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Alpha 19 Dev Diary


madmole

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33 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

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Fort Sage is coming along nicely. :) Took me ages to gather all this cobblestone. Eventually this will be my horde base.

 

Inspiration comes from the one and only Madmole. :)

my Fort is a old trailer found near trader joel (it has a cow skull on it!)

 

Spoiler

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22 hours ago, madmole said:

How hard is it to just exit the game and reload it? I am usually afk anyway and its noon by the time I notice my game started, so I start a new game using the same seed I just baked. Like I start a new game when I'm going to dinner so when I come back it's ready to play so I just start a new one using the map and delete that save.

 

You should add that information to the map loading screen.

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There's been a fair bit of drama around here during the night. Sirens, lights and such. No sleep for me so the following is a mess. Reader beware heh.

2 hours ago, Khalagar said:

stamina as a stat is just the "Limit on how often you can actually play the game" so super punishing stamina is more tedious than fun

That's a nice clear way of putting it, imo, and I agree.

 

While of course I have no idea what TFPs ultimate ideal stamina balance is, it's clear that whatever balance is found during the closed phase of recent new alpha coding and testing, stamina winds up being more punishing on release than where it winds up after it's been stable for a point release or so.

 

I expect I'm missing something in the overall, but these bits combined confuse me somewhat;

1) All Tools and Weapons have individual stamina costs. Obvious yes. Allows for Sledges to have very high cost vs a knife.

2) Player gathered materials, wood, stone, ores, etc., are basically worthless to sell to traders.

3) Zombie block damage is higher than it was (a16) so Wood or Flagstone horde bases are not really a viable option.

Assuming no exploits, player defended w low tech weapons, and not spending majority of week cutting wood for a vast spike field. I have watched MechanicalLens' first horde night vid, 7x7 solid cobblestone tower with bar overhangs, and zeds didn't break even one block. Mech had a number of pipebombs & molotovs and a T1 double barrel & T1 Pistol (not used) plus a number of zeds focused on the jump-gap access structure that allowed for some nice clustered pipebomb shots. And obviously Mech's a veteran player.

4) Point of 3 is that Cobblestone is bare minimum, and I'll cheery pick a couple bits from MMs recent post about his current game;

  "I'm on day 12, another shotgun build. I have my 7x7 tower with r concrete up 4 layers and iron bars are almost finished"

  <<I'm guessing he's forged a fair bit of Iron for Bars: takes 530 Iron Ingots for a single wide wrap of a 7x7>>

  "I already made over 4k concrete mix all from loot!"

4a) Between getting enough iron (6000?) for several hundred ingots (assumption), and shoveling all the blue bags for Cobblestone (assumption, could be building w wet concrete), and shoveling all that POI bagged cement, plus either scrapping POI cobblestone for 4000 stone or mining it (I think he mentioned he hasn't done any stone mining?) also needed 4000 sand to make 4k concrete mix.

Could also be having good luck at Trader and buying most/all? cobblestone used. 1000 Cobblestone scraps down to 750 Stone but maybe it's more abundant in A19?

4b) Sry, got sidetracked with particulars. Point is MM has done a fair bit of at least shovel work. And he mentions how good the shotgun is, "once you get STR up there", so the stamina/food/drink cost may not be a major issue with a Strength build. Or could be his knowledge of what to drink & eat, and when, etc.

 

5) Regardless of character build template, they all need to be able to fight the horde, and have a chance to survive, during blood moons.

Even 'crazy' templates shouldn't result in guaranteed bm failure. Keep in mind recent discussions of being able to pick up and use any weapon.

 

6) Could easily disconnect 'mining' centric perks from Strength into their own tree, or into stand alone bits. Sure they make sense under Strength, but"Gameplay trumps realism".

 

7) The Building aspect of 7dtd seems to be a significant attraction for new players. I know building and a voxel world were the two biggest initial draws for me.

 

8.) Current meta of just using up a POI for a horde night base, while valid, doesn't seem like a thing to be encouraged, at least to me. So, (again my opinion) it would seem to be beneficial to support players building their own horde night bases.

 

9) Honest question: What's the downside if a player gathers a bunch of materials early game? Other than Flag/Cobble there's nothing you can do with them without the workstations. Along with crafting times there's also the Heat Map mechanic available to temper workstation useage.

