Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

GTA motorcycle mechanics would be nice.

 

I doubt we'll get them that nice, but somewhere between now and them with some way to wipe out/wreck would be nice. Right now its the training wheels version.

[madmole]

Why don't we just increase the archery perk into a Legolas-like speed shooting at about 150% reload speed. Then henceforth bows would have a place in the endgame. Lets say, combined with purple quality and some equipables you'd get about 450% starting speed. Which would be pretty cool just imagining it.

 

And make firearms feel inadequate?? This is a mod you seek.

[madmole]

Friends I played with only expected guns & ammo from Cops if you killed him before they blew up that is, & Magnums from Cowboys, % chance that is...

 

That game is so 2015. We're not catering weapons to anyone now, its an equal chance to drop insert weapon name here, so that each archtype can get his type of weapon he wants to use. Dropping one specific gun by a specific enemy would skew the balance in favor of those archtypes.

[madmole]

Oh right, my bad. Practically TFP can invent or postulate any strange rays, gases, effects and have different devices react differently to it.

 

This is correct. The blood moon fog might be speculated to what causes it, or the strange lightning storms. Fact is nobody knows but don't get caught out in a blood moon.

[madmole]

In A18 is there an indicator for shale locations? In recent alphas it has been a bit of guessing game where to find it; maybe that's the intention, but it's not consistent with other ores which have surface indicators.

 

Mining is completely changed, but the new tells we made are semi broken for some reason so I'll show it when its ready.

[madmole]

If we are brainstorming magical abilities of the storm why not just make all vehicle disappear. Problem solved!

 

But honestly i would rather see game play being balanced for risk vs reward than putting up magical invisible walls to govern our actions.

no pain no gain!

 

Edit: words.

 

Maybe the fog clogs up your air filter and your carb floods from too much fuel and not enough air. It doesn't really matter does it? The thing is, people should be on foot during a horde night and at some risk unless they either pay a trader or get indoors and hope the zeds can't get to them if they don't want to fight.

 

Maybe its kind of a slow thing too so that you can drive a bit then your engine dies, it starts up gain but dies more frequently, etc. That way it feels random and scary and not a 100% won't run at all kind of thing.

[madmole]

If you play nomad scavenger you don't really need a base, just a temporary place to drop you stuff.

 

The problem i see is that defending your base is high risk with little reward. As I said before bump up the reward on the base defending so that players that stick to their guns actually get rewarded and progress faster.

 

By the way Im cool with nerfing gas since there is gas in abundance, that's just the logical thing to do.

 

What happened to survival itself being a reward? Everyone wants a participation reward these days. You know, the fat ass who walked the 50 yard dash gets a ribbon kind of thing? Sorry Navezgane is an unforgiving place, not meant for the weak. Zombies have a chance to drop loot, dogs drop bones and leather, and you get boatloads of XP for killing them, yet that isn't enough?

 

Once we make the death penalty steep enough maybe you will change your tune and you'll feel grateful you survived instead of having asking for a hand out lol.

[madmole]

Well, regarding the silly idea of electromagnetic storms screwing up electronics, you'd just build your vehicle or generators with magnetos and shield your spark plug cables. Or even better, build a compression ignition engine (simple diesel engine) without all the electronics. Once it's running, it doesn't stop unless you cut the fuel source. If you have the mechanical knowledge to build the stuff you already are in game, that would be pretty easy.

 

Balance by making fuel harder to acquire is by far the better option.

 

I disagree. I want to drive my vehicle all week long, but on horde night no, I shouldn't just be able to outrun everything and be safe. It really doesn't matter what we do, as long as it puts you at risk in a vehicle on horde night somehow. That is the real issue, how we solve it, is another topic and I posted one of 500 ideas we had.

[Mechanimal]

I disagree. I want to drive my vehicle all week long, but on horde night no, I shouldn't just be able to outrun everything and be safe. It really doesn't matter what we do, as long as it puts you at risk in a vehicle on horde night somehow. That is the real issue, how we solve it, is another topic and I posted one of 500 ideas we had.

 

I for one only did a single BM on a vehicle, and that was a minibike in A16. It was not deliberate, and it was not fun(well it kinda was, I laughed afterwards). Probably because I was not ready for it. At any rate I have not encountered nor partook in this survival tactic, not likely a method I would impose, on purpose anyway. I also imagine only the jeep would really be safe, danger chickens can get you on any of the others, I would not even try it for that reason alone, personally. By the time one makes a jeep I would expect they were also well prepared and had a horde base since it is such a late game achievement. I just think this exploit is weird, far more rare than those complaining about it realize. But if you did do something to make it more difficult, sure go ahead, we'll see how that works out, and likely debate it here in the forums, as usual. I just didn't realize this was all that much of a thing in the first place.

