Thoughts on A18 - possible bugs?

[v81]

Hi all, long time lurker, 1st time poster.

::edit:: Just realised this isn't my 1st.. I posted last in 2014.. lol

 

This is a bit of a jumble of things and making a thread for each issue might be a nightmare.

 

I returned to playing 7dtd early this year and found A17 to be brilliant.

My preferred play style is simple and solo, and in A17 i had a great time.

 

[Performance]

I fired up A18 with this from the release notes in mind.. "We had a lot of feedback from Alpha 17 on how performance was lower than Alpha 16. We have made many changes to improve performance including..."

 

What i got was anywhere between 15 and 100 FPS (indoors usually 60+, outdoors varies wildly), mild input lag (V-Sync off).

It felt unplayable compared to 17, and in my mind it is a step backward, not an improvement.

Dropping to medium settings the game looked like crap, so i basically started with the High preset and peeled back most things except the textures, couldn't stand the way the cars, trees and birds nests looked on medium, really really bad.

 

 

[Playfeel]

Died over and over when running out of stamina and unable to retreat from an aggravated zombie fast enough.

In A17 combat had the right mix of challenge vs reward for me, A18 has tossed that out.

This was a really joy killer for me, this and the performance were reason enough to roll back to A17.

 

Also I'm completely lost at how to improve crafting quality, the new perk system is a mess, the previous one was better worded and laid out, even if balance was an issue. I've honestly never played long enough to see the issues some have mentioned myself, but I'll take the word of others and agree that it might have needed a chance, just not happy with the implementation.

I find it completely unintuitive and achieving things that were simple previously are not impossible for me (eg ability to craft better tools is something I'd go for quickly, couldn't find it).

 

[Glitches?]

Not sure what to make of this, but i seem to be getting tearing, which should be impossible on my setup.

App is exclusive full screen with V-Sync off (again, specs below).

 

Additionally i get a weird effect rolling up the screen as i move my view around, worse when i look at the ground and walk forward / backward. I did a screen capture and the output of that is fine so not sure i can blame 7dtd for this as to my understanding clean capture video suggests the game is being rendered fine, but thought I'd mention it in case someone else sees it or has any ideas.

 

Also a small thing, the 'hitbox?' for opening a microwave on top a fridge was quirky, as in the option to open it was not available on a significant portion of the top left of the front of the microwave.

I could post a YT vid of this as it's in one of my captures.

 

 

[specs & Setup]

This info may be relevant

i5-6600K, Gigabyte Z170X-UD3 , 32GB Corsair DDR4 2800

512GB Samsung 950 Pro SSD OS/Apps (NVME) + 1TB Intel 545s SSD (SATA) + 1TB iSCSI volume

GTX 1070 -> Acer Predator 1440p G-Sync

Intel HD 530 -> NEC 1200p commercial touchscreen

 

On encountering issues i did a system cleaner and updated relevant drives before retrying A18, specifically am now running GeForce driver 436.48.

 

 

 

These are my thoughts, but I'm just one of many.

Feedback appreciated either way, interested in those finding they agree with my issues or those that might have some insight on what I'm missing or doing wrong.