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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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I hear this on a regular basis but thanks.

 

Made me lol!

 

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*Pours acid on his eyes*

 

If you can spare some of that acid, I could more accurately determine the rock type.

 

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Looks cool, but seems too big, like game-changing big.

 

Yeah I know.. it's tough to find underwear which fits.

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Just remember, using what you find is a cornerstone of survival. Too much choice and excess are luxuries which work against survival.

 

I mean, I know we all want choices. But RNG should still be a factor, making some choices easier and some choices harder in a given game. If the player doesn’t have to take what they can get - if they can dismiss low-hanging fruit, at least in the early game - it’s not a survival game anymore.

 

I think the current design for A18 supports that. Anything that isn’t a weapon type you have perked into is garbage. Anything you scrap that is not what you are looking for to match your chosen perk tree will scrap into specific parts that won’t help you. Selling that stuff to the trader gets you some coin but not very much.

 

So you will be getting lots of weapons but most of it won’t be relevant to what you want. You can certainly use it but only at its most basic stats which are randomly generated for every weapon.

 

Case in point: In my most recent restart I found the baseball bat schematic on day one so that clinched me going with a strength build specializing in clubs. The baseball bat is an awesome weapon so of course I wanted to get one crafted but the recipe is insane and only can be done using baseball bat parts.

 

Just like everyone has noticed, I found lots of weapons in the next couple of days but none of them could be broken down into baseball bat parts so —not useless exactly but not helpful towards getting what I really wanted.

 

There is a real psychological bond that you form with the weapons you’ve perked into but don’t have yet. Nothing else is good enough so it creates a type of scarcity amidst the abundance. Yes, you’re finding lots of weapons but you still feel like going out and searching for the right ones for you and there are so many that it makes the specific type you’re looking for more rare.

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I think the current design for A18 supports that. Anything that isn’t a weapon type you have perked into is garbage.

 

And here we see the fundamental flaw. Certain weapons should be more powerful!

If I am a bowguy, a t6 shotgun should still be a find I am happy about.

Yes you can say that this is replaced with weapons of your choosing beeing the "awesome find".

But then it looses its bond to reality.

If there was a zombie apocalypse (like the one in 7d2d with stronger and weaker z's) out there, I would be MUCH happier about a shotgun or AK than about a pistol.

 

I actually am having trouble explaining this... because it makes sense on first glance, but it removes something that I actually can't describe...

 

Hey RestInPieces would you be so glad? :D

Obviously... only if you see my problem... :D

but you've been far FAR better with words :p So you may be able to describe why putting every level on an equal playingfield is a bad thing for a survival game.

 

I mean, I know we all want choices. But RNG should still be a factor, making some choices easier and some choices harder in a given game. If the player doesn’t have to take what they can get - if they can dismiss low-hanging fruit, at least in the early game - it’s not a survival game anymore.

this describes it pretty well already... but it doesnt explain why "all weapons are garbage until you specc into it" is a bad designchoice.

 

Or am I just wrong in this? :D

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I think the current design for A18 supports that. Anything that isn’t a weapon type you have perked into is garbage. Anything you scrap that is not what you are looking for to match your chosen perk tree will scrap into specific parts that won’t help you. Selling that stuff to the trader gets you some coin but not very much.

 

So you will be getting lots of weapons but most of it won’t be relevant to what you want. You can certainly use it but only at its most basic stats which are randomly generated for every weapon.

 

Case in point: In my most recent restart I found the baseball bat schematic on day one so that clinched me going with a strength build specializing in clubs. The baseball bat is an awesome weapon so of course I wanted to get one crafted but the recipe is insane and only can be done using baseball bat parts.

 

Just like everyone has noticed, I found lots of weapons in the next couple of days but none of them could be broken down into baseball bat parts so —not useless exactly but not helpful towards getting what I really wanted.

 

There is a real psychological bond that you form with the weapons you’ve perked into but don’t have yet. Nothing else is good enough so it creates a type of scarcity amidst the abundance. Yes, you’re finding lots of weapons but you still feel like going out and searching for the right ones for you and there are so many that it makes the specific type you’re looking for more rare.

