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Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread


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Happy new year to the great dev Team first^^.

 

I got the game since a few years but at that time, when a friend advise me to take a look at it, i couldn't spend more than 2hours because its was... too early stage i guess for me to be enjoyable.

I recently relaunch it and then pass 80 hours in those last days, it was a blast i just love all those mechanics and its now nice for my eyes to play.

 

I'm playing with 2 friends on local servers so my feedback is based on 3player on a map.

 

1 : Ore:

After a week mining Visible Ores, i finally get you can mine veins under, i feel a bit bad since usually if you don't dig right under after you break the Ore, you have no way to see the "veins" on the ground so a lot of "veins" are now lost. Also those Veins seems a bit too "Rich", i mean its pretty "easy" to mine 4-6k ore under, at least, maybe triple that if lucky, i love mining, i love minecraft but in a survival mode like here it seems a bit "too" rich for those under veins maybe ?

 

2 : Cars gathering

I now realise that some ressources like Cars never respawn and are the most common way to get a lot of mechanic piece. The issue is not the respawning but not being able to recraft them when you clean the whole map. Because the "Wrench" perk is not the best to take at first (the recycling one) so you end up loosing so much cars that could have dropped 2/3 times more maybe after all loots perk upgraded. I don't know yet how it would affect the endgame but after almost 100days ingame at 3player i believe we have allready destroyed 30% 40% of cars ^^'.

 

3 : SkillTree

So far i love the balance in gameplay (you can mine, you can build, you can explore, you can take risk in underground bunker, military camps or search for treasures in habitations) everything is enjoyable and make character progression. Also all Perk trees have use, its the first time i struggle to choose 2-3 perk tree since they are all appealing (i read ppl don't like the Scientific tree, but even if you can loot schematic and not is it for this, the other sides, crafting speed, healing speed and so are good to take later on for sure) Or when you spend 80hours without finding a Crucible, you may even upgrade it only for this one haha..

 

4: Trader and respawn.

I love those traders, the only NPC in the game, their funny look, the not so good deal but usefull to restock pills or food sometimes because you could struggle. BUT the "reset building for quest" is a bit immersion breaking. So far i'am abusing it to loot twice in a row each "quest" building, it feels wrong, but i don't know how you could do without this so... Maybe rethink the "building quest" ?

 

Also on this point, i had some "bug"/issue with this, usually when i'm looting in houses, i put a Safe on a house wall to store my craps for the 2days looting time, but i realised that when you start a quest, the whole building reset and... it DELETE ALL your storage you may have put on it too^^'.

 

5: Disease, contaminations and so.

I've never saw their effect, its to harmless, to easy to counter, i mean i'm new to the game, i've NEVER used ANY pills, NEVER got sick. Why ? I sarted the few weeks only with looted Food in Can (0 risk), i started with the life/Iron gut tree too, so i had -3% at start almost, so no disentry risk. Then when i started to craft meals (4%risk-3%) i took the final level 4 Iron Gut to make it 0 ^^', and for Contamination, i always had Honey before 5% so i never so the use of pills and such.

I would prefer that contamination progress was 2times faster at least, it would make a real need for pills and hurry to cure it.

That "food in can" would be like 1% risk at least, and crafted food 5% instead of 4%, so you need a Iron Gut level 5 to be immune, way harder to get.

 

6: Vehicles

I don't use Vehicle :

Friend of mine craft all of those but... i love running in a straigh way, climbing mountain in a straigh line to get to my point, and vehicles are so bad for this. And when i put them on the street to loot 2-3houses, i always end up loosing time to find them again, look for plane roads to get them "speed" and its making me loose time in the end, so i use only my "virtual legs".

I would love to see vehicles 1.5* more speed, Bicycle not using THAt much stamina, when you have a bicycle, 5km is pretty easy without stamina issue IRL so... i would prefer what you may add late,r breaking issue on vehicules, but make them 25/50% more fast, they seems really useless for now.

 

7: Death :

Death is painless, its always frustrating when it happened but it feel just bad and not horrible to have a 10/20% xp penalty. I would really prefer something like : Ok you can recover your Bagpack if you retrieve it from where you die, as it is now BUT with something like a 10/20/50% random loose on it according to your Gamestage.

