Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[madmole]

6 hours ago, RhinoW said:

@madmole Topic aside. Are the level designers considering making gigantic "1 time spawn" structures (ex: airports, mall + cinema rooms, military airfield, hypermarkets, big warehouses)? I truly believe the game would take an insane leap with it's immersion with these "common" places, that make the player feel like a tiny ant in a ravaged world. 

 

Seeing a real scale mall, overgrown, looted, stores shut down with metal grates, decrypt, missing/flickering lights, filled to the brim with zombies that can come from anywhere would make up for such an interesting expedition, especially with the new lighting system. Just imagine the main area of the mall, multiple floors, with the giant skylight window letting the moonlight in, zombies wandering, some hiding behind closed stores, and being able to search through the very guts of the mall (that we aren't allowed access in real-life) is just great to think about.

 

Though i'm not sure how that would be possible to add without mauling everyone's FPS.

We'll see.

5 hours ago, Syrex said:

The ugly terrain blobs (dirt blocks) are merely cheap placeholders for upcoming structures, plus the zeds dont really prioritize them so its limiting a side that they attack - at least thats how it appears.. The auto turrets are held up with "plates", one facing the ground and the plate above that is facing the opposite direction (creates a field that you can walk within - zeds still target the plates, just not as much). My team punished me for going to sleep on them early yesterday, when i woke they left me with D84 horde nite. The demolishers definitely punished some of my decisions lol. 908 total credited kills -horde nite alone - though! (HD is still processing).

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Ah ok. Hopefully eventually we exceed our current voxel stability and blocks must have some form of adjacent support or it won't work, so no plate blocks with gaps, unless there were side voxel holding it together/up.

As long as there isn't some weird exploit like zombies won't attack dirt then I don't see any issues with dirt castles, but... looks pretty bad.

5 hours ago, Vintorez said:

I do think it would be more thematic if the primitive tier was rebranded as the scrap tier. A bent Yield street sign for a shovel, a shard of glass wrapped in cloth handle instead of a bone knife, I think it would be harder to try to make a shovel with a rock than anything else available in a post-apocalypse setting

Probably, but we made our choice over 7 years ago. Maybe next game. Sounds like a good mod.

[JCrook1028]

19 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

drop you're Gun or Drop you're Drawers

your.......your....

not you are...... you are......

 

[madmole]

5 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

This is it. The thing is, it's kind of frustrating to know that you're only gonna get stone crap in every loot box. Why even loot it during the first days then? It would be so easy to add a chance to get something else. Even if it's a small chance, it's still a chance, so it's not so predictible and downer to loot POIs early on.

 

Heck, I'd rather get some iron ingots instead of two useless stone shovels in every Working Stiff's box.

That is because you've been playing the game forever, and are spoiled from getting access to good gear too soon for years. A new person coming in sees something better than he has and is grateful.

I think we want to put some crafting supplies in it, it just takes time to get it feeling good, we added this late in the alpha and it needs more polish. I could do without ever finding any brown or orange primitive loot either so it is better than what you can craft right away unless you spend all your points on miner up front.

[Ralathar44]

5 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

This is it. The thing is, it's kind of frustrating to know that you're only gonna get stone crap in every loot box. Why even loot it during the first days then? It would be so easy to add a chance to get something else. Even if it's a small chance, it's still a chance, so it's not so predictible and downer to loot POIs early on.

 

Heck, I'd rather get some iron ingots instead of two useless stone shovels in every Working Stiff's box.

Because I didn't spec into tool crafting and so getting t6 quality stone tools is actually super valuable to me.  Same to people who didn't spec into weapon skills.  Not everyone plays the same way, sometimes there will be loot that is super useful to other folks that may not be very useful to you and stone tools/weapons definitely fall into that category.

On my current agility run I went pure agility to test the new hunger levels and loot and etc.  Finding high quality stone tool was a big deal and my T6 stone axe only got replaced on day 30ish.  You know why I still went out and looted?  Recipes, materials, dukes, books, etc.  I was still making significant progression in every other area of the game and the moment I found a forge recipe I was able to make my hunting knife.  Blunderbuss and melee choke points for knifing got me through early horde nights without issue.

