Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Deadalready]

4 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

I personally believe the marksman rifle and the hunting rifle are fine the way they are, especially since a new T3 sniper rifle is coming in A19, but we'll have to wait and see. But I completely agree with you on the magnum. 

 

Start a new save and limit yourself only to the hunting rifle and marksman for your ranged weapon. Do a few horde nights (without resorting to explosives) and come back with your opinions, I have 3 level 150+ perception characters and I can tell you they are seriously underperforming. A new T3 rifle does not fix the problems with the dps, game mechanics and game balance of the rifle series weapons. I hope that the T3 sniper can accept the drum mag because it's probably the best mod in the game.

 

4 hours ago, Khalagar said:

I love the Hunting Rifle, but mostly because I really like bolt action rifles. I wish it was better though. It and the Marksman rifle are both gimped hard by the toggle aim down sights screwing you over when you shoot and try to reload, as well as them not really doing all that much damage per shot. Why would you ever use a single shot sniper when the fully auto M60 does nearly as much damage, and the sniper takes more than shot to kill anyway. In the time you pump enough Marksman rifle shots into your target to kill it, you could have also thrown out enough M60 shots to kill it too, probably in a really similar amount of bullets.

 

I like the feel of bolt actions too, but there are many bolt action rifles out there with magazines. Would making the hunting have a 3-5 magazine cap break it? Would letting the markmans rifle accept the drum mag (for a total of 15-20 rounds in magazine) be over the top? If they're not going to fix the auto reload/rescope prolems then these QoL would make the rifles branch so much nicer.

 

1 hour ago, BobbyLee298 said:

I wish TFP wouldn't limit them selfs with the idea of 3 tiers for weapons. IMO this game could use a new gun every alpha update to keep things fresh and just bring more of a selection to the players. 

 

At some point the game needs to focus on endgame content and optimisation. An extra gun isn't going to inspire players to stay on servers past level 100, nor is it going to stop players from getting bored once they have an effective horde base.

[Dethar]

Now I also have to ask, do you not know difference of a rifle and assault rifle?

[Necrophobic]

[regarding screenshots from the first page]

 

this is awesome your finally reskinning/updating zombies.. When are we going to see limbless zombies, children,teenage zombies and more wildlife zombies.. we need more more more more more!!

 

 

[Matt 1977]

Personally id rather see just updated zombies, car mod, bandits then go gold. Optimising is really needed imo. But what do i know.

 

Flying fox going to be added or was it permanently scrapped?

[MechanicalLens]

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[Khalagar]

1 hour ago, Ineffable said:

Also, I remember someone saying that the amount of persons visiting the forums is so minute compared to the amount of players. But did that statistic take into consideration the many individuals who visit the forums un-logged in?

 

Probably not, it's probably just based on forum posts. The point they were getting at is right though, even if you combine EVERY forum, the type of people who post on the forums is still only a tiny fraction of the buyer base. But it's usually a decent fraction of the *actual* player base, which matters for games that actually make money from active players.  Nearly 40% of the people who bought the game haven't even made a bedroll, so you don't get very good numbers comparing sales to forum activity, assuming your end goal is to determine what active players want.

 

The problem just always revolves back around to active players not generating any further cashflow for games like this if there isn't DLC, so it's not profitable or even feasible to focus on the hardcore players right now

[MechanicalLens]

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[DaVegaNL]

3 hours ago, Dethar said:

Now I also have to ask, do you not know difference of a rifle and assault rifle?

One is for shooting deer, the other for school-shootings?

Don't know, not an American.

[MechanicalLens]

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[Gazz]

4 hours ago, Deadalready said:

I like the feel of bolt actions too, but there are many bolt action rifles out there with magazines. Would making the hunting have a 3-5 magazine cap break it? Would letting the markmans rifle accept the drum mag (for a total of 15-20 rounds in magazine) be over the top? If they're not going to fix the auto reload/rescope prolems then these QoL would make the rifles branch so much nicer.

You said it yourself. The problem is not the magazine capacity. That would only be a hack that we _could_ do 5 minutes before going gold.

Until the gun mechanics/animations are polished up this is not even a topic.

30 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

In other words, both are used to hunt for sport, depending on what context you look at it in.

