Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[betam4x]

Not every game needs to be 100% moddable from start to finish. A lot of games aren't. Personally, I'd rather see a sequel that is built with mods and multiplayer in mind.

[RhinoW]

3 minutes ago, betam4x said:

When Madmole said they were gearing up for gold, I doubted. After playing Alpha 19 for some time, I've become a believer. This game feels something like 90% done. Outside of bug fixes, the only areas I see that need improvement are Random Gen, the music system, and (maybe) storyline related lore.. It's both scary and sad that one day we won't have another Alpha to look forward to. I've been with this game since it came out of Kickstarter (I don't back things on Kickstarter). I've watched it evolve from a quirky fun early access game 

 

I'm sure some other people have other metrics they measure the game by. However, this game feels pretty close to complete to me. I personally hope Alpha 20 can wrap things up or get us almost all the way there. I also hope to see other games from The Pimps in the future....maybe another genre of game (like a Diablo style action RPG?) set in the 7DTD universe? Who knows.

 

Side Note: The music has definite Ultima vibes to it in some areas.

It's finally on the right track since A17, but I wouldn't say it's close to the finish line. As much as I love the game, I can say that the most hours I (and probably more players) put into it, were because of the promise of a new update and changes, otherwise I wouldn't reach 50hrs if it stayed in A12 (when i started).

 

There's still lots of polishing and concrete mix to add into the house.

I'm the guy that "whines" about the gun play because it still feels very wrong and stiff (artificial recoil and bad shooting anims, awful animation timings, desynced sounds, bad particles, bad viewmodels, bad aiming down sights models, bad animations for some weapons). The only weapon that escapes this is the DB shotgun.

Melees also suffer from this.

 

Lack of zombie variety and repetition is still an issue.

The whole Hive Mind AI still has some issues (like focusing on 1 block out of the sudden).

Modifications are still under-explored (and still need visual upgrades for most of them).

Vehicles still need some form of modification/customization.

We still need more home defense blocks / block redesign (like the barbed wire) / turret upgrades (durability, like the blocks).

Some PoI's are in dire need of specific doors (like the new stores, they need the metal frame glass doors instead of those metal glass frames around them).

Players still need double doors and more doors in general.

More craftable lights that they removed in A17.

 

 

Things that are completely finished?

- The core loop of the game is the most solid i've seen in any survival game. (and that's not something you can say for most games)

- The whole freaking concept of it (a survival game with a purpose, when was that invented?)

- The quantity of the different additions and concepts (they're still a bit hollow, bit the whole modification, vehicle, electricity additions fits very well into the game).

 

 

So yeah, it's mostly polishing and finishing up the frameworks they've added, the game is getting insanely solid and I love it.

 

 

[wolfbain5]

3 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

That's basically standard revolver for Colts of the era... 

I needs ta redjamacte meself on colts, been a remington man for many a coons age.

[hiemfire]

1 minute ago, wolfbain5 said:

been a remington man for many a coons age.

Nothing wrong with that. Both are pretty.  

[Adam the Waster]

Just now, hiemfire said:

Nothing wrong with that. Both are pretty.  

GUN IS GUN!
 

IF IT GOSES BOOM! IT'S GOOD FOR ME!

[wolfbain5]

Just now, Adam the Waster said:

GUN IS GUN!
 

IF IT GOSES BOOM! IT'S GOOD FOR ME!

here i was making fun of my ancestors and he out does me by going pure floridian

[betam4x]

11 minutes ago, RhinoW said:

It's finally on the right track since A17, but I wouldn't say it's close to the finish line. As much as I love the game, I can say that the most hours I (and probably more players) put into it, were because of the promise of a new update and changes, otherwise I wouldn't reach 50hrs if it stayed in A12 (when i started).

 

There's still lots of polishing and concrete mix to add into the house.

I'm the guy that "whines" about the gun play because it still feels very wrong and stiff (artificial recoil and bad shooting anims, awful animation timings, desynced sounds, bad particles, bad viewmodels, bad aiming down sights models, bad animations for some weapons). The only weapon that escapes this is the DB shotgun.

Melees also suffer from this.

 

Lack of zombie variety and repetition is still an issue.

The whole Hive Mind AI still has some issues (like focusing on 1 block out of the sudden).

Modifications are still under-explored (and still need visual upgrades for most of them).

Vehicles still need some form of modification/customization.

We still need more home defense blocks / block redesign (like the barbed wire) / turret upgrades (durability, like the blocks).

Some PoI's are in dire need of specific doors (like the new stores, they need the metal frame glass doors instead of those metal glass frames around them).

