Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[Laz Man]

Crafting has been changed from being necessary for survival to being the back up plan for survival. You only need to craft what you can’t find looting or trading. The problem is that people are still finding everything they need before there is a chance to craft it.

 

Whether crafting is in a grid or in a list or whether it involves several complex steps or just a couple of simple ones is just player preference Issues and you’ll never please everyone. However, the balance problem with crafting involves its role in the game.

 

Right now someone cannot choose to ignore looting and trading because there are parts need for crafting that can only be found by looting and trading. But, then not only do we find the parts we need, we find the very item we were planning to craft.

 

I think you’ve got to continue to nerf the probabilities of finding any whole pieces of gear of quality yellow or higher. Let yellow green and blue be the crafting domain except for the rare lucky find. You mentioned once about including broken gear that couldn’t be repaired but could be scrapped for parts. That’s a great idea.

 

I think your spot on. I have had the same experience with crafting. I have tons of crafting parts for weapons but since I'm not perked into most of them, crafting them at a low quality has stopped me everytime from trying a craft.

 

@MM or @Gazz, what if crafting weapons/tools had a random chance of making a better quality tier as well?

 

For example, lvl 1 shotgun perk (forget its name) has a chance of yielding a shotgun of quality q2 to q3, lvl 2 : q3 to q4, etc. So that way, people will still be encouraged to use their crafting parts even if their applicable perk lvls are not that high. Otherwise, its sell all weapons/parts we plan on never perking up.

[Laz Man]

...regarding MMs 55 legendary effects...

 

If you end up with too many you could allow 80% of the normal ones on all weapons and save the 20% uber ones for the legendary items because.....there legendary of course. 😎👍

[Laz Man]

Diablo let players craft the best gear momentarily and ruined the game. In Skyrim when I craft that best gear its over. Players shouldn't ever craft the best gear. The problem is still the loot distribution table. Its too easy to get high quality things which spoil your plans for crafting, and too hard to get what you need to craft stuff.

 

Glad you agree with this. I'm sure with a few tweaks balance wise and you guys will find that sugary sweet spot. 😎👍

[madmole]

Are you planning to include new abilities that would require new animations such as a whirlwind attack with the sledge? This could be done by altering the power attack abilities.

 

I could easily see an ability option that gives the player a version of the zombie rage mode for 10 seconds or something after a power attack. These kinds of things would absolutely be insane and make finding legendary items ♥♥♥♥-your-pants worthy.

 

 

Loc

 

So far no, but we could do something like that.

[madmole]

Depends how you define traps. We had two rows of barbed fence to one row of spikes, and we were out about 12-15 meters from the walls. And then a row of sandbags outside that last spike row. Total ammo usage between four of us was well over 2500 9mm and about the same for 7.62. (I'm possibly off on the 7.62, but I was the only one using 9mm extensively. It was 1800ish AP 9mm and just over 600 standard.) And they STILL made it to the walls and we STILL had to make extensive repairs to our entry bridge. We only had that because we smelted Dukes to make casings. Gods only know how much junk turret ammo we went through. Less than we would've because the perimeter was just out of range.

 

The only thing that actually saved us in my opinion is that the different waves come from different spawn directions now. If all three waves had come in from the same side, we'd have been completely boned. As it was our perimeter was far enough out that the AI decided running all the way around was pointless.

 

Understand, I'm not saying it's not fun, but it was starting to wear us down a bit. We didn't have time to do POIs because we had to mine and rebuild, and then we'd get maybe the 6th day of the week to go hit a POI or explore or whatever. 40 demolishers is a touch rough. AP ammo helped though.

 

Player fatigue late game is real. I would suggest later game setting hordes to every 10-14 days so you can enjoy the game more, or focus on blade traps that can kill quite a few zeds for you. Sometimes I let them chew on my walls because beating my walls doesn't mean they can even reach me, its just a hole below me to patch. I'll do that before using up the last of my ammo and leaving myself at a high risk should they reach me because I wasted it all shooting them.

[Locusta]

So far no, but we could do something like that.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

If you need help with ideas on these, I'm sure I could come up with a few dozen or more.