I honestly don't see a problem with the current design. And in fact as someone who didn't spec into miner69er and motherload scavenging constantly was an important source of resources that didn't rely on my mining skills that I don't have.  Chairs are a steady source of wood, pallets are a steady source of cobblestones/cement/stone, and the things I scrap or smelt are a steady supply of metals I'd otherwise need to mine alot of.  I've gotten a ton of nitrate from rotting bodies in houses and carcasses on the road.  I made it to day 34 so far without ever needing to do dedicated mining for metals.  I carved a path through the mountain to make my trips to the trader much faster, but even then I got almost all of my stone/cobblestone/cement from POIs and the trader.  Clay is the only thing I've had to mine myself so far.

[MechanicalLens]

2 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Because I didn't spec into tool crafting and so getting t6 quality stone tools is actually super valuable to me.  Same to people who didn't spec into weapon skills.  Not everyone plays the same way, sometimes there will be loot that is super useful to other folks that may not be very useful to you and stone tools/weapons definitely fall into that category.

On my current agility run I went pure agility to test the new hunger levels and loot and etc.  Finding high quality stone tool was a big deal and my T6 stone axe only got replaced on day 30ish.  You know why I still went out and looted?  Recipes, materials, dukes, books, etc.  I was still making significant progression in every other area of the game and the moment I found a forge recipe I was able to make my hunting knife.  Blunderbuss and melee choke points for knifing got me through early horde nights without issue.

I honestly don't see a problem with the current design. And in fact as someone who didn't spec into miner69er and motherload scavenging constantly was an important source of resources that didn't rely on my mining skills that I don't have.  chairs are a steady source of wood and the things I scrap or smelt are a steady supply of metlas I'd otherwise need to mine alot of.  I made it to day 34 so far without ever needing to do dedicated mining for metals.  I carved a path through the mountain to make my trips to the trader much faster, but even then I got almost all of my stone/cobblestone/cement from POIs and the trader.  Clay is the only thing I've had to mine myself so far.

Confirmed, clay soil is the only resource that you cannot buy from the trader, find in loot, or harvest from pallets. Instead of clay pallets though, I suggest a different kind of container that you'll be able to find this valuable resource in. Your thoughts, Fun Pimps?  

 

[Khalagar]

2 hours ago, Adam the Waster said:

does anyone get a Error when trying to mod out you're junk hammer?

 

I do not, but I am still getting the modify bug on Wrenches,  and Hammers where I can't add mods if it's not on my toolbar, it has to be Workbench related imo, it only happens on those two for me

 

I have only had one major bug so far, where I was pocket crafting a stack of frames and tried to move the stack in my inventory and place a minibike in the slot the frames were going. It locked up and my friend said I started spewing out hundreds and hundreds of wood frames in dropped loot bags while I couldn't move. I restarted and had like 2K wood frames in my inventory and he picked up a few hundred from my wood frame vomiting. I guess from the crafting running the entire time while I was trying to figure out what was going on

 

 

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

Take some of them out 😎

 

No really, I still say there shouldn't be Schematics for everything it makes the perks less valuable and it's  what causes these non stop "crafting vs looting" and "here's a list of 19 perks that are objectively not worth picking" debates.  You can see it in the sheer amount of people in this thread and on every forum who think the vehicle perk and master chef or even the inventor perk etc are not worth putting more than 1 or *maybe* 2 points into early game and then respecing out of later when you have all the schematics because all of their "other benefits" are still bad.  Even in this thread, every time food comes up, people say they would never invest in any of the gardening or chef perks, and that's because they would rather just live off what they find until they get a schematic. Perk points are too valuable to waste on something you can just find instead

 

Not a single crafting perk stands on it's own as being worth a perk point when you have the schematics, not one. I say that as someone who still picks them anyway because I *want* them to be good. Who cares about 20% faster forge speeds when . . .you can just build a second forge and get 100% faster speeds instead. 20% cheaper resources means nothing late game when you have a box with 4,000 bones / super corn and 40,000 iron you can make steel with if you need. By like day 20 max, I had 3 forges, 2 campfires, and 3 cement mixers going. Bonuses to speed mean nothing in a game where you can just build a second workbench and double efficiency

 

A book to make basic stuff like grilled meat, a forge, a bicycle etc are one thing, but if you can just find a book / the item itself and make crucibles and electricity and high end food etc, the perks are just a "last resort" at best. Like you said about perks being "The easy way out". Instead of being worth picking, they are just "You only pick these if your RNG sucks and then you respec later" which is just bad design

 

B-b-b-b-but how will Run and Gun Only CoD Boye™ craft end game gear without getting all of the perks for free in the form of a book???????!!!!!!!!

