Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Onarr]

18 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

Well, obviously neither you nor I know what new players will think and can only speculate, but simply enough I can tell you that's how I see it and how it feels to me very clearly. I think it sucks to only get stone shovels and crappy spears in every stash for days, because it's really absurd and affects the player's interest in looting early on.

 

It would also be very nice of the devs and players like you alike to stop assuming other "old time" players such as me "got used to getting AKs" in loot and disregard our opinions based on that. I never even got to play A18 much, so no, I'm not used to the way it was, and I never said we should get blue AKs early on again either, I'm only saying there should be other possibilities of items mixed in during this "stone age" thing so players don't have to scrap 80% of the loot they find and get stones out of it, cause that's how it is right now.

 

Also, this whole thing of using the concrete stack sizes in backpack or other stuff like that as an argument to somehow validate mechanics that don't make sense is mind boggling to me. Yes, we carry 100 tons of concrete in our backpacks for the sake of building. Yes, if you have the option active, loot respawns every 30 days. How in God's name does any of that tie in to a loot balance issue in any way?? It's not relevant.

I second this. Main problem is stone age loot is boring and has low value. It needs balancing - end of story.

[Nef]

On 7/12/2020 at 8:49 PM, madmole said:

With corona and strict stay inside orders in just a few days animals took over many areas. Like hundreds of wild monkeys in one city I saw a video on. Its not even an apocalypse and I've seen up to 20 stag walking through my yard, boatloads of geese, fox, wild turkeys, and obviously cats, dogs, rabbits, etc. I hear coyotes at night. I live on the edge of town is all.

Off topic but the coolest thing I saw was a fawn (baby deer) in my front yard, I was able to get about 8' from it, so cute. Wasn't much bigger than a small dog.

Exactly this. With no one around, the bears are wondering right down mainstreet of my town and raiding the bar's dumpster in broad daylight, lol.

5 minutes ago, Onarr said:

I second this. Main problem is stone age loot is boring and has low value. It needs balancing - end of story.

What I will say on this topic, is it does make the early game tedious, and un-rewarding feeling. Safes, used to be that big "oh wow what an amazing find!" moment, that'd you happily wack away at for 6 in-game hours with tier 1 stone hatchets as there was likely a reward to be found. Now after you go through 4 stone hatches, you open the safe to find....... a stone hatchet! : D Playing it, I've completely lost interest in safes and other such things, and have wondered off, returning on like day 50 when I'm already buried in self-crafted gear, just scrapping the contents for repair parts.

26 minutes ago, Xtrakicking said:

Well, obviously neither you nor I know what new players will think and can only speculate, but simply enough I can tell you that's how I see it and how it feels to me very clearly. I think it sucks to only get stone shovels and crappy spears in every stash for days, because it's really absurd and affects the player's interest in looting early on.

 

It would also be very nice of the devs and players like you alike to stop assuming other "old time" players such as me "got used to getting AKs" in loot and disregard our opinions based on that. I never even got to play A18 much, so no, I'm not used to the way it was, and I never said we should get blue AKs early on again either, I'm only saying there should be other possibilities of items mixed in during this "stone age" thing so players don't have to scrap 80% of the loot they find and get stones out of it, cause that's how it is right now.

 

Also, this whole thing of using the concrete stack sizes in backpack or other stuff like that as an argument to somehow validate mechanics that don't make sense is mind boggling to me. Yes, we carry 100 tons of concrete in our backpacks for the sake of building. Yes, if you have the option active, loot respawns every 30 days. How in God's name does any of that tie in to a loot balance issue in any way?? It's not relevant.

I would like to back this up in one regard, as well. While players can "accept" that this is "just how games like this be" a lot will complain and find it hard to suspend their disbelief. (I can hear my father @%$*#!ing already, lol, a 57 year old man) It's pretty nonsensical, even in a zombie situation, to think that someone stored a self-made stone hatchet and some sticks in a gun safe, and then locked the thing, lol. Like who's gonna steal your flint rod when there's tools strewn about every house?

[Nef]

45 minutes ago, Alpacko said:

Do you still think it strange that cupboards get new loot every 30 days? 

 

yes

 

  Hide contents

its an option for MP servers and should be disabled by default on SP/coop games, imo.

