Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[ZombieSurvivor]

"Meaning of ALPHA and BETA games

 

Alpha state games

 

A working alpha state game is the game itself with all the basic core concepts in place (and most likely some still being developed or drawn up) allowing players the base freedoms that allow the game to resolve gameplay issues, early exploits, small bugs, major bugs, early balancing and many other issues that you wont see in a fully released game that does not state that its an alpha or beta state game.

 

This all being said, the best way to get thing that devs have as a tool is in my eyes the community or "us" putting it plainly. We are the force that drives them to make an outstanding product that we are all eager to enjoy. When developers see the forums exploding with issues like people saying that "the game is dying" or "this game sucks" then whats the point of them continuing on making this game for people that have already given up on them? Things like this in some extreme cases do have valid points but in very rare cases do they matter for Alpha state games that have literally just been made playable for people.

 

The best thing that you can do in the Alpha State of game development (especially with a working and released alpha state game) is to give constructive feedback to the devs so that they can interact with the community, sharing ideas or even allowing us to sometimes vote on different content that could be included in the game later on. For those that are alpha testers who stay around from this point forwards our word and feedback becomes very valued and wanted by the devs because we would have more experience than a fresh player at release. This in itself can create a much better and more fluid game for everyone to enjoy.

 

RECAP

Alpha state games are:

-Incomplete basic forms of the game

-Full of bugs

-Unbalanced in some areas (or all)

-Will have major changes at times (such as the removal of Station PvP which is being re-implimented and will not be removed from game0

-Graphics Artefacts

- And a lot of other inconsistencies with the game that wont be in a full release or even beta state games

 

 

Beta State Games

Beta state games are in some cases a simple fine tuning of a 90% complete game, or could be another stage for the devs to add another round of content for the end product itself. There are a lot of different ways to see what beta state games are and normally they are categorized by the different numbers associated with them. a common way of seeing this (in most games but not all) are the 3 numbers in patch notes such as 0.1.9 (early beta phase) or 0.9.8 (late beta stage) different developers have different ways of doing this but the higher the number, the later in the creation it is.

 

Now this is a time when its like going over a game with a fine tooth comb to find all the last existing bugs or balance changes. At this point more and more players will most likely take a stance on if the game is a good one or not as most of the time (not all) the future potential has been revealed and what the devs work ethic is and how it will be possibly during later development and release. But this stage is critical as well, because sometimes large bugs, exploits, glitches and other issues do pass over from the alpha state. But its also the time when a lot of new content can be added, tested and looked over.

 

At this point in development keep an open mind, but keep active on the forums, look for issues and things that might need to be addressed by the devs. Or bring up new ideas and suggestions on in game stuff and mechanics

 

Review

-Less bugs and issues

-Better balancing

-quicker hotfixes or updates

-more content (but not all)

-game changes

 

for those of you who found this helpful thanks for reading " -Narphalex

[custom_hero]

Generally yes, but in coding, not so much. If you polish now, the next thing you add might break that, and you have to code it all over again. That's why there is stages of development. Alpha - Add content. Beta - Polish/balance/optimize/bugs. This way you know everything you want to add to the game works well together, then you can focus on fine tuning it.

 

follow general development rules .. it's not about pimps.

in the 6th year, they began to remove blocks, content. Optimize the game.

7th year of development soon. if in 2023, with a bloody night there will be 60+ fps. It will be a success.

We will still play it until 2033. How I am playing Warcraft 3. 2002 release game.

even with 15 fps, by far 7dtd is the best game. what makes her so for me?

1) RWG,

2) Zombie,

3) Content (items + blocks)

[ZombieSurvivor]

I think, the guys understood that, before you add something, you need to bring to shine what is already available.

before the bandits, I would like to see new quests, balance.

 

I agree. I would like to see more quests and a little more balance before bandits are added. Of course with every update comes more balancing and in some cases breaking the balance of things, so that is a never ending wish lol.

