Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Adam the Waster]

2 minutes ago, Space4Ace said:

Min-Max? Isn't that Mad Max's son? 😁

no. just no

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, strask said:

Guard Pigs and hammocks are both things I approve of.

Yeah, I know D&D used dice for character creation, but it's the trademark that non roleplayers all know that gives them the idea of the right sort of game in general. That's why I said, or tried to say, that I was talking about other games in that general style.

Original D&D sure, but then came AD&D 1, then 2,3,... I don't know where it started, but most versions had Point-buy as an alternative. So instead of rolling dice for stats the dungeon master would allow you to pick the attributes of your character. You could buy a high stat in one attribute by lowering others. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but if every fighter has int and charisma at the lowest value, where's the role play?

 

 

 

 

[strask]

40 minutes ago, meganoth said:

but if every fighter has int and charisma at the lowest value, where's the role play?

It is partially destroyed. So, the game has less roleplay-fu, but more puzzle-fu, and that is appropriate to my mood on certain occasions. But certainly not all the time.

[Quagmire1428]

52 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

No, it's Mad Max's half-born brother.

half born? you mean the other half is still stuck up the erm . . . in her . . . nevermind. let's move on! 🤣🤣

[Sigil_Thane]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

Original D&D sure, but then came AD&D 1, then 2,3,... I don't know where it started, but most versions had Point-buy as an alternative. So instead of rolling dice for stats the dungeon master would allow you to pick the attributes of your character. You could buy a high stat in one attribute by lowering others. Which isn't necessarily wrong, but if every fighter has int and charisma at the lowest value, where's the role play?

I've never cared for point buy (As a 40+ year vet of Pen and Paper RPGs) ...It may be politically incorrect, but people just aren't balanced in the real world. You get the guy that played the Mountain in GoT that can shot put a washing machine and Geena Davis who can remember exact details of every day of her life (and is in Mensa), and then you have people like myself.

24 minutes ago, strask said:

It is partially destroyed. So, the game has less roleplay-fu, but more numbercrunch-fu, and that is appropriate to my mood on certain occasions. But certainly not all the time.

The Roleplay is in the HOW of the stats... C'mon. Be Creative!

 

Low Charisma? Maybe you smell bad, Or Talk with in annoying pitch, OR are too gruff, OR Maybe have a habit of blurting out things that are better unsaid.

 

Low Dexterity? maybe you are clumsy, OR you had suffered an injury that makes you move stiffly, OR maybe there is even the effect of a curse which tends to make you dodge INTO attacks instead of away.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Sigil_Thane said:

I've never cared for point buy (As a 40+ year vet of Pen and Paper RPGs) ...It may be politically incorrect, but people just aren't balanced in the real world. You get the guy that played the Mountain in GoT that can shot put a washing machine and Geena Davis who can remember exact details of every day of her life (and is in Mensa), and then you have people like myself.

The Roleplay is in the HOW of the stats... C'mon. Be Creative!

 

Low Charisma? Maybe you smell bad, Or Talk with in annoying pitch, OR are too gruff, OR Maybe have a habit of blurting out things that are better unsaid.

 

Low Dexterity? maybe you are clumsy, OR you had suffered an injury that makes you move stiffly, OR maybe there is even the effect of a curse which tends to make you dodge INTO attacks instead of away.

There is no problem to play a fighter with low int and charisma, in fact there is no problem in playing any attribute distribution. But if a player always plays characters at the limits of the attribute system it heavily points to him not thinking of a character first and selecting appropriate attributes to fit that character but min/maxing an ideal class character and then inventing a fitting role. Often a min/maxer fighter will still make intelligent observations or choices instead of really roleplaying such an extraodinarilly dumb character.

 

 

 

[FileMachete]

50 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Often a min/maxer fighter will still make intelligent observations or choices instead of really roleplaying such an extraodinarilly dumb character.

Neebs Gaming?  <hehe those guys are funn-ee!>

 

& I can't find that early old vid clip of DnD player who keeps yelling asking if he can cast "???" while th dungeon master gets madder and madder (what was it..dangit won't come to me, bah.)