 

 

Loc

[JCrook1028]

I agree that Master Chef shouldn't be under strength. It would fit in better with Fortitude since it also has the Iron Gut perk which balances out eating cooked food.

I'd also like to point out that the fortitude build allows for heavy armor and healing/buffs through iron gut and regeneration. Heavy Armor would be better served under strength where you have to be up close and personal for both the club and shotgun. Split up the defensive/support perks between the two builds.

 

Fortitude having the healing buffs is why strength has the cooking, food for health.

[Fuffel]

Moin.

What I see in our community over and over again is that many new players struggle with the controls. So here's a simple, but probably effective proposal:

 

Change from "Press <E> to use..." on campfire, forges, work- and chemistry station and mixer to "Press / Hold <E> to use ...".

 

Fuffel

[iamnuff]

Diablo let players craft the best gear momentarily and ruined the game. In Skyrim when I craft that best gear its over. Players shouldn't ever craft the best gear. The problem is still the loot distribution table. Its too easy to get high quality things which spoil your plans for crafting, and too hard to get what you need to craft stuff.

 

The best gear should ONLY be craftable.

 

Saying that 'the game is over' as soon as you craft it... isn't that the same as saying that the game is over as soon as you find it?

What's the difference?

 

People who'll stop playing when they have the best stuff will stop playing when they have the best stuff. Regardless of whether they found it or crafted it.

 

On the other hand, crafting a top-tier daedric sword requires getting the ingots, the daedra heart, and having a maxed smiting skill with perk-points in daedric crafting.

 

Finding one just requires killing a couple of high-level daedra and looting until you get lucky.

 

I'd rather have 'getting the absolute best weapon' be the results of my effort to gather all the required materials, level up and learn the right skills to make what I want, rather than the bland anticlimax of finding it in a box somewhere, usually while i'm looking for something else.

 

Aren't you just more satisfied when your primary weapon is something that you made yourself, from your own hard work?

 

That said, the difference between craftable (Blue) and lootable (Purple) is fairly minor. One extra mod slot and a little damage. Not a gambreaker

 

The main issue currently is that... as said before, getting parts to build a weapon is harder than just finding the weapon.

 

The solutions listed above would probably fix it pretty nicely. Raising the drop-rate for trash-tier steel tools or weapons. (broken or not. brown tools are only useful for scrapping anyway) or just making the parts themselves drop more.

 

It's not necessary with guns, imo, since you can already make high-tier guns with the parts from their low-tier variants. (SMGs use Pistol Parts, not SMG parts) so you have a decent stack of those, even if you also use them for turrets.

 

Not with tools though. Iron tools can't be used to make steel tools.

 

TLDR: I truly do believe that getting the best possible item should be a culmination of player level-ups, skill-investment and resource gathering, rather than the result of a random roll on the loot-table, but being able to make blue quality is fine, so long as the parts used to make them aren't rarer than the items themselves.

 

I understand that you don't want players to be able to get Q6 gear too easily, but we already need schematics for forges, schematics for steel tools/armour/weapon, a crucible, a bunch of forged steel and a bunch of other miscellaneous resources like ducttape and mechanical parts.

 

Oh, and enough skillpoints to get whatever crafting skill we intend to use to the max, which usually means getting the associated stat to the max too.

 

That's not an easy feat at all. All that stuff is so gated off that it's pretty much endgame content already.

I'd found a pair of Q6 handguns and a half a set of Q6 steel armour long before I had max ranks in either of those skills, and a gunned for them pretty hard, right from the start.

 

Granted, I didn't want pistols, I wanted an AK, but eh. I found a bunch of those too, but they were all trash.

Still, made myself a Q5 m60, so that's pretty sweet.

[Marinxar]

Some further feedback, after several playthroughs.

 

T5 Missions still not worth all the ammo used to clear them. Better balance need to be found. Late game when you do these, you hardly need anymore level 6 gear. So, no point in adding more gun crates etc. You do it for the dukes and the XP for mission completion. When you spend that much time and ammo on a mission, it must be worth it. I love and appreciate the hard work done by the level designers. Especially the quest related POIs are great and immersive and challenging...but at the moment only worth doing as a novelty and once off experience.