Players still need double doors and more doors in general.

More craftable lights that they removed in A17.

 

 

Things that are completely finished?

- The core loop of the game is the most solid i've seen in any survival game. (and that's not something you can say for most games)

- The whole freaking concept of it (a survival game with a purpose, when was that invented?)

- The quantity of the different additions and concepts (they're still a bit hollow, bit the whole modification, vehicle, electricity additions fits very well into the game).

 

 

So yeah, it's mostly polishing and finishing up the frameworks they've added, the game is getting insanely solid and I love it.

 

 

The game will never be perfect for most people. I've over 2,500 hours in at this point (at least), I've gotten my money's worth, and I still play.

 

A thought I had the other day was that Zombies could use the dye system for their clothing. That would add some variation to the clothes. I'm sure TFP is already on that.

 

The rest of the stuff you mentioned seems like bug fix material except perhaps vehicle mods, which would be a good target for A20.

 

EDIT: One thing I'd love for TFP to do is get one of the first Alphas working again so that we can see how far things have progressed. Maybe call it 7DTD Classic or something.

 

 

 

 

 

[hiemfire]

Just now, Adam the Waster said:

GUN IS GUN!
 

IF IT GOSES BOOM! IT'S GOOD FOR ME!

Hackbut? 

Spoiler

 

[Adam the Waster]

Just now, hiemfire said:

Hackbut? 

  Hide contents

 

YES!

 

or this

 

Spoiler

OR THIS

OR THIS

 

OR THIS

OR THIS

 

 

[hiemfire]

3 minutes ago, Adam the Waster said:

YES!

 

or this

 

  Reveal hidden contents

OR THIS

OR THIS

 

OR THIS

OR THIS

 

 

Hit reaction limit... Bacon? 🥓🥓 🥓🥓 🥓🥓 🥓🥓

[Adam the Waster]

Just now, hiemfire said:

Hit reaction limit... Bacon? 🥓🥓 🥓🥓 🥓🥓 🥓🥓

[hiemfire]

11 minutes ago, betam4x said:

EDIT: One thing I'd love for TFP to do is get one of the first Alphas working again so that we can see how far things have progressed. Maybe call it 7DTD Classic or something.

@Capp00 sort of has you covered there.  

 

 

[Khalagar]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

At best you are simply naive in actually believing that most everyone is just like you and you just cannot imagine that anyone could have fun playing in a different manner than you find fun.

 

Uh no, it's based on browsing the various forums, and I've already said you can play in a million different ways lol. You can play the entire game without killing a single zombie, it's 100% possible to do, so of course you can pick the absolute worst possible perks and build and never go to a trader and never build a base and never use a tool etc, and reach end game. You just have to ignore that kind of extreme niche play style when talking about what's common. Would you prefer, me to name out and list and link to 48 separate comments between here, the Steam forum, and Reddit, on every opinion? It's a lot easier to just say "Nobody picks charismatic nature, because it's bad" and explain why it's bad, rather than spend 2 days on the "nobody" part.

 

I work in a mix of marketing, working with customers directly, and working with our devs at my current company. Customers call me saying they want X, I then decide if that feedback needs to go to the trashcan because it's stupid / unreasonable, or pass it on to the devs as potential suggestions. With market research and customer complaints, you have to multiply every single complaint you see by a sizable number based on your total player base. Like with a game like this, for every single person you see say "Charismatic Nature kinda sucks" there are going to be dozens if not hundreds who said that to themselves and not on a forum and didn't pick it.

 

I'm a nerd and one my main hobbies is researching stuff and reading reviews, so I spend a LOT of time on forums reading other people's opinions. You have to take each with a grain of salt and evaluate it. Like I and a couple of other people said the Gardening perks are really good, and others said they don't ever pick them. You combine those together, and can tell that the perk is likely well balanced and is good for some builds and not others.

 

If everyone agrees that Miner 69 is almost always a must have, then you know it's probably a *really* good perk. If one turbo nerd has an excel sheet break down of stats and numbers showing objectively *why* one perk is better than another mathematically, it's worth ten times more than people saying "I like it but I don't know if it really works" etc

 

 

 

When dealing with devs / the money men in a company, the ONLY thing that matters is potential revenue gain numbers. That's it. So if something doesn't impact enough people to matter, there's no point in even talking about it. Like with the Junk Sledge, I know I'm in a minority with caring about that, so I try to frame my arguments as "people who play Int builds could benefit from it not being bad".