 

I always disable that setting, as well. No magic loot fairy here, lol. Now if I could just find the one wedging all these stones into gun safes in spite... xD

[Gazz]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

That would probably be Gazz to thank...

Hey Gazz, would you have ever imagined that of ALL the changes this one was THE ONE? 😁

I'll take it.

[Perlin_Worm]

4 hours ago, sillls said:

It still takes 7 days to die from the infection right?

 

I got infected on day two. I tried talking to trader Jenny but all she had were some bandages.  Every once in awhile, I would find some honey but never enough.  So I get it to 4% and I got nothing else. So it rises back up. Dern it. 

I'm thinking that I might have to become a Dr. to get a cure. 

I was excited about the new infection system described before experimental release but then a19 dropped and it's the same infection as a18. Still never a threat after day 5 and still a ton of honey and antibiotics sitting in inventory after day 14. 

[Blake_]

11 hours ago, JCrook1028 said:

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

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

 

sigh, kids these days 😛

Not.......not....

not "mot"....... "mot"......

 

On top of that, you are missing the first cap letter -also called "initial" or "drop cap"- at the beginning of the sentence (Your) and even the end dot after the emoji.

 

Sigh! -thought Blake shaking his head- Grandfathers these days 😘.

 

[KuriousTurtle]

Not sure if it is intended or if it is a bug, but when you have a full inventory and you accept molotovs as a quest reward, instead of the molotovs being dropped as a brown bag, they all explode and set you and the trader on fire

[Reaver]

16 minutes ago, KuriousTurtle said:

Not sure if it is intended or if it is a bug, but when you have a full inventory and you accept molotovs as a quest reward, instead of the molotovs being dropped as a brown bag, they all explode and set you and the trader on fire

That’s actually really funny to imagine. I love it 

[Kosmic Kerman]

On 7/12/2020 at 11:32 PM, faatal said:

A more flyable gyrocopter is a helicopter, which I hope to someday add to the game.

Just wait until people find out you've made it fly semi-realistically and they have to push forward and up to maintain elevation while accelerating and have to flare back to kill forward motion.

 

Edit - I see faatal has already semi-addressed this. Here are my 2 cents. I think hovering (one of the hardest parts of flying a RL helicopter) should not require any input from the player. It would be cool, however, if moving forward caused the nose of the helicopter to pitch down and required "up" input to maintain elevation and stopping required flaring back. However, I'm not sure what is the best way to handle strafing. Canceling sideways inertia could be a real pain in a game that's not built or intended to be a physics simulator.

[v3tro]

2 hours ago, beHypE said:

I've noticed I lose a tremendous amount of FPS when I crank up Terrain Quality. I have pretty much everything at max/ultra, but terrain quality on low, and have a beautiful game with a steady 60 FPS. If I set terrain quality to medium, I instantly drop to around 30 FPS. The difference is like night and day and quite frankly I don't even see a huge difference in quality, if any. 

 

Highly advise you guys to set max quality everywhere, terrain quality on low and then reduce stuff as needed. I kept tinkering with medium settings everywhere and it was just not making much of a difference at all, until I figured out the bottleneck. 

 

I'm running a Sapphire Radeon 5600XT on a Ryzen 5 1600 and 16gb of RAM fwiw. 

 

 Yup, that`s the one! 

I`m playing on max settings (ultra+ where possible) , 1440p  and I`m having steady 60-80fps(usually 70) with Terrain Quality being the only thing turned down to "Lowest", If I increase it then fps drops to 40-50 and the difference it makes(not much really) does not justify the fps drop for me. Oh and in hilly areas or between mountains if Terrain Quality is anything above "lowest" it can tank down to 10fps which is ridiculous. On horde nights with max alive 64 I usually get between 20-50fps.

 

PC Specs: 

 

Spoiler

CPU: Ryzen 9 3900x

GPU: RTX 2070 Super

MOBO: X570 Aorus Master

RAM: DDR4 32GB 3600Mhz

SSD: 970 EVO Plus 1TB

 

Generating RWG 8k map usually takes about 10min.

 

45 minutes ago, Onarr said:

I second this. Main problem is stone age loot is boring and has low value. It needs balancing - end of story.

 

Would you be so kind to tell me why stone age is boring to loot for you?