 

Farming plots.... I can only assume there is a technical(code/resource) related reason behind this idea, as it makes no sense otherwise. There is so little advantage to cooking food, over just consuming more cans of food...well there is none really. So the whole point of making farming so tedious and expensive, is not making any sense either. Crafted/Cooked food need to have a significant advantage over scavenged/vendor food, to justify the current cost of farming plots, and it does not.

 

The Horde nights are awesome and challenging now. Really love the changes done to this, and on proper difficulty and 200 game stage, I got endless waves from 22:00 and still hunted down the last couple of vultures 4:10 in the morning. That's the way it should be IMHO. Every horde night should be a challenge to you and your strategic base defenses. The demolition Zombies certainly adds a proper sting to assault, and I hope we will see more variants like these in the future, that will force one to get even smarter on the Tower Defense tactics.

 

There still seem to be a bit of a difficulty drop-off after the second week or so. The first few days are extremely difficult, especially with the new mechanic of the zombies getting random spurs of rage, in combination with no viable ranged weapons, but once you looted your first handgun, and you can start running clear/fetch trader quests, you very quickly get over that first hurdle, and it all feels downhill from there. Once you get to know the POIs and their sneaky and creative traps (kudus on those ) it all seems too easy. Hopefully with the new Alpha, bandits and the Duke, there will be more late game heavy challenges...and/or something like Starvation, where you have a radioactive biome that requires significant preparation to even enter.

 

 

Overall I am loving A18 the most so far, ever since I started all those years back. Im really excited to see where this is going, as we near the end of development.

 

Now I eagerly await those talented modders to bring some new challenges. Especially looking forward to the return of True Survival. You need some proper steelwool for chest hair for that one.

[Gazz]

The best gear should ONLY be craftable.

 

Saying that 'the game is over' as soon as you craft it... isn't that the same as saying that the game is over as soon as you find it?

What's the difference?

The difference is that this is a strawman argument. =P

 

With random stats "the best gear" will take many attempts. With crafting from basic resources you would just grind away until that happens. Done.

[beHypE]

The difference is that this is a strawman argument. =P

 

With random stats "the best gear" will take many attempts. With crafting from basic resources you would just grind away until that happens. Done.

 

Not saying I agree with the fact the best loot should be craft only, but given how many parts you'd need to craft a Q6 if it was available, "just grind away until that happens" may take long enough to be honest ^^

 

On another topic, we've started over a bunch of times already with my friend, and indeed, nothing trumps looting, no matter what you're looking for. We tried doing the old fashioned way of gathering resources in the wild, mining early, getting a forge going, making bullets by using the traders workbench and... you're actually better off looting house after house and picking up those weapon bags / ammo piles, it's less of a grind and actually way faster. Same for food, the best way to keep your belly full is to loot kitchen after kitchen (which, in a way, makes sense). And well... same for tools/weapons. In the grand scheme of things it isn't really an issue but it's indeed quite a drastic change compared to A17 and previous versions.

 

The one thing I truly dislike is the fact that there's literally no use for all the parts / low quality weapons & tools that you find if you don't plan on specializing in them. Basically, once you pick your tree, you're going to be crafting a maximum of 3 different weapons, and maybe some tools if you spec into Miner 69er. All the rest is either of decent enough quality to be used, or is sold or scrapped and then sold. Makes the looting experience a bit dull sometimes when you can't find anything useful (or got lucky early), and the crafting experience kind of inexistant.

 

I feel the whole system works quite well but there's one little thing missing to make it all stick together. I don't know quite what it is, but either a combine feature that lets you slowly increase the quality of a gun/tool you're not specialized into, or a LBD system only for guns/tools (so that using that Q1 pistol eventually enables you to craft a higher quality pistol), or something else. Especially regarding the tools which in the end everybody needs, it's quite the double punishment that not putting points in Miner 69er both leaves you stuck with ♥♥♥♥ty tools AND with poor mining skills.

[Weazelsun]

The difference is that this is a strawman argument. =P

 

With random stats "the best gear" will take many attempts. With crafting from basic resources you would just grind away until that happens. Done.

