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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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    • :)
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That, and MM finally started playing late game. =)

 

Devs stopped breaking save games daily so I can. I have to say I love the late game, I used to just have them mastered by day 28 or 35 and quit, now I'm building a new horde base just to see what happens :)

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@madmole I've been very curious on the Perception tree ever since its reveal for A18. Although I've never legitimately used rifles/rocket launchers (not my style; besides, rocket launchers were always sort of a "gimmicky weapon" imo, due to their rarity and huge ammo cost), and although I'm eyeing the Fortitude tree intently, I'm curious on how the Perception tree performs. I'm wondering if you could provide some insight on the matter. Forgetting javelins for a second, how does one invade a POI using a marksman rifle? Or is this task saved exclusively for the hunting rifle, or even just the javelin? What about horde night? Will the marksman rifle provide enough firepower to stop a later gamestage horde. What of the rocket launcher? Is it a viable weapon for later gamestage hordes? Are rocket launchers/rockets as rare as ever?

 

I'm sure that would require a weapon mod like a large capacity magazine and something to increase the fire rate on them.

 

You've got some huge testes if you're trying that marksman vs horde considering the spawns come from everywhere and those zombies move pretty quick. I swear the one eyed crippled woman has been sped up 😮

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Players want to feel rewarded and find a substantial loot cache. Piece mealing it would be like when we removed the payload harvest at the end, it wasn't good.

 

 

We've talked about several ideas, heres a couple that need to percolate a bit.

Add a boss to the level area who's hard to kill. He drops a keycode which unlocks the super chest at the end. Super chests will become invulnerable and the keycode would be the only way to get in.

 

Could involve some kind of switch that opens the box, or turns on power to read on a terminal the key code or releases the kraken that has the code.

 

Could hide the code on a corpse in the map somewhere randomly.

 

Auto turrets could help protect the loot area. Find kill switch to disable them or fight them.

 

We're still thinking about it, its an a19+ thing.

 

Why not all of those options? The game can see it as a quest in a quest house and there's obviously a 'start quest' code. Does it matter what triggers it?

 

And instead of making the treasure box invincible, I'd much prefer if you were to hide it as a normal-looking house block what just had a texture over it. It can be random anywhere within the house (or even an adjacent house) and the information can be on the boss bad guy or several places over the house (don't have a full map coordinates without finding 3 notes, for example).

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Devs stopped breaking save games daily so I can. I have to say I love the late game, I used to just have them mastered by day 28 or 35 and quit, now I'm building a new horde base just to see what happens :)

 

That's the spirit, and I'm sincerely glad you're able to experience what we've been talking about... it's gotta be weird developing a game, I can't even imagine...

 

♥♥♥♥ gets boring at around 120 days or so, so by then you start making up your own minigames (building a maze and fighting hordenight in there, taking on massive "Bridge to nowhere" projects, etc).

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Regarding zombie loot (from within the z bags), is the quality of the loot determined by gamestage/Lucky Looter level, or could you theoretically find a purple M60 from the first zombie bag that drops? (I am also unsure what determines the loot quality within zombie bags in A17, if such a mechanic exists at all.)

 

Edit: Also, yesterday in my solo A17 world, on day 2 with Lucky Looter 2/5, I found a level 6 chainsaw within a destroyed workbench. I had never acquired something so "overpowered" within a destroyed workbench in the entire time I've played A17. Since this "drop" is apparently so rare, do you plan on keeping the chainsaw within the destroyed workbench loot table? Just curious.

 

Loot has had a pretty good workover. Its still possible to get pinks on day 1, but not likely. About level 50 to 60 you start seeing them more frequently, but still are never common.

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Players want to feel rewarded and find a substantial loot cache. Piece mealing it would be like when we removed the payload harvest at the end, it wasn't good.

 

 

We've talked about several ideas, heres a couple that need to percolate a bit.

Add a boss to the level area who's hard to kill. He drops a keycode which unlocks the super chest at the end. Super chests will become invulnerable and the keycode would be the only way to get in.

 

Could involve some kind of switch that opens the box, or turns on power to read on a terminal the key code or releases the kraken that has the code.