 

They don't ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Let them loot the items, get them from a trader, or, y'know, invest in the perks like everyone else. I get it, the run and gun players are what you guys focus completely on, but it's just lame that a guy without a single point in crafting, not one, can build the exact same thing as someone who spent every single point on Crafting stuff.

 

 

 

 

Not every one plays miner. Not every day is late game. And then 20% cheaper resources still means something.

 

Speed boosts are useless, sure.

 

[Ralathar44]

8 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Confirmed, clay soil is the only resource that you cannot buy from the trader, find in loot, or harvest from pallets. Instead of clay pallets though, I suggest a different kind of container that you'll be able to find this valuable resource in. Your thoughts, Fun Pimps?  

 

I mean technically I got most of my clay via buried treasure quests :).  So that does at least make the clay farming alot more enjoyable since you're chasing treasure.  I'd be down with having clay a little easier to obtain in POIs, the plant pots give so little they are pointless, but I'm not sure if it's completely needed with the new treasure digs being so good even with no treasure hunting skill :).
 

Just now, Khalagar said:

 

I do not, but I am still getting the modify bug on Wrenches,  and Hammers where I can't add mods if it's not on my toolbar, it has to be Workbench related imo, it only happens on those two for me

I'm definitely getting the wrench bug too.

[MechanicalLens]

1 minute ago, Ralathar44 said:

I'm definitely getting the wrench bug too.

To my knowledge it's not a bug; the modify option is replaced with the equip option (which was not an option for claw hammers or wrenches in A18), so if you want to modify your wrench, you must have it on your toolbelt.

[hiemfire]

31 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

your.......your....

mot you are...... you are......

 

sigh, kids these days 😛

😆🤣

[MechanicalLens]

34 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

your.......your....

mot you are...... you are......

 

sigh, kids these days 😛

Nope, your being ridiculous. You heard me right, ur being ridiculous. Guess whose fault it is for misunderstanding the new generation? It's you'res.

 

(Sorry, couldn't help myself. 😛)

[Ralathar44]

4 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Nope, your being ridiculous. You heard me right, ur being ridiculous. Guess whose fault it is for misunderstanding the new generation? It's you'res.

 

(Sorry, couldn't help myself. 😛)

Nuuuu, the problem is ewe'rs, silly sheeple today 🤪.

[Khalagar]

17 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Not every one plays miner.

 

That's fine, not everyone should have to play miner (and not everyone should have to play looter . . .looking at you uncraftable parts and items).

 

17 minutes ago, meganoth said:

20% cheaper resources still means something

 

A bit, but not really that much imo, not for the kind of build that actually invests in crafting perks. 20% resource matters to a run and gun player that doesn't mine, but a crafter will have a box with tens of thousands of coal, clay, nitrate, iron etc in them pretty much 24/7 if they mine very often, and the crafting discounts are super far down all the perk trees for some reason. It takes like 4 in Master Chef to get a food cost discount, and several in the inventor perk before you get any meaningful discount. If each stage of Master Chef gave food cost reductions, and the end game reductions were like 50+ percent yeah it would be pretty sweet, but 20% cheaper food late game when you almost certainly already have a sustainable garden is completely meh. Especially because 20% cheaper resources probably doesn't even hit a break point. If it  takes 1 potato, it takes 1 potato, 20% cost reduction does nothing

 

Late game when you have 5/5 in the inventor perk . . .20% cheaper steel is like my trader offering me his amazing 3 painkiller reward for a T5 quest. You just roll your eyes and don't even notice the difference.

[MechanicalLens]

10 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Nuuuu, the problem is ewe'rs, silly sheeple today 🤪.

Yup, and proud to be one. 😜

 

 

That's Jonathan by the way. Solid chap, he is a good listener and always does what he's told. 😛

[meganoth]

3 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

That's fine, not everyone should have to play miner (and not everyone should have to play looter . . .looking at you uncraftable parts and items).

