Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[Prisma501]

Might I ask, WHY isn't this information included in the forum rules?!?

 

Also limiting the post lenght might do the trick. If 10000 characters is too much for you, maybe a limit of a 1000 characters will get the message accross?

 

I only ask since I'm new here and I wrote my initial two post in detail because ... I could.

 

Its not a rule. Its a tip. ^^

 

And now you know.

 

Cheers

[MarcusBrutus]

(...)

Cool thoughts - but I reckon you'll get a better discussion framing it as a discussion rather than a lecture - and I don't mean that disrespectfully; but I feel it's easier to ignore or dismiss anyone who includes phrases like 'this is too easy because I.....'

 

Thank you for your reply. I must apologize for my tardiness and late reply, but I was working 12 to 14 hours a day for last two weeks, and today was the first day I could find a bit of time.

 

 

I think you’ve misunderstood my initial intention. I never intended my post to be a start of a discussion of how to improve this game. I’ve read large part of this thread and parts of dev’s thread and I came to the conclusions that my ideas have almost zero chance of attracting the FP interest. Therefore presenting them in a way of suggestions made no sense to me.

 

Instead I made a post about my experiences and about what I plan to do to make the 7 Days to Die interesting again for me and me alone. This was intended as purely informative message. Thus all the “I will” moments.

 

Honestly I have not even considered to make my changes into a mod, and definitely did not think about an impact on MP gameplay and server resources. Maybe it was my mistake to put those two issues together, and possibly I could have put it more clearly.

 

Rest assured though that should I ever think on making a mod for this game, I will consider your feedback.

[Hollowprime]

The are three major problems with PVP/PVE:

 

First, players usually start with different levels. This can be alleviated by digging underground and hiding

Second, cars are the only reliable source of engines but those are destroyed by the players above them. To alleviate this the player has to do quests and respawn cars. However, those cars are rare and there is a high chance players will camp in those locations because they are rich in loot. This can be fixed by repeatedly doing the same quest.

Third and perhaps the most severe thing out of all of those mentioned is the explosive damage. I'm currently playing on a server that greatly reduced the damage of rockets and dynamites because those can level entire bases not just on pvp but on pve as well. This obviously needs to be scalable e.g. block explosive damage needs to be scalable on multiplayer to avoid grieving .

 

So the solutions are:

-Engines always spawn when a car is wrenched destroyed

-Engines are more common

-Quests could be looped indefinitely in a daily basis as they are now (without having to quit and rejoin the server)

-Damage of explosions on blocks be customizable on multiplayer to avoid grieving.

[MarcusBrutus]

Thank you for your detailed post although it could have been much shorter and said more.

 

OK, I'll try to respond in your manner: I call BS on everything in this response of yours, except for the parts of last paragraph. Is that short and yet informative enough?

 

 

 

For those on this forum that would like to actually read "more_than_one_sentence" posts:

 

[insulting and aggressive words that nobody wants to read. Your pride is getting in the way of your desire to contribute.]

[faatal]

Might I ask, WHY isn't this information included in the forum rules?!?

 

Also limiting the post lenght might do the trick. If 10000 characters is too much for you, maybe a limit of a 1000 characters will get the message accross?

 

I only ask since I'm new here and I wrote my initial two post in detail because ... I could.

 

It is not a forum rule. Somebody at the company or others in the forum might love to read your 10000 character post. I would not.

 

I even tend to find our tester's bug videos too wordy much of the time and skip through half of it just wanting to see the bug already. Personal preference.

[Gareee]

@Fataal: Can you (or are you) looking at light cast distance? I know its a performance issue, but we need ay least one craftable light type that can be seen from a further distance for night navigation with the gyro.

 

The only thing that can be seen far enough away on a dark night is the land claim bounding box, and even that is barely far enough away.

 

Also is there a coded limit to deployed junk turrets? I have 8 or so around my base and saw two disappear. You can still hear them and they still fire at zeds, but I can no longer see them or pick them up and reload them.

 

If there is a limit we shouldn't be able to place junk turrets in excess of it so we don't loose them or their included mods.

