Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[madmole]

2 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Mmm. I have a question, it might be a tricky one.

Have  you guys thought of a mod that autoretrieves the spear back to the belt when it hits a block? 

 

Like: a chain , or  an automatic "crane" or a hook bracelet mod with a cord or chain attached (could be for the armor gloves) made with an engine and a battery or something cool like that .

 

Right now, it's extremely annoying to lose that quality 6 fully modded steel spear in the heat of battle and to never see it again.

Impossible to lose now, you get a sprite marker.

56 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

When you build for cool looks on Day 21 you know its too easy  

Its way too easy for me at least. But it doesn't take much more work to make something look cool than to look boring.

[wolfbain5]

4 hours ago, madmole said:

XML. They only show when you are close I think, I haven't noticed them in game play.

There is a book set to enhance INT weapons now. They aren't my cup of tea either but I hear they get better as you perk into them, so we will see.

You need an axe no matter what IMO so its not relevant to balance. It does pretty awesome damage but same as before. INT stuff has been enhanced some with the books and mods you can get now, there is a mod that sends zombies flying on the stun baton.

I think everyone gets into strength a bit. Perception and Agility are the ones I use the least, the rest have must haves every game, but it depends on play style IMO.

 

 

good to hear on the food changes. I do not use many of the str abilities except miner, motherload and 1 level of cooking. I use the hell out of agility. perception tho, salvage and 1 point of lockpick so that I can make em.

 

balance wise, str had a decent amount of benefits, it prolly has the most used would consider that sexy t-rex should be a Fort thing

perc, not so much,lockpick 1, salvage 4

Fort, temp and healing factor early on, later game a few of the others.

agility with the stealth and stealth weaponry + light armor, sneak attacks

intel I get tons of use, just not the baton or charisma. you say there is some changes and books for int weapons. I really do hope so.

[Blake_]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

I haven't lost a single spear in A19. A retraction chain would be a cool mod but it would only be for the convenience of easily retrieving your spear. Finding it has been solved. You can't not find it thanks to "Hendley Garner"

You mean when the spear pulls a "Hendley Garner" through the world, right?

[Xtrakicking]

5 hours ago, madmole said:

Food poisoning is removed. Instead you take some health damage from rotten foods. No effects from raw, and get hefty max stamina increase from the best cooked foods.

Is this serious... ? Why?? Why do you keep cutting things out that don't need cutting? Food and especially water have always been incredibly easy to manage. In A18, it looked like it was finally getting better, but now raw food is perfectly fine to eat and stack in hundreds in your boxes? How does that make sense??? You could've done so many things to make food poisoning fun and engaging, but nope, better cut it out for some reason.

 

Well... Now that food poisoning is removed, the one and only disease the game has is infection. Not exactly what I imagined when you said "The lower the quality level, the greater chance for disease" in the game's trailer.

 

Edit: Forgot about dysentery. Cool, 2 diseases, and none are even tied to food. Hurray.

[Laz Man]

26 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

Is this serious... ? Why?? Why do you keep cutting things out that don't need cutting? Food and especially water have always been incredibly easy to manage. In A18, it looked like it was finally getting better, but now raw food is perfectly fine to eat and stack in hundreds in your boxes? How does that make sense??? You could've done so many things to make food poisoning fun and engaging, but nope, better cut it out for some reason.

 

Well... Now that food poisoning is removed, the one and only disease the game has is infection. Not exactly what I imagined when you said "The lower the quality level, the greater chance for disease" in the game's trailer.

 

Edit: Forgot about dysentery. Cool, 2 diseases, and none are even tied to food. Hurray.

My gut (no pun intended lol) tells me we will have our hands full managing all of the new critical injurys instead.  We shall see how the change plays out....

[Blake_]

35 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

Is this serious... ? Why?? Why do you keep cutting things out that don't need cutting? Food and especially water have always been incredibly easy to manage. In A18, it looked like it was finally getting better, but now raw food is  """"""""(snip for space)

My reaction at first, but you really need to think about the situation with a cool head. Now food is used for absolutely everything related to health + buffs and it is extremely scarce the first few days. Now, raw meat will not give you more health than, say, cat food and the addition of candy inside vending machines will reduce buyable food around a 33%. What did you do before to get rid of food poisoning? Eat. Is it easier without it? No, actually, it should be equal at the very least, but I think it might be a little harder now in a19 due to meat not being that easy to find for a semi-sedentary player.