For oldtimers think back a couple few alphas. How many working stations were in the average world? Wrenches? How long till you had/found a Forge, Workbench & a Mixer? Much less a Minibike? Or a dang Mining Helmet (argh!..)?

Downside 1) break many blocks, make mucho xp. fix=lower xp gained from breaking blocks

Downside 2) players can break into safes too easily.  really...? anyone using a stone axe to crack a 5000 hp safe would chew it open if that's all they had :)

Downside 3) players won't burn through all their food.  ..kinda got me there. can't recall what the food burn is in 18.4 for an all night pickaxe mining session. will say the food consumption for a 'normal' day out looting is pretty low, but I'm all guns, drugs (healing) & motorcycle.

 

Anyway. I'm not saying that day 1 we should be able to pick up any shovel/pick and just endlessly swing.

Don't want it to take 50 swings of a stoneaxe to break a 500 hp stone block, and exhaust stamina every 4 swings either.

 

Final bit: I'd prefer to see things balanced to fit TFPs goals food usage goals that also supported 'builders' _not_ spec'ing so heavily into Strength.

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7 hours ago, Jugginator said:

Umm, speaking of those trader reward nerfs lol @madmole / @Gazz(Or whomever does trader quest balancing atm lol) https://www.reddit.com/r/7daystodie/comments/hjfjv9/a19_my_first_tier_2_quest_reward/

 

They got a level 4 tactical rifle for the reward on day 1 quest 2 lol.

The reddit post said it was their first Tier 2 quest. I'm not sure where you are getting "Day 1" from. TFP have already said the Traders aren't using levelled loot yet and are aware of the imbalance. Also, that player was not playing vanilla and was using mods. There's no way to know if any of the mods affected trader rewards.

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1 minute ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

The reddit post said it was their first Tier 2 quest. I'm not sure where you are getting "Day 1" from. TFP have already said the Traders aren't using levelled loot yet and are aware of imbalance. Also, that player was not playing vanilla and was using mods. There's no way to know if any of the mods affected trader rewards.

Ah whoops lol my bad. Someone linked it to me and I didn't investigate further 😀 It was like 3 am lol

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Loving the gore, and decapitations are well more frequent now just as I hoped for with a zombie game.

 

The zombies and environment on the fly reactive physics are excellent, again so  much wanted this and here we get it.

 

I was wondering if you could apply floppy physics to the crawler (plus on the others would be cool), that would make its entrails look way more slinky like.

 

A19 - is so slick.

 

 

 

 

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I read people on Steam complaining about the injuries effect duration.

I think they got a point since new players can easily get discouraged if they break a leg and rage-quit asking for a refund.

 

I was thinking that maybe the duration could scale with the difficulty level. For example when at default difficulty the minor injuries could last around 2 mins, moderate would last 10 mins and major around 20 mins, while if you play on harder settings they could scale +25% per level or something.

 

What do you think?

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37 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

4a) Between getting enough iron (6000?) for several hundred ingots (assumption), and shoveling all the blue bags for Cobblestone (assumption, could be building w wet concrete), and shoveling all that POI bagged cement, plus either scrapping POI cobblestone for 4000 stone or mining it (I think he mentioned he hasn't done any stone mining?) also needed 4000 sand to make 4k concrete mix.

 

I don't know if it was possible in A18, but in A19 you can scrap cement down to 3/4 of its ratio in stone. I hit up several barns and construction sites within the first week and gathered up all the cement pallets to scrap into... I think I got 2 stacks of stone from all of that? Plus I went small with this base; the inside ring is only flagstone and not cobblestone (double thick walls), since my current base that I'm working on is just chewing through my resources.

Also, I would hardly call myself a veteran. Haha. I've known about the game and followed it through content creators on YouTube since A10 or A11, but I only started playing myself when A17 EXP came around.

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51 minutes ago, FileMachete said:

There's been a fair bit of drama around here during the night. Sirens, lights and such. No sleep for me so the following is a mess. Reader beware heh.

That's a nice clear way of putting it, imo, and I agree.

 

While of course I have no idea what TFPs ultimate ideal stamina balance is, it's clear that whatever balance is found during the closed phase of recent new alpha coding and testing, stamina winds up being more punishing on release than where it winds up after it's been stable for a point release or so.

