Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[madmole]

Then please, either A) have the trader stop putting quests in the middle of the badlands, b) give us an off-road vehicle.

 

Granted, when the quest is at the top of a mesa, yer NOT getting yer motorcycle up there. But just off-road?

Seriously, a standard Jeep Wranger does just fine off road, no modifications required, IF you take it easy and

don't be stupid.

 

Go zipping along at top speed? Yeah, yer gonna break it. Slow speed? easy peasy.

(ok, on flat plains, or desert? zoom zoom. Flat snow? Oh gods, it's playtime!!! heh)

 

(had a jeep for 20 yrs. wore the poor thing out)

 

Ummm how about no Take the roads to the trader quest as close as you can get, then walk the rest of the way, or tell the trader to shove it up his ass, or risk driving there off road. The choice is yours. I used to have 40" monster mudder truck so I know a bit about the topic. Take tools and be prepared to stall in deep water, etc.

 

Post apocalypse off roading is not the same as modern driving in the ditch a bit or through a farmers fields for the fun of it.

[Blake_]

We are aware of this and working on the loot tables.

 

Hi MM, is it possible to give us a few hints about what the team is working on at the moment or is the a19 OP all we get for now?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Edit: Meant to post this on the a19 thread, sorry!

[Thecolours]

We are aware of this and working on the loot tables.

 

Do you have plans to reduce the amount of can food found in the world?

[dcsobral]

The difference between Steel and Military @ skill lvl 5 and improved fittings

armor rating 16%

mobility 17.7%

Noise, not improved by specs: Military=50% Steel=100% only muffled fittings changes this so you're still 50% loud in light armor.

 

In my personal opinion these numbers are not a very good difference between light and heavy armor in the sense of choosing one over the other.

 

Advanced Muffled Connectors decreases by 8% per piece, military armor increases by 10% per piece. So, if you are going stealth, it's going to be 10% vs 60%. Big difference. One level of From The Shadows is enough to totally negate the light armor, and level 5 wouldn't totally negate heavy armor. Night Stalker decreases 5%, and even adding that wouldn't totally negate the heavy armor penalty.

 

Of course, if you want to do stealth early game, you can use padded armor, which has no noise penalty.

[meganoth]

Sounds good. I'm not against renaming them, as things evolve from simple concept to prototype to final product these things can come under the spotlight, but does it add any value? One guys idea of what "Close Combat" is to the next could vary and cause even more confusion than "Strength" supposedly does. To me it all makes sense, but of course I designed it based on my perception of the world. My roots as a D&D Player say to keep it simple and it is what it is. The perk names have cool flavor names, to me changing attribute names to flavor names could cause more confusion. F.E. "Close Combat has nothing to do with Mining. "Ranged Fighter" has nothing to do with picking locks, etc. I think we already landed on the best attribute names tbh.

 

Sure, but there are better categories, namely if you concentrate on the utility skills and on the overall characteristics when you select the name:

 

"Miner" would be a very good name for the strength tree, because it is rather unspecific about weapons and describes the utility skills very well. It is the best tree if you want to play as a miner, right?

 

"Scavenger" is a very good name for the perception tree, because it is again unspecific about weapons and describes the utility skills very well.

 

"Tinkerer" for intelligence.

 

Should I go on?

[xXC.H.U.DXx]

I wanted to leave my Feed back on Alpha 18 - it has really good Bones now - i am more impressed now then i was after Alpha 16 -

Good job Fun pimps - "Jabo out"

[dcsobral]

I've played a dozen games and I can't really think of a game where I did not find running shoes and a jacket by day 7. Random loot can just be crazy sometimes.

 

I'm pretty sure he was referring to the Performance Running Shoes, which actually decrease stamina drain when running.

[Scyris]

Advanced Muffled Connectors decreases by 8% per piece, military armor increases by 10% per piece. So, if you are going stealth, it's going to be 10% vs 60%. Big difference. One level of From The Shadows is enough to totally negate the light armor, and level 5 wouldn't totally negate heavy armor. Night Stalker decreases 5%, and even adding that wouldn't totally negate the heavy armor penalty.

