 

You can survive like that right now, but if you want to thrive I want you to get off your ass and leave the safety of your walls. In TWD they are constantly leaving their base and going out risking their lives to find medicine, ammo, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Totally agree but a more natural method would be to increase gamestage based on days played... so if u are playing really good or playing bad u can get ahead of the curve or fall behind based on whatever difficulty you selected. I personally dont like when a game attempts to adjust its difficulty based on the player. Id rather the player select an appropriate difficulty.

 

Instead of thinking to myself, i have to slow down leveling because the next blood moon is gonna be too hard ...id say to myself I really need to level so I have the skills or tools to deal with the next horde. Slowing the leveling on purpose feels gamey.

 

We had that and it sucked. Can't you remember day 28, 35, 42, etc? Then there was the case of logging in on day 140 on an existing server the first time and being a brand new level 1 character and you get the same nasty horde as the guys who've been there every night.

 

Game staging allows for players to get a horde they can realistically cope with regardless of what day the server is on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just wondering. What does it matter if some poi's don't give you enough loot, to warrant your ammo usage? Shouldn't that be part of the game as well? Some pois might not have decent loot and basically waste some of your stock?

 

Cool, but I hope some will still be packed full, while other poi's are not.

The issue, at least for me, was that you could enter the same poi ->in different areas<-, and they all were filled to the brim with zeds, with the same amount of zeds, which ended up becoming monotonous, because you always knew what you were getting.

Hopefully you all get it set that sometimes you can enter the same poi in different areas, while one of them is filled, the other might be empty, or another might only have a few zeds populating them.

 

It will become pretty hard to play the same POI twice in one game when we're done. There is good loot, there needs to be a decent amount of zombies. The new remnants are very sparse in loot and enemies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't understand, this has nothing to do with realism. What's wrong with seeing the spear held from further down the shaft so that the player can tell the actual reach it has?

 

It's very confusing right now because you only see the spearhead as the part that pokes, yet it pokes things that are well farther away than the spearhead itself. This has nothing to do with industry practices, it has to do with the spear having a collider that extends beyond the model, thus causing a mismatch between what the player sees that it hits, and what it actually hits.

 

EDIT: And seriously, who sets these "industry practices"? Because I know of many mainstream, highly successful games that would disagree with this supposed industry practice. Ark has a spear that's held from further below. Mordhau, the most recent first person medieval combat hit, has many polearms being held from well below the head. Hell, Morrowing, since you love TES games (and who doesn't) has spears held well below.

 

Its been this way forever. DO you think your stone axe is actually hitting them in the head? Its an illusion. Your like 10' away lol. For actual meshes to hit fist to face you would have to be so close you couldn't see anything but a zombie covering your entire screen.

 

We might be able to adjust it, I haven't even looked at it or used it much yet, I was just telling you general practice. I've been doing one build at a time, I did strength and agility. Fortitude is up next, then I'll do perception because its not quite done yet. As I play I take notes and give the guys feedback and polish notes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stealth is an option, but if you buy up all the bullet supplies at traders, mine and get the books, you should be swimming in ammo if you are willing to put in the work.

 

Just wondering. What does it matter if some poi's don't give you enough loot, to warrant your ammo usage? Shouldn't that be part of the game as well? Some pois might not have decent loot and basically waste some of your stock?

 

Cool, but I hope some will still be packed full, while other poi's are not.

The issue, at least for me, was that you could enter the same poi ->in different areas<-, and they all were filled to the brim with zeds, with the same amount of zeds, which ended up becoming monotonous, because you always knew what you were getting.

Hopefully you all get it set that sometimes you can enter the same poi in different areas, while one of them is filled, the other might be empty, or another might only have a few zeds populating them.

 

Point isn't "sometimes not getting big reward". The rewards are +- the same compared to difficulty. But big POIs are just.. Not worth going trough. As was said before, T5 quests lead you there. And as you said before, MM, you want to encourage exploration. It is not much of encourage to walk around the big POI and be like "Meh, too much ammo for so little, i guess i will skip this / jump to top"

 

EDIT: the level designers are reducing spawn numbers too.

 

That is kinda cool.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MM, don't know if it has been discussed recently but what is your point of view about current state of BM hordes? As I see it being able to just simply drive away from a horde without any implications moots the point for any TD elements or fortifications, as there is no real/practical reason for them to be utilized.

 

From what I remember you wish to add alternative ways to avoid them, which will include cost/risk, like more limited gas availability or paid trader night accommodation, which would be great as long as they are balanced to not the "obvious" choice one would take to deal with the horde.

 

What sayest thou mr. MM?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You can't be too obscene with your ammo usage either, I know I had to learn the hard way a few times. If you have some intensely vast mega base with a few dozen turrets and use nothing but your AK on full auto then you are gonna chew though some serious stacks of brass loving ammunition. Maybe just adapt some other weapons and tactics in that case, use the shotgun more, discover the joy of molotovs, go nuts with blade traps, create obscenely vast fields of spikes and barbed wire, use more shotty turrets, and so on. I just think reassessing your ammo usage to begin with can go a very long way in dealing with this problem as well. Once I modified my overall usage, and got more accurate with my AK (no full auto for example), I've not since had a brass problem. I also use many alternatives like molotovs, shottys, traps, etc. I actually did it all to save me the time/effort of having to make so much damn ammo in the first place, my need for brass dropping dramatically overall was just a bonus at that point(in both A16 and A17 btw).