Yes. Just for different prey. =P

[Matt 1977]

Gazz i can't wait for gold. Where you know what does what. As a Paradox games player im really getting frustrated at the constant changes to mechanics that have been in place since launch.

 

Live service model of whatever the fark it is im over it now. Must be my 43yrs starting to make me cranky lol

16 minutes ago, Gazz said:

You said it yourself. The problem is not the magazine capacity. That would only be a hack that we _could_ do 5 minutes before going gold.

Until the gun mechanics/animations are polished up this is not even a topic.

Yes. Just for different prey. =P

 

[meilodasreh]

3 hours ago, Ineffable said:

Just curious of the types of people that play this game (well, visit these forums, more so, I guess you can say).

I haven't played 7d2d recently (waiting for A19 before starting a new game), but I already thought I would feel a bit weird nowadays to play a game where you run around and break into the next-best building and loot everything an so on.

Well it's just a game, but none-the-less...

I guess it means I'm still a little bit in touch to the real world 😐

[beHypE]

1 hour ago, Khalagar said:

The problem just always revolves back around to active players not generating any further cashflow for games like this if there isn't DLC, so it's not profitable or even feasible to focus on the hardcore players right now

Mhhhh I doubt this is as true as some of you paint it out to be. We don't generate direct cash income but we do generate lots of indirect cash income. A game that is played is a game that is talked about. A game that is talked about is a game that generates sales. A ghost game doesn't attract nearly as many players as a game that has an active community, both on the official forums and on other platforms (discord servers, reddit, twitch, YouTube...). I wouldn't consider myself as being a "hardcore" 7 days to die player even though I have several hundreds hours of play; that being said, me still playing after all this time actually made 3 of my friends buy the game recently. Did I hand over more cash to TFP than the initial copy I bought 4 years ago ? Nope, but as you can see that doesn't mean that the fact i'm still playing didn't increase TFP's cash income.

 

The very same "hardcore community" is also the one making mods for the game, keeping it fresh and giving the game visibility on websites like nexusmods, and on YouTube by offering content people have never seen; and thus promoting how complete of an experience 7 days to die can be. Know what turns customers away ? A dead forum, a dead subreddit and no recent content on any platform whatsoever.

 

On another note, I'm also pretty sick of reading the argument of "this feature is unneeded since only 5% (or whatever low number you want to come up with) of the playerbase actually uses it". That is a very slippery slope, as it's either a guideline for the whole roadmap or a bad excuse when out of other arguments. Things like steel, gyrocoptorers, electricity all shouldn't have been added to the game if you truly believe this is a decent argument.

[Matt 1977]

@madmole has the flying fox been axed completely?

Elevator still a possibility ?

 

[MechanicalLens]

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[beHypE]

Of course it does matter whether I have 5 minutes or 5000 hours in game.

 

On an individual scale because I wouldn't ever recommend a game that I have played only 5 hours to my friends and family. The fact that I've played the game thoroughly both showed my friends that the game is indeed a deep and rich experience, and the fact I have all that knowledge about the game was the reason I could speak up for it as well as I did.

On a larger scale because while most of us aren't influencers, we are a good enough metric to show that the game is indeed playable for hundreds of hours on end. Do you think Minecraft would have had the success it has if the game got stale after 10 hours ? No, the sales rely on the reputation the game made for itself that you can do and build endless things. None of those hours spent made the company any more money than if people played 5 minutes and left, but the overall success is quite largely affected by the perceived longetivity of the gameplay.

 

Serious question, why are we adding demolishers and bandits since those are most likely a 5% feature ? Is it only marketing, to show "the game has bandits" so that people buy the game ? Because if not, something's fishy about the logic of not adding stuff that concerns a minority.

 

[MechanicalLens]

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[Guppys Fur]

5 hours ago, Necrophobic said:

 

this is awesome your finally reskinning/updating zombies.. When are we going to see limbless zombies, children,teenage zombies and more wildlife zombies.. we need more more more more more!!

 

 

Answer: Allready in, Never, Never, On their way.

And i disagree with the last sentence with reasons Mr. Mole allready gave.

 

PS: Can you please delete the Pics out of your quote or mark them as spoilers?

Thanks Mate.

[Damocles]

  

25 minutes ago, beHypE said:

Of course it does matter whether I have 5 minutes or 5000 hours in game.