 

I like stone age loot progression and what it is.. I get in loot everything I would get if my game stage would be 100+.. you still get sewing kits, duct tapes, anvils, all kind of raw mats etc, the only difference there is is tools/weapons. But how is getting stone variations any different than getting iron/steel? If I`m mid game and every box I open there is Iron shovel/pickaxe/hunting rifle it`s the exact same boring @%$*#! all over again, no? What`s different? Or are you saying that that is the problem and you should be getting Q2 stone axe in T5 quest loot boxes?

 

There is still plenty of variations for primitive age - stone axe, shovel, clubs, spears, bone knives, sledge, blunderbuss and hopefully more to come in A20 with new primitive weapons for each class. Same as there is in any other gs - pickaxe/shovel/sniper/m60/machete/magnum etc. To me, personally, that feels like natural progression.

 

Spoiler

13 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.

 

 

 

 

 

Are you actually suggesting going back to A17 perk system where you were gated behind certain perks? That system was hated by far far more players than any you hint at not liking the new one. (Not saying you said that, that`s how I understood it)

Not all perks should be equal as it has been stated already, it`s a choice for different people with different play styles, of course, it`s not perfect and could use some tweaking, but I honestly don`t think any perk at it`s current state is useless or not worth investing as you mentioned.

 

I can debunk usefulness of any perk you name with your provided logic for not wanting crafting perks.  (why waste points in melee, when I use only ranged...)

 

Any % increase is still faster and cheaper no matter how you look at things. Yes, you can craft another workstations and get that +100% speed, but I can do the same thing with perk, so how is that a valid argument? How many workstations are you willing to craft? 20, 40? And then there is a problem called performance if you have too many workstations and screamers and now you need bigger space for it, more management etc.. Can it be done? Yes, but that in no way makes the %faster/cheaper perk bad or not worth investing especially in late-game, why waste your precious time mining when you can do other things?

 

If you like mining, that`s fine, but not everyone plays like you and it`s not black and white either, where it is miner/crafter or run and gun looter.

 

 

 

Regarding painkillers - Aren`t they the only item that can heal concussion? Also being loot only item it seems decent getting it as an option for a quest reward. Maybe 3 of them is a joke, but I would take 3 painkillers over any Q6 weapon that I`m not spec`ed into as a Tier 5 Quest reward. Best item to get your hp back instantly. 

[RhinoW]

41 minutes ago, KuriousTurtle said:

Not sure if it is intended or if it is a bug, but when you have a full inventory and you accept molotovs as a quest reward, instead of the molotovs being dropped as a brown bag, they all explode and set you and the trader on fire

That's not a bug, if you drop molotovs from your inventory they explode on the floor (since they "break", though water bottles don't funny enough). It's just an unfortunate situation that you found yourself in, since all items are automatically dropped.

[Kosmic Kerman]

2 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Well, obviously neither you nor I know what new players will think and can only speculate, but simply enough I can tell you that's how I see it and how it feels to me very clearly. I think it sucks to only get stone shovels and crappy spears in every stash for days, because it's really absurd and affects the player's interest in looting early on.

It doesn't affect my desire to loot because I'm happy to get whatever mods, ammo, etc. I can during the early days. I am also looting for food anyways so it's just easier to loot everything and move on to the next POI. The only thing I've noticed is it makes cheesing loot rooms fairly pointless early days. And I don't think that is a bad thing. It's also nice to feel weak in the beginning since you get to overpowered pretty quickly.

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Well, obviously neither you nor I know what new players will think and can only speculate, but simply enough I can tell you that's how I see it and how it feels to me very clearly. I think it sucks to only get stone shovels and crappy spears in every stash for days, because it's really absurd and affects the player's interest in looting early on.

 

It would also be very nice of the devs and players like you alike to stop assuming other "old time" players such as me "got used to getting AKs" in loot and disregard our opinions based on that. I never even got to play A18 much, so no, I'm not used to the way it was, and I never said we should get blue AKs early on again either, I'm only saying there should be other possibilities of items mixed in during this "stone age" thing so players don't have to scrap 80% of the loot they find and get stones out of it, cause that's how it is right now.

