Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[JCrook1028]

Anyone notice that boxes that have been looted ...you can leave a room and come back and they are ready to be looted again?? Had this happen several times on a full wiped server each update using the Pregen 03 map.

 

Anyone anyone Beuller??

 

 

Coughs *Airport POI * Coughs

 

One way that can happen is someone else looted it, didn't take the stuff out and then time passed and loot respawned. Then when you remove the original loot and reenter you now see the respawned loot. Been like that for a few alpha's now.

[Xtrakicking]

He's good for a week maybe. One stack a meat lasts about a day unless you use guns, mine with an auger and never walk anywhere.

 

One stack of meat a day? Lol? Maybe I'm playing in the wrong settings, but that is not the amount I eat a day at all, much less if you take the amount of food you can find while looting into account.

[Jugginator]

He's good for a week maybe. One stack a meat lasts about a day unless you use guns, mine with an auger and never walk anywhere.

 

A stack will just last a week only if I only eat grilled or charred meat lol. I'm a melee / shotgunner wearing heavy armor with one point into heavy armor, I always hold Shift and my auger sucks so I use a steel pick to mine. I haven't played much, but I did progress 3 days since that picture. I still have the same amount of meat in the chest... lol. Maybe it's because I drink red tea?

 

One stack of meat a day? Lol? Maybe I'm playing in the wrong settings, but that is not the amount I eat a day at all, much less if you take the amount of food you can find while looting into account.

 

Yeah TBH I eat maybe 1 stew every other day and I'm fine.

[Vintorez]

Could make temperature more punishing by reducing natural and food based health regeneration, and disabling it when you're in the red level debuff.

[Scyris]

Here are some balance issues, and other such issues I feel in A18 that need some adressing, some are simple others not so much.

 

First: Junk Turrets, for a int build these are fine, however, they are pretty overpowered in the hands of virtually any other stat build due to easy ammo, ability to drop down anywhere, and their very high knockdown chances. Not to mention they also borrow perks from whatever is in your main hand, so if you have a perked gun in your main hand.. its almost like you have the turret syndrome perk, as the weapon your holding's perk effects the junk turret (and blade traps, and the other gun turrets). Even procs like burning shaft mod and such will let the junk turret light things on fire when placed. Only ways I can see balancing this is: Removing the knockdown chance entirely, or, making it require turret syndrome level 1 or 2, before you can place them, if your a int build you'll most likely be getting that perk anyway so it won't hurt them, but it'll balance it for other builds so they cannot abuse it at no cost other than finding a junk turret in loot. The Iron cost doesn't count either, I got motherload 4 and a steel pickaxe on day 7, 32 iron ore blocks gets me over 6000 iron, thats 2000 junk turret ammo, doesn't even take 5 realtime minutes to mine either. The main problem is players are starting to depend on these turrets, because they are just that good. I myself, only allow myself the use of them on horde nights if I lack the turret syndrome perk. This keeps it balanced as on horde night you'd have turrets of some kind almost always. Not going to lie though there are some situations where using the turret cheesing would make poi raiding much easier. Thats what I call people who use them who aren't speced in turret syndrome perks: they are basically cheesing the game with the junk turret, its borderline a exploit imo.

 

Second: Supercorn is a level 5 perk in living off the land, the problem is, the supercorn poi doesn't spawn often in rwg, and currently in vanilla there is no other way to get the supercorn, turning level 5 of that perk and the schematic mostly worthless. Solution: have supercorn be sold at trader, or findable in loot, like every other crop. In trader make it be a min of a stack of 5 like normal corn that way you have enough to make one seed do not make it need better barter either please, for loot, it can be in shamway crates and any other place crops usually can be found. There just needs to be other sources incase the poi does not spawn, you guys are pretty good at providing alternate ways to get almost everything else, supercorn needs to join that list especially as there is one place in the entire game you can get it. Also I don't know if its just my bad luck, but everytime I get a nice rwg seed I like, it NEVER has a supercorn poi, I check the prefabs.xml and search for it. The RWG name/quest location name for the poi is: house_Old_gambrel_03

 