 

Could hide the code on a corpse in the map somewhere randomly.

 

Auto turrets could help protect the loot area. Find kill switch to disable them or fight them.

 

We're still thinking about it, its an a19+ thing.

 

Auto-turrets protecting the area is the only good idea on that list, fyi. No offense to the devs who came up with the others, but um, "fully destructible world" is in the title description, AND it's just weird.

 

...but keeping wires in the prefab files instead of writing the data to the chunk or wherever is definitely something I'm interested in y'all doing... =)

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Or turn down the difficulty. 32+ is pretty insane IMO.

 

EDIT:

WTF, I just checked my settings it was only 12 alive???? You guys saw 12 alive and it was insane. I'm impressed with our AI now if that was only 12 alive.

 

When you kill one mob another apears instantly.

Guys playing with 32 or 64 put all that preasure against a good base desing. Using less bullets but more materials to replace the losses. The goal is buy some time.its efective..but kinda borring.

 

For me demolishers are very good news.

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Do you need to be insulting like Roland is?

 

I'm not claiming knowledge on something I haven't played. I've reasoned, perhaps incorrectly using things that you have said on here. And now it seems that INT will be another thing to avoid rather than spec into. I'm more than happy to be corrected just try to do so graciously.

 

Suppose a player for whatever reason, however, chose to invest into INT for those unlocks, since youve gimped the exp - aren't they going to be forced into looting POI's as well as into some alternative builds that they may not want just to get their kills for exp?

 

This is what I fear, being forced to invest points into something I don't want just to get something I do. If I misunderstood then by all means correct me, just leave the sting out of it

 

Sorry but I have a low tolerance for comments (not even people, its nothing personal) who don't read or watch the videos and then complain without an accurate understanding of what they are complaining about.

 

I don't understand your question. What gimped exp? Forced into looting? Looting is fun and part of the game. You can get to level 300 with just your fists if you want, mining grass for a couple thousand years, nothing is forced. Mining and building, upgrading is very rewarding with XP.

 

You don't have to buy any perks at all. Noone is forcing any play style. You can craft everyting without int, if you find the schematics. There might be 2 things you can't craft we forgot. On the other hand if you don't want to find schematics you can buy into intellect and craft all that stuff, work stations, mixers, medicine, be a better doctor, better bartering, etc.

 

A word of advice if you open a conversation up all emotional, your probably going to get an emotional response back. I agree lets try to be civil :) We very well may have ruined the game for some players, but feel in general its 5000x better for a lot more players. All the changes were better for the game play.

 

If you don't like combat, you can trade with traders. Craft things, go dig up buried treasure for money, etc. There are plenty of non combat ways to do things. We will only improve on this in the future too.

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I might not understand your definition of loot. When I opened a toilet and found a pistol, wasn't that loot? Or when I looked in cabinets? I know I was doing those things at least in a17. I won't absolutely swear to it, but I believe we looked for junk in a16 as well.

 

After killing a zombie in a16, didn't we "open" its body to get the "loot"?

 

Let me know if this isn't your definition of "loot".

 

EDIT:

OK...never mind. By reading posts a few pages after this one, I have determined that what you are calling "Loot" is actually the yellow bags that some zombies drop from time to time, not the crap in the cabinets and such.

 

Let me just say that there were about 10 things you needed to find to be end game before, now there are hundreds, and thousands if you consider the variants of pink quality items. Like once you found pink steel boots, gloves, etc and a pink axe, pink pick, pink gun of choice it was game over. Now there are hundreds of perk books/schematics and millions of random stat items to find. Its no comparison A18 will double your pleasure, in one session, and each major build gives that 5x the fun, so IMO you guys are literally in for at least 5 new A18 play throughs that last you 75 to 500 hours each.

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Let me just say that there were about 10 things you needed to find to be end game before, now there are hundreds, and thousands if you consider the variants of pink quality items. Like once you found pink steel boots, gloves, etc and a pink axe, pink pick, pink gun of choice it was game over. Now there are hundreds of perk books/schematics and millions of random stat items to find. Its no comparison A18 will double your pleasure, in one session, and each major build gives that 5x the fun, so IMO you guys are literally in for at least 5 new A18 play throughs that last you 75 to 500 hours each.