[TheRani]

52 minutes ago, meganoth said:

There is no problem to play a fighter with low int and charisma, in fact there is no problem in playing any attribute distribution. But if a player always plays characters at the limits of the attribute system it heavily points to him not thinking of a character first and selecting appropriate attributes to fit that character but min/maxing an ideal class character and then inventing a fitting role. Often a min/maxer fighter will still make intelligent observations or choices instead of really roleplaying such an extraodinarilly dumb character.

 

 

 

I have a brawler in a tabletop game with low Int and Cha, and part of her backstory is that she was dropped on her head in infancy.  Repeatedly.  Her mom was a klutz.  She's a total sweetheart, loves to help people, and is a hugger.  She frequently greets people with a hug.  And she has decent Wis and points in Sense Motive.  I often start encounters by saying, "She looks at *whatever NPC* and senses their motives *Rolls Sense Motive check*.  Do they look like they need a hug?"   

[meganoth]

Other positive examples are in a few computer RPGs that actually provide dumb dialog choices if you play a low-int character. At least Arcanum and Fallout 2 were often cited as games you really should replay as a brute.

 

 

[hiemfire]

43 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

& I can't find that early old vid clip of DnD player who keeps yelling asking if he can cast "???" while th dungeon master gets madder and madder (what was it..dangit won't come to me, bah.)

Magic Missile...

[FileMachete]

25 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

Magic Missile...

Yes!  That's it. Thank you hiemfire! "I'm attacking the darkness..." Ha! lol "summoner geeks"  https://youtu.be/zng5kRle4FA

 

@TheRani, too funny

[Adam the Waster]

me waiting for A19 sense i have nothing else to do and i have completed most of my challenges in A18

 

 

[FileMachete]

all I see are vast fields of Golden Rod !  ...  maybe I need help too... who'r you seeing Adam? 

[Adam the Waster]

1 minute ago, FileMachete said:

all I see are vast fields of Golden Rod !  ...  maybe I need help too... who'r you seeing Adam? 

i just eat the glowing mushrooms under my deck and i feel better!

[faatal]

On 6/11/2020 at 2:46 AM, DaVegaNL said:

June 26th is my birthday, I appreciate the gesture

Mine is the 24th and I'm supposed to be in that days stream.

[MechanicalLens]

deleted

[faatal]

On 6/11/2020 at 5:11 AM, beHypE said:

Great news ! Roland, can you give us some broad figures about how the super early experimental went? Number of people who opted-in, number of new bugs that it helped fixing, stuff like that. I guess the stability of 19.0 should be way better than all previous x.0 versions, for a lot more people have already tested it. 

More testers just tend to find the same bugs multiple times. Once in a while you catch something new.

On 6/11/2020 at 8:54 AM, Perlin_Worm said:

What a horrible task it must be to dig through developers Github and write up release notes. Do you assign it to the new guy?

Not as bad as that. All devs add non trivial changes to the release notes doc when they commit to SVN. It then just needs editing in the end.

[Khalagar]

13 hours ago, Gazz said:

Some players strongly feel that they must have XYZ right when they want to but that's what perks are for.

They then go around projecting their own preferences on everyone else. =P

 

I mean, I was like 2% joking with the "mandatory tier" perks thing, but not really. You can of course play without them, but some perks are just a bajillion times better than others, it's going to happen with any game.

 

You can play without Miner 69 and Mother Lode for example, but it's going to be drastically more tedious to do basically anything. You'll have to buy literally everything from traders and rely purely on their RNG to see if they even have anything you need, and won't be able to just tear through the walls and safes in a PoI.

 

It's totally doable, just pointlessly tedious when you can just perk into two of the best perks in the game that will increase QoL drastically

[Adam the Waster]

32 minutes ago, faatal said:

Mine is the 24th and I'm supposed to be in that days stream.

so does that mean its coming out around the summer sale?