 

P.S. I'm glad to see all the polishing they have done for this game in an alpha state. Means they care about us players vs waiting till beta to do polishing.

 

Personally I love most of what The Fun Pimps do when in comes to this game...but....more quests before bandits please.

[madmole]

I know somebody has said "this isn't a sim", but it seems to me that the most vocal of your supporters WANT 7d2d to be a sim, and I'm one of them. I understand streamlining things like Iron/Iron Ore, but to say that having to enter a town carefully because it's flooded with zombies is "boring" is ridiculous to me. What's boring is having every Tier V quest being at the same 3 POIs. I've even used a modlet to double the zombie spawns and it still doesn't feel like it's enough. Until ferals and irradiated zeds start popping up, I'm just not seeing a threat. And I'm not powergaming, or powerleveling, I'm going at a moderate pace. Not rushing to get certain items... In fact I waited until level 30 or so to even take weapon skills, since I didn't know what I'd be using since I have to wait until I roll a lucky weapon to make it worth it.

 

My biggest gripes with a18 are repetitive missions (I know there's not a lot you can do about that honestly), and the lack of zombies. I really hope this new random encounter system fixes at least one of those problems.

 

Most of the more simulation type stuff can be done with mods so I won't bitch too much about it, but the core missions get old real quick, and once you hit Tier V missions and get all your shiny Tier 6 gear, there really isn't much to do outside of pet projects. And the threat is still weak. Granted at about level 45, I actually have to be concerned about running out of ammo in a POI, but other than that, I can wander freely making all the noise I want and not having a care in the world.

 

Spawn masks are on the road map so we can fine tune wilderness and city spawn rates.

[madmole]

Hello MM when do you think water physics are going to change, is its on the roadmap?

 

When its done.

[madmole]

Madmole, I think the loot bag drop probability is bugged. In the gamestage.xml file it suggests that a loot level of <loot level="973,999999" prob="1"/>

has a probability of 1.

Does that mean a gamestage 973 should give me a loot bag every zombie kill? Because it does not. It's still very low (around 2% as the entityclasses.xml suggests)

I searched for that and came up with 0 hits.

[beHypE]

Spawn masks are on the road map so we can fine tune wilderness and city spawn rates.

 

That's amazing news. Without going into dates, is it high priority a.k.a for the next Alpha or rather further down the road ?

[madmole]

I just read the 18.2 notes, and I absolutely beg you to not increase the chance of lockpicks breaking. That mechanic is absolutely infuriating in how it works right now, and increasing the chance of those things breaking even more means there's really no reason to even have them. When they break 9 times before they open the safe, they aren't saving me any time over the pickaxe, and it's always at the last second that they break. Also, since we have no direct control on how they're used, and it's just a toss of the dice, it just gets tedious.

 

I AM grateful lockpicks are in the game. I just think that they need a rebalance in the direction opposite of where you're going.

 

Might as well remove it then, as a novice with zero perks invested I have acquired a huge stack of lockpicks, and never run out because its so easy to open things right now.

[madmole]

I think he was referring to this.

 

 

 

I assume this will cap the XP required to a certain amount...for example....20k required per lvl after lvl 80...

 

I believe the amount is whatever it was to level at level 60 is that way the rest of the game.

[madmole]

I do agree with this. Why do I pick down to 2%, but when I start again it starts at 30% That doesn't make much sense. If I pick down to 2%, shouldn't it start on the second one at that same 2%?

 

Apparently there are some bugs with lockpicking that went in, we'll sort it out.

[agrastiOs]

Spawn masks are on the road map so we can fine tune wilderness and city spawn rates.

YES! Thank you!

[madmole]

Perk balancing suggestion:

A lot of perks, like Infiltrator, Animal Tracking, Lockpicking, etc. are really underpowered and take way too many valuable perk points to get anywhere useful. My suggestion is to compress the perks into only 3/4 ranks rather than the default 5, and to add better unique rewards, comparable or equal to a magazine or rare item (the fact that certain magazines like the mine immunity one almost COMPLETELY obviate an entire 5 point perk tree is absurd).