Let say when you die, level 1-10 you have like 10% loss on your recovered bag, then it increase to a point than in late game Zomboys destroy ALL you Bag so Death become meaningfull. (i would only apply this to the bag, not the tool so you save you equipped stuff) but something like this.

 

8 : Night

Night is too soft, i mean there is blood moon true, but it would be scarier to add some Zombies Hordes wandering at night, so Hand grabbing your feets on the ground, real zombies coming from the dirt sometimes. Something a bit more scary and unpredictable. Looting houses at night is scary, but running in the wild gathering ressources is too soft ^^'.

 

9 : Farming,

i really like how hard it is at start to craft those farming plots and find the seed to grow a really nice farm, i would love to see also a "watering" part where you need to craft a watering can as a tool, and use water at least 2times on them to gather, maybe increase the recolt by 25/40% for the time consuming thing but make it more like something to work on rather that just click with the axe every day once with no work^^'. Or make the crops die after 10/20 collect maybe ? Make fertilizer to increase the recolt ?

 

10 : Bows and arrows ?

I usually love them in games, but there, maybe its because i didn't pick any Bow Perk, i just using guns to kill animals, only the rabbit is hard to get, the other dont run away enough, the Boar almost don't move at all, you just shoot 4bullet at 2m range and that's it, bow precision seem insane, miss always. I would prefer that you can only kill wild animal with bows, make them better, and make every Shoot fired on animals like "The animal run away instantly after the first shoot", so hunting with bows have value.

 

11 : Noise

The noise feature feels really clunky, i would prefer to have a "radius" visible on the minimap of my noise, and the % mean something, like 50% = zombies are now awake, 80+% = zombies now hunts you. Now you can have 10% only, crounching and zombies still came out of wall to kill you, while you are crounching, in leather armor, barely moving, it feels really broken and useless as a feature.

 

12 : Heat

I only understood it because i had to check wikis and so, its a bit sad not having some indicator of the "HEat" in areas, like a gauge, an instrument to craft to measure the heat, i don't know, its hard to understand that using "torchs" in a "Closed" building can attract outside zombies because they see trough walls and smell too ? It a weird but good mechanic at the same time, just hard to understand without any indicators. I made an almost underground, closed bunker, build a forest around to hide myself on the mountain and magical zombies still detect my 10 little candles on days ?

 

13 : Automatic respawn if not seen in 30+days ?

I like th efact that loot can respawn after a while, but building /cars could use the same mechanics if the chunk let say have not been visited for a while, like 30/60days, and you have no structure/chest in it, then you could rewpan it, you will not remember it anyway and it will force to revisit some areas after a while. (Maybe even 100days, just to make use of some map areas)

 

14 : Landscape

Will you add some river later ?

Also some lakes feel weirds sometimes, the water appears like in "blocks"/weird way when the lakes are almost empty, a bit buggy.

Some mountains layout have weird spikes, terrain generation issue ?

 

You need a bit of "dense" forest/dead forest, craters, impact holes in the ground, trees blocking the roads, piles of garbages blocking the roads, something more apocalyptics, with a bit more variations.

 

Burning cars you need to watered before looting them, dead animals, dead zombies could loot extra bones.

 

Too much nests, there is hundreds of birds nests on the ground, its silly ^^'.

 

Too much "Ores", make them more in hard biomes and less in forest biomes/town proximity ^^

 

No enough tree stump.

Some tree fall too quickly.

Trees should grow 2* slower.

 

Not enough use for coal (maybe make it used for torch and so , for rares metals, just resell for silver/gold and 1craft for diamonds ?

 

Food and items COULD have values display before you craft them no ? Its a bit silly to craft a pie or even a block without knowing any of its value, well i guess its a learning part, its maybe good too, not sure what the majority think of this^^.

 

Also this is my only real question :

When you destroy junk/nest on the ground, toilet, all the furniture in a house, when the 30days respawn happened, doest it respawn ? Because you could destroy all nest, garbage after loot then end up a bit screwed right ?