 

Just wait and see.The new survival system, broken arms, legs etc will make it worth your while in return. 

 

In a18 I seldom see the friggin' food poisoning or dysentery if I expend just 2 points into Iron Gut.

 

The chance of getting food poisoning after a couple of points is lower than the Fat Hawaian Zombie calling me daddy .

[bloodmoth13]

5 hours ago, madmole said:

We're done with weapons except for maybe missing batons. Flamethrower trap might happen yet.

 

do you mean you are finished with weapons for this alpha or are all weapons for a19 final for the game>?

[Xtrakicking]

23 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

My reaction at first, but you really need to think about the situation with a cool head. Now food is used for absolutely everything related to health + buffs and it is extremely scarce the first few days. Now, raw meat will not give you more health than, say, cat food and the addition of candy inside vending machines will reduce buyable food around a 33%. What did you do before to get rid of food poisoning? Eat. Is it easier without it? No, actually, it should be equal at the very least, but I think it might be a little harder now in a19 due to meat not being that easy to find for a semi-sedentary player.

 

Just wait and see.The new survival system, broken arms, legs etc will make it worth your while in return. 

 

In a18 I seldom see the friggin' food poisoning or dysentery if I expend just 2 points into Iron Gut.

 

The chance of getting food poisoning after a couple of points is lower than the Fat Hawaian Zombie calling me daddy .

Food is certainly not "scarce". It's never been. This is why FoodSpoilageGate has been product of debate for pretty much the whole development of the game. You can binge hunt animals and keep boxes and boxes full of their meat, never expiring. You can buy food from all the vending machines. Even if vending machines only had candy, you can still get food from traders. You don't even need to do that if you loot, cause looting POIs will always yield more than enough food. Heck, you can grow your farm and never even look back at food again.

 

You can have an intricate medical system and food poisoning as well. One should not have to be the compensation for the other, especially when removing one causes problems. You can eat raw meat now? This means a player can hop in, live off of raw meat, and survive without even having to craft a fireplace. Really??

This actually even goes against using points in the cooking skill. If I can just eat raw and spoiled food, why would I use points in that skill when there are much more important skills like all the stuff regarding steel, traps and electricity in the int build? Oh, you get wellness points faster? Well, lucky me. It's not like you get them even if you don't cook the fancy stuff.

 

23 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

In a18 I seldom see the friggin' food poisoning or dysentery if I expend just 2 points into Iron Gut.

The chance of getting food poisoning after a couple of points is lower than the Fat Hawaian Zombie calling me daddy .

So removing it is the solution? Instead of, like I said, making it work? Infection used to be a big joke too, thank god they decided to make it fun instead of removing it too.

[Gazz]

It really was inevitable that someone would throw a tantrum about "TFP dumbing the game down" when one feature was removed. (and 6+ new ones added instead, but who's counting?)

And this time Joel was really careful about not saying a peep about it until it was actually in and working the way we wanted.

 

There is no doubt that there will be another straw fire of over-analysing the patch notes when they come out, predicting doom and gloom (in no particular order) for the game.

Actually playing the game? I predict a very different outcome except for those with prescription rose tinted glasses.

[Adam the Waster]

1 hour ago, Xtrakicking said:

Is this serious... ? Why?? Why do you keep cutting things out that don't need cutting? Food and especially water have always been incredibly easy to manage. In A18, it looked like it was finally getting better, but now raw food is perfectly fine to eat and stack in hundreds in your boxes? How does that make sense??? You could've done so many things to make food poisoning fun and engaging, but nope, better cut it out for some reason.

 

Well... Now that food poisoning is removed, the one and only disease the game has is infection. Not exactly what I imagined when you said "The lower the quality level, the greater chance for disease" in the game's trailer.

 

Edit: Forgot about dysentery. Cool, 2 diseases, and none are even tied to food. Hurray.

maybe one day there may be more kinds of sickness, like Tapeworms or something to make the game more Survival 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Xtrakicking said:

Is this serious... ? Why?? Why do you keep cutting things out that don't need cutting? Food and especially water have always been incredibly easy to manage. In A18, it looked like it was finally getting better, but now raw food is perfectly fine to eat and stack in hundreds in your boxes? How does that make sense??? You could've done so many things to make food poisoning fun and engaging, but nope, better cut it out for some reason.