 

Even then though, when dealing with coding, many things seem WAY simpler to fix than they really are, and sheer numbers of people minorly annoyed don't really matter. I doubt you will find a single person, Madmole or Faatal or any dev included, that doesn't think it's a bit annoying / silly that two people can't talk to the trader at once or two people can't access a stash at once. The reason that kind of thing isn't fixed is because it's low priority and would almost certainly open a giant festering can of worms (ten thousand new bugs) so it's easier to just shrug and put it on the back burner

 

Sorry, not trying to make my opinions seem more important than anyone elses. Opinions be opinions yo. It's just pretty easy to get a group consensus when you spend a few hours on each of the main forums. The people on the forums are only a small sample, but you have to account for that with marketing. So if your playerbase is 1K people daily and on the forums you  see 4 turbo nerds and 12 regular nerds complaining about something, you can pretty easily extrapolate it to know there is at least a pretty sizeable chunk of the player base unhappy about it. 

 

Whether that makes it worth changing depends on what it is and what's involved, and end of all, "It's Madmoles world, we just play in it"

[v3tro]

2 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

are burnt trees suppose to be lootable?

 

 

Looking at your debuffs pains me. that` s a rough start.

 

 

 

Talking about rough start, i Just had the fastest permadeath game session ever, didn`t even last half a day. Generated 4k rwg map, had a nice spawning point (in a car lol), and my first buried supply quest led me to mountain lion.. I though hostile animals spawned at night or was that change only for forest biome?

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Joining in on Perks, I play with purist builds/roleplay, I never spend a single point outside my specific tree until it`s maxed out. Now I`m playing agility, maxed it out fully before I got anything else and I`m doing fine. I`m on day 60 (40min day, no loot respawn, bm every 2-4days, max alive 64, survivalist, nightmare) and don`t even have a bicycle and honestly don`t see a need for one as there is still plenty to do in my town near trader. After maxing out agility just now started investing in intellect (engineering, physician) for faster crafting times, not the items they unlock.

 

Reading people say one or other perk is a "must have" really baffles me. What were you guys doing before perks were introduced? Some of them are better than others, sure, that`s the beauty of it, but saying one is a mandatory perk is just wrong as it all depends from person to person.

[RhinoW]

9 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

Uh no, it's based on browsing the various forums, and I've already said you can play in a million different ways lol. You can play the entire game without killing a single zombie, it's 100% possible to do, so of course you can pick the absolute worst possible perks and build and never go to a trader and never build a base and never use a tool etc, and reach end game. You just have to ignore that kind of extreme niche play style when talking about what's common

 

I work in a mix of marketing, with customers directly, and with our devs at my current company. Customers call me saying they want X, I then decide if that feedback needs to go to the trashcan because it's stupid / unreasonable, or pass it on to the devs as potential suggestions. With market research and customer complaints, you have to multiply every single complaint you see by a sizable number based on your total player base. Like with a game like this, for every single person you see say "Charismatic Nature kinda sucks" there are going to be dozens if not hundreds who said that to themselves and not on a forum and didn't pick it.

 

I'm a nerd and one my main hobbies is researching stuff and reading reviews, so I spend a LOT of time on forums reading other people's opinions. You have to take each with a grain of salt and evaluate it. Like I and a couple of other people said the Gardening perks are really good, and others said they don't ever pick them. You combine those together, and can tell that the perk is likely well balanced and is good for some builds and not others.

 

If everyone agrees that Miner 69 is almost always a must have, then you know it's probably a *really* good perk. If one turbo nerd has an excel sheet break down of stats and numbers showing objectively *why* one perk is better than another mathematically, it's worth ten times more than people saying "I like it but I don't know if it really works" etc

 

What would you prefer, me to name out and list and link to 48 separate comments between here, the Steam forum, and Reddit, on every opinion? It's a lot easier to just say "Nobody picks charismatic nature, because it's bad" and explain why it's bad, rather than spend 2 days on the "nobody" part.

 

When dealing with devs / the money men in a company, the ONLY thing that matters is potential revenue gain numbers. That's it. So if something doesn't impact enough people to matter, there's no point in even talking about it. Like with the Junk Sledge, I know I'm in a minority with caring about that, so I try to frame my arguments as "people who play Int builds could benefit from it not being bad".