 

 

A bit, but not really that much imo, not for the kind of build that actually invests in crafting perks. 20% resource matters to a run and gun player that doesn't mine, but a crafter will have a box with tens of thousands of coal, clay, nitrate, iron etc in them pretty much 24/7 if they mine very often, and the crafting discounts are super far down all the perk trees for some reason. It takes like 4 in Master Chef to get a food cost discount, and several in the inventor perk before you get any meaningful discount.

 

Late game when you have 5/5 in the inventor perk . . .20% cheaper steel is like my trader offering me his amazing 3 painkiller reward for a T5 quest. You just roll your eyes and don't even notice the difference.

I'm wondering then why you mine at all if you don't need the resources? OCD? In that case you also don't need a reason to perk into Master Chef. You perk into it because it is there and the checkmark is missing 😉

[Troxism]

Well I said in my earlier post I wanted to talk a bit about perks/perk trees balance, so here that is I guess:

Perception:

 

Overall I think this tree is in a pretty good place, it's both useful as a 'sidespec' tree for Salvage Operations/Lucky Looter/Explosives/Penetrator (at least once Penetrator gets fixed to actually do something again), and it's at least okay as a main spec tree, since Rifles and Explosives are good (although ofc you probably want to use something like shotguns for POI looting, but frankly no tree stands well completely on it's own). The biggest issue with main speccing this tree is Spears still suck even with the magazines for them (like they seriously suck and aren't remotely on the same level as Clubs/Sledges/Fists atm).

 

One change I would suggest would be to make the spear perk buff power attack damage by an additional 10-50% (maybe even 15-75% or 20-100%? Sounds crazy but honestly that might be what it takes to put Spears on the proverbial map) beyond the flat buff to all spear attacks, to make thrown spears truly devastating at high ranks, although I think even this wouldn't be enough to put spears on a similar level as the better melee weapons.

 

Also, Treasure Hunter could probably be doubled to 20/40/60% (honestly I could see this being buffed to 40/80/120% as crazy as that sounds), as you don't get that many treasure maps on average and the digging bonus only gets weaker as you get better tools. You get far more dukes/value out of putting points into something like barter or mining then you would putting them in Treasure Hunter anyways, so a massive buff wouldn't be out of place.

Strength:

 

Strength is sort of a strange tree balance wise. It's weapons are all in a great spot (clubs/sledges are basically the thing all other melee weapons are compared to), but Strength is already nearly mandatory unless you almost never mine or play MP where someone else mines for you. As it stands, this tree will almost always get taken in SP just for mining, so I'm not really sure why Heavy Armour was moved here, there is already enough attraction for 'side speccing' just due to mining existing here. I don't think this is a huge issue however, as to become 'okay' at mining requires only a 1 point investment in the attribute itself (with a cigar, that gives you STR 3, unlocking 3/5 mining/motherload and 2 ranks of tyran).

 

Pack Mule could probably be compressed down to 3-4 points for the same effect to make it a little better, as it's already sort of optional due to mods/vehicles existing.

 

Master Chef is fairly weak, at best you MAYBE take 1 point early to make teas/coffee and then just get all the recipes with schematics. I would suggest something like: compress the perk down to 4 points, make the grandpa elixirs not have schematics for them, and then change the melee/exp grandpa elixirs to have a longer duration (basically change the melee one to be more like the new Recog, weaker but longer duration so it's actually usable). In addition, although idk how easy this would be to do, you could do something like for every rank in this perk you get 20% more buff effect from the related recipes. For example with 4 points, you would get 80% more buff from the elixirs, or an 80% bigger stamina buff from the foods. Maybe even add extra buffs to some of the foods like max HP buffs or crit resistance to make this a bit more relevant. Or maybe tie some of these extra buffs to having ranks in this perk (ie if you have for example rank 3, you get an extra +10 max HP buff from eating high end foods).

 

Having said all that, unless I am mistaken, doing stuff like this would require adding a bunch of different versions of each buff, which would probably be a ton of clutter/work. But it's just some ideas, I'm sure someone else can think of something better/easier to implement.