[Aldranon]

21 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

I mean, I was like 2% joking with the "mandatory tier" perks thing, but not really. You can of course play without them, but some perks are just a bajillion times better than others, it's going to happen with any game.

 

You can play without Miner 69 and Mother Lode for example, but it's going to be drastically more tedious to do basically anything. You'll have to buy literally everything from traders and rely purely on their RNG to see if they even have anything you need, and won't be able to just tear through the walls and safes in a PoI.

 

It's totally doable, just pointlessly tedious when you can just perk into two of the best perks in the game that will increase QoL drastically

 

As half the world is underground I like to dig, I perk mining at least a little and sometimes make huge underground places (nothing like JC's Channel though).

I worry that TFP plan removing voxels for their next game, as they have very little content past basements.  The little marker boulders could end up being permanent or respawn after a few days.

 

But if their next game in is the whole New York city area with all the subways and sewers, then voxels would be a bad idea as the game would be so HUGE!   

[meganoth]

17 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

I mean, I was like 2% joking with the "mandatory tier" perks thing, but not really. You can of course play without them, but some perks are just a bajillion times better than others, it's going to happen with any game.

 

You can play without Miner 69 and Mother Lode for example, but it's going to be drastically more tedious to do basically anything. You'll have to buy literally everything from traders and rely purely on their RNG to see if they even have anything you need, and won't be able to just tear through the walls and safes in a PoI.

 

It's totally doable, just pointlessly tedious when you can just perk into two of the best perks in the game that will increase QoL drastically

You won't find many people disagreeing about miner69 and motherlode, but you made the same "mandatory" comment about a lot of other perks and there is much much less consensus about those.

 

[Damocles]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

Other positive examples are in a few computer RPGs that actually provide dumb dialog choices if you play a low-int character. At least Arcanum and Fallout 2 were often cited as games you really should replay as a brute.

 

 

I remember Fallout having the low intelligence dialogs. Did not know Arcanum also had it.

[madmole]

On 6/10/2020 at 12:18 PM, Guppycur said:

I think the game is much scarier when you're in a building surrounded by zombies than when you're outside of a building and most of the zombies are hidden within. 

 

I don't mind the sleeper system, but I do wish it was not the predominant system.

 

At least make a system where if sleepers wake up, the biome spawns increase and zombies head your general direction.

That would put a great deal more pressure on you.

Hopefully the event manager can do that when its done.

41 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

I mean, I was like 2% joking with the "mandatory tier" perks thing, but not really. You can of course play without them, but some perks are just a bajillion times better than others, it's going to happen with any game.

 

You can play without Miner 69 and Mother Lode for example, but it's going to be drastically more tedious to do basically anything. You'll have to buy literally everything from traders and rely purely on their RNG to see if they even have anything you need, and won't be able to just tear through the walls and safes in a PoI.

 

It's totally doable, just pointlessly tedious when you can just perk into two of the best perks in the game that will increase QoL drastically

I perked into strength and still don't mine into safes, the breeching rounds are king. One shot pops open a small safe. Not everyone mines. People have their play styles. People coming over from minecraft will spec into mining, people coming from COD will do fortitude. Quake players might want perception for railgun and rl type experience. People who like stealth games or gunslinging might go with agility. I wouldn't assume everyone plays like me and neither should you. While the axe is sufficient and free for me because I like to build, I don't use it in combat and I "waste" the perk points on clubs because its just more satisfying to me. I'm not a hardcore min maxer though, I do a bit of role playing and do what is fun instead of always the most efficient. My new base is beautiful and horrible at the same time, but I like a challenge

https://twitter.com/joelhuenink/status/1271527086188949504?s=20

[Damocles]

Would be also an idea to have a group of zombies spawn and try to destroy the players running / recently used workstations when the player comes close again to them (eg coming back to the base).

This would make the base more vulnerable to attack, and thus require closing doors when leaving the base etc..

 

So the next best target to the player is the player property.

 

(also vehicles should be a target)