 

Even then though, when dealing with coding, many things seem WAY simpler to fix than they really are, and sheer numbers of people minorly annoyed don't really matter. I doubt you will find a single person, Madmole or Faatal or any dev included, that doesn't think it's a bit annoying / silly that two people can't talk to the trader at once or two people can't access a stash at once. The reason that kind of thing isn't fixed is because it's low priority and would almost certainly open a giant festering can of worms (ten thousand new bugs) so it's easier to just shrug and put it on the back burner

 

Sorry, not trying to make my opinions seem more important than anyone elses. Opinions be opinions yo. It's just pretty easy to get a group consensus when you spend a few hours on each of the main forums. The people on the forums are only a small sample, but you have to account for that with marketing. So if your playerbase is 1K people daily and on the forums you  see 4 turbo nerds and 12 regular nerds complaining about something, you can pretty easily extrapolate it to know there is at least a pretty sizeable chunk of the player base unhappy about it. 

 

Whether that makes it worth changing depends on what it is and what's involved, and end of all, "It's Madmoles world, we just play in it"

From my experience, Charismatic Nature has always been a late game perk and incredibly useful in Insane difficulty (where everything insta f*cking bleeds you) and I can see where most of the players come from with it's criticism. 

 

But I believe the main problem isn't with the perk, it is the fact that all the "Influence Perks" are obviously suited to a Charisma specific skill tree, since the new perk system is heavily inspired in fallout. And in the intellect tree, all the other perks take priority (otherwise why would you even go for intellect?).

[Khalagar]

Oof, being full quoted mid edit. I need to get better about editing before posting haha.

 

For the bleeding thing . . it's just so much easier to carry a healing item than to let bleed time out or invest 3 full perk points into reducing the bleed time and damage a bit. Like, I don't think I've ever let a bleed time out on it's own lol. You will have to heal either way, so why not use a medkit or bandage or sewing kit or one of the other ways to stop it instead and put those points into Physician or something with a way more tangible benefit

[RhinoW]

3 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Oof, being full quoted mid edit. I need to get better about editing before posting haha.

 

For the bleeding thing . . it's just so much easier to carry a healing item than to let bleed time out or invest 3 full perk points into reducing the bleed time and damage a bit. Like, I don't think I've ever let a bleed time out on it's own lol. You will have to heal either way, so why not use a medkit or bandage or sewing kit or one of the other ways to stop it instead and put those points into Physician or something with a way more tangible benefit

Hence why I said it's a late game perk, and I mostly picked it because of the +1 fortitude and half bleeding (trust me those are needed when you get swarmed in the shenlong tower or that one medical facility, you don't much big of a window to heal until you clear up the mess).

[Jarod_Silverstar]

50 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

@Capp00 sort of has you covered there.  

 

 

Amazing how much has changed but yet it is still the same core game and there are clearly things identifiable even through all the versions.

[Adam the Waster]

23 minutes ago, v3tro said:

Looking at your debuffs pains me. that` s a rough start.

 

 

 

Talking about rough start, i Just had the fastest permadeath game session ever, didn`t even last half a day. Generated 4k rwg map, had a nice spawning point (in a car lol), and my first buried supply quest led me to mountain lion.. I though hostile animals spawned at night or was that change only for forest biome?

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

 

Joining in on Perks, I play with purist builds/roleplay, I never spend a single point outside my specific tree until it`s maxed out. Now I`m playing agility, maxed it out fully before I got anything else and I`m doing fine. I`m on day 60 (40min day, no loot respawn, bm every 2-4days, max alive 64, survivalist, nightmare) and don`t even have a bicycle and honestly don`t see a need for one as there is still plenty to do in my town near trader. After maxing out agility just now started investing in intellect (engineering, physician) for faster crafting times, not the items they unlock.

 

Reading people say one or other perk is a "must have" really baffles me. What were you guys doing before perks were introduced? Some of them are better than others, sure, that`s the beauty of it, but saying one is a mandatory perk is just wrong as it all depends from person to person.

yeah i may restart but i may troop on! im on day 8, horde night was Hard, died to many times. but im going to get a job at white river so i can get the xp!

 

and with perks i like to having everything but i need to remind my self that i can't. im used to being a jack of all trades in say ARK, but i can't in this game, Not saying thats a problem! but i like to have my Victory garden, and mine, and be good with spears or robots. so its kinda ruff!

[Blake_]

@madmole I get it. You describe a valid gameplay path. And, while your vision seems valid you are wrong about the aproach . A mathematical and completely balanced aproach will always trump whatever you "feel" about, say, perk design. Once you perfectly balance an attribute taking into account health recovery, weapons, feel, uses and usefulness then you can add infinite content and it will always be good, exciting, perfect or chaotic for any kind of player as you describe.

 

The current design, thanks to you meets all of the above EXCEPT "usefulness" because there are nonavoidable cases, like mining, that are intrinsecally superior to any other attribute perk relative; again because there is no similar ones in other attributes. A good choice is to put the black sheep into a new page and maybe steepen their cost (or not, really, it doesn't matter) and not forcing them into an attribute gate.

