Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Khalagar]

16 minutes ago, Gazz said:

The only difference to A18 is that it now looks like a fantasy battle axe so more players are using it.

 

I had a lot of Reddit threads during A17 and A18 on it being the best melee weapon, so I'm glad it wasn't changed!

[beHypE]

Regarding the stone vs iron debate, lots of good suggestions have been made. I think the best and easiest way would be to give a passive motherlode as someone stated, maybe 10% for iron tools & 20% for steel tools. Any balancing to damage / number of hits is a huge can of worms, especially since the top soil has 250hp and the underlying layers only have 200hp.

 

While the issue is most obviously seen with the shovel due to block HP, it's kinda the same with the pickaxe. The game's progression is so dragged out there's a huge chance you find Q5+ tools of a tier before you find Q1-Q2 of the next tier, which in turn means progressing to the next "age" is very often meaningless, especially if you have mods. It kind of defeats the purpose and excitement of advancing a tier. While it makes sense a fully modded Q6 of any tier to be better than a Q1 of the next tier, I think Q3+ should be an almost guaranteed upgrade. 

[hotpoon]

13 hours ago, beHypE said:

The thing is, this is the only thread that the devs read on a consistent basis. It's only natural people voice their concerns here. General Discussion isn't dead to be fair, but since no-one from the dev team ever chimes in to speak about future plans or even state they are aware of a problem, it's mostly people arguing until one of them quits. 

 

If you only want to read the answers of the team members, then you should probably check their profiles every now and then. I used to use the dev tracker on 7d2d.rocks but it broke and never got updated ever since the forums changed. 

Accurate. I've come to realise it's a bit of waste of time posting in general because there's always some random willing to argue longer than you, even if they just keep repeating themselves. It is a pity we have to resort to stalking dev profiles to find out what is going on when a diary is the perfect place for it. This is not a diary. It's a forum all on its own, just harder to find stuff.

43 minutes ago, Roland said:

You don't have to read 500+ pages of this thread. Follow the content of Gazz, Madmole, and faatal and you can get the info you are wanting without all the extra noise. 

 

Loot is tied to gamestage. Enemies are tied to gamestage.

Individual POIs and biomes cannot currently be assigned gamestage modifiers but they will in the future.

 

Thus, while in the Forest biome you will be at your basic gamestage whereas in the burnt forest you might be at gamestage +30 or in the wasteland-- gamestage +50 which means tougher monsters guarding better loot than in the Forest.

 

In addition, that radiated Firestation might be gamestage +80 whereas the simple home next to it might be gamestage -10. Go in the home and you'll one-hit kill anything that comes at you and enjoy some nice new stone axes whereas right next door there will be ferals inside with pump shotguns in the crates. Now mix and match and stack those modifiers for POI's together with the biomes where they are located and you will have a variety of loot you can get if you are willing to take a chance.

 

The system they have planned will also mean that it won't have to always be that particular Firestation that is always going to be gamestage +80 every time you play.

That sounds pretty awesome.

[MechanicalLens]

10 minutes ago, beHypE said:

Regarding the stone vs iron debate, lots of good suggestions have been made. I think the best and easiest way would be to give a passive motherlode as someone stated, maybe 10% for iron tools & 20% for steel tools. Any balancing to damage / number of hits is a huge can of worms, especially since the top soil has 250hp and the underlying layers only have 200hp.

 

While the issue is most obviously seen with the shovel due to block HP, it's kinda the same with the pickaxe. The game's progression is so dragged out there's a huge chance you find Q5+ tools of a tier before you find Q1-Q2 of the next tier, which in turn means progressing to the next "age" is very often meaningless, especially if you have mods. It kind of defeats the purpose and excitement of advancing a tier. While it makes sense a fully modded Q6 of any tier to be better than a Q1 of the next tier, I think Q3+ should be an almost guaranteed upgrade. 

This could cause imbalance unless Mother Lode went to the chopping block, or at least for a trim. A passive harvest bonus to the higher tier tools would only encourage players to upgrade, but the way I see it, it fails to address what comes next. Why would players put 5, even 4, or even 3, points into Mother Lode if iron/steel tools gave them this bonus inherently? I'm not arguing against this suggestion, just something to think about. It's all about balance at the end of the day.