Third: I was not too happy with the shotgun ammo gunpowder cost doubling at first glance, nor with the pump shotguns spread being made almost double what it was. I do however like it fires 2 more pellets now, seems to hit a bit harder, and has a 5 block effective range where it'll do full damage instead of the 3 it used to be so it balances out after I thought about it so its fine. Not to mention next to the rocket launcher the shotgun has the highest per shot damage in the game for ranged weaponry it just has a short range to compensate. Also the change to slugs makes them much more attractive to craft now as they use the same gunpowder as normal shells, just 2 lead tips. Still hit for less than the combined buckshot damage on non-armored zombies thou, but then again, it does pierce like the other AP ammo now so that balances it nicely. I've never used them.. do they also have a much tighter crosshair by default as its basically turning a shotgun into a close range rifle? Guess I can check that next time I see some for sale at a trader for myself. Overall I love the shotgun changes, as someone who primarally runs str builds, it made me very happy.

 

Fouth: I feel machine guns need their own ammo caliber, think about it, Pistol, magnum, shotgun, junk turret, rocket launcher etc all have their own ammo's Machine guns share theirs with rifles. I was thinking of 5.56mm Rounds for the machine guns, 1 bullet tip, 2 gunpowder, 1 brass case for the normal ammo, 3-4 gunpowder per for the AP Ammo. Would just need icons and recipes pretty much, and a description change on the books that teach the AP/HP Ammos.

 

Fifth: It'd be nice if we could break down ammo into its base componnents, preferably with little to no loss of the gunpowder at least, I often have tons of ammo for guns I don't really use, that I end up just firing anyway as I have no other real use for it. Pistol being a main one, as I find agility worthless other than handguns, I actually mainly use a good pistol as my gun for poi clears, as I often have tons of spare ammo for it, and the ammo stacks to 300, its also dirt cheap to craft so I generally go HAM with the pistol as the ammo is easy to get.

 

Sixth: I'd like ammo stack sizes for 7.62mm to be the same as pistol ammo, its almost as common in loot, and its annoying it stacks only half as high. Either this, or allow us to box up 100 bullets into a box in the field, no discount like when crafting boxes though its simply to make carrying ammo easier, make boxing up 100 rounds not require a book or anything, but keep the recipe to craft boxes for the mats for 80 rounds as they are currently which is book locked.

[Scyris]

Could make temperature more punishing by reducing natural and food based health regeneration, and disabling it when you're in the red level debuff.

 

Honestly I wish they'd just remove weather survival, it honestly doesn't add anything noteworthy to the game other than an annoying as f*** overlay thats always on screen. Not to mention its still pretty busted, games I notice generally fail at weather survival elements IF they try to do both hot and cold. If its just one type you need to worry about, either hot, or cold (but not both) it generally can work out fine. Granted the system in a17/18 is better than it was in a16, I just dispise the overlays, I wish I could shut them off, especially the damn heat one, as I often get that even in the forest thats right beside a damn snow biome.

 

One solution though would be allowing the heat/cold resist mods to go into clothing items, most people use the coat, shirt and pants slots, so that'd be +15 hot or cold resist, be even better if each had 2 slots so you can use both, then again that'd not make sense for certan clothing. Like the puffer coat should only be able to take the cold resist mod. While something like the leather duster/BDU top+pants/Goth Pants could take both cold and hot.

[Scyris]

When you open a safe successfully, it says in the lower right corner -1 lockpicks. Conclusion lockpick has broken. This makes no sense. When safe was opened it's obvious that the lockpick has not broken. So why taking players a lockpick for opening a safe? This need to be fixed.

 

Best regards

 

I'd also like it to remember the time left when its below 25% instead of resetting back to 25% time left. Its annoying (and really frigging aggravating!) when your down to 0.2s left to pick the lock and then it breaks, which then causes you to start back at 25% left (5 seconds on gun safes unperked) instead of just continuing from where it left off. I've had more picks break with less than 0.5s left on the timer than I can count, its almost like its rigged to happen almost every time, then I usually end up breaking 3-5 more with it resetting back to 25% time left each time before its finally opened.

