Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Slingblade2040]

ok. how much time and effort go into getting jail breaker candy vs using other methods?  also amount of resources and perk points. the idea of a 100 duke candy letting you 100% lockpick is very OP. 100 duke is a joke to get and with vending machines respawning what every day? it's very easy to obtain jail breakers. 

 

the idea of not calling those candies anything outside of OP is kinda ridiculous. kinda weird that those candies are OK while other things that weren't even close to being that good got nerfed to hell.

[RhinoW]

36 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

All weapons do that, it's the % dismember chance. If you hit them in the head, there's a % chance to auto dismember the limb (head in this case) and auto kill them. The percent goes up as you invest more into the perk. Attacking really fast and spam proc dismember is  what makes even the bad weapons like the Stun baton at least usable.

 

It's not reliable though, so you can't say the spear is balanced because you can sometimes get a lucky RNG dismember on it. There was a melee weapon test several pages back showing the TTK (time to kill) of a few melee weapons against Irradiated and the spear did by far the worst, taking entire minutes longer than the others to kill a couple of irradiated.

Melee agility build is by far the strongest in the game, not even comparable to anything else. Bleed + fast chance to insta kill + good stamina efficiency per hit + no movement penalty + easy crafts (bone knife).

[Khalagar]

  

1 hour ago, stallionsden said:

I had never put any points into any perk let alone the sex rex one.

It is random but the game is alot of random, Random amounts of loot, random amounts of guns found, ammo found etc. The game be boring if it was always predictable and the spear is no different really, The chance of decaping a z with the spear is just as random as a gun shooting a zs head off. one shotting zs constantly is a mod and the randomness of these events should stay that way. The spear to me feels balanced and fair not over powered or under powered.

 

 

Uh, you mis-understood what I meant lol

 

It's not Sex Rex, it's the your governing attribute (and all tool and weapon get the exact same chance from their attribute) that increases your chance to dismember on hit. It goes up to 50% at max I think, forgot to look after I maxed out perception just now

 

 

Loot and other stuff being random is totally unrelated to a weapon not being able to consistently kill targets. People are of the opinion the spear is not great because other weapons *can* kill targets more reliably.

 

It's a really easy thing to test, just load up a new game, give yourself some EXP and weapons, spawn zombies and hit them with the weapons. Try different perks and different builds, document results. It's not opinions when you can just use use statistics to back them up

 

Here is the damage for a fully modded spear vs a fully modded steel club, with both attribute maxed and with perks maxed

 

 

 

 

 

Steel club does more per light attack, less on a power attack, attacks faster, and costs one more stamina.

 

 

I just ran about a dozen tests on basic zombies, ferals, and irradiated zombies comparing Club to Spear

 

Spear can easily dispatch a solo fodder zombie in one hit to the head with a throw. It takes several to kill ferals and especially irradiated, but it can usually do it in about 4-5 hits if I mix in throws and pokes and throw it at their head when they are knocked down for the 50% extra damage. It's fine 1 vs 1 against a feral, basically anything in the game is

 

The club was infinitely easier and more reliable though. M2 M1 M2 and the fight was over, every time on club. You stagger, knock down, then kill and they weren't even fighting back.

 

Spear isn't trash, it's totally usable, it's just high skill and high risk for lower reward than the low skill options like bonking them on the head with a club. Honestly though, Club is just OP at the moment. In every melee test I've run, Club is basically the defacto comparison because it overshadows everything else

 

Disarming yourself to do your main damage is also not a very good idea as it's REALLY easy to miss, and even if you hit, I was really, really struggling to get my spear back from the zombies pretty frequently. Even when looking directly at it and spamming E on the spear while the zombie was dead, it would take 2-8 seconds to get it back nearly every time. I think it has something to do with the zombie animation, as it only happened on dead zombies or zombies in the process of standing up

 

  

41 minutes ago, RhinoW said:

Melee agility build is by far the strongest in the game, not even comparable to anything else. Bleed + fast chance to insta kill + good stamina efficiency per hit + no movement penalty + easy crafts (bone knife).

 

You can make a club out of wood lol, bone knife isn't adding much

 

Run tests on it, the machete is about like the spear where "It's usable, but Club does it's job a lot better". I'm not even sure what the numbers on bleed damage is, but it's not really high enough to bother with, you are better off just doing like MechanicalLens mentioned and just spamming M1 until the zed stops moving.