[Laz Man]

It is not a forum rule. Somebody at the company or others in the forum might love to read your 10000 character post. I would not.

 

I even tend to find our tester's bug videos too wordy much of the time and skip through half of it just wanting to see the bug already. Personal preference.

 

Hey Faatal, thanks for all the responses in this thread. Are there any specific areas in the game that u would like more balancing feedback on?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

@Fataal: Can you (or are you) looking at light cast distance? I know its a performance issue, but we need ay least one craftable light type that can be seen from a further distance for night navigation with the gyro.

 

The only thing that can be seen far enough away on a dark night is the land claim bounding box, and even that is barely far enough away.

 

Also is there a coded limit to deployed junk turrets? I have 8 or so around my base and saw two disappear. You can still hear them and they still fire at zeds, but I can no longer see them or pick them up and reload them.

 

If there is a limit we shouldn't be able to place junk turrets in excess of it so we don't loose them or their included mods.

 

Maybe they have fallen through blocks? Try going god mode and looking in the floor?

[ArNaLdInHo]

Improve Ai for zombies, so they dont do repetly the same mistake, like this video shows ...

 

[JaxTeller718]

OK, I'll try to respond in your manner: snip

 

Come on man. I tend to agree, peoples times are short. Even though you have time to type all that up, and I am not saying its not valid or informative, in this day and age people have so much on their plates. There is only so much time in a day. If every single forum poster made posts that were this long how can anyone reasonably expect devs to read every single one. Its not only you here, and just because you say its valuable, no one will know that until they read it in its entirety and by that time you have taken up the time devs have to read 5 other peoples opinions.

 

I dont think what they are asking for is unreasonable. Say the same thing, just say it more concisely.

[erlgrey]

fyi for the amd gpu owners:

 

new amd driver (19.12.2) enables RIS also for dx11 games, don't see any performance penalty yet and it partially neglects the ugliness of running low AF settings in 7dtd due to performance issues.

 

AF medium for playable performance + RIS @ 100% looks at least much better again then just AF medium.

at least on my system its much better now and it is not that blurry anymore.

 

 

edit: fixed versionnumber.

[0ldman]

Make asphalt - dig hole - fill asphalt and marvel ... Omg 18.2 (5b)

[JaxTeller718]

Make asphalt - dig hole - fill asphalt and marvel ... Omg 18.2 (5b)

 

You need a permit to build a road.

[wolfbain5]

You need a permit to build a road.

 

damn bureaucracy.

[AKMrTumnus]

You need a permit to build a road.

 

"Where we're going, we don't need roads."

[SkinnyR]

Lost some quality for more casual/creative play

 

I was really big fan of some of the more "creative" things 7Days haad to offer in previous versions. A18 is great, however I miss a lot of the old crafting recipes that were available for more aesthetic base decor- like refrigerators! Also the table saw crafting list if remarkably small, especially considering the potential. I would love to see more building/decorating options in future versions, for when the apocalypse settles down and you want a cool place to kick it. And more paint textures! Or the ability to further customize existing paint mechanics. Loved your work with everything else this version, feels great.

[faatal]

@Fataal: Can you (or are you) looking at light cast distance? I know its a performance issue, but we need ay least one craftable light type that can be seen from a further distance for night navigation with the gyro.

 

The only thing that can be seen far enough away on a dark night is the land claim bounding box, and even that is barely far enough away.

 

Also is there a coded limit to deployed junk turrets? I have 8 or so around my base and saw two disappear. You can still hear them and they still fire at zeds, but I can no longer see them or pick them up and reload them.

 

If there is a limit we shouldn't be able to place junk turrets in excess of it so we don't loose them or their included mods.

 

Light cast range is a performance issue and they need to be turned off at range. The flame itself (self illuminating) would have to be big enough to see at whatever distance you are wanting to see it at, but since the flames scale down with distance, it gets very small. Would probably have to do a non trival scaling change to deal with that, so probably not happening anytime soon.

 

Unsure about junk turrets, since that is Kinyajuu's baby.

[faatal]

Improve Ai for zombies, so they dont do repetly the same mistake, like this video shows ...