[Axebeard]

As we on lock picking I agree there needs to be a real reason (time incentive isn't enough) for the use of lock picks over simply smashing open containers.

Smash it then you loose more, using lock picks you gain more.

 

As a fan of lockpicks and one of the few people who actually takes the skill, I love this idea.

 

"grass....kind of useless in the grand scheme."

Agreed, scrap it. Same with the Burning Barrel. What would be useful (and what I've modded into my own game) is a craftable non-burning Barrel to keep gasoline in.

 

Temperature stuff:

The 6 level "not affected by weather" buff is dumb. In a16 and a17, finding proper clothes was actually a struggle early on, now it doesn't really matter at all. Weather effects overall don't seem to be strong enough to really even affect the player, at least in my observations.

 

"One solution though would be allowing the heat/cold resist mods to go into clothing items, most people use the coat, shirt and pants slots, so that'd be +15 hot or cold resist,"

Yeah, this would make more sense than wasting an armor slot on weather mods. I've literally never used a Cooling Mesh or Insulated Liner or whatever because armor mod slots are too precious.

 

"Fifth: It'd be nice if we could break down ammo into its base componnents, "

Ammo Disassembly mod does that and it's wonderful. Would love to see it mainlined into the game of course.

[Gazz]

Super corn is a gimmick, not a fully integrated game feature with it being useful for something.

 

Fouth: I feel machine guns need their own ammo caliber, think about it, Pistol, magnum, shotgun, junk turret, rocket launcher etc all have their own ammo's Machine guns share theirs with rifles. I was thinking of 5.56mm Rounds for the machine guns, 1 bullet tip, 2 gunpowder, 1 brass case for the normal ammo, 3-4 gunpowder per for the AP Ammo. Would just need icons and recipes pretty much, and a description change on the books that teach the AP/HP Ammos.

We're not changing it for the sake of having it changed, nor does it make any sense to have an AK or M60 in 5.56mm.

 

 

Sixth: I'd like ammo stack sizes for 7.62mm to be the same as pistol ammo, its almost as common in loot, and its annoying it stacks only half as high. Either this, or allow us to box up 100 bullets into a box in the field, no discount like when crafting boxes though its simply to make carrying ammo easier, make boxing up 100 rounds not require a book or anything, but keep the recipe to craft boxes for the mats for 80 rounds as they are currently which is book locked.

9mm is the only ammo that needs this buff because it does low damage per shot.

[agrastiOs]

Super corn is a gimmick, not a fully integrated game feature with it being useful for something.

Gimmick or not, it could be added to traders or loot, couldn't it?

 

Edit: or maybe it's fine, it's cool how there's lore that the super corn was created. Maybe add them to some more different farm POIs?

[Star69]

Some of the features that you want with ammo used to be in the game but were removed to clean it up. You used to be able to break down ammo you didn’t need.....you got to choose one component to get back, usually I chose brass. My memory is a bit vague, but didn’t we have 5.56mm ammo at one time?? If not 5.56 there was another like .45 cal. Someone else might remember. The smg used its own ammo instead of 9mm. I believe this was all changed as the idea of weapon progression became a thing, also maybe to save texture space?? You’d have to go way back to an old developer diary to find those discussions.

[SickPuppy]

There's only one thing u need to add for a18:

 

Side stand

[Onarr]

As a fan of lockpicks and one of the few people who actually takes the skill, I love this idea.

 

"grass....kind of useless in the grand scheme."

Agreed, scrap it. Same with the Burning Barrel. What would be useful (and what I've modded into my own game) is a craftable non-burning Barrel to keep gasoline in.

 

Temperature stuff:

The 6 level "not affected by weather" buff is dumb. In a16 and a17, finding proper clothes was actually a struggle early on, now it doesn't really matter at all. Weather effects overall don't seem to be strong enough to really even affect the player, at least in my observations.

 

"One solution though would be allowing the heat/cold resist mods to go into clothing items, most people use the coat, shirt and pants slots, so that'd be +15 hot or cold resist,"

Yeah, this would make more sense than wasting an armor slot on weather mods. I've literally never used a Cooling Mesh or Insulated Liner or whatever because armor mod slots are too precious.