[Odetta]

Could we get a combust on impact flame arrow? The current flame arrow's particle effect makes it super hard to aim with it. Not gonna lie, they are not intuitive to use other then hip-fire or aim and pray. Something like this or a little smaller:

 

Here is the bow aiming a flame arrow for reference:

 

[KingSlayerGM]

Once we make the death penalty steep enough maybe you will change your tune and you'll feel grateful you survived instead of having asking for a hand out lol.

 

And the new players will be very thankful too..

[Boxcarwilly]

When playing with friends in a party it kinda sucks that the person with the highest loot bonus ends up looting everything because you want the best chance to get the good loots. Is there any chance the "find better loot" bonus (not the faster loot time) from Lucky Looter could be shared among near by party members? I dont think it'd be that much different and would allow others to loot without guilt.

[SnowDog1942]

What happened to survival itself being a reward? Everyone wants a participation reward these days. You know, the fat ass who walked the 50 yard dash gets a ribbon kind of thing? Sorry Navezgane is an unforgiving place, not meant for the weak. Zombies have a chance to drop loot, dogs drop bones and leather, and you get boatloads of XP for killing them, yet that isn't enough?

 

Once we make the death penalty steep enough maybe you will change your tune and you'll feel grateful you survived instead of having asking for a hand out lol.

 

This is what i like to hear but do u have the nutz to follow thru and ignore the cryers that dont like challenge and love participation trophies?

[KingSlayerGM]

I disagree. I want to drive my vehicle all week long, but on horde night no, I shouldn't just be able to outrun everything and be safe. It really doesn't matter what we do, as long as it puts you at risk in a vehicle on horde night somehow. That is the real issue, how we solve it, is another topic and I posted one of 500 ideas we had.

 

I disagree. It does matter what you do. Cars that simply don't work 1 day per week feels like a cheap/lazy solution to patch a deep game flaw. Players would feel frustrated for being imposed an arbitrary law that isn't consistent and breaks immersion. And what about bikes? Would they not work too? The electromagnetic waves during the night don't let its wheels spin? Lol

 

Zombies that jump onto the car? That would actually be great! Zombies that do a lot more damage than normal to your car during horde nights, just because it is useful for the devs to make you not use it, is again a cheap/lazy solution.

 

Why don't you ask yourself the real question: why would a player want to skip the night? And the magic answer is: because maybe to him it's not worth it. Perhaps address that, before nerfing gas.

 

Also if you start this battle of not letting players find ways around fighting the horde, how can you stop the oh I will just nerdpole to the roof of this building and wait for the night to pass strategy?

[AtomicUs5000]

What happened to survival itself being a reward? Everyone wants a participation reward these days. You know, the fat ass who walked the 50 yard dash gets a ribbon kind of thing? Sorry Navezgane is an unforgiving place, not meant for the weak. Zombies have a chance to drop loot, dogs drop bones and leather, and you get boatloads of XP for killing them, yet that isn't enough?

 

Once we make the death penalty steep enough maybe you will change your tune and you'll feel grateful you survived instead of having asking for a hand out lol.

 

You need to have that in order to fully appreciate survival for the sake of survival.

 

I'm all for that... 100% agreed plus some.

 

That's why we need that penalty, why we need those insta-wins fixed and/or balanced on horde nights. The presence of these issues makes it so that you want some kind of reward for participating in something that could have cost you zero time and resources.

[Mechanimal]

So, will A18 have a way to make voice chat always on? The group I sometimes play with uses Discord because no one wants to deal with push-to-talk. There should simply be an option to make vc always on. Otherwise I have to keep dealing with discord(not a fan).

[HerrKingsley]

What happened to survival itself being a reward? Everyone wants a participation reward these days. You know, the fat ass who walked the 50 yard dash gets a ribbon kind of thing? Sorry Navezgane is an unforgiving place, not meant for the weak. Zombies have a chance to drop loot, dogs drop bones and leather, and you get boatloads of XP for killing them, yet that isn't enough?

 

Once we make the death penalty steep enough maybe you will change your tune and you'll feel grateful you survived instead of having asking for a hand out lol.

 

Lol personally I couldn't care less about xp.

If I had it my way there wouldn't be any XP just perks by book in sweet old RNG style. That's how I mod my game.