 

Number wise, club was shown above so reference the numbers there so I don't make the post look longer than it already is

 

 

Club only costs 3 stamina more per swing, and attacks slightly slower while doing way more damage per hit.

 

I just tested TTK with no decapitation RNG, on second hardest difficulty

 

Club = 1 M2 + 2 M1 = Dead Radiated Arlene

 

Machete = 1 M2 + 4 M1 = Dead Radiated Arlene

 

 

I tried to test DoT but I don't know how  you tell when she's even bleeding. I hit her until she was on fire and it took about 7 minutes in game for her to die, and that was with me having to hit her a few more times to re-apply the fire and bleed. The DoT basically did so little damage it was negligible as I had to hit her at least 4 times with M1 which would have taken most of her health bar off with just those

 

 

 

Edit: Basically the To Long Didn't Read take away of my tests is

 

TLDR; Club is OP and outclasses everything else. Spear and Machete (and probably Stun Baton) are called weak (by comparison) but are usable, they are just under tuned. Spear getting a chain that pulls it back to you after you throw it would solve a lot of it's issues, and Machete just needs number tweaks to make bleed less non-existent 

 

Sledge, Spear, Machete, and Axe can all get the job decently well, they are just all outclassed by the Club and all have downsides the club does not have. Junk Sledge is terrible in handheld, and I didn't test Stun Baton

 

[bloodmoth13]

2 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

So here is my proposed solution:

 

1. Lockbreakers effectiveness is reduced from 100% down to 15-20%

 

2. Higher-end loot containers should have a greater chance of breaking your lockpicks than lower-end containers, much like how Skyrim does it. Breaking 30 lockpicks on a wall/desk safe is ridiculous in my eyes, and I'm speaking purely from a gameplay standpoint here. One of the reasons why lockpicks are unattractive without Jailbreakers is you might blow all of your lockpicks on a single wall/desk safe. 

Lockpicking just needs a minor rework, all it needs is for a guaranteed 1s advancement per lockpick, and the perk can just reduce the total time it takes to pick a lock from 15 - 12 - 9 - 6. or lower. For higher end containers just increase the time it takes to pick from 15 to 20. 

The lockpicking perk though i think does need a loot multiplier, saving time and lockpicks isnt really enough for an investment.

[pregnable]

Yeah for my throwing build it is just meant to be another source of cheap ranged damage, so there is not any point in using anything other than a tier 5 stone spear, as that is the best I can craft and spam, with no mods. 

 

So at some point the tier 5 stone spear needs to 1 shot a zombie on nomad with a headshot or the build is a bust.  Rather just use stone arrows at that point, which kinda got a buff with all the chickens around now. 

 

It does have a range advantage for my melee from above horde bases, where you can just melee the horde while mostly safe... but I could probably change it slightly and do the same thing power attacking with the sledge or steel axe... so meh. 

[madmole]

44 minutes ago, Slingblade2040 said:

ok. how much time and effort go into getting jail breaker candy vs using other methods?  also amount of resources and perk points. the idea of a 100 duke candy letting you 100% lockpick is very OP. 100 duke is a joke to get and with vending machines respawning what every day? it's very easy to obtain jail breakers. 

 

the idea of not calling those candies anything outside of OP is kinda ridiculous. kinda weird that those candies are OK while other things that weren't even close to being that good got nerfed to hell.

How is it OP? They are available in limited quantities, where if you do a lot of tier 4 and 5 questing and have the super chests to deal with you are going to run out, where with shotgun breaching rounds I can blow the lock off in a few shots and be in. Same way with a ranked up pickaxe you can smash in fairly quick, so to pay 100 dukes to speed that up a bit isn't really that OP. Originally it increased your chance to get in, but it was meh, nobody was buying them because you had to lug lockpicks and candy to do it, vs just a pickaxe, you might as well just use a pickaxe if it isn't guaranteed to get you in, instread of wasting 2 slots on lockpicks and candy that might NOT get the job done.

37 minutes ago, RhinoW said:

Melee agility build is by far the strongest in the game, not even comparable to anything else. Bleed + fast chance to insta kill + good stamina efficiency per hit + no movement penalty + easy crafts (bone knife).

I disagree, clubs smoke knives, but knives are fun too. Knocking a guy down is way better than him bleeding where you still need to run away.