 

Baseball bat parts.. for real???

 

How does that even work, are they not supposed to be made from one piece of wood or aluminium?

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I probably should have been more clear. All brown quality weapons you find will be garbage. If you get lucky and find a blue or purple of something you didn’t perk into of course that will be still be awesome but those are very rare finds until your gamestage makes them a bit less rare.

 

If you find some mods to increase the stats of a weapon that is outside your skill set it won’t be garbage either.

 

My point is that even though there are lots of weapons, there is such a large variety now and you will likely only be developing skills in one or two that it will still feel like weapon scarcity.

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Baseballbat parts.. for real???

 

Yeah, I hope that it isn't like I am thinking it is. I don't want to collect baseball bat...parts!?!? in order to initially use it.

I am hoping it's more along the lines of mod attachments..

Like a Weighted 'knob' mod, to make it swing faster.

or spike attachments for the barrel, for extra damage and increased bleeding effect.

or grip tape. Stuff like that..

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Yeah, I hope that it isn't like I am thinking it is. I don't want to collect baseball bat...parts!?!? in order to initially use it.

I am hoping it's more along the lines of mod attachments..

Like a Weighted 'knob' mod, to make it swing faster.

or spike attachments for the barrel, for extra damage and increased bleeding effect.

or grip tape. Stuff like that..

 

He said recipe, that does not sound like attachments or mods at all...

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Any thoughts yet on adding simple enemy nest spawns in a future build?

 

This could add some interesting dynamics and challenge to random areas like the possibility of a dog pack that runs in a city, or a bear that has a territory in the woods.

 

 

I'm imagining an invisible helper block that acts somewhat like a spawnpoint for sleepers over an area, keeping track of NumberOfMembers and is destroyed when the member count is reduced to zero.

 

 

 

In the case of a bear nest in the woods, it would simulate a bear patrolling its territory. Until you kill the bear, there will always be an increased chance of a bear being somewhere in that vacinity.

 

In the case of a dog nest in a city, if you run away without killing the entire pack, you will still need to deal with remainders when you come back. The helper block could also replenish the pack by 1 more member every game day up to a max member count so hunting down every last one of them would be beneficial if you want to safely extract resource from that area.

 

 

 

Would work much the same as spawns in a POI, but out in the world, covering a larger area.

 

Sort of puts the possibility of "Boss Battle" confrontation outside of POIs and into parts of the map; to be conquered or otherwise avoided until you are stronger.

 

would make the world feel more persistent and "natural" - and less trivial, gta-random style.

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I assume a baseball bat recipe is wood and a workbench? Maybe some resin? I dunno. Hoping it's just mods.

 

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speaking of the troll face how did someone come up with trolland?

 

He likes to troll, and I think he gave himself the name. Not sure. But it basically started with him saying you can wrench mines to diffuse them.

 

/Guppy History

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Yeah, I hope that it isn't like I am thinking it is. I don't want to collect baseball bat...parts!?!? in order to initially use it.

I am hoping it's more along the lines of mod attachments..

Like a Weighted 'knob' mod, to make it swing faster.

or spike attachments for the barrel, for extra damage and increased bleeding effect.

or grip tape. Stuff like that..

 

Could be “baseball bat parts” is a placeholder for now and eventually it will be a unique named part. Same for the rest of the weapons. Good enough at least for experimental I would think.

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Could be “baseball bat parts” is a placeholder for now and eventually it will be a unique named part. Same for the rest of the weapons. Good enough at least for experimental I would think.

 

haha that is all mods really are, the parts system re-branded. I just hope you can find/loot a bat and use it. Then get mods to trick it out after. Read/use the schematic. Once you read it, you are now able to make a wood bat at a workbench. I want my "Zombieville Slugger" :) Make an Aluminum bat version a find only.

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Yeah because weapon parts were sooo annoying to collect, everything was too complicated and redundant. So of course we scrapped them and streamlined them in a17. And they will be back in a18 (albeit in a slightly different form)..