 

Of course, if you want to do stealth early game, you can use padded armor, which has no noise penalty.

 

With how much of a joke nomad difficulty is, you could probally get away with just using padded armor period.

[dcsobral]

They are OP and rare, the jacket is too OP too.

 

I love the jacket. I take being too hot or too cold for the price of using the jacket. Moving slowly makes me feel like the game itself is slow and dragging. Of course, I only started wearing the jacket once I could mod the armor enough to avoid the worst of the weather penalties.

[dcsobral]

The problem with the auger is not the tank size. The big size already takes a minute or so to deplete. The problem is it doesn't destroy the stone fast enough . When you read all the schematics mining has a 20% chance to instantly destroy a rare ore but not a stone ore. I think this should be changed. I want to create huge labyrinths as I did in A16 even if it costs more to do so.

 

Have you tried dynamite?

[KiraTheCat]

It's probably been mentioned but:

 

Club Swing Range

 

It feels too far away from the body now. I'm swing at a guy who's seemingly still half a city block away - and connecting. It was bad enough that the zombies could do it, but just feels totally wrong when the player, too, has "Go Go Gadget" arms.

 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_Gadget

[madmole]

So, only your way to play is acceptable?

 

Dude, you actively invented this entire penetration system where a single round can take out 2, 3, 4 zeds a shot, and then the best way to use it is to stand 3 meters up in the air so you're shooting down at an angle that guarantees, at best, two targets in a line? Come on...

 

This is the primary reason why people have been asking for steel bars for ages; they want to build a semi-sane bunker point to defend from, and that requires field of view at ground level. The only way currently to achieve that is iron bars. If that's the only thing you're putting down, sure you're a sucker and you deserve what you get, but being told the only proper way to play is build an actual tower and if we don't like it, it's our fault? Come on, you're better than that.

 

It was a simple solution to some BS complaint about Demolishers. There are at least 4 million other solutions, but due to forum space and time it was spared. Steel bars are on the list, but we can't just give you them until more ranged attacks are in. You can build them back to back and have 5k, why is everything on us? Come on, you're better than that

[dcsobral]

Demolisher feedback:

 

In a 2 player coop game, they appear far too early (< day 28), and in greater numbers than can be reasonably handled (2-3 at a time).

If one detonates during a 7 day horde, it can punch a hole through iron bars on it's own. At that point, its not when, but if, you will die. Tone down the explosion block damage. They completely wreck any and all electrical defenses.

 

If it's detonation countdown begins, it cannot be stopped, and is too easy to trigger. Unfun.

Once it is dead, it's detonation countdown can still be triggered. Unfun.

 

Blade traps at *head height* will trigger it, and means all your defenses are guaranteed to get wrecked. Unfun.

 

Their sole purpose seems to be to screw over legit base designs. Cheese fall/ramp loop bases still work. No tactics are required, or even work: just cheese it, drive all night, or get breached.

 

I'm sure in design, someone thought they would be scary. They're not. They're just overpowered to the point of annoyance. Been playing since A12. This is the first time I genuinely thought about quitting, and I'm normally super forgiving about this stuff.

 

Thematic note #1: How does one become zombified whilst an *active* demo charge is strapped to your chest. The mob makes no sense.

Thematic note #2: It's too similar to cops, who, tbh, now that they can spit through bars, are far more interesting (and scary) to deal with.

 

In short, the demolisher is redundant, boring, annoying, overpowered, and add very little to the game that cops don't already, besides being a bullet sponge.

 

I feel very much the opposite. I think demolishers are showing up too late in the game -- see all the people who finish day 28 horde and think there's nothing more in the game for them.

 

There ARE plenty of designs that can help defend against demolishers, without cheesing anything. To put it plainly, your design doesn't work, and you haven't figured out how to make it work. That's what makes the game interesting, though, granted, once you learn a couple of design strategies the fun is over, unless you challenge yourself.

 

But rest assured, it is possible to defend against demolishers even on melee bases. It is possible to use blade traps against them.