 

But in the end, the skill tree is great, the special book feels great too, really fun to look for, farming crops, harvesting, building, hunting, all of this is really enjoyable.

The balance feels really good, between all the craft, the game experience from different way to play.

Weel i just played a week so i will add more later.

 

You made a really good game and it keep inproving over the years so great job !

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Review / Balance part 2 (i had more to say but had to cut it because, 10k words limit...

 

15 : Some perk need rebalance,

I read you may change some perk later, like those 5 row perk to get "+5% stamina when running" less useless with maybe some other bonuses or swap ? I like the fact a lot of usefull effects are spread across all the perks. Maybe you could add something like a "building/farming" tree for those enjoying more this aspect of the game, like "reduce block cost by %percent, unlock a ultimate Metal Block this way, can craft fertilizer with the Farming perk, can grow swowberries, cactus for other application on it, "can use gold/silver for..." i don't know^^ something for the building/farmers guys^^

 

16 : Gamestage

This part feel off, i mean the way you display it without infos, at fist i though it was the game "character progression", map completion or something but in fact its the "game difficulty" adjusting to the player progression ? A bit more information ingame would be nice, because the number increase doesn't let a clue about what it does, more zombies over times ? They become more harder ? The only thing i've noticed is it spawn more various and harder zombies but that's it. Also when you play in group i saw is weighted the difficulty between the most advanced players and the other, but then you should add some "global server gamestages" value somewhere.

 

17 : UI

I'm a "mobile/low game graphiste" (not player XD), i usually mind all the UI stuff but in this kind of game, its nice to see and blank UI, something soft as possible, to focus on the gameplay and not the pretty buttons. I saw the UI at early stage, its was "too much", not polish and feel unfinished, but not, its soft and enough, i like when in those game you have not much buttons, bars all over the screen and you focus on playing rather than checking all those information hiding the background, the game world. The loading screen need more work, more tips, prettyness i'd say, as the main starting menu, but ingame its fine as it is.

 

18 : Diamond Shape 3D

Falling caves/ground and the weird Diamond shape 3d block ?

This feels like a buggy part of the game, when you dig on the ground and got some "dirt spike" remaining, or when a cave or ground part fall and it make a temporary "diamond 3d shape" which remain a few seconds, its intended ?

 

19 : Animation.HitBox

I love the zombies animation, the way they react to every part you hit, their legs, hand, head, its really nicely done, but i don't know if its because i'm playing on a local server, but 20% of the time the "reach" range feel off, zombies can hit me even if they are obviously far away, OR i can't hit them (it miss) when i'm at close range with my hammer. Sometimes i hit their head on the ground like 3times before it actually hit the head. Sometimes it destroy the ground under without touching them), maybe a hitbox issue ? a server issue ?

Also the "spider" zombie jump feel weird, it like a teleportation, he jump behind, to far behind, its on purpose ? he is not supposed to jump from a far range to reach us quickly ?

 

20 : Sounds

I've noticed that something when you are just standing, crafting or using a tool, it makes a "moving sound" like if you are actually moving or someone else is moving around you but their is nothing. Its really disturbing, like i'm wreching a car and i hear like if i am moving/walking at the same time in the background.

Zombies sounds are great, but when they die, its last for a while like if it was coming from other zombies around.

Night creepy sounds are great but you also hear a lot of "scary birds" sounds without the actual zombie Bird around (not the owl sound), so its strange.

Maybe using tools, guns and so could make a "sonar wave" on the map with like a color to indicate the more you hit, use tools and so, it increase the Heat ?

 

21 : Landscape 2

My friend told me before their were bridges and other components (and rivers used as biomes limits), why the removal of Bridges ? its a part of the world, you could have bridges variations, make them reparable for vehicles, add those rivers back but not as biomes limits.

I guess its a world generation limit but then maybe you could have like one Handcrafted Map (with only cities as the random component) and make good rivers/forest/bridges layouts no ?

 

22 : Signs

I would love to see more Signs ingame, like road direction, city names, being able to craft some wood signs to write some text, like Minecraft signs i guess.

 

23 : Gas

I read you did "nerfed" the gas craft from oil, to 1k gas per 100Shell oil right ?