 

Personal opinion, I feel that the random stats is still too "safe", as I noticed that the stats of a similar weapon and quality is usually between 1 - 5 points of difference. If it was more extreme, like having a difference in stats be between 1 -20, more players would actually take time to look at the quality level of the items. To figure out which is better. And, not just simply automatically go for tier 6 item immediately.

 

The way I envision random stats is like if I started out and found two identical weapons but different tier quality. One could be tier 1 and have a stat of 20 damage vs the tier 2 that might have a stat of 6 damage. Admittedly, it would cause a mess in terms of balancing but, geeze the wonders.

[Gothyc]

The difference is that this is a strawman argument. =P

 

With random stats "the best gear" will take many attempts. With crafting from basic resources you would just grind away until that happens. Done.

 

Unless you have random stats on crafting too, of course.

 

Also, I really like the idea of the best items in the game needing BOTH looting and crafting. Loot that legendary component and hand it over to your crafter (or yourself if you're speced as such), and reap the rewards.

[Relo@d]

We need more brass! (or have i missed someting?)

 

The game main object is to shoot zombies. If I want to play on hardest difficulty and for that run around with an AK47 and build lots of turrets the thing I miss most is BRASS.

 

The only way nowdasy seems to pick cars apart since the brass fauchets and lamps are almost gone. SO I need to spend all day finding cars further and further away and then spend all the presious bullets on shooting down zombies in 2 min before needing go out again and search for brass.

 

And NO, Im done with melee, bow and shotgun.

 

I want to use the end game weapons. And for that I need crazy amounts of brass that nowdays are way to rare in the game.

[beHypE]

We need more brass! (or have i missed someting?)

 

The game main object is to shoot zombies. If I want to play on hardest difficulty and for that run around with an AK47 and build lots of turrets the thing I miss most is BRASS.

 

The only way nowdasy seems to pick cars apart since the brass fauchets and lamps are almost gone. SO I need to spend all day finding cars further and further away and then spend all the presious bullets on shooting down zombies in 2 min before needing go out again and search for brass.

 

And NO, Im done with melee, bow and shotgun.

 

I want to use the end game weapons. And for that I need crazy amounts of brass that nowdays are way to rare in the game.

 

There's a book that lets you harvest door knobs from doors, and you can smelt dukes in the forge to make brass. You can also buy bullet casings from the trader.

[Weazelsun]

We need more brass! (or have i missed someting?)

 

The game main object is to shoot zombies. If I want to play on hardest difficulty and for that run around with an AK47 and build lots of turrets the thing I miss most is BRASS.

 

The only way nowdasy seems to pick cars apart since the brass fauchets and lamps are almost gone. SO I need to spend all day finding cars further and further away and then spend all the presious bullets on shooting down zombies in 2 min before needing go out again and search for brass.

 

And NO, Im done with melee, bow and shotgun.

 

I want to use the end game weapons. And for that I need crazy amounts of brass that nowdays are way to rare in the game.

 

Lots of ways to get brass, much like @beHype mentioned there are the books. One that deals with getting brass from doors and another that allows harvesting of brass from sinks. Along with the radiators, A/C units, and scrapping the ammo that you don't primarily need.

[Blake_]

Player fatigue late game is real. I would suggest later game setting hordes to every 10-14 days so you can enjoy the game more, or focus on blade traps that can kill quite a few zeds for you. Sometimes I let them chew on my walls because beating my walls doesn't mean they can even reach me, its just a hole below me to patch. I'll do that before using up the last of my ammo and leaving myself at a high risk should they reach me because I wasted it all shooting them.

 

Have you guys thought of incresing the default duration of the day?

When npcs and random encounters are in plus campaign, the game will be so flavoury that it would really tire the player to prepare time and time again for the horde.

 

I would wish for several things on that front:

 

Increase the default day to 100 minutes or so and add day duration options 240/480/960 minutes for players that would like to avoid touching horde day frequency settings and stay true to the game's name.

 

Have a place that charges 25.000 dukes per head to protect you from the horde night (it would be cool if you managed a fully destroyable design that repairs in the morning yet is totally safe for the player if he stays inside certain area.