So I'm perfectly fine with no hand outs.

 

But since you always talk about risk and reward it seems logical to address it.

 

I get the feeling that a lot of ppl here feels that other players are "getting away" easier by not playing the "intended" way.

And therfor draw the conclusion that penalties should be handed out.

My suggestion is to make the "intended" way more profitable.

That doesn't always mean adding penalties to other options.

 

By the way just to check your opinion on surviving.

Is combat the only way of survival in your book or are you balancing for stealth non combat builds also in SP?

[dhlmaster]

So, will A18 have a way to make voice chat always on? The group I sometimes play with uses Discord because no one wants to deal with push-to-talk. There should simply be an option to make vc always on. Otherwise I have to keep dealing with discord(not a fan).

 

I hope they will just improve the voice chat in the game client in general. I can never hear what most people are saying because they don't have their mic sensitivity set high enough. At least in discord, I can boost the volume of individuals who aren't coming across loud enough.

[ogre92]

I disagree. I want to drive my vehicle all week long, but on horde night no, I shouldn't just be able to outrun everything and be safe. It really doesn't matter what we do, as long as it puts you at risk in a vehicle on horde night somehow. That is the real issue, how we solve it, is another topic and I posted one of 500 ideas we had.

 

As you drive away from the horde on the blood moon you look in the rear view mirror just as the irradiated feral "lurker" zombie grabs a hold of your head and starts to munch on your tender flesh, this is your last image as your vehicle spins out of control and crashes into a tree killing you instantly and destroying the vehicle and all of its contents. Call it a 50% chance this happens...

[Moldy Bread]

I do wish gun parts were brought back, it was satisfying building up your gun, having it get better over time. It gave you a reason to always scavenge. Now however you can find like 20 pistols and 10 shotguns on the first day and god know how much ammo.

 

I also miss the scary cities. I still think that cities, towns and etc should still be very dangerous and have that creepy green atmosphere. Large cities with wandering zeds including special zeds would make low levels think twice and would make investing into stealth more worthwhile so you can make your way through a place that is very dangerous.

[4sheetzngeegles]

Madmole:

For poi landscaping in A18 do you plan to allow placement of pois in elevated or mountainous areas? Similar to the coding in a16.4 where a lot was flattened in circular fashion, or do they all still get regulated to the flat of a city only. If it can be done in the wilderness portion of Rwgmixer, can you give a hint how to do it. I ask about wilderness because I have tried to rem the city portion and only place pois in wilderness but they seem picky and only certain pois will spawn in that terrain.

[sillls]

We'll probably do away with pistols in toilets, there are plenty of dedicated gun boxes now.

 

I never really understood why there were so many handguns in toilets. What was it doing there? Rapid clearing of constipation???

 

 

 

Or is it a way of Defending the Throne!

 

"None shall disturb my reading of the morning paper!"

[sillls]

I changed advanced shotgun ammo to use polymers, not the shells. Shells still use paper. Steel arrows and bolts use polymers too instead of feathers. You can get polymers and paper from the cardboard pallet boxes you see everywhere.

 

So are we doing away with feathers now? Because I only found three uses for them.

 

1. Arrows and bolts.

2. Burning them as fuel. (burns very fast)

3. Sell at a trader. (Traders won't buy a lot of them)

 

What about the primitive bow's arrows such as stone and iron tipped ones?

Will they still use feathers?

[sillls]

No plans to nerf shale, but I need to mine some (once I can't find gas) and make sure its not too OP. IMO you should be able to mine for one night and have gas for a week.

 

And if that doesn't work there is always the bicycle. It may be basic but it can get you there.

 

It really helps out if your carrying a full load.

 

You learn to really appreciate the bicycle after trying to run around with a pack full of loot. Especially when you get thirsty.

[Miguel94]

You can add more minerals and metals for the mining.

Copper to make the cables and some materials for mechanics and electronics.

Sulfur.

Platinum for some electronic materials and as a precious metal.

Tungsten for some necessary materials of electronics and advanced weapons.

Titanium as the strongest metal, the next level of steel to improve the blocks and to make some materials for vehicles, electronics, advanced weapons.

 

For larger hordes of zombies and more powerful zombies, something harder than steel is required. The only thing that exceeds steel and is found in mines is titanium.

 

Apart from that, titanium is necessary for electronics, vehicles and as a last level of weapons. Example: stone ax, iron ax, steel ax and titanium ax. Titanium as the most advanced, last levels of the character and very rare the loot.