 

"Fifth: It'd be nice if we could break down ammo into its base componnents, "

Ammo Disassembly mod does that and it's wonderful. Would love to see it mainlined into the game of course.

 

It would be cool, that weather effects actually mattered. Overheating I. would drain you max stamina and overheating II. would start draining your max health. Picking right clothes for the biome would be much more important. Fortitude perk would increase in value. I would also love, weather events like blizzard, thunderstorm, high noon, solar flare etc. to force player to actually seek shelter. Once safe it could trigger an encounter event like attacking horde attracted by campfire, drowners flooded from the nearby river, bandits too seeking shelter in the same house etc.

 

It would of course need to be offset with better loot in those biomes.

[Onarr]

Some of the features that you want with ammo used to be in the game but were removed to clean it up. You used to be able to break down ammo you didn’t need.....you got to choose one component to get back, usually I chose brass. My memory is a bit vague, but didn’t we have 5.56mm ammo at one time?? If not 5.56 there was another like .45 cal. Someone else might remember. The smg used its own ammo instead of 9mm. I believe this was all changed as the idea of weapon progression became a thing, also maybe to save texture space?? You’d have to go way back to an old developer diary to find those discussions.

 

Id love to have the ability to break down ammo to gunpowder from ammo I dont need, so I can make explosives with my PER build. That would be pretty wizard

[Ezed]

I don't see a bug reporting thread anymore? Maybe this has been reported, it's pretty minor but...

 

In the first screenshot below, you can see 'Running Shoes' as locked and requiring Needle and Thread Vol 3 to unlock. In the second screenshot, you can see I have already read Needle and Thread Vol 3.

 

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/753719253575658697/CF908CF8250C1FEBC80A4808050A93F1CA0D7948/

 

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/753719253575659991/BECE8D865E4C151DE5AED3AD3E57B2A4F980808E/

 

As far as I can tell, reading the book unlocks the other footwear items it's supposed too. BTW...it'd be nice if we could craft the High Performance Running Shoes with their buff...I mean...we can craft the buffed varsity jacket, why not the shoes?

[Cadamier]

Here are some balance issues, and other such issues I feel in A18 that need some adressing, some are simple others not so much.

<SNIP>

Fouth: I feel machine guns need their own ammo caliber, think about it, Pistol, magnum, shotgun, junk turret, rocket launcher etc all have their own ammo's Machine guns share theirs with rifles. I was thinking of 5.56mm Rounds for the machine guns, 1 bullet tip, 2 gunpowder, 1 brass case for the normal ammo, 3-4 gunpowder per for the AP Ammo. Would just need icons and recipes pretty much, and a description change on the books that teach the AP/HP Ammos.

 

I - and 'we' - the 9 of us do not care for too many different kinds of ammo, even if you get a bunch of different kinds of weapons. It's too much inventory, too much thinking, etc. I tried Mayic /Jayic's Firearms 1.1 mod and YIKES! There was no way to tell what kind of ammo you needed for almost any given gun! Since I don't know what ammo goes with what gun, it was hard and frustrating until I realized that I could unload a gun to find out what kind of ammo it took. Then it was okay for me, but everyone else didn't care for that. I just looked at xml for Mayic's Firearms 2.1 and you got 20 different kinds of 'regular' ammo, not including steel (which is part of the mod)... But now you need to add AP and HP... So that'd be what?!? 80 different kinds of ammo if you include steel! Many "gun enthusiasts" already know and have memorized what exact type of ammo for each gun, etc. but we don't. For us at least it detracts from the game and thats why we won't use a mod like that.

 

Adding one type of ammo shouldn't be an issue, but I'm thinking that a decent number of people would prefer to have it easy as possible. I mean for some games complexity is fine and even necessary. Where as for our view of 7D2D we're fine with it the way it is.

[Marinxar]

Super corn is a gimmick, not a fully integrated game feature with it being useful for something.

 

 

 

Why not remove it then, like iron ore.

[JaxTeller718]

I mean for some games complexity is fine and even necessary. Where as for our view of 7D2D we're fine with it the way it is.