 

I mean, I'm all for meandering a bit (especially when it concerns rivers), but cmon..

 

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"Hey guys we are removing gun parts because they are kind of useless and bad design"

 

"Hey guys we are adding baseball bat parts to make things more interesting'

 

Damnit, i should have continued reading. Basically this.

 

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Could be “baseball bat parts” is a placeholder for now and eventually it will be a unique named part. Same for the rest of the weapons. Good enough at least for experimental I would think.

 

Placeholder systems.. really? Thought we were wayyy past that stage.

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haha that is all mods really are, the parts system re-branded. I just hope you can find/loot a bat and use it. Then get mods to trick it out after. Read/use the schematic. Once you read it, you are now able to make a wood bat at a workbench. I want my "Zombieville Slugger" :) Make an Aluminum bat version a find only.

Even having to read a schematic for being able to craft a baseball bat feels somehow out of place. I mean, you are able to craft perfectly cube shaped frames from a raw chunk of wood with your bare hands (using no nails or similar).

And what more is a bat than a smoothly curved/shaped and therefore nicely weighed/balanced wooden club? You should have an idea how to

craft one "out of the box" (or backpack in this case :smile-new:)

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WOW do people NOT read and comprehend or only hear in their head what they want.

 

You find whole weapons, mainly the lowest level that are crappy, so you perk into that weapon by specializing it does slightly better ( imagine you can strip and clean it and have practiced for ages with it) You scrap the 20 crappy pistols into parts then rebuild a better one. As you get better your chances of finding/crafting better pistols improves.

 

You can still use other weapons your just not as good with or knowledgeable about them.

 

Once the game is out we will be able to better judge if they got it right and well balanced.

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WOW do people NOT read and comprehend or only hear in their head what they want.

 

You find whole weapons, mainly the lowest level that are crappy, so you perk into that weapon by specializing it does slightly better ( imagine you can strip and clean it and have practiced for ages with it) You scrap the 20 crappy pistols into parts then rebuild a better one. As you get better your chances of finding/crafting better pistols improves.

 

You can still use other weapons your just not as good with or knowledgeable about them.

 

Once the game is out we will be able to better judge if they got it right and well balanced.

 

The idea works well for firearms (and I am not talking game design, but just plain suspension of disbelief here). Guns can be dissambled into parts that could be reassembled into a new gun from parts from other guns. I can even see that needing a lot to get a good quality gun because you are basically discarding most and only using the very best parts. But a baseball bat is made out of a single piece of wood (or aluminium). How does a person go about breaking that up into bits and making a new one out of it. Same goes for most other melee weapons and tools too most likely. They are not made of granular parts but mostly just a few components.

 

If they are doing actual weapon parts using the attachment system, then it could work if the parts to upgrade the basic bat are added later. But needing parts of broken down bat to CRAFT a new higher tier bat just does not make any sense.

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Every high end weapon or tool that you can craft has parts.

Simple and consistent. Baseball bats are no special snowflakes. They are weapons.

 

Very much unlike the previous weapon parts system, low level weapons or their parts are not frustratingly useless and scrapping them to bring the parts home and maybe craft something better with them saves inventory space.

 

The previous weapon parts were also in no way comparable to mods. They offered zero choice and gameplay, only micromanagement.

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But we forgot that, this micromanagement - was interesting, and this is the main thing.

It doesn't matter that it's - micromanagement.

Why do you think micromanagement has to be boring just because it's "micromanagement"?

No need to think in patterns :)

 

It turns out that this micromanagement was a game in the game.

You collected different parts and because of the fact that often came across low quality - was a joy when you come across a high-quality part. That was the reward. She's gone.

Now it looks like the usual customization of weapons in hundreds of other games. There is no true motivation.

 

It may seem that i protect the parts system - but no, i just point out what the old was better than the new in terms of interesting gameplay. New system is ...hmmm...more intelligent...but still no quite interesting.

 

Need to do something with her....for A18...of course. This is a thread about A18? correctly?

 

(Moderators, seems we need a separate thread! ;))

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