 

 

That is not really a mistake. The correct path is through that wall. There are always going to be edge cases like that, which we will attempt to address if commonly exploited.

[faatal]

fyi for the amd gpu owners:

 

new amd driver (19.2.2) enables RIS also for dx11 games, don't see any performance penalty yet and it partially neglects the ugliness of running low AF settings in 7dtd due to performance issues.

 

AF medium for playable performance + RIS @ 100% looks at least much better again then just AF medium.

at least on my system its much better now and it is not that blurry anymore.

 

Nice.

 

I see a 19.12.2 version. I gather you meant that version?

[erlgrey]

Nice.

 

I see a 19.12.2 version. I gather you meant that version?

 

oh yeah, missed the 1 ofc.

 

can be checked and compared easily with enabling/disabling it in the sidebar overlay, without restarting game and so on.

 

 

https://imgur.com/a/cwGo75m

[rdunham3]

Light cast range is a performance issue and they need to be turned off at range. The flame itself (self illuminating) would have to be big enough to see at whatever distance you are wanting to see it at, but since the flames scale down with distance, it gets very small. Would probably have to do a non trival scaling change to deal with that, so probably not happening anytime soon.

 

Unsure about junk turrets, since that is Kinyajuu's baby.

 

Would it be possible for distant lights to have a dumbed down cast with less/no shadow calculations and less-smooth steps in light amount? I was noticing in the last couple of worlds that I played with others that I'd get within maybe a half dozen blocks of a street lamp or lantern before it started up its area glow at all. That was before I discovered my settings were markedly lower than the overall "ultra" should have had them set to...haven't gone to study light levels recently to see how that changed, if any, now that the settings are up where they should be.

[Scyris]

It should be compulsory to start a fresh game and map if you play on RWG at each build.

 

Its the only way to be sure for clean reports and error referencing.

 

So far, new game 18.2 and no issues to report. (so far)

 

 

I did find a purple pistol on day 2 I think it was, that correct (seems way to generous) ?

 

You just won the Rng lottery is all, even at day 1 level 1 you CAN find purple items its just the chance is SO low that its like winning the lottery if you happen to find one that early.

[quyxkh]

Shouldn't the cement mixer require power?

 

Concrete bases reward tons of XP and they're an easy rush. It just feels wrong to be able to reach walls built with top-tier materials so easily.

 

Speaking of XP, I might have missed it but I think placing concrete blocks directly doesn't reward XP, but upgrading from flagstone does. Is this intentional?

[Roland]

Shouldn't the cement mixer require power?

 

Concrete bases reward tons of XP and they're an easy rush. It just feels wrong to be able to reach walls built with top-tier materials so easily.

 

Speaking of XP, I might have missed it but I think placing concrete blocks directly doesn't reward XP, but upgrading from flagstone does. Is this intentional?

 

If they made electricity a gate for cement it would just drive people to exclusively scavenge for it and the Craft Faction might start accusing the game of being a "looter shooter".

 

I believe XP is only gained by upgrading blocks and never by placing them. There is no crafting XP so crafting cement blocks and placing them gives no XP but upgrading from cobblestone does. Also upgrading from rebar frames would grant xp. By the way, since flagstone is a crafted block you would get no XP for making and placing flagstone but you would by upgrading it to cobblestone (and then again by upgrading it to cement)

[Adam the Waster]

OK so im using the knuckle wraps and i checked the damage, it was 13 however when i went to fist it was 14?

 

 

is that normal or not?

[faatal]

Would it be possible for distant lights to have a dumbed down cast with less/no shadow calculations and less-smooth steps in light amount? I was noticing in the last couple of worlds that I played with others that I'd get within maybe a half dozen blocks of a street lamp or lantern before it started up its area glow at all. That was before I discovered my settings were markedly lower than the overall "ultra" should have had them set to...haven't gone to study light levels recently to see how that changed, if any, now that the settings are up where they should be.

 

No shadows would make it bleed all over. You would get to a certain distance and it would poke through blocks. If I recall correctly, it already fades out shadows, then turns them off at distance, but has to aggressively clamp range to stop the bleed.

 

Less smooth is just the CPU update rate, which is not where the bottleneck is.