Fortitude: 

 

I know this is going to sound like heresy, but I honestly think the Fort tree is the overall worst perk tree period (worst doesn't mean useless or 'unviable' ofc). I never put a single point into any of the perks, even in the late game. The weapons are okay: Fists are legitimately good now with the magazine to make beer last longer/not make you dizzy, and you can actually fight groups of radiated with fists + beer now if you take all the melee perks. Would even say Fists might be slightly better or at least on par with Clubs now if you can source beer. Automatics are obviously strong, but guzzle resources like crazy (so they are pretty bad on horde every night for example unless you want to mine all day every day), with their only real advantage being raw DPS (which isn't very useful in this game, and even if that is what you want the SMG comes pretty close and is much cheaper to make ammo for, and is also more accurate). So Fort is probably fairly well balanced in terms of it's weapons with the changes to fists, but it's sidespec potential is IMHO awful. I'll go into more detail:

 

Huntsman was already unneeded even before the animal buffs, now it's just completely overkill, even if animals were somewhat toned down again (maybe compress it to 3 4 points?). Would make it better for MP at least.

 

Living off the Land to me is pretty much pointless (and I mine a LOT, so it's not a question of not needing food/buffs), but I know people do like it and use it, so it probably is fine as it is.

 

Healing Factor has become MILDLY useful with increased healing from crits, but frankly the regen was always a joke. Before you get it to rank 5 (which takes Fort 10 and is a MASSIVE investment, even if you were using Fort Weapons), the regen is basically just out of combat regen to deal with minor injuries. The problem is healing items and healing foods (boiled meat is very good for early game healing) are absurdly common, even just from loot. Even without crafting a single healing item and never taking any fort perk I have stacks and stacks of healing items just sitting around in the late game. And even if you get rank 5 Healing Factor, the regen is still too slow to be that meaningful in combat: if you are actually in trouble you would still need to pop a medkit or bandage to stay alive. However I know some people swear by this perk, so I'm not really sure what else to say about it, I just feel it's a waste of points (even if you already had the prereq Fort for other reasons).

 

Iron Gut is just... yeah. Idk why this one still has 5 ranks (should be like 3). Alternatively, the buff duration bonus could probably be increased to +100% (or maybe just +75%) and then it would actually be pretty good for Recog/Candy buffs/Beer if you went Fists.

 

To make Fort a little more attractive, and make pure melee builds more viable, there could be some kind of crit resistance perk added to fort that is tied to using melee weapons (for example a stacking crit resist buff that gains a stack every time you hit with a melee weapon, and loses a stack if you use a ranged weapon). Would mean that if you invested in all 3 melee perks (Tyran, Flurry and this one), a pure melee build might actually work pretty well and be really fun, esp with the buffed fists. Or it could just give a flat crit resist buff when you have a melee weapon equipped.

Agility:

 

Handguns were already very strong in A18, and in A19 are even better with the buffs to the Magnum, and the Desert Vulture being an even better Magnum that basically fixes all of it's problems. In A18 this was just the Pistol/SMG tree but now the Desert Vulture is probably even stronger (seriously this gun is crazy and might be the best gun in the whole game; high DPS, resource efficient ammo, penetrates targets, accurate on hip fire and almost instant reloads). However Knives/Bows were pretty weak in A18. With the change to make them deal way more stealth damage, they might be a bit better, but both are still quite bad at straight up combat (but you do get explosive arrows/bolts at least, if you don't want to side spec Perception). So weapon wise, this tree is a mixed bag, with arguably the best gun skill but a very weak melee option and bows basically being a stealth/explosives only weapon.

 

In terms of side spec potential, this tree is a bit weak but not terrible, more detail below:

 

Run and Gun is sort of a weird perk in Agi, since the only Agi weapons that actually meaningfully benefit from this perk are Crossbows and the Magnum (the other weapons generally have fast reloads), but it's obviously a great pickup for someone who is specced into automatics for example. Situational, but useful, which seems about right to me.

 

Parkour is super fun, although it's mostly quality of life, so therefore a 'late game' perk.

 

Flurry of Blows would probably benefit from my idea to add a crit resist perk for melee. It's the type of perk that is just there for pure melee builds, but those need a bit more help ATM.