 

On an individual scale because I wouldn't ever recommend a game that I have played only 5 hours to my friends and family. The fact that I've played the game thoroughly both showed my friends that the game is indeed a deep and rich experience, and the fact I have all that knowledge about the game was the reason I could speak up for it as well as I did.

On a larger scale because while most of us aren't influencers, we are a good enough metric to show that the game is indeed playable for hundreds of hours on end. Do you think Minecraft would have had the success it has if the game got stale after 10 hours ? No, the sales rely on the reputation the game made for itself that you can do and build endless things. None of those hours spent made the company any more money than if people played 5 minutes and left, but the overall success is quite largely affected by the perceived longetivity of the gameplay.

 

Serious question, why are we adding demolishers and bandits since those are most likely a 5% feature ? Is it only marketing, to show "the game has bandits" so that people buy the game ? Because if not, something's fishy about the logic of not adding stuff that concerns a minority.

 

 

There are some smaller games, that already offer good entertainment, even if they are only played a few hours. having some novel idea, presentation, mechanic or story.

Not every good game must offer hundreds of hours of gameplay to leave a lasting impression.

[MechanicalLens]

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[Matt115]

5 hours ago, Necrophobic said:

 

this is awesome your finally reskinning/updating zombies.. When are we going to see limbless zombies, children,teenage zombies and more wildlife zombies.. we need more more more more more!!

 

 

I suport this idea, it should be zombies in scap armor, iron armor aka bandits , maybe wild zombie teen could be cool like in rags or in plant fiber clothes - fast and harder to hit becouse is smaller ,  children  zombie in school will be looking  logicalXD or swat zombies in cities or near police cars , but it should be more dead bodys too : hanging survivor, shoted scientists in lab, killed soldier, old skeleton on desert or in caves 

[Deadalready]

2 hours ago, Gazz said:

You said it yourself. The problem is not the magazine capacity. That would only be a hack that we _could_ do 5 minutes before going gold.

Until the gun mechanics/animations are polished up this is not even a topic.

I've read this post multiple times and I don't understand the reply.

 

I read this as:

• The magazine capacity is NOT a problem
• It's too hard to polish up the gun mechanics so it's not going to be changed
• It's easy to change magazine sizes but we're not going to do it until we polish up gun mechanics? Or we could do it and it'd be easy, but simply won't.

My belief is all of it needs improving especially magazine capacity. A bandaid fix would be to up the capacity until the more difficult mechanics are fixed.

[meganoth]

28 minutes ago, Deadalready said:

I've read this post multiple times and I don't understand the reply.

 

I read this as:

• The magazine capacity is NOT a problem
• It's too hard to polish up the gun mechanics so it's not going to be changed
• It's easy to change magazine sizes but we're not going to do it until we polish up gun mechanics? Or we could do it and it'd be easy, but simply won't.

My belief is all of it needs improving especially magazine capacity. A bandaid fix would be to up the capacity until the more difficult mechanics are fixed.

 

If you simply increase magazine size on the sniper rifle it just becomes an M60 with a different texture. The objective is to get guns into the game that are very distinct in handling and usage.

[beHypE]

The problem is there's no way to make all guns really effective. The machine guns are the best guns in the game, because they cover absolutely every situation you'll ever find yourself into when playing against zombies. One zombie, multiple zombies, close, far, running, walking, it has it all covered. You can even attach a scope to it and have a perfect sniper...

 

It wouldn't be so bad if the whole skill tree wasn't designed around having to pick your weapon depending on your specialization. Let's face it, perception is just terrible for every-day gameplay. Snipers are a no-no for POI looting, explosives are useful on horde nights only and the spear is... well, quite quickly not that useful. 

Int is not that much different. Stun batons are terrible, and while 2 junks turrets definitely do work, it's so situational to use them. You need decent space and a "choke point", if you fall into a trap it's super tough to deploy them quickly, if zombies cross the deployment point, you have to run in circles to bring them back into line of sight... I mean, on day 23 (2 hour days) I very often just kill zombies with my unspecced AK47 as a pure int build, because... well, it gets the job done with so much less of a hassle.

 

I hope A19 fixes most of those issues with the new weapons. But I doubt snipers will ever be useful outside of very niche situations, for the game doesn't offer long-range threats on a regular basis.

 

[MechanicalLens]

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