[beHypE]

2 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

This could cause imbalance unless Mother Lode went to the chopping block, or at least for a trim. A passive harvest bonus to the higher tier tools would only encourage players to upgrade, but the way I see it, it fails to address what comes next. Why would players put 5, even 4, or even 3, points into Mother Lode if iron/steel tools gave them this bonus inherently? I'm not arguing against this suggestion, just something to think about. It's all about balance at the end of the day.

What ? If anything it would make motherlode even better if it's a multiplier of the base efficiency that would thus be 110%/120% instead of 100%. Indeed, it encourages to upgrade, which is kind of the point... I mean, how exciting is it for a new player to find a iron pickaxe on day 10-15 only to realise it totally sucks compared to the stone axe he had since day 1 ? Like I said, a fully modded Q6 stone axe vs 1 mod Q1 iron axe ? Yeah, keep the stone axe. As soon as you have 2 mod slots to your pickaxe, it should become better imo.

[MechanicalLens]

1 minute ago, beHypE said:

What ? If anything it would make motherlode even better if it's a multiplier of the base efficiency that would thus be 110%/120% instead of 100%. Indeed, it encourages to upgrade, which is kind of the point... I mean, how exciting is it for a new player to find a iron pickaxe on day 10-15 only to realise it totally sucks compared to the stone axe he had since day 1 ? Like I said, a fully modded Q6 stone axe vs 1 mod Q1 iron axe ? Yeah, keep the stone axe. As soon as you have 2 mod slots to your pickaxe, it should become better imo.

Still, my points stands - it would just devalue the mother lode perk imo - but perhaps I'm a hypocrite since I personally believe that the machete should give the player more resources back than the hunting knife, and the hunting knife more than the bone knife. But that's a whole other can of worms that doesn't need to be spilled right now.

I do agree though, finding a level 1 or level 2 iron pickaxe and having it be immediately outclassed by your level 4, 5, or 6 stone axe is always quite anti-climatic. "Oh yay, my first iron tool!... Scrap."

[beHypE]

How would it devalue it ? 

Level 5 Motherlode doubles your efficiency, so right now, you get 200% resources.

With a 20% steel shovel base efficiency bonus, Motherlode would double 120%, thus you would get 240% resources.

 

As I said, if anything, it would make motherlode even better if the tools improve your base efficiency. Then again you could just add a 10%/20% bonus not being included in base efficiency, so with full motherlode, you'd have 210/220% efficiency instead of 220/240%.

[FileMachete]

Tech question: been curious what prevents having select fire weapons like the AK or SMG being either full or semi auto via a control?

 

Kinda seems like a middle mouse click to swith between semi & full should be doable? But I've no idea what Unity can handle..

[beHypE]

1 minute ago, FileMachete said:

Tech question: been curious what prevents having select fire weapons like the AK or SMG being either full or semi auto via a control?

 

Kinda seems like a middle mouse click to swith between semi & full should be doable? But I've no idea what Unity can handle..

Mods fill that feature. Semi-auto trigger mod (1 bullet per click), Burst Trigger Mod (3 bullets), Full Auto Mod.

[MechanicalLens]

1 minute ago, beHypE said:

How would it devalue it ? 

Level 5 Motherlode doubles your efficiency, so right now, you get 200% resources.

With a 20% steel shovel base efficiency bonus, Motherlode would double 120%, thus you would get 240% resources.

 

As I said, if anything, it would make motherlode even better if the tools improve your base efficiency. Then again you could just add a 10%/20% bonus not being included in base efficiency, so with full motherlode, you'd have 210/220% efficiency instead of 220/240%.

Perhaps the word "devalue" was the wrong term to use. Again, it all comes down to balance and whether or not to call the shots. Eventually a developer must put their foot down and say, "You have your cake, and your icing, and your sweet cherry on top, you're not getting anymore." No, adding an extra 10% harvest bonus on the other tools probably won't be game-breaking, but it might get people scratching their chins wondering if they actually need that extra point in Mother Lode... which is not necessarily a bad thing, it's just something to consider.

 

Again, I'm not debating against this idea. I think it's a solid idea come to think about it. I was just skeptical of accepting a new possible mechanic just because it's "ooh, shiny".

 

Just remember that this is all spitballing. Realistically, I only see a minimal stamina depletion nerf for the iron tools in the future (I think madmole already mentioned one?) and that's about it.