 

Light Armour suffers from not having many advantages over Heavy Armour and being way less protective*, but it's hard to say what should be done (if anything, obviously it's not like Light Armour is unusable, but it doesn't really feel competitive with Heavy Armour atm). The most obvious change would be to nerf the fittings mods(by 1% each probably, so from 2/3% to 1/2%). This would mean that while unmodded Heavy Armour would stay the same, modded/perked Heavy Armour would still have noticeable mobility penalties unlike currently (atm if you wear a set of Heavy Armour with Custom Fittings and Heavy Armour 4/4, you have 92% mobility, so barely any penalty), and it would make Light Armour look a lot better in comparison as modded/perked Light Armour would basically have no penalties to compensate for the lower protection. At the very least it would make Light vs Heavy more distinct gameplay wise as you would actually be slow in Heavy armour and fast in Light armour.

 

Another change that could be made would be to buff Light Armour crit protection to be the same as Heavy Armour, so that the difference was only in damage reduction.

 

To be fair however, half the issue is the urban combat magazine that makes armour not encumber you in combat. If that was removed, that might already help make Light Armour a lot more attractive.

 

*For reference, although it heavily varies with the specific stat roll, a full set of Light Armour with Banded Plating Mods gives you between about 60-65 armour, and a full set of Heavy Armour between about 75-80, which means you take about 60-75% more damage when wearing Light vs Heavy armour. So there is plenty of room to buff Light/nerf Heavy armour without making Heavy armour useless as it would still be WAY more protective.

 

Somewhat unrelated, and also something that is from back in A18, but currently the way armour perks and fittings stack, perked + modded Light Armour displays a mobility of above 100% on the character sheet (although this doesn't appear to actually increase your movement speed above 100% from my limited testing). Also when you wear the College Jacket, that doesn't show on the character sheet. Basically the display of your mobility/movement speed should probably be changed to be more accurate and take into account the jacket.

 

As for Stealth, well the core issue is it's obviously situational. I think the best solution would be to compress the ranks of the stealth perks down to 4, or even 3 each so that you don't need to invest as many points for the benefits. This would make stealth less of an investment, which would help fix the problem of it being situational.

Intelligence:

 

Well I already talked about this before, but the Int weapons really need help. Batons obviously just need higher/lower tier versions (ie A20). The sledge is a lot better post buffs, but the Junk Turret still suffers from the late game problem of constantly triggering Demos (but as I said before, just making it unable to trigger them would probably be OP), which makes Int pretty bad in the late game. Coupled with the lack of any early game Int weapons, this means there are a lot of gaps in effectiveness.

 

As for side speccing, well Int has always suffered from the issue of being unlock heavy, and schematics existing. Having said that, Barter is a top tier perk due to higher secret stash loot, and unlocking recipes early in the game is very useful. I always end up investing heavily in Int in the early game up to Int 6-7 just to unlock stuff faster, but that is mostly because I am impatient and like to progress very fast.

 

Daring Adventurer isn't a weak perk on it's own, but suffers from the problem that quests are usually a waste of time in the early game (at least if you want to be efficient; it's not that quests are 'bad' it's that you could be doing more directly useful things like looting or mining instead of running back and forth from traders). Not really a problem with the perk however.

 

Barter as I mentioned is already great. However on subject of trading/barter, I think the barter candy/barter elixir/cigar could probably stand to be nerfed in half. You can stack way too many of these buffs in the late game and it makes prices a little nuts, which sort of breaks the late game economy. It would make much more sense to nerf these buffs then the perk, since the perk actually requires investment, while these buffs are more or less just 'free' (I mean you get far more then 100 dukes 'back' from the candy for example, and the cigar is something you would be using just for the STR anyways). 

 

Physician/Grease Monkey could probably be better, but they are already much stronger in A19 then A18, and it's hard to think of meaningful improvements to them.

 

Something that might be a good addition to Int would be a perk to speed up block upgrading/repairs. Something like 3 ranks, 15/30/50% faster 'swing' when upgrading or repairing a block.

 

Anyways, perks seem to be the type of thing most people have different options on, but that is my 2 cents on the matter.