 

I expect I'm missing something in the overall, but these bits combined confuse me somewhat;

1) All Tools and Weapons have individual stamina costs. Obvious yes. Allows for Sledges to have very high cost vs a knife.

2) Player gathered materials, wood, stone, ores, etc., are basically worthless to sell to traders.

3) Zombie block damage is higher than it was (a16) so Wood or Flagstone horde bases are not really a viable option.

Assuming no exploits, player defended w low tech weapons, and not spending majority of week cutting wood for a vast spike field. I have watched MechanicalLens' first horde night vid, 7x7 solid cobblestone tower with bar overhangs, and zeds didn't break even one block. Mech had a number of pipebombs & molotovs and a T1 double barrel & T1 Pistol (not used) plus a number of zeds focused on the jump-gap access structure that allowed for some nice clustered pipebomb shots. And obviously Mech's a veteran player.

4) Point of 3 is that Cobblestone is bare minimum, and I'll cheery pick a couple bits from MMs recent post about his current game;

  "I'm on day 12, another shotgun build. I have my 7x7 tower with r concrete up 4 layers and iron bars are almost finished"

  <<I'm guessing he's forged a fair bit of Iron for Bars: takes 530 Iron Ingots for a single wide wrap of a 7x7>>

  "I already made over 4k concrete mix all from loot!"

4a) Between getting enough iron (6000?) for several hundred ingots (assumption), and shoveling all the blue bags for Cobblestone (assumption, could be building w wet concrete), and shoveling all that POI bagged cement, plus either scrapping POI cobblestone for 4000 stone or mining it (I think he mentioned he hasn't done any stone mining?) also needed 4000 sand to make 4k concrete mix.

Could also be having good luck at Trader and buying most/all? cobblestone used. 1000 Cobblestone scraps down to 750 Stone but maybe it's more abundant in A19?

4b) Sry, got sidetracked with particulars. Point is MM has done a fair bit of at least shovel work. And he mentions how good the shotgun is, "once you get STR up there", so the stamina/food/drink cost may not be a major issue with a Strength build. Or could be his knowledge of what to drink & eat, and when, etc.

 

5) Regardless of character build template, they all need to be able to fight the horde, and have a chance to survive, during blood moons.

Even 'crazy' templates shouldn't result in guaranteed bm failure. Keep in mind recent discussions of being able to pick up and use any weapon.

 

6) Could easily disconnect 'mining' centric perks from Strength into their own tree, or into stand alone bits. Sure they make sense under Strength, but"Gameplay trumps realism".

 

7) The Building aspect of 7dtd seems to be a significant attraction for new players. I know building and a voxel world were the two biggest initial draws for me.

 

8.) Current meta of just using up a POI for a horde night base, while valid, doesn't seem like a thing to be encouraged, at least to me. So, (again my opinion) it would seem to be beneficial to support players building their own horde night bases.

 

9) Honest question: What's the downside if a player gathers a bunch of materials early game? Other than Flag/Cobble there's nothing you can do with them without the workstations. Along with crafting times there's also the Heat Map mechanic available to temper workstation useage.

For oldtimers think back a couple few alphas. How many working stations were in the average world? Wrenches? How long till you had/found a Forge, Workbench & a Mixer? Much less a Minibike? Or a dang Mining Helmet (argh!..)?

Downside 1) break many blocks, make mucho xp. fix=lower xp gained from breaking blocks

Downside 2) players can break into safes too easily.  really...? anyone using a stone axe to crack a 5000 hp safe would chew it open if that's all they had :)

Downside 3) players won't burn through all their food.  ..kinda got me there. can't recall what the food burn is in 18.4 for an all night pickaxe mining session. will say the food consumption for a 'normal' day out looting is pretty low, but I'm all guns, drugs (healing) & motorcycle.

 

Anyway. I'm not saying that day 1 we should be able to pick up any shovel/pick and just endlessly swing.

Don't want it to take 50 swings of a stoneaxe to break a 500 hp stone block, and exhaust stamina every 4 swings either.

 

Final bit: I'd prefer to see things balanced to fit TFPs goals food usage goals that also supported 'builders' _not_ spec'ing so heavily into Strength.

with how bad the loot is for trader quests, he had a t2 sniper for 600 tokens lvl 1, and i did quests and rounded up (idk how) over 450 rounds so horde night i ran arounf with that...something tells me they will fix that?

 

Other issues/beneifts..?