 

Finally, and this is my personal preference, and I know it's not shared by many, if there's no chance for the blood moon to wreck a good chunk of your base due to simple bad luck, regardless of the measures you take, the game just loses a lot of the fun. So I like that a stray shot can ruin your plans, and I don't like that there's safe strategies that can be used against them.

[Gobarg]

As I approach the 1800 hours played mark (started at A15.5) I have taken a few moments to reflect on the game and it's progression.

 

…

 

The game looks as good as it ever has, in fact, it's gorgeous.

The game play is still as awesome as ever but now we have so much more to aim for that it has become a game of choosing what to do next and that is fantastic.

After grieving over the loss of the minibike books et al, the addition of the books into A18 has returned that great feeling again, you know the one, the one where you find THAT book, the ONE you needed! The YES!!! moments.

 

MINING!!! Thank all the gods of the pantheon for bringing back mining as a thing. A real thing that you need to do and is still fun AND ties into the above perfectly.

 

I really like what TFP have done … A lot.

The game has changed a lot since I started (I can only imagine what the A1 peeps are thinking) and what I see is a game that seems to be achieving the vision of it's creators.

 

I would however like to see things like more paintable textures and stuff but they are just the fluff, the game itself is great to play.

 

Now that I have had what I hope is my last Op and am Cancer Free (Yeah Baby) I intend to play the knackers off this thing!

so to put it all into simple to understand terms...

 

Keep that sh*t coming!

[madmole]

That "grindy stupid cost" made way more sense than the current system does.. just saying. You wanted to get good at using clubs? you had to actually use clubs, to raise their skill then you can perk into it to make it even more effective. It makes way more sense than now where you mine spend a few points and magically your a knife expert having never touched one before. I do admit crafting quality had to be removed from a LBD skill and rather be determined by the perk level of the weapon type you wanna make, like it is in A18.

 

It made more sense ? But was fundamentally the same as now, you bought perks to magically get better. Ok, now that we have defined what LBD really is, you can finally be happy. You killed zombies, gained "progress" which was converted to buying a perk. Now you do the same thing. You kill zombies and gain "progress" and buy a perk with that economy. But I digress, some people loved to butt hump cacti to level their armor skills.

 

What happens when you reach 100 skill at clubs? You can't progress any more using your favorite weapon. The old system was too flawed yet people still talk about it

[dcsobral]

So, only your way to play is acceptable?

 

Dude, you actively invented this entire penetration system where a single round can take out 2, 3, 4 zeds a shot, and then the best way to use it is to stand 3 meters up in the air so you're shooting down at an angle that guarantees, at best, two targets in a line? Come on...

 

This is the primary reason why people have been asking for steel bars for ages; they want to build a semi-sane bunker point to defend from, and that requires field of view at ground level. The only way currently to achieve that is iron bars. If that's the only thing you're putting down, sure you're a sucker and you deserve what you get, but being told the only proper way to play is build an actual tower and if we don't like it, it's our fault? Come on, you're better than that.

 

Not true. You can make steel arrow slits. Yes, you don't have a wide field of view with them, but, then again, if you aren't using base layout to get zombies to line up for shots, you can't get multiple targets with one shot anyway.

 

 

That base design suggested by madmole is not the only way of doing. On the contrary, I think madmole was showing how easy it is to make a safe base. I've seen a plain, on-the-ground, no paths, no ramps, no tricks of any kind, survive a day 700 horde. The base was made in creative, granted, and the guns and ammo available made up by what the streamer thought was fair, but I'm on day 140, and the resources that went into that base were a FRACTION of what I can scrounge up for every horde night. If I forsake looting, I could make that base out of nothing every horde night, with way more ammunition.

 

There's no need to cheese. There's plenty of ways to handle what the game is throwing at us, particularly on default difficulty, without much problem. If your base design isn't working, well, it doesn't work. Try something else.