 

That's it... I'm going upstairs and loading up a18... pw is still guppyisawesome right?

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Yeah 😂

 

We are supposed to be for each other here, you know, making suggestions and giving feedback, even having reasoned arguments based on features or lack thereof that people are diametrically opposed to.

 

I don't understand why people have to be so harsh. Especially when I just saw that MM actually gave a great answer explaining INT a page or two ago.. just not to me. I got the ♥♥♥♥ end of the stick 😑

 

Sorry if I offended you. I love the game so much now, any attack on it I kind of take personal because I really love what we've done. I feel like most comments they just don't know what they are talking about or are an odd 1% guy and the masses are going to love what we've done to the game. Fun cannot be faked, I'm loving this game for the first time since about A11. Its finally all there.

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What looting in 16? There was no loot. 18 is the first version with loot, ever. Guns actually have multiple random attributes now so finding the perfect gun is a never ending process. In 16 every item was the same if it was pink. Now you might have something that does more damage but has a small mag, or vice versa, among other random state.

 

I'm very confused about this statement, A16 was the build I joined the game on and got many of my friends to play on. An we would pack up and ride out on minibikes to loot far away towns and citys I don't think the smash items together mechanic was perfect and many good things were done A17 and it looks like there are good things in A18. Looting got hit hard and hit bad in A17 but now it seems like you are way over correcting in the other direction. I think the 1-6 quality rating is part of the problem for both crafting and looting. In A16, sure the incremental increases were not game changers but they made the difference between a level 100 item and a level 600 actually feel like a large jump. As for the idea that you don't want people sitting in their base crafting good stuff, so what. Sitting in your base crafting is that players decision. I also wholeheartedly disagree with the idea that there was no reason to loot. Crafting the good ♥♥♥♥ took a long ass time and you could find better stuff in the mean time. I don't know where the balance is and A17 was a big change and I still liked it but it condensed a lot down and removed a lot of nuance that was there. Yes I haven't played A18 yet and I am still excited for it however I want to point these issues out because I want the concern known. Through many of your statements I get this feeling you end up to over correcting for things that are not entirely an issue. It also just sort of feels like you have this contempt for the part of the player base that wants to build a strong defense.

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Madmole the video was great! It appears that late game is awesome now!

 

No matter what please do not nerf it because of peeps complaining about it being too hard. I am looking forward to playing it and it will give me a reason to rent another box to host a server again!!!!!

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Or turn down the difficulty. 32+ is pretty insane IMO.

 

EDIT:

WTF, I just checked my settings it was only 12 alive???? You guys saw 12 alive and it was insane. I'm impressed with our AI now if that was only 12 alive.

 

Madmole, I really think that the All night horde should be tested with you doing another new game, survival, full steel reinforced late game uglyarse tower with an iron bar cage for vultures with full fledged defenses 100 molotovs and 5000 bullets with an m60 with 120 min game and 64 Zds alive.

 

And jump to the Day 140 horde. If the horde doesn't deplete while in the 30 min horde night, then you have supported every single mode of the Zd amount settings to be fun. If it does deplete (as it is likely to), the 120 min setting will be a coitus interruptus as with every Zd amount setting in a 17.4, therefore 120 min with 8,12,.....etc count will also su** a bit.

 

I like 64 alive. It's perfect. 8 very bland. And below 32, well. Horde night or a sweet visit?

 

Edit: Your base is gorgeous, I really think so. Just not a good one for Zd fighting nor for testing Zd amount purposes. And fixing it will likely take 3 times more resources and require a bit of ugliness and destroying. That's why I ask this test of you.

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One cannot please everyone. All they can do is create the best experience/product/vision/etc. they can possibly make for themselves and for others, meanwhile in the background, trying to please as many people as possible. I think TFP have A18 on lockdown. Keep up the excellent work, and I propose a toast to the greatest game that has ever been conceived!

 

Thanks to that last sentence above, I'm getting hungry. Time to make myself a sandwich.

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