 

Also, this whole thing of using the concrete stack sizes in backpack or other stuff like that as an argument to somehow validate mechanics that don't make sense is mind boggling to me. Yes, we carry 100 tons of concrete in our backpacks for the sake of building. Yes, if you have the option active, loot respawns every 30 days. How in God's name does any of that tie in to a loot balance issue in any way?? It's not relevant.

This would be a perfect reply if you weren't the one bringing new player into the discussion.😉

 

I actually agree that there are too many stone age tools and weapons in those boxes. I even suggested to Gazz to add tier1 weapon parts to the mix a few pages previously. So if it is just that, we can stop arguing now.

 

But if your argument were stone axes should never be in those boxes because of it making no sense then I have to ask: Where else can the player who doesn't specc into miner69 find better stone tools? Where else can he find a better blunderbuss if he doesn't specc shotgun? I really really want to find a better stone axe when I only have a quality1 in my hand.

 

[Xtrakicking]

3 minutes ago, meganoth said:

This would be a perfect reply if you weren't the one bringing new player into the discussion.😉

What's the problem with that? Since madmole always seems so concerned about what new players might feel about the game, I just expressed how new players might as well think the same way about loot that I do.

 

8 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

It's also nice to feel weak in the beginning since you get to overpowered pretty quickly.

When you're weak because the game forces you to be weak, no matter how much you loot and explore, it's not fun. Hopefully the devs will find the right balance.

[MechanicalLens]

2 hours ago, Nef said:

Exactly this. With no one around, the bears are wondering right down mainstreet of my town and raiding the bar's dumpster in broad daylight, lol.

They might have to rename that bar to The Bear Den.

[Xtrakicking]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

But if your argument were stone axes should never be in those boxes because

Nah, I don't care if there's a stone axe in the loot stashes. I do care when there's three in each, and not much else though.

[Adam the Waster]

18 minutes ago, RhinoW said:

That's not a bug, if you drop molotovs from your inventory they explode on the floor (since they "break", though water bottles don't funny enough). It's just an unfortunate situation that you found yourself in, since all items are automatically dropped.

i thought that was for pipe bombs and TNT!

 

 

I GOT A IDEA!

[madmole]

8 hours ago, Xtrakicking said:

Yeah, that would be good. I'm not against the new system, I just wish it were less artificial. Eventually, even new players might think something's off when they realise they're only finding stone tools in loot crates, crappy spears in locked gun safes and nothing else, especially considering new players will probably take longer to level up than others and thus spend more days only finding stone loot.

I never once questioned the best rpgs of all time when looting. I diablo I got what I got. Same in Skyrim, Fallout, etc. I opened up a loot container and got something a little better and I was happy about it. You just aren't used to it. Once we get pipe guns and a bit more supplies to craft your own things it might feel less repetitive which I think is the larger problem.

We will have game staged increases in the harder biomes you can go there to get non primitive loot early game but it will be a lot harder.

[Xtrakicking]

2 minutes ago, madmole said:

Once we get pipe guns and a bit more supplies to craft your own things it might feel less repetitive which I think is the larger problem.

Sounds good. Looking forward to it.

[madmole]

6 hours ago, Troxism said:

 

I do play on higher difficulties (Survivalist, sometimes Insane). I could see the value in the snare part of the bleed on Nightmare speed, but on any speed below that you can outrun the zombies anyways (and if you have running zombies, you wouldn't fight multiples at once in the early game anyways). Ultimately the issue I have with knives is they just deal awful damage (even 7 stack bleed deals damage very slowly, and the base damage of knives isn't great). Even if you argue the snare is useful, the overall damage really needs to go up, there isn't any reason knives should deal like half the DPS of clubs or fists. Even the sneak bonus is sort of meh for knives, since bows/crossbows usually deal more damage on the sneak attack and have range to boot. Honestly on Insane + Nightmare, the best tool early on is the Blunderbuss (as it snares enemies much more effectively then the 10% of the rank 1 knife perk, and you can carry multiples to help with the reloading issue).

 

My comment on stealth wasn't that it wasn't useful, it was that it's situational/not needed and therefore shouldn't be as expensive as it currently is to make it more attractive to spec into. Even on Insane + Nightmare, early POI looting can be accomplished by using the Blunderbuss or placing blocks in doors and upgrading them so the zombies can't rush you while you attack over the block. It's a bit slow/tedious, but so is stealth, and on those settings it's always going to be slow in the early game, and this approach doesn't require spending a bunch of points (hence why I think stealth shouldn't be so expensive to make it more competitive).  By the time you have a good rifle + silencer, stealth will be purely a bonus anyways, it's mainly relevant in the early game when you are weak. The moment you have even a basic pistol you can just blow every zombie away if you really want to even on Insane (okay maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but it's not that far off).