 

I'll grant that multiplayer gamestages are totally out of sync. Gamestage got compressed so it increases much more slowly than it used to, but the party gamestage formula is essentially the same, which means groups get things much further ahead of them than they used to, and, I think, more than they should. I even made a mod to reduce party gamestage so it's never more than twice the max gamestage of the group.

[Gobarg]

Oh forgot to mention Steel Tools.

 

Dunno about the rest of you but they seem to be a lot rarer than other steel items such as the amount of steel sledgehammers you find.

 

Even finding low level ones to scrap are a challenge.

 

Is that on purpose?

[madmole]

Yeah i think that was the issue. It worked great for action skills, but for stuff like armor, crafting, etc it failed horribly. Ideally a hybrid system that incorporates a little of both is ideal, but the same issues occur though. You kill zombies and all of a sudden your better at crafting armor....

 

The problem is you aren't going to craft enough sets of armor naturally in a game to ever get good at it in a useful sense. It would be spam crafted to get good, like Skyrim and that sucks. It's a no brainer to group crafting with your armor skill, as one skilled in armor would be doing field repairs and pounding out dents to keep it working etc. Same with everything.

[madmole]

Since what you guys have done with perks is not cookie cutter (which can be a good thing) maybe what's missing is a better tutorial for how the system works.

 

For example, a loading screen that shows a high level view of what strength Grant's players (e.g. what melee wpn, ranged wpn, etc.)

 

Isn't it obvious by reading the description?

[madmole]

Hi MM, is it possible to give us a few hints about what the team is working on at the moment or is the a19 OP all we get for now?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Edit: Meant to post this on the a19 thread, sorry!

 

Nope. I'm showing stuff that is done or announcing things that work has begun on. There is more but I'll fill it in as we go, its better to show then talk.

[madmole]

Do you have plans to reduce the amount of can food found in the world?

 

Not sure, is there any data that says there is too much food? We are planning a global loot abundance reduction of 20%, so food will take a hit.

[madmole]

Sure, but there are better categories, namely if you concentrate on the utility skills and on the overall characteristics when you select the name:

 

"Miner" would be a very good name for the strength tree, because it is rather unspecific about weapons and describes the utility skills very well. It is the best tree if you want to play as a miner, right?

 

"Scavenger" is a very good name for the perception tree, because it is again unspecific about weapons and describes the utility skills very well.

 

"Tinkerer" for intelligence.

 

Should I go on?

 

I just disagree that they are better than what we have, they are a small subset. Does a tinkerer practice medicine in your mind? No he works in a shop on.. stuff. Does a miner kick ass with a shotgun? No evidence of that IMO. Its best as is the current names can easily encapsulate all the current perks and future ones, yet "tinkerer" might sound cool but nobody would guess where doctor skills would be with that setup IMO, but anyone who played former RPGs with INT would just know, because it just works, TM.

[Lonestarcanuck]

It will be like it is now, except smashing into things will have a chance to mess up your ride, so going off road will have some risks.

 

@MM - if you are going to mess our ride off-road you need to drop the mini and make a true off-road bike.

[Laz Man]

So, only your way to play is acceptable?

 

Dude, you actively invented this entire penetration system where a single round can take out 2, 3, 4 zeds a shot, and then the best way to use it is to stand 3 meters up in the air so you're shooting down at an angle that guarantees, at best, two targets in a line? Come on...

 

This is the primary reason why people have been asking for steel bars for ages; they want to build a semi-sane bunker point to defend from, and that requires field of view at ground level. The only way currently to achieve that is iron bars. If that's the only thing you're putting down, sure you're a sucker and you deserve what you get, but being told the only proper way to play is build an actual tower and if we don't like it, it's our fault? Come on, you're better than that.

 

I'm sure MM was just making an example that it doesnt take much to come up with ways to defend against demos, not that was the only way lol.....

[Lonestarcanuck]

Not sure, is there any data that says there is too much food? We are planning a global loot abundance reduction of 20%, so food will take a hit.

 

Wow - no there is not enough. or should I say I would not do anything to reduce the amount. I have some players who are always on deaths door and others who invest heavy into farming and feed the masses.

 

I am liking the balance ATM.