[bloodmoth13]

4 minutes ago, madmole said:

How is it OP? They are available in limited quantities, where if you do a lot of tier 4 and 5 questing and have the super chests to deal with you are going to run out, where with shotgun breaching rounds I can blow the lock off in a few shots and be in. Same way with a ranked up pickaxe you can smash in fairly quick, so to pay 100 dukes to speed that up a bit isn't really that OP. Originally it increased your chance to get in, but it was meh, nobody was buying them because you had to lug lockpicks and candy to do it, vs just a pickaxe, you might as well just use a pickaxe if it isn't guaranteed to get you in, instread of wasting 2 slots on lockpicks and candy that might NOT get the job done.

Im guessing he was comparing the candy to the lockpicking perk, which with 3 points only gives you a 30% increased chance to not break as opposed to 1 candy that gives you 100% chance. The candy basically gives you 10 perk points worth of the lock picker perk, which on that metric looks really good, i think it just shows more how low the value of that perk is (1 pt for the lockpick crafting though is probably worth it)

 

[hiemfire]

@Khalagar 2 things.

1: 55 attacks per minute (what your example steel spear does) = 1 attack every 1.09 seconds and 52 attacks per minute (what your example steel club does) = 1 attack every 1.15 seconds. The spear in your example attacks more often.

2: Why are you using fortifying grip instead of ergonomic grip?

[Khalagar]

1 hour ago, hiemfire said:

: 55 attacks per minute (what your example steel spear does) = 1 attack every 1.09 seconds and 52 attacks per minute (what your example steel club does) = 1 attack every 1.15 seconds. The spear in your example attacks more often.

Oops, yeah misread it. Spear attacks slightly faster with a light attack

 

1 hour ago, hiemfire said:

Why are you using fortifying grip instead of ergonomic grip?

 

Mostly was just what I had on me and I wasn't really thinking too much about it. Was getting annoyed trying to find things that fit it that were good, I figured stuff like serrated blade would fit it, but nope. I just stuck that on there for the extra damage from number of mods. Rad remover probably would have been best I guess, but there is kind of a shortage of mods for melee weapons honestly, I ran into the same issue on Machete where I struggled to find stuff to even work on it, as common sense things like serrated blade wouldn't work on it either

[MechanicalLens]

4 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Oops, yeah misread it. Spear attacks slightly faster with a light attack

 

 

Mostly was just what I had on me and I wasn't really thinking too much about it. Was getting annoyed trying to find things that fit it that were good, I figured stuff like serrated blade would fit it, but nope. I just stuck that on there for the extra damage from number of mods. Rad remover probably would have been best I guess, but there is kind of a shortage of mods for melee weapons honestly, I ran into the same issue on Machete where I struggled to find stuff to even work on it, as common sense things like serrated blade wouldn't work on it either

You think melee weapons have it rough? Try the magnum. 

[STyK_]

Hopefully this is still a work in progress. It also rained for 11 hours in game during which time it was freezing and as soon as it stopped even though it was still dark cloudy I started getting heat stroke, pretty much the day 6 from hell.

[Khalagar]

They mentioned on one of the streams that not putting your buried supplies under a road was one of those "it sounds easy on paper but isn't" things. You just have to dig in from the side

 

16 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

Try the magnum.

 

Oh man, speaking of weapons that need a buff really badly, that thing. Most pointless red headed step child in the entire game, does *anyone* ever use that? I've never even had a Vulture to compare it to as even end game when I had all the other T3's ages prior, I still never got a single vulture in loot or for sale, but had tons of magnums. Every time I've tried to use that it's just . . .why? I honestly prefer the 9mm to it even late game

 

[STyK_]

6 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

They mentioned on one of the streams that not putting your buried supplies under a road was one of those "it sounds easy on paper but isn't" things. You just have to dig in from the side

well in that case I'm more likely to cancel the quest and let the trader come up with something else the next day, cause that was a death trap. Not that I died but expected the dog horde every second I couldn't see and getting away was a massive pain.

[Laz Man]

3 hours ago, Khalagar said:

TLDR; Club is OP and outclasses everything else. Spear and Machete (and probably Stun Baton) are called weak (by comparison) but are usable, they are just under tuned. Spear getting a chain that pulls it back to you after you throw it would solve a lot of it's issues, and Machete just needs number tweaks to make bleed less non-existent 

 

Sledge, Spear, Machete, and Axe can all get the job decently well, they are just all outclassed by the Club and all have downsides the club does not have. Junk Sledge is terrible in handheld, and I didn't test Stun Baton

 

Did you consider available mod types?  I know they removed the burning shaft from some weapon types.  If burning shaft is still compatible with clubs maybe they should remove it to make the spear more viable?