• Finding 300+ BRASS in trash?? wtf lol
• SO...MUCH...GUNPOWDER (intended?)
• Parts are a lot harder to come by
• Traders being specialized is so nice. makes me actually travel
• If you havent, there are lots of mods already for a19 (check em out)

• exp gain seems slower
• Tools use? TFP explain this, why does a wrench in which you PHYSICALLY move, cost MORE stamina...then a Impact Driver you PRESS a BUTTON...
Ex - lvl 2 wrench = 45 harvest dmg and 20 stamina vs lvl 1 impact 66 harvest dmg and 26 stamina. Yes it harvests more, but i believe and think many will agree, make the recipe for a impact have a battery in it and make it used like the auger? 
• Repair kits are getting too generic. We need it more diverse to something even liek a weapons kit, armor kit, tool kit etc...idk why i need a repair kit to repair my cloth armor FYI LOL cant i just slap some cloth on it? didn't think i need some screwdrivers and wrenches for that...

• Zombie head trackign is so....fake like! They jsut watch me so perfectly like puppets and it needs to be more natural
• the new blood splatter is from a cartoon game or something it needs to be toned down from bright licqorice to something natural....who colored it? weird...

All in all, great update but DANG some moronic/weird stuff is happening in A19 now that makes 0 sense

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6 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

I've noticed an interesting change in zombie behavior when you are underground mining. At least with one zombie (I am unsure about groups), as long as you are moving around a little, it won't dig down to the player. It'll dig briefly, and then get back up and run to the player's current location. I was mining for an entire night just below the surface with a zombie above my head, and it repeated this pattern over and over, even now.

Interesting. I hope they changed screamer's behavior as well: in A18, underground mining she could sense and hear me so she would call reinforcements; harvesting my tree farm (6 blocks high), she could sense and hear me, but no reinforcement being called. 

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6 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

Again, comparing this to the inclusion of a chance of dysentery with bottled water. That addition encouraged players to use teas and to use the Water Purifier mod. This new stamina system reminds people that coffee exists. The difference here though is one system encourages, the other forces, but given the nature of these two, it's hard to encourage players to use stamina without making it entirely optional, and then useless to most out of lack of convenience. Up until recently in A18 (now 19) I never used coffee because it wasn't needed, I didn't need the bonus. Do I agree with this change? Yes and no.

 

I do agree with you though that it is a bit excessive. Perhaps 2/4 Sex Rex w/ coffee, or 3/4 Sex Rex with no coffee could be good for iron tools, and 3/4 Sex Rex with coffee or 4/4 Sex Rex with no coffee for steel tools would be a better system. It would give the player a choice: dump another point into Sex Rex, or use coffee, which would prevent the latter from gathering dust like it did for most people through the entirety of A17 and A18. To help with the motor tool upgrade later on, the forgettin' elixir (don't make me spell it out legitimately, I know I butchered it) exists as an option from the traders.

 

You look at sex.rex but in the first week miner69 seems to me the more important perk here. Because miner actually decreases stamina use (and therefore food use) while sex.rex only allows you to expend it faster (AFAIK, I don't have the game near me to check). And in the first week food is a major concern

 

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4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

 

 

You look at sex.rex but in the first week miner69 seems to me the more important perk here. Because miner actually decreases stamina use (and therefore food use) while sex.rex only allows you to expend it faster (AFAIK, I don't have the game near me to check). And in the first week food is a major concern

 

does 69er work on all tools? or just shovel axe pic?

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1 hour ago, FileMachete said:

Final bit: I'd prefer to see things balanced to fit TFPs goals food usage goals that also supported 'builders' _not_ spec'ing so heavily into Strength.

If someone's goal is to have a player-built horde base by Day 7 they can do it. You can mine enough clay and rock or loot enough cobblestone without a heavy investment in Strength.  You also don't need anything fancy for Day 7. I had two-thick cobblestone walls and the Day 7 horde only managed to break one block and damage some others.  

 

One small clarification. Builders don't need strength. Miners do. If you want to mine for base building materials you will need to invest some points in strength. It doesn't take much. If you aren't investing any points in miner 69er and Sexy-rex as a miner you are unlikely to have a good time. 

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21 minutes ago, lord_ahriman said:

Interesting. I hope they changed screamer's behavior as well: in A18, underground mining she could sense and hear me so she would call reinforcements; harvesting my tree farm (6 blocks high), she could sense and hear me, but no reinforcement being called. 