 

As for fighting horde night on foot, unless your playing on Nightmare speed, you can easily do that even without a single point in Run and Gun (zombies are slow, esp if you can get them temporarily caught on something), at least with the faster reloading weapons. I've done it with the Desert Vulture or Pistol, or even the SMG, or with Shotguns (Automatics kind of want at least 1 point in Run and Gun to do that due to long reloads, and Rifles just aren't well designed for that sort of combat). The main reason I don't usually fight hordes on foot is it's hard to use explosives to their full effect which makes the horde night take all night and wastes a lot of time as your spending a lot of time running, but it is pretty fun to do. Again, I did say Run and Gun has it's place, but I don't think it's as mandatory as some people claim, even for mobile combat (depending on the weapon used). Parkour can also be used very effectively if you setup some 2 or 3 high pillars in your combat arena when fighting the horde on foot too, to give you breathing room to use healing items if you got hit, or regain some stamina/use more drinks.

 

Anyways, I don't mean any of this in a dismissive way, there obviously are multiple ways to do things in this game. My goal was to point out things that were IMHO a little weak to bring them more into line with other options, not to say that those options are entirely useless currently.

I've been playing a stealth build and had no problem killing zeds on day 1 with a bone knife. 4 power attacks to the face typically does it and I still have gas left over to party!

[Tmodloader]

2 hours ago, Alpacko said:

Do you still think it strange that cupboards get new loot every 30 days? 

 

yes

 

  Reveal hidden contents

its an option for MP servers and should be disabled by default on SP/coop games, imo.

 

Poor survivor got into the building, stowed away some stuff in a cupboard and proceeded to get mauled by zombies within those 30 days.

[MechanicalLens]

5 minutes ago, madmole said:

I never once questioned the best rpgs of all time when looting. I diablo I got what I got. Same in Skyrim, Fallout, etc. I opened up a loot container and got something a little better and I was happy about it. You just aren't used to it. Once we get pipe guns and a bit more supplies to craft your own things it might feel less repetitive which I think is the larger problem.

We will have game staged increases in the harder biomes you can go there to get non primitive loot early game but it will be a lot harder.

Sounds good.  My only two minor constructive criticisms is that it currently feels very repetitive (like you said, the addition of pipe weapons should fix this) and imo you should never find level 1 and 2 stone tools in loot (again, I believe you mentioned you think this shouldn't be a thing?).

[Xtrakicking]

Just now, Tmodloader said:

Poor survivor got into the building, stowed away some stuff in a cupboard and proceeded to get mauled by zombies within those 30 days.

Body or it didn't happen 😛

[meganoth]

1 minute ago, Xtrakicking said:

What's the problem with that? Since madmole always seems so concerned about what new players might feel about the game, I just expressed how new players might as well think the same way about loot that I do.

 

Exactly, and I was expressing how new players might think as well. Whats good for the Marlene is good for the Edgar. 🙃

 

1 minute ago, Xtrakicking said:

 

When you're weak because the game forces you to be weak, no matter how much you loot and explore, it's not fun. Hopefully the devs will find the right balance.

Sure. High danger/loot zones seem already a near certainty, so you can have shortcuts. But I feel the game already has lots of lucky finds you can make, even in stone age. Any book or mod that fits the current spezialisation you are going for is a such a lucky find. Anvil, workstation recipes, in fact all recipes are things that can catapult you forward. And as far as I know it is still possible to have a rare find of a tier1 weapon even in the stone age.

 

But even before A19 I opened hundreds of safes and treasure boxes and didn't find a single item i needed. The game, even now, has not enough precious items to allow something good in every safe. That isn't new. 

 

[Tmodloader]

 

Just now, meganoth said:

But even before A19 I opened hundreds of safes and treasure boxes and didn't find a single item i needed. The game, even now, has not enough precious items to allow something good in every safe. That isn't new. 

 

I suggest playing with loss of loot on death, it makes everything count a lot more.