 

I wouldn't recommend a destroyable safe haven with infinite turrets and bullets if the game's performance wasn't getting so good lately.

[Nemoriel]

@MM: Any plans to implement a favourite system in the backback/inventory? I'm really missing the possibilty to right click my AK, Med Kit, 7.62 - give them a star for favourite and then have the ability after a long loot session in the city to go into a deposite create and f. ex hold shift+R to deposite everything that's not set as a favourite.

 

Would really make my day :-)

[Marinxar]

@MM: Any plans to implement a favourite system in the backback/inventory? I'm really missing the possibilty to right click my AK, Med Kit, 7.62 - give them a star for favourite and then have the ability after a long loot session in the city to go into a deposite create and f. ex hold shift+R to deposite everything that's not set as a favourite.

 

Would really make my day :-)

 

That would be so great.

[Guest Piratenking]

What's wrong with your PC that your losing power? Did you know any files being used on your PC can get corrupt if power is lost? That's not the games responsibility. Go buy a UPC battery backup instead of demanding them fix your PC issues.

 

are you stupid or you hit your head when your were a kid?, you go around assuming ♥♥♥♥ when i never said it was my pc that lost power, use what is left of your brain a little bit and realise that this post was moved to feedback by a moderator for a reason, i am glad is not someone like you who is developing this game.

[Gareee]

@Madmole:

 

When doing legendaries, maybe you can also do legendary versions of the mods as well?

 

Basically the same mods we now have available, but with higher percentage of their effects. (Like say, crippler that dismembers 50%-100% of the time with limb hits.) That would also give players flexibility combining legendary mods on top of legendary weapons.

 

(For example, you have a bow that multiplies fire damage speed, and when using fire arrows they go up in particle burst of ash in 4 seconds.)

 

For tools that could be a one shot tree chop, or a one shot mineral hit. An accompanying sound effect or animation for some could be fun... like the one shot tree chop using the full arc power weapon swing with a wood explosion of the impact point of the tree.

 

That could extend to legendary mods for vehicles as well.... a short turbo speed burst for vehicles, or a very efficient mpg mod for the 4x4, or even a junk turret mod for the gyro that allows straife firing on ground targets. (Or a jump liftoff for it giving it instant ground clearance and forward movement that lets you lift off of small rooftops easily)

 

Legendaries could add a lot of endgame fun!

[Guest Piratenking]

Back up your save data instead of whining about stuff out of our control. Its harmful to your hard drive and data to lose power, get a power backup.

 

Are you ♥♥♥♥ing serious? are you rly telling me to back up my files every day i play the game???

Out of your control??? is out of your control to make the game create a saved file every ingame midnight??

Are you rly so short of sight as to assume ♥♥♥♥ i have never said?? this town has electric problems whenever there is strong winds, so should i go complain to the electric company because your incapability of putting your ego aside and analyse feeback in a objective manner to improve your game???

I seriously cant believe you are working with the professionals who made this nice game possible.

[HungryZombie]

The difference is that this is a strawman argument. =P

 

With random stats "the best gear" will take many attempts. With crafting from basic resources you would just grind away until that happens. Done.

 

For me the random stats are not a good enough cookie to justify the bother. I can't really articulate how to fix it but the system as-is is entirely unsatisfying.

[bobross]

Player fatigue late game is real. I would suggest later game setting hordes to every 10-14 days so you can enjoy the game more, or focus on blade traps that can kill quite a few zeds for you. Sometimes I let them chew on my walls because beating my walls doesn't mean they can even reach me, its just a hole below me to patch. I'll do that before using up the last of my ammo and leaving myself at a high risk should they reach me because I wasted it all shooting them.

 

Ironically, was thinking about starting an SP nomad game with a 28-day horde night just so I can enjoy some POIs.

 

That said though, is Day 28 (even on 120-minute days on an MP server) where the players are right around Level 30-35 in any way, shape, or form "late game"? That's my concern. We're getting demolishers at Level 30. If you're saying that's fine, then that's fine, but it seems a tad rough to me.

 

I think I'm bringing it up because we were told (and your games demonstrated) that Demolishers are late-game, and we're getting them before Level 40 in massive quantity.