[FileMachete]

15 minutes ago, beHypE said:

Mods fill that feature. Semi-auto trigger mod (1 bullet per click), Burst Trigger Mod (3 bullets), Full Auto Mod.

Not what I meant. Yes mods change an -always-full-auto- to an  always-semi or always-burst, but that isn't readily selectable during a fight.

 

The SMG, in my experiance, with it's higher rate of fire can be difficult to single-shot even in normal times. During hordes even the Ak often winds up firing a couple rounds instead of the one I intended.

 

Edit: here's my use case.

 

I prefer to stealth snipe when poi clearing. When I got a decent SMG I put away the pistol and started sniping w the SMG. But I kept sending 2 or 3 rounds when I only wanted 1. Which tends to wake other sleepers.

So I went back to the pistol until I looted a semi-auto mod which I installed into the SMG. Did that for a while then as zeds got tougher I wound up packing two SMGs, one full and one semi auto.

Just felt wrong.

[Onarr]

14 hours ago, Vintorez said:

Have you guys considered trying to implement "dumb" filler zombie spawns? Basically enemies that have more basic AI and internal mechanics that make them viable to spawn in larger numbers to fill out the world.

I was browsing mods for Rimworld, a game that starts to chug even with just a few dozen colonists/creatures in play, and somebody made a mod called Zombieland that uses very simplified bare-bones entities that can be spawned in the hundreds with little performance impact. Wondered if something similar could be done for 7 days for those who want the zombies to have more of a presence in the day-to-day play.

 

Could be like desecrated zombies whose bodies are barely functional anymore. Low health, little to no xp value, basic pathing to approach the player and attack when in range, weak senses make them easy to stealth past and aren't too much of a nuisance to bases. Could give the game a whole new feel between horde nights and POI looting.

Damn that sounds awesome

12 hours ago, faatal said:

Yes. I have several ideas on my todo list, but they are not simple changes. They will need a good amount of R&D. Character controller updates is a big one, but reducing update frequency will cause problems, so it has to be done in a careful manner and time sliced to reduce frame spikes.

I want to hug and kiss you. No homo. Love your work on optimization and AI

[Onarr]

14 hours ago, madmole said:

This is wrong, Iron is 2 points better than stone, but the randomness can make it possible for stone to be better than iron.

Imho the differences between tiers are now way to thin. Stat wise one tier up should be alway significantly better no matter the quality. On side note I feel like stone tools should never get to higher qualities for this very reason. Different tier should have quality cap based on the material:
Stone - max Q2

Iron - Max Q4

Steel - max Q6

It would make sense, because quality of item is severaly limited by material and design used. Also the tiers imho should be balanced around how many hits it needs to break a block. If I can two shot dirt with my stone shovel, I am not going to replace it with anything unless it one shots it.

[DaVegaNL]

Any chance of an update to experimental before the weekend?

[beHypE]

22 minutes ago, Onarr said:

Imho the differences between tiers are now way to thin. Imho stat wise one tier up should be alway significantly better no matter the quality. On side note I feel like stone tools should never get to higher qualities for this very reason. Imho different tier should have quality cap based on the material:
Stone - max Q2

Iron - Max Q4

Steel - max Q6

It would make sense, because quality of item is severaly limited by material and design used. Also the tiers imho should be balanced around how many hits it needs to break a block. If I can two shot dirt with my stone shovel, I am not going to replace it with anything unless it one shots it.

Max Q2 on stone is a bit rough to be fair 😆. But I like the idea. Regardless of the path they choose, I hope they will address the "differences between tiers" that are way too thin like you stated.

[MechanicalLens]

2 minutes ago, beHypE said:

Max Q2 on stone is a bit rough to be fair 😆. But I like the idea. Regardless of the path they choose, I hope they will address the "differences between tiers" that are way too thin like you stated.

I just hope they don't remove all the unique tiers entirely and replace them with "Shovel", "Pickaxe", and "Axe". 😜

[Gazz]

8 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

I just hope they don't remove all the unique tiers entirely and replace them with "Shovel", "Pickaxe", and "Axe". 😜

Why over-complicate it when "tool" will do just fine?

[MechanicalLens]

6 minutes ago, Gazz said:

Why over-complicate it when "tool" will do just fine?