At first i felt like gas would be an issue since i didn't find much on car loot, BUT then i discover you can just Mine them, with rich veines giving around 5-10k shell oil for 2k Gas consumpting on my tool, so on 10minutes, i got 8k shell, so 80 000 gas for barely 2k and 10minutes spent, i think its still too rewarding, maybe cut this in half again ?

Even if i used almost 15k gas just to barely got my ground flat and build a "small" house, mining it feels a bit too rewarding OR crafting it, just nerf the craft again woulnd't not be that bad i guess.

 

24 : Forum

It took me 15 minutes to understand that to actualy post in the forum, you need to link your steam account (then you got a message it is already linked ?? and then you need to click the lower right button to actualy really link it) then by this time the forum auto deconnect you (its like a 5minutes timer auto disconneciton ?) the same way you also got disconnect before you end writing your message and need to relog to post it, so... the forum is also part of the game difficulty to communicate haha.

 

25 : Duplicated Vehicles glitchs on servers

One of my friend got a glitch when pickup and respawning her vehicles sometimes make the duplicated, she got 2 motos and 2 bicycles that way, we don't know how ot properly reproduce it or its it only can happen on local servers but there it is^^.

 

26 : Books / Food

I hear more books are coming later ?

Collecting them feels so good, even if is feels easy for some to drop really often.

Maybe you could add books to discover new recipes to cook, also for now i only use the combination of "Beef Stew" and "Yucca Juice Smoothie" because those too combinated are 10times better than any other recipe. I think you should had/convert old recipes to be more like "temporary buff" like:

 

Super juice 1 : stamina regen x2 for 10minutes

Super food 1 : life regen x2 for 5 minutes

Super food X : damage reduction x2 for 5minutes

 

And snow should be like usable only for 7days, after is disappear so you have to get some again to craft the Yucca juice

 

Make way more recipe to be temporary buff since when you got the best Stamina/water ones, the other are just useless.

 

Well that's all i've tried so far, i'm still missing a lot of the game to comment more on it.

 

In the end i'm mostly making a global review of the current alpha, based of 0 previous ones, since i have very few infos about the stage on the game before (i only know from my friend but haven't experience it myself except a few years back)

 

And sorry for the crappy english (not my lative langage) , i tried my best haha.

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snip

 

A few comments:

 

1. A friend of mine brought up excactly this point just at lunch today. Too rich ore mines, especially since they often mingle into "super-rich mines"

 

2. Don't forget you can generate new cars if you take quests where cars are parked in front of POIs. It seems to be a developer-sanctioned way to get new resources on the map.

 

4. Looting a quest poi twice seems also developer-approved. You could loot a neighbouring building in the same time, it doesn't matter as long as there are enough new buildings left. You still get the quest-reward only once.

 

6. If you lock your vehicle, you get an icon on the compass to find it again. Many players like the vehicles for their inventories

 

11. Trash makes lots of noise when you step on it. Maybe that was your stealth problem!?

 

About your question: I'm not sure about nests, but destroyed loot containers in POI's do not respawn after 30 days. But they do if you start a quest in that POI.

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Crack a Book headquarters

paper room.... seriously, none of the rolls of paper give paper? just wood painted white? can you please fix this. that room was GAH!

 

yeah that kinda sucks but there is some paper you can harvest like the wood piles.

 

however iv only found it in a burnt house in navezgane. Pic here! 251570_screenshots_20200102111528_1.thumb.jpg.df495355f356f70ea8624c5c3d8dc171.jpg

 

 

 

i think it should be allowed to spawn in those areas like book stores. once they update the POIs again

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yeah that kinda sucks but there is some paper you can harvest like the wood piles.

 

however iv only found it in a burnt house in navezgane. Pic here! [ATTACH=CONFIG]31086[/ATTACH]

 

 

 

i think it should be allowed to spawn in those areas like book stores. once they update the POIs again

 

actually that was a commentary on the paper mill poi where the same looking items give paper when axed, but only wood here. lack of continuity

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A few comments:

 

...

 

Ho thanks for the infos, what you call "POI" is Point of Interest, i mean Buildings Prefabs yes ?