 

Well... Now that food poisoning is removed, the one and only disease the game has is infection. Not exactly what I imagined when you said "The lower the quality level, the greater chance for disease" in the game's trailer.

 

Edit: Forgot about dysentery. Cool, 2 diseases, and none are even tied to food. Hurray.

They cut things out that they decided didn't work well. Please don't confuse updates with experimental content for DLC's with bonus finished content. The game is still in development and the developers are developing and that means lots of iterations and trials. Will some players fall in love with some of those trials that eventually get cut? Yes. Does that mean that those things never needed cutting? Not necessarily.

 

Now in this case, TFP listened to a lot of feedback concerning the barfing mechanic and decided to rework things. There will be a difference between good food and bad food health-wise. For A19 they decided they wanted to remove the barfing all your food to zero mechanic and put in a placeholder mechanic of getting a health and stamina debuff. In A20 they will flesh it out so that it is more in line with all of the other injuries and ailments.

 

I, like you, had no problem with the vomit mechanic. However, I'm not married to the mechanic and the way TFP is doing things like lacerations, infection, broken bones, sprains, etc. is great. I think that getting sick from eating bad food if done in line with those other things will be better than the current vomiting mechanic. I promise this is good news and the fact that they want to get a quick replacement in for vomit that won't add extra development time shows how close A19 is.

15 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

So removing it is the solution? Instead of, like I said, making it work? Infection used to be a big joke too, thank god they decided to make it fun instead of removing it too.

This is exactly what they are going to do with consequences of eating bad food-- make it more fun. Currently the consequence is barfing all of your food out. That was a good experiment. Now they want to make it better. 

 

You say that infection used to be a big joke but they made it fun. That required removing "the big joke" and replacing it with "the more fun." The process of removing and replacing is what is known as "development" in the business. The A19 change will be an adequate replacement and the A20 solution will have players in the future saying the same thing you did about infection but saying it about illness from eating bad food.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Blake_ said:

You mean when the spear pulls a "Hendley Garner" through the world, right?

We'll see. A lot of work has been done to prevent things from falling through the world. But there is no amount of work that can compensate for a potato that can't generate the world fast enough to play in it or a poor internet connection with a ping too high to coordinate between your machine and the host. As I said, I haven't lost a single spear and I use spears all the time. Not one has slipped through the world for me and the nav beacon always leads me straight to it. It is impossible to lose given that your rig/network can possibly render/communicate the world in a timely fashion.

[Adam the Waster]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

We'll see. A lot of work has been done to prevent things from falling through the world. But there is no amount of work that can compensate for a potato that can't generate the world fast enough to play in it. As I said, I haven't lost a single spear and I use spears all the time. Not one has slipped through the world for me and the nav beacon always leads me straight to it. It is impossible to lose given that your rig can possibly render the world in a timely fashion.

maybe the Main spear/pike can have a power attack.

but you can craft spears (they look smaller) and can be thrown.

 

or like i said, Hold R (Pike mode or Spear mode) 

 

 

[Xtrakicking]

Just now, Gazz said:

It really was inevitable that someone would throw a tantrum about "TFP dumbing the game down" when one feature was removed. (and 6+ new ones added instead, but who's counting?)

And this time Joel was really careful about not saying a peep about it until it was actually in and working the way we wanted.

 

There is no doubt that there will be another straw fire of over-analysing the patch notes when they come out, predicting doom and gloom (in no particular order) for the game.

Actually playing the game? I predict a very different outcome except for those with prescription rose tinted glasses.

Well, if the dev team is having a hard time announcing features for what the playerbase might say then that's certainly not a good sign, is it? How about instead of looking at any negative outlook on their changes as "tantrums" you look at them as valid negative reactions from players? I know it's easier to just shrug off any negative feedback away, but c'mon. Just because the players who were frustrated by past changes have given up hope or modded their games, doesn't mean the devs haven't made bad changes.

 

So you're saying that because they added new features in some other area of the game, player's should shush when the devs remove from others? I wonder what terrible things will happen when bandits are added, then.

 

26 minutes ago, Roland said:

SNIP for space

This is a much better response. Thanks Roland, for clarifying.

 

27 minutes ago, Roland said:

I think that getting sick from eating bad food if done in line with those other things will be better than the current vomiting mechanic. I promise this is good news and the fact that they want to get a quick replacement in for vomit that won't add extra development time shows how close A19 is.