Why separate tools from weapons? That is stretching things a little too thin. Why not unify all weapons and tools as one singular term? "Object" should suffice.

That leaves the mess that is every other "object" in the game to deal with. Therefore I propose that every asset in the game - tools, armor, weapons, light sources, workstations, blocks and deco, food, ammo and meds, vehicles, so forth - should be replaced with one singular asset. "Thing" it shall be called. It can do it all, and it is the only object to exist in loot or to be craftable; it won't even have its own sprite. Everything unified. "Thing."

[Gazz]

I like the simplicity!

 

“7 Days to Die thrusts players into the aftermath of the fall of civilization with only their wits and bare hands to survive. In this continually evolving title currently in alpha stage development, players must explore the open world alone or with friends to build things and shelter against the dangers of the reanimated dead, infected wildlife and the world itself.”

[MechanicalLens]

5 minutes ago, Gazz said:

players must explore the open world alone or with friends to build things and shelter against the dangers of the reanimated dead, infected wildlife and the world itself.”

Yes, I love it when a plan comes together.

[NukemDed]

funny how all discussion atm seems to be about balance which is gradients of settings rather than content, graphics or performance let alone glitches. ..

saying that, nothing i have seen so far has given me cause to be interrupted or wrenched from the game zone

things are looking as promising as i had hoped. im so looking forward to modding the final product!

 

unless the weather improves and i get to go fishing.

hint hint

[Jon Dillinger]

i have been loving the jump from PS4 to PC started 18.4 and after having trouble getting the DS4 controller to work on linux i tried A 19 to see if things where better , and they were as far as the Xbox controller went but the Ds4 and maybes its me is not working on the Linux build i have tried and failed many times the best i can get is the buttons to be recognized but the axis for the TS's don't move my player or the console cursor im on Linux ubuntu 20.4 using Qjoypad to get the Xbox controller to work and that is only accomplished on "steam big screen" mode launching from the classic steam window produced carried result as the "bigscreen mode" has been more stable. any how THe jump from 18 to 19 was awesome so many improvement and while moving form PS4 i missed the grind exploits to get high tier early game i find the new Character build mechanic gets me out there playing the game right away and not sitting in a shack spam building stone axes over a work bench . so i really have been liking it and i think i see the wisdom in that decision

[Adam the Waster]

deleted

[Damocles]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

You don't have to read 500+ pages of this thread. Follow the content of Gazz, Madmole, and faatal and you can get the info you are wanting without all the extra noise. 

 

Loot is tied to gamestage. Enemies are tied to gamestage.

Individual POIs and biomes cannot currently be assigned gamestage modifiers but they will in the future.

 

Thus, while in the Forest biome you will be at your basic gamestage whereas in the burnt forest you might be at gamestage +30 or in the wasteland-- gamestage +50 which means tougher monsters guarding better loot than in the Forest.

 

In addition, that radiated Firestation might be gamestage +80 whereas the simple home next to it might be gamestage -10. Go in the home and you'll one-hit kill anything that comes at you and enjoy some nice new stone axes whereas right next door there will be ferals inside with pump shotguns in the crates. Now mix and match and stack those modifiers for POI's together with the biomes where they are located and you will have a variety of loot you can get if you are willing to take a chance.

 

The system they have planned will also mean that it won't have to always be that particular Firestation that is always going to be gamestage +80 every time you play.

That sounds definitely interesting to have the world have some more regional variation, and a reason to travel further than the hometown, and have higher risk POIs.

... and also does not sound like too complicated to implement with the current mechanics (probably need needs another world-file for the local gamestage level or parameter in the prefab definition, and some audio/visual cue of how dangerous the local area is, like a Geiger counter)

 

.. how long that takes to implement by TFP keeps being a mystery for me...

[Onarr]

2 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

I just hope they don't remove all the unique tiers entirely and replace them with "Shovel", "Pickaxe", and "Axe". 😜

Well... you could have 6 tiers without quality - stone, iron, steel, carbon fiber, power and legendaries at top.  It would make things much easier to balance and would be simpler to understand. Each tier would need one less strike to harvest block - 4-3-2-1, power tools do it faster and legendaries have special effects like AoE. 

I dont know, its just an idea dont stone me please