[Crater Creator]

On 7/12/2020 at 7:43 PM, madmole said:

I've been working all weekend on [animal spawns]. I think I have it pretty good now. It might be even subjectively harder than it was before. So now, in an upcoming version there are a fair amount of rabbits and chickens and rare big game, but the chance respawns every day. So if you dedicate time to hunting, you can feed yourself, where before there was plenty on day 1 or so then it was dry for 3 weeks. So for MP people can hunt and get food, but you are getting a chicken here, a rabbit there. I haven't seen a stag or pig yet, but I also haven't been actively hunting, just doing quests and killing what I can in between quests.

Sorry for the rushed version you guys got. What seems good looking at what spawned flying round in the editor is completely different than playing the game for 3-4 hours.

 

I know you've probably seen a ton of feedback on the animal spawns already.  I get it - it was and is an experiment.  I even had to argue with someone on the Steam forum, who said that now wasn't the time - in Alpha 19 Experimental - to be doing experiments. 

 

But I actually wanted to make a different case.  You were able to turn up the animal spawns considerably.  And I never saw any complaints about performance suffering from this change.  In other words, you had the performance bandwidth to crank up animal spawns.  And the animals, with their diverse variety of textures and skeletons and whatnot, are likely bigger performance hogs than the zombies, especially as you've been remaking the zombies to be more performant.

 

So why do I bring up performance?  Because it seems like now is the time to increase the biome spawner zombies.  For many alphas now, I've seen a lot of people that miss seeing plenty of zombies just out in the wilderness, not tied to a horde or a POI or anything.  The excuse for a long time was that we have sleepers now, so there are a lot of zombies inside buildings taking up those slots.  But again, my argument is, if you had the bandwidth to crank up the biome animal spawns, you have the bandwidth to crank up the biome zombie spawns.

 

You said it yourself - the zombies are the primary antagonists in the game.  So it makes sense to me that the threat from hostile animals should be secondary.  While the model of 'plenty in a given area at first, then dry for a while once depleted' wasn't great for animals, it's actually pretty cool for zombies.

 

TL;DR: Moar zombehs!  No excuses!

 

[Khalagar]

22 minutes ago, meganoth said:

I'm wondering then why you mine at all if you don't need the resources? OCD? In that case you also don't need a reason to perk into Master Chef. You perk into it because it is there and the checkmark is missing 😉

 

Mining is a great audiobook activity. Turn audiobook on, turn brain off, turn auger on, let er rip! 

 

I only really mine for Iron because Junk Turrets will burn though 10,000+ iron in an afternoon easily, and shale for gas.  I sometimes get some nitrate and coal for gunpowder, but that's like a "I've had to do that 2 times in 50 days" thing and mostly just for bulk crafting a bajillion pipe bombs or bullets for testing different weapons

[madmole]

6 hours ago, sillls said:

Thanks.  It would be great to see real muskets in the game to and not just these pipe rifles. 

Pipe guns are way more plausible and there is no way to do an automatic musket machinegun.

From a game play and production and inventory perspective we want to use existing ammo.

[Broneigh]

10 minutes ago, madmole said:

Pipe guns are way more plausible and there is no way to do an automatic musket machinegun.

From a game play and production and inventory perspective we want to use existing ammo.

Maybe some kind of hand cranked gatling gun using ball and shot? Its "automatic" firing is slow but, no reload for a short while, and reloading involves replacing a preloaded cylinder, maybe, just spitballing. range is terrible but acceptable amongst a crowd of zombies

[madmole]

3 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

Take some of them out 😎

 

No really, I still say there shouldn't be Schematics for everything it makes the perks less valuable and it's  what causes these non stop "crafting vs looting" and "here's a list of 19 perks that are objectively not worth picking" debates.  You can see it in the sheer amount of people in this thread and on every forum who think the vehicle perk and master chef or even the inventor perk etc are not worth putting more than 1 or *maybe* 2 points into early game and then respecing out of later when you have all the schematics because all of their "other benefits" are still bad.  Even in this thread, every time food comes up, people say they would never invest in any of the gardening or chef perks, and that's because they would rather just live off what they find until they get a schematic. Perk points are too valuable to waste on something you can just find instead

 