That hasn't happened to me so far. As an added bonus, the Screamers obviously ragdoll now if they fall into your mine, giving you time to kill her before she gets up and screams.

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

 

 

You look at sex.rex but in the first week miner69 seems to me the more important perk here. Because miner actually decreases stamina use (and therefore food use) while sex.rex only allows you to expend it faster (AFAIK, I don't have the game near me to check). And in the first week food is a major concern

 

No arguments coming from me; my first perks that I spec into are always Miner 69er and Sex Rex.

5 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

If someone's goal is to have a player-built horde base by Day 7 they can do it. You can mine enough clay and rock or loot enough cobblestone without a heavy investment in Strength.  You also don't need anything fancy for Day 7. I had two-thick cobblestone walls and the Day 7 horde only managed to break one block and damage some others.  

 

One small clarification. Builders don't need strength. Miners do. If you want to mine for base building materials you will need to invest some points in strength. It doesn't take much. If you aren't investing any points in miner 69er and Sexy-rex as a miner you are unlikely to have a good time. 

That depends. If you're into constructing towering, imposing fortresses with tens of thousands of resources poured into them, AND you want that as a horde base? I'd argue that the miner and the builder work in tandem here. (Unless I am simply echoing your original point here, and if I am, I misunderstood your post.)

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56 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

I read people on Steam complaining about the injuries effect duration.

I think they got a point since new players can easily get discouraged if they break a leg and rage-quit asking for a refund.

 

I was thinking that maybe the duration could scale with the difficulty level. For example when at default difficulty the minor injuries could last around 2 mins, moderate would last 10 mins and major around 20 mins, while if you play on harder settings they could scale +25% per level or something.

 

What do you think?

I think the duration of injuries is fine. They ensure that your actions have consequences.  Besides, the duration of Injuries can be shortened with consumables and by spending perk points. The injuries give you a reason not to Rambo zombies in the first week before you've gotten armor, consumables, and perk points. There are always going to be players who would rather eat glass than overcome adversity.  The game shouldn't be balanced around those players. As to new players, this game has always had a steep learning curve. If someone rage quits because of an injury, a survival game is probably just not their cup of tea.

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13 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

If someone's goal is to have a player-built horde base by Day 7 they can do it. You can mine enough clay and rock or loot enough cobblestone without a heavy investment in Strength.  You also don't need anything fancy for Day 7. I had two-thick cobblestone walls and the Day 7 horde only managed to break one block and damage some others.  

 

One small clarification. Builders don't need strength. Miners do. If you want to mine for base building materials you will need to invest some points in strength. It doesn't take much. If you aren't investing any points in miner 69er and Sexy-rex as a miner you are unlikely to have a good time. 

Generally I agree. But even if you try to get your materials from building/construction sites you save a lot of time with miner69 because the resource piles have to be mined as well, not looted. Maybe shoveling or axing resource stacks in buildings should use LL boni instead of miner69 boni. Or maybe they already do and I never noticed 😉

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2 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

It's linked in the red area at the top of the forum. It may not show up on mobile and so here is the link: https://community.7daystodie.com/bug-test-1/

Thank you but the only thing that is linked there for me is "Updating to Alpha 19 instructions". Bug report forum should be accessible via link from "home" landing page and not via direct link only.

 

Moreover, that means my topic in the "old" bug report forum from yesterday does not exist anymore? Oh well... not gonna take those screenshots again.

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Just now, meganoth said:

Generally I agree. But even if you try to get your materials from building/construction sites you save a lot of time with miner69 because the resource piles have to be mined as well, not looted. Maybe shoveling or axing resource stacks in buildings should use LL boni instead of miner69 boni. Or maybe they already do and I never noticed 😉

I agree with that. It's just a matter of priorities. Personally, I think miner 69er is important because it saves you time breaking blocks. If your goal is to have a Day 7 Horde base instead of using a POI, I think you should be spending points in miner 69er, mother lode, and sexy-rex. 1 point in each is sufficient. I don't consider that a "heavy" investment. 

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We had our first horde night in A19 and it ended in less than an hour and a half. In past alphas this was how it was when you killed enough zombies but in A18 they would come all night long. Are there supposed to be a finite amount of zombies or is it a bug or was A18 a bug?

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