 

This.

 

Ammo is a problem when you are overly reliant on it. When going up against the real bullet sponges I tend to at least drop some spikes for them. Arrows save a crap tone of ammo too - stone arrows are essentially free.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Totally agree but a more natural method would be to increase gamestage based on days played... so if u are playing really good or playing bad u can get ahead of the curve or fall behind based on whatever difficulty you selected. I personally dont like when a game attempts to adjust its difficulty based on the player. Id rather the player select an appropriate difficulty.

 

Instead of thinking to myself, i have to slow down leveling because the next blood moon is gonna be too hard ...id say to myself I really need to level so I have the skills or tools to deal with the next horde. Slowing the leveling on purpose feels gamey.

 

100% agree. Not going to happen though as the game stage is thoroughly integrated, working and solves MP isses that this would cause like MM said. Sometimes SP forgets about the MP :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rick said shut up and take my money so we can count on this for 19.

 

Wait, you let him boss you around? Couldn't you eat him?

 

Cage match!

 

I also agree with kage... But it's more than that, it's that it's the /same/ loot, just more of it.

 

Special unique to poi loot items would be fantastic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We had that and it sucked. Can't you remember day 28, 35, 42, etc? Then there was the case of logging in on day 140 on an existing server the first time and being a brand new level 1 character and you get the same nasty horde as the guys who've been there every night.

 

Game staging allows for players to get a horde they can realistically cope with regardless of what day the server is on.

 

You can still make a formula that will make the GS be in part dependent on global time and cap the GS for new players ;o

A small global time factor to the GS will create some delicious urgency.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Its been this way forever. DO you think your stone axe is actually hitting them in the head? Its an illusion. Your like 10' away lol. For actual meshes to hit fist to face you would have to be so close you couldn't see anything but a zombie covering your entire screen.

 

We might be able to adjust it, I haven't even looked at it or used it much yet, I was just telling you general practice. I've been doing one build at a time, I did strength and agility. Fortitude is up next, then I'll do perception because its not quite done yet. As I play I take notes and give the guys feedback and polish notes.

 

It may be this way with the other weapons as well, but with the spear it seems especially bad, since you expect a long reach out of it, which it has, but it's being held like a knife.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Point isn't "sometimes not getting big reward". The rewards are +- the same compared to difficulty. But big POIs are just.. Not worth going trough. As was said before, T5 quests lead you there. And as you said before, MM, you want to encourage exploration. It is not much of encourage to walk around the big POI and be like "Meh, too much ammo for so little, i guess i will skip this / jump to top"

 

Ammunition consumption depends on how you fight the zombies. I was able to complete T5 quests without using a single bullet.

 

Most of the time I fight the zombies with the club and the crossbow. The hospital and the apartment building are very well suited for this. But you have to spec in strength and stealth to be successful with this strategy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The enemies don't get stronger, we slowly expose you to nastier different enemies to keep the player challenged and engaged. Like plants vs zombies. WIthout it, you could sit safely in your easy biome and never be scared or challenged at all, never die, and then the fun is lost. The fear, challenge and progress is what motivates players to continue. Start removing those and the game gets boring quickly.

Well I think you missjudge the player base.

I dont see warframe players hanging around on earth just because it's safe.

I haven't seen any one playing skyrim hanging around safetly in riverwood.

Back in the days when I played Wow no one stayed in the starter area for long.

And that had nothing to do with being exposed to nastier enimies but all to do with wanting to explore and evolve.

 

Sure some builders might like to be left in peace while they build. But hey if it rocks their boat.

 

I dont think the majority of 7dtds playerbase will stay in the pineforest with stone age technologies just because it's safe.

 

 

We had that and it sucked. Can't you remember day 28, 35, 42, etc? Then there was the case of logging in on day 140 on an existing server the first time and being a brand new level 1 character and you get the same nasty horde as the guys who've been there every night.

 

Game staging allows for players to get a horde they can realistically cope with regardless of what day the server is on.

 

Yeah that did suck.

But I think he meant some thing in the line with what Roland did with his mod.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Talking about loot and higher tier quests not being worth it, this is something I posted in another thread where someone was having a real hard time finding a tool and die set:

 

I think some things , like the tool and die set, should stay uncraftable. If you don't have a tool and die set, how can you craft them? ;)

 

BUT, what I think would work is to give them a high probability to be quest loot. Still can get lucky and find them almost anywhere as you always have been able to, but if you do a few higher tier quests, it should almost be a guarantee that they'll be a reward for said quest. Maybe be added to quest loot at T4, with a low-ish probability, and by T6 maybe like 75%+ probability?

 

Would give another incentive to do quests as well. :)

 

I know you had been tweaking the beaker's loot probability and I honestly don't remember all of what has changed like that recently, but maybe adding the rarer loot stuff like beakers and too and die sets to be higher tier quest loot would work well. Still doesn't have to be a guaranteed drop, but just make it a real high possibility. And, if you already have one and don't need it, they sell for a good amount of dukes. Which, if those scrapping to brass is coming back, gives you even more options. :)

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

isn't there that radiated corn that is poi specific?

 

I believe so, yeah.

 

But I also cannot think of any other examples of this. Lol.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...