This is exactly what they are going to do with consequences of eating bad food-- make it more fun. Currently the consequence is barfing all of your food out. That was a good experiment. Now they want to make it better.

I agree 100% with this, and is exactly what I thought would happen when madmole talked about the new medical system. I'm really glad this is the case.

[Roland]

The devs did listen to negative feedback. It was part of their decision to make this change. They decided not to shrug off the negative feedback they’ve been getting for the past six months. Your current negative feedback is brand new. Let’s give it six months and see if it gains traction.
 

Nobody ever wants the devs to listen to negative feedback unless it’s theirs...lol. 

[Xtrakicking]

6 minutes ago, Roland said:

The devs did listen to negative feedback. It was part of their decision to make this change. They decided not to shrug off the negative feedback they’ve been getting for the past six months. Your current negative feedback is brand new. Let’s give it six months and see if it gains traction.
 

Nobody ever wants the devs to listen to negative feedback unless it’s theirs...lol. 

Yeah, the thing is that the way it was worded made it seem like the decision was to just get rid of the problem by cutting the feature from the game entirely. If, as you said in your previous response, they have plans to upgrade the whole system in the future much like they did with infection, then it's very different.

[Roland]

I think A19 will be an adequate side step that will make a lot of people happy because vomitting as it has been implemented will be gone. I think YOU will be happy with what they have planned for A20. 😀 
 

I’d like to see vomitting come back as part of sickness at some point kind of like bleeding. Maybe not vomit up everything but maybe 20 points of your food bar with a chance to vomit more than once while the sickness buff is active.  But that will be up to TFP. I hope vomitting isn’t gone forever. 

[xiiMaRcLeoN]

These screenshots are awesome madmole. Cant wait to experience it myself.

[SnowDog1942]

Guys I'm going for the record number of turd reactions in one post.  Turd me.

 

 

Edit: unlike real life, I can't poop myself.

[Roland]

We give it.....  You pack it.....

[wolfbain5]

41 minutes ago, Roland said:

We give it.....  You pack it.....

snowdog, your up

[tatters]

7 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Mmm. I have a question, it might be a tricky one.

Have  you guys thought of a mod that autoretrieves the spear back to the belt when it hits a block? 

 

Like: a chain , or  an automatic "crane" or a hook bracelet mod with a cord or chain attached (could be for the armor gloves) made with an engine and a battery or something cool like that .

 

Right now, it's extremely annoying to lose that quality 6 fully modded steel spear in the heat of battle and to never see it again.

Don't forget the "Get Over Here" sound bite.

 

[XCOUNTRY]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

We'll see. A lot of work has been done to prevent things from falling through the world. But there is no amount of work that can compensate for a potato that can't generate the world fast enough to play in it or a poor internet connection with a ping too high to coordinate between your machine and the host. As I said, I haven't lost a single spear and I use spears all the time. Not one has slipped through the world for me and the nav beacon always leads me straight to it. It is impossible to lose given that your rig/network can possibly render/communicate the world in a timely fashion.

I was sooooo ready to guess this from your hint too...then MadMole ruined it and gave the riddle away in the next post...

 

got anymore riddles?

[Guppycur]

2 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Food is certainly not "scarce". It's never been. This is why FoodSpoilageGate has been product of debate for pretty much the whole development of the game. You can binge hunt animals and keep boxes and boxes full of their meat, never expiring. You can buy food from all the vending machines. Even if vending machines only had candy, you can still get food from traders. You don't even need to do that if you loot, cause looting POIs will always yield more than enough food. Heck, you can grow your farm and never even look back at food again.

 

You can have an intricate medical system and food poisoning as well. One should not have to be the compensation for the other, especially when removing one causes problems. You can eat raw meat now? This means a player can hop in, live off of raw meat, and survive without even having to craft a fireplace. Really??

This actually even goes against using points in the cooking skill. If I can just eat raw and spoiled food, why would I use points in that skill when there are much more important skills like all the stuff regarding steel, traps and electricity in the int build? Oh, you get wellness points faster? Well, lucky me. It's not like you get them even if you don't cook the fancy stuff.

 

So removing it is the solution? Instead of, like I said, making it work? Infection used to be a big joke too, thank god they decided to make it fun instead of removing it too.

A19 screenshot...

 

 

[mr.devolver]

6 minutes ago, Guppycur said:

A19 screenshot...

 

 

Lol, 7 Walls of Text to Die.