Not a single crafting perk stands on it's own as being worth a perk point when you have the schematics, not one. I say that as someone who still picks them anyway because I *want* them to be good. Who cares about 20% faster forge speeds when . . .you can just build a second forge and get 100% faster speeds instead. 20% cheaper resources means nothing late game when you have a box with 4,000 bones / super corn and 40,000 iron you can make steel with if you need. By like day 20 max, I had 3 forges, 2 campfires, and 3 cement mixers going. Bonuses to speed mean nothing in a game where you can just build a second workbench and double efficiency

 

A book to make basic stuff like grilled meat, a forge, a bicycle etc are one thing, but if you can just find a book / the item itself and make crucibles and electricity and high end food etc, the perks are just a "last resort" at best. Like you said about perks being "The easy way out". Instead of being worth picking, they are just "You only pick these if your RNG sucks and then you respec later" which is just bad design

 

B-b-b-b-but how will Run and Gun Only CoD Boye™ craft end game gear without getting all of the perks for free in the form of a book???????!!!!!!!!

 

They don't ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Let them loot the items, get them from a trader, or, y'know, invest in the perks like everyone else. I get it, the run and gun players are what you guys focus completely on, but it's just lame that a guy without a single point in crafting, not one, can build the exact same thing as someone who spent every single point on Crafting stuff.

 

 

 

You should really try condensing your giant replies to the bare bones minimum needed so I can read it all. I read this one but most of them are just too long winded and get skipped entirely or skimmed at best.

That said it is entirely subjective if someone thinks it is worth it or not. There is so much effort put into mining and tools in this game I don't see how you can say we're focused on the run and gun crowd when we've redone mining 10 times, it has plenty of mods, plenty of different tools and books dedicated to them.

Later on you might not like what happens when you get too many forges, campfires etc running. Bandits might just smell that and come check it out.

[Blake_]

11 minutes ago, madmole said:

Pipe guns are way more plausible and there is no way to do an automatic musket machinegun.

From a game play and production and inventory perspective we want to use existing ammo.

So .... blunderbuss ammo or something like that will just be the ammo for all the primitive weapons ? 

All the bullets are kinda expensive compared to those "lead marbles".

[Tmodloader]

8 hours ago, madmole said:

The harder biomes in the future will have higher GS and higher loot stage, so if you don't want to wait you can go there and try to get better stuff.

That sounds great. Once you know the game you can challenge yourself early for some better rewards. 

 

[madmole]

45 minutes ago, Crater Creator said:

 

I know you've probably seen a ton of feedback on the animal spawns already.  I get it - it was and is an experiment.  I even had to argue with someone on the Steam forum, who said that now wasn't the time - in Alpha 19 Experimental - to be doing experiments. 

 

But I actually wanted to make a different case.  You were able to turn up the animal spawns considerably.  And I never saw any complaints about performance suffering from this change.  In other words, you had the performance bandwidth to crank up animal spawns.  And the animals, with their diverse variety of textures and skeletons and whatnot, are likely bigger performance hogs than the zombies, especially as you've been remaking the zombies to be more performant.

 

So why do I bring up performance?  Because it seems like now is the time to increase the biome spawner zombies.  For many alphas now, I've seen a lot of people that miss seeing plenty of zombies just out in the wilderness, not tied to a horde or a POI or anything.  The excuse for a long time was that we have sleepers now, so there are a lot of zombies inside buildings taking up those slots.  But again, my argument is, if you had the bandwidth to crank up the biome animal spawns, you have the bandwidth to crank up the biome zombie spawns.

 

You said it yourself - the zombies are the primary antagonists in the game.  So it makes sense to me that the threat from hostile animals should be secondary.  While the model of 'plenty in a given area at first, then dry for a while once depleted' wasn't great for animals, it's actually pretty cool for zombies.

 

TL;DR: Moar zombehs!  No excuses!

 

We don't have the bandwidth, performance is bad an animal spawns are way too heavy, there is a massive nerf coming. It might even be harder to survive than before, but only in SP. I did turn up the zombie spawning, just not the amount alive all at once. What you will see is a faster repopulation of killed zombies in the wild which will help a bit. I randomized the times too, not that it matters much, but I didn't know we could do floats until a few days ago.

[Tmodloader]

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

 

Not every one plays miner. Not every day is late game. And then 20% cheaper resources still means something.

 

Speed boosts are useless, sure.

 

Cheaper crafting is certainly worth a ton more than speed boosts.