For example:

 

Animal Tracking 1: all small animals (rabbits, chickens, snakes, etc.)

Animal Tracking 2: all large animals (boars, deer, etc.), 25m range boost

Animal Tracking 3: all predators (wolves, dingos, bears, etc.), 50m range boost

 

Infiltrator 1: 1s extra floor time, 25% mine and spike damage reduction

Infiltrator 2: 1.5s extra floor time, 50% mine and spike damage reduction, not slowed by traps

Infiltrator 3: 2s extra floor time, mine immunity/pickup and 75% spike damage reduction

 

Lockpicking 1: craft lockpicks, 15% better lockpick chance and speed

Lockpicking 2: 30% better lockpick chance and speed

Lockpicking 3: 50% better lockpick chance and speed, chance to not break a lockpick when you fail

 

Cardio 1: 15% better stamina usage

Cardio 2: 30% better stamina usage, 5% run speed boost

Cardio 3: 50% better stamina usage, 10% run speed boost

 

These are just ideas off the top of my head, but I feel like compressing certain 'minor', underpowered perk trees would have people actually pick them, cause they're REALLY lame right now. Why get the teensiest boost to some really minor skill when you could get tons of weapon boosts or an important tech tree unlock? This might be easier than entirely scrapping/replacing admittedly cool, unique trees that just need some love rather than replacement.

This is certainly reasonable. While it might have been a noble goal to have 5 cool ranks it just doesn't work out for some of the non combat perks.

[vonstorm]

Might as well remove it then, as a novice with zero perks invested I have acquired a huge stack of lockpicks, and never run out because its so easy to open things right now.

 

Agreed. We could have a Lockpick Gun that loses durability on each fail craftable at perk x. This would minimise stopping the pick at a fail and just chewup some of the gun. That way the rate of success can be drecreased without stopping the flow of lockpicking for those that perk into it, or find one. just pausing the lockpicking for a second with a loud "clack" noise.

 

Overthinking it?

[madmole]

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

 

Good point.

[madmole]

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.

 

The incentive as mentioned in earlier post, loot maybe should become a percentage number of items (or value) tied to the nature of how its been opened.

 

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

 

I plan on adding some locked ammo containers and suitcases to the game. If you smash them you lose the contents, so lockpick only.

[madmole]

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.

 

Playing a brawler and running everywhere and mining all night, and using it for healing health occasionally but never wasting it, can certainly go through quite a bit.

[madmole]

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?

 

 

 

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

 

That might explain it, I didn't have any teas forever on my last build. That seems crazy even if you were laying around sleeping you should need way more food than that.

[Thecolours]

Spawn masks are on the road map so we can fine tune wilderness and city spawn rates.

What are spawn masks?

[Thecolours]

I plan on adding some locked ammo containers and suitcases to the game. If you smash them you lose the contents, so lockpick only.

What if 20% of cars are locked and you gotta lock pick them to get better loot than what you would find in an unlocked car?

[Axebeard]

What are spawn masks?

 

Just areas where things can or cannot spawn.

[madmole]

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

 

Side stand

 

Drop it like you stole it

[madmole]

Why not remove it then, like iron ore.

 

Because it will be cool later, when its done.

[madmole]

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.

 

I'd be willing to increase the stack sizes some, late game horde nights chew through a LOT.

[madmole]

 

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.

 

It does allow you to potentially carry a few more useful items. I want to either make a few more uses from low use ingredients or nuke them, so you can carry more stuff that is useful or valuable (one more gun to sell, etc). Like acid is cool, but needs a few more uses IMO.

[RayneAngelus]

The Urban Combat jump height buff combined with a fully leveled Parkour skill is a little OP. I think it would be better if that were kept to the standard 1m jump height when sneaking rather than enabling 2-3m crouch-jumps. Not to mention running into ceilings by accident and losing jump control, which can get dangerous.