Why does that technicality matter and why is it any different than the current system? 

 

Because the current way you semiforce a expenditure of points in an attribute for ANY gameplay style  that you really might not want to chose (everybody mines). Goodbye to my agility , intellect, fortitude or perception build if I can't even mine fast enough by day 30 due to the fact that I don't want strenght. 1/3 of the game down the drain for 80% of the pure builds or as you like to call them, "Roleplays". Doesn't matter if you make them cheap as dirt : as long as they are under an attribute you force their use eventually.

 

I'm not sure if you get the point. You improved it a lot from a17. But by putting general use perks into any attribute you are and always will be unbalancing your own game. Set them free into a page. On the plus side you will have more space for perks if needed. 

 

#freethegeneralperks

[Laz Man]

9 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

@madmole I get it. You describe a valid gameplay path. And, while your vision seems valid you are wrong about the aproach . A mathematical and completely balanced aproach will always trump whatever you "feel" about, say, perk design. Once you perfectly balance an attribute taking into account health recovery, weapons, feel, uses and usefulness then you can add infinite content and it will always be good, exciting, perfect or chaotic for any kind of player as you describe.

 

The current design, thanks to you meets all of the above EXCEPT "usefulness" because there are nonavoidable cases, like mining, that are intrinsecally superior to any other attribute perk relative again because there is no similar ones in other attributes. A good choice is to put the black sheep into a new page and maybe steepen their cost (or not, really, it doesn't matter) and not forcing them into an attribute gate.

Why does that technicality matter and why is it any different than the current system? 

 

Because the current way you semiforce a expenditure of points in an attribute for ANY gameplay style  that you really might not want to chose (everybody mines). Goodbye to my agility , intellect, fortitude or perception build if I can't even mine fast enough by day 30 due to the fact that I don't want strenght. 1/3 of the game down the drain for 80% of the pure builds or as you like to call them, "Roleplays". Doesn't matter if you make them cheap as dirt : as long as they are under an attribute you force their use eventually.

 

I'm not sure if you get the point. You improved it a lot from a17. But by putting general use perks into any attribute you are and always will be unbalancing your own game. Set them free into a page. On the plus side you will have more space for perks if needed. 

 

#freethegeneralperks

I don't think there is a black/white or right/wrong way about it... What might help illustrate your opinion is if you had another similar game where what you are proposing works better then how they have it now.  Keep in mind they may disagree with you but success stories of other games will put more creditability behind your opinion.  On the flip side, they are within their right to explore and do their own thing and not copy other games out there as well.  One of the beauty's of EA titles, crowd funded, self published game dev companies is the creative freedom that they have.

[Blake_]

3 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

I don't think there is a black/white or right/wrong way about it... What might help illustrate your opinion is if you had another similar game where what you are proposing works better then how they have it now.  Keep in mind they may disagree with you but success stories of other games will put more creditability behind your opinion.  On the flip side, they are within their right to explore and do their own thing and not copy other games out there as well.  One of the beauty's of EA titles, crowd funded, self published game dev companies is the creative freedom that they have.

Yes. We can say that this game is still finding its tune. I could relate to some mmo rpgs with fine tuned skills and balance  but it wouldn't really help my point as there's no game like this one. On a general sense though, I think that detaching troublesome or ambiguous perks into their own non-attribute page will greatly benefit the game and the player.  I feel it (as a player ) every single time I play.

 

Telemetry data will likely back me up. And steal my children. I'm certain that's what telemetry is for.

[Roland]

39 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

A good choice is to put the black sheep into a new page and maybe steepen their cost

So what if the steepened cost is exactly the same amount as it costs now? You’d be fine with that? The way it is now you pay a steeper price for a black sheep perk but you also gain the benefit of getting other perks from that attribute for much cheaper not to mention the benefits of the attribute itself for whenever you might use a weapon from that track. 
 

So you would trade those benefits for no benefits but still paying the same steeper price just to get it out of the attribute it’s in?  
 

Instead of thinkIng of it as investing in an attribute you don’t care about, think of it as just the steeper cost for that perk which you already say you are willing to pay. 
 

—————-

 

@Khalagar you’ve convinced me that you aren’t naive.  I believe you about what you are seeing. Rick also reads a lot of different forums and Reddits. They are aware. 

[wolfbain5]

@madmole is it an oversight or intentional that even tho everything else in the game has a recipe or schematic that can be used to learn to craft with except landmines?

[Roland]

Landmines are LBW

 

Learn by Wrenching.