 

This is probably the most heart breaking statement Ive read here.

 

Never the less I agree on ammo. I loved Mayics mod but after a while there was just too much inventory space being taken up by so much ammo. I feel maybe one more type of ammo would be pretty nice but Im ok with how it is now.

[JaxTeller718]

Why not remove it then, like iron ore.

 

 

May i ask something of people here who want the removal of things like this and cotton something? Do you honestly believe that removing an icon and 20 lines of xml is allowing you to have cool things? Some of you make it sound like removing iron ore or corn will allow for 5 new pois and a new zombie type? I hope people realize it does not work like that, like at all.

[Laz Man]

There's only one thing u need to add for a18:

 

Side stand

 

Yes please! #NoMoreBikeRuberBanding....😂

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Why not remove it then, like iron ore.

 

He never said they didnt have plans for it....just that it's not fully integrated....That is Gazz Speaking in riddles again....lol

[ZombieSurvivor]

 

May i ask something of people here who want the removal of things like this and cotton something? Do you honestly believe that removing an icon and 20 lines of xml is allowing you to have cool things? Some of you make it sound like removing iron ore or corn will allow for 5 new pois and a new zombie type? I hope people realize it does not work like that, like at all.

 

Finally someone speaking some sense up in here lol. Nicely said. *fist bump*

[Laz Man]

 

May i ask something of people here who want the removal of things like this and cotton something? Do you honestly believe that removing an icon and 20 lines of xml is allowing you to have cool things? Some of you make it sound like removing iron ore or corn will allow for 5 new pois and a new zombie type? I hope people realize it does not work like that, like at all.

 

No, but every little bit counts. I'm willing to bet in MMs design for vehicle mods, more books, whatever, he has an item limit. When that limit is reached, they have to get creative and figure out what needs to be removed. Thank god for the shape selector as without that we would be even more limited...

[Tnasty68]

Super corn is a gimmick, not a fully integrated game feature with it being useful for something.

 

 

We're not changing it for the sake of having it changed, nor does it make any sense to have an AK or M60 in 5.56mm.

 

 

 

9mm is the only ammo that needs this buff because it does low damage per shot.

 

you want to talk about making sense? It doesnt make any sense that the AK M60 Hunting Rifle (single shot r700) and Marksman rifle (AR10?) all share the same round.

 

It is possible to have an AR15 chambered in 7.62x39 however this one is not modeled like that. the 7.62mm in game seems to be a .308win/7.62x51mm Nato. the AK is clearly modeled as a 7.62x39 gun. Sooooo don't talk about making sense.

 

I have been talking about this and complaining about it for years that guns in this game need some love. The dev team needs some range time. Come to SC and I will take you to the range and show you how guns actually work look and feel.

[Tnasty68]

I feel like crafting higher quality items should be tied to intelligence not the governing skill for that tool.

 

Maybe create a 'work smarter not harder' category as that is kind of how one would think it works? swining a pick ax a million times of day and having big muscles doesn't make you a better craftsman of a pickax it makes you a better pickax swinger.

 

this is even more highlighted in group play. if someoone is the groups 'crafter/intellect' person he should be able to craft high quality tools equipement and weapons for his group, but to do so you have to invest heavily in other trees to do so.

[JaxTeller718]

No, but every little bit counts. I'm willing to bet in MMs design for vehicle mods, more books, whatever, he has an item limit. When that limit is reached, they have to get creative and figure out what needs to be removed. Thank god for the shape selector as without that we would be even more limited...

 

Not even close. The xmls allow for thousands of additions and icons do not take up much space. They have already pruned down recipes and removed so many textures, items and blocks. Removing 5 more items at this point is not going to allow for any new vehicles. You could have easily had these additions without removals.

 

Or are you saying the game is at a stage where its so fragile that adding 20 books will break it? Thats makes very little sense when other mods are adding dozens of recipes and items with zero effect on playability.

 

 

This is literally written in the items.xml

 

<!-- Item limit: There can be 32k items in the game. IDs are generated internally on loading the game/items. -->