 

Indeed i didn't think about Cars being inside a POI that's nice, also for the trash i guess i should try to avoid destroying them for respawn purpose.

 

Then i guess nests would have the same behavior.

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Guys, stop it.

 

You're arguing about who's math is correcter when the whole misunderstanding is about the assumptions that you both make.

I'm certain that you are arguing per item and per bundle of multiple items so this will never stop. =P

 

Can the next argument be who is better at gramma next lol 😁

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back to reality

 

we need 2 spawn lists in entity classes. one for SP play, and 1 for MP play. MP ramps up way too fast.

 

even tho mp has more guns, they are still loot calculated at the individual gs of the player who opened the container. so low level loot, therefore low level gear.

 

in sp I get cops in my horde by week 3, in mp with 3 players, all with the same gs as an sp player, we get em on week 1. in sp, I was on day 35 and still no demolishers, in MP, pve group, we get em by week 2. this doesnt allow for much time except to grind mats most of the time. we have a good world to explore and poi's to do.

 

it should be that mp get the same type of zeds at the same week for sp, just more of them, lots more, and the specials should show up at the same rate as sp, again just more of them.

 

so if in sp cops dont show til week 2, then in mp cops should not show until about week 2. just for 2 player, about 2.2x the amount of zombies from an sp game should show

 

So, either we need a separate spawn list for mp horde night, or please look into MP Gamestage calculations. sleepers and regular play work just fine

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back to reality

 

we need 2 spawn lists in entity classes. one for SP play, and 1 for MP play. MP ramps up way too fast.

 

even tho mp has more guns, they are still loot calculated at the individual gs of the player who opened the container. so low level loot, therefore low level gear.

 

in sp I get cops in my horde by week 3, in mp with 3 players, all with the same gs as an sp player, we get em on week 1. in sp, I was on day 35 and still no demolishers, in MP, pve group, we get em by week 2. this doesnt allow for much time except to grind mats most of the time. we have a good world to explore and poi's to do.

 

it should be that mp get the same type of zeds at the same week for sp, just more of them, lots more, and the specials should show up at the same rate as sp, again just more of them.

 

so if in sp cops dont show til week 2, then in mp cops should not show until about week 2. just for 2 player, about 2.2x the amount of zombies from an sp game should show

 

So, either we need a separate spawn list for mp horde night, or please look into MP Gamestage calculations. sleepers and regular play work just fine

 

This

 

I (and all players I team up with) also noticed a huge discrepation between the game stage progress SP vs Teaming up.

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Roland did not say he was wrong. It is just a matter of how you look at it. It is effectively additive before the first roll begins.

 

I often use/test this math to get the results I want. Kill 25 zombies at 4% loot chance and there is an AVERAGE 100% chance for a loot bag. That does not mean you get one every time you kill the 25. Sometimes it is 0 or 1 or 2 or 3, but if I do that test 100 times, then I most likely got 100 loot bags +/- a few.

 

Now if you ate 10 food items and made it that far with no food poisoning, then you have won the lottery thus far and do indeed only have a 4% (the percent for that food item) chance the next time you eat.

 

The stam recovery amount vs percent of poisoning needs to be low enough that the food poisoning AVERAGE is reasonable to recover. The example 40% is not great for the player, but the total risk can be reduced by eating the highest poison percent items first and as/when you successfully get your stam up, start using no or low risk food. I don't know if we have much variation in our percents for the foods that can poison, but it would be nice if there was, so that recovery strategy could be used.

 

it been too many years since i did Probability and statistics at uni... i agree on average. but 10 is not a statistically large enough sample.

 

as to my other thought , i am now on day 74. i have had the water purifer mod for about 50 in game days. i do eat cans but mostly grilled meat. i must be extremely lucky because i have not once had food poisioning since i got the purifier mod. is it having untentional effects on food as well as drink?

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real grammar or internet gramma, or hill billy grammer

 

Hey, whoa now. No need to bring anybody's Gramma into this. Grammas and mamas are off limits.

 

Haha ya all picked up on my sarcasm lol.. but in particular it was gazzs i was referring to lol with his new word he made up lol.... "correcter" lol

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