35 minutes ago, STyK_ said:

Hopefully this is still a work in progress. It also rained for 11 hours in game during which time it was freezing and as soon as it stopped even though it was still dark cloudy I started getting heat stroke, pretty much the day 6 from hell.

Lathan was laughing maniacally in tonight's dev stream....now I know why lol...

 

Joking aside, he mentioned there is no way for him to determine where there is a road thus cannot do road detection.  Pointed at Robert...😂

[Gazz]

A lot of those balance suggestions are entertaining to read. Every time someone claims that blades are weak, someone else pipes up with them being very strong. Some hate the magnum, others love the it, etc.

 

The fun part is that all of those are correct.

If you use your play style only then from that perspective some weapons will absolutely be much stronger than others.

 

Spears or blades can not be buffed to a point where you can just stand there all chill and trade blows with a zombie because then they would end up crazy OP. There already are weapons for this kind of thing. Use those and be happy.

[Rathlon]

In the latest A19 experimental build my mother has the zombies off due to that's how she plays.

But in doing so the hostile animals also doesn't spawn.

And yet today she ran across a direwolf, now I looked over the entityclasses.xml file at the coding for the hostile animals.

I didn't notice anything changed on the enemy type code line.

Or it was never stated in the patch notes.

And yes I know it's experimental and bugs can and will happen, but this one is new to me.

[CoolJ]

29 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Oh man, speaking of weapons that need a buff really badly, that thing (the magnum). Most pointless red headed step child in the entire game, does *anyone* ever use that? I've never even had a Vulture to compare it to as even end game when I had all the other T3's ages prior, I still never got a single vulture in loot or for sale, but had tons of magnums. Every time I've tried to use that it's just . . .why? I honestly prefer the 9mm to it even late game

 

I use a Vulture when I am doing T5 Dungeon Crawls. The magnum does do more damage, however, it cannot be silenced. The magazine also cannot be expanded. I use a magnum with AP rounds on horde nights to kill demolishers. Fully maxed out with a 2x scope, it works really well for that one thing alone. Though I feel a sniper or a marksman rifle would probably be better for that with the larger magazines and faster fire rate. Certainly if you are perked into it. I don't even know what the marksman rifle is supposed to do now otherwise.

 

2 hours ago, madmole said:

I disagree, clubs smoke knives, but knives are fun too. Knocking a guy down is way better than him bleeding where you still need to run away.

Did you forget that when you are perked into deep cuts, your enemy is slowed? There is no running away. There is only attacking another target while the previous one dies. Not to mention, you can't harvest an animal with a club. Your system puts so much weight in inventory slots, that even saving one matters. It's another reason why the candies are not OP. They take up yet another inventory slot. Once you have a steel pic, carting around lock picks and candy just to open a safe is a complete waste of time and inventory space.

[Khalagar]

27 minutes ago, Gazz said:

Every time someone claims that blades are weak, someone else pipes up with them being very strong

 

Consistent Testing™ solves everything! TTK is the baseline test that works best for most games, just pick a specific enemy, time how fast it dies to each build, and you've got a pretty unbiased test for 1 vs 1 at least. Definitely not perfect though, since it's just 1 vs 1, and some things are really bad in groups, like the spear being REALLY bad for groups

 

 

  

11 minutes ago, CoolJ said:

Did you forget that when you are perked into deep cuts, your enemy is slowed?

 

 

Stun >>>>>>>>>>>> Slow

 

Club staggers and knocks them out, and also kills faster too. You should test the "trigger bleed and ignore them" as from my tests earlier it didn't do enough damage to matter even with a flaming shaft mod

 

  

11 minutes ago, CoolJ said:

Not to mention, you can't harvest an animal with a club

 

 

This is why I think the Axe is the one of the best late game melee weapon. TTK wasn't that much lower than Sledgehammer, it tears through wood, has pretty reasonable stamina use, gathers meat, staggers enemies decently etc. It's all around pretty good.

 

Club is just flat out OP at the moment, but it's arguable if it's even *worth* carrying a melee weapon at all late game, so the axe can do melee "good enough" and has a lot of utility too

[CoolJ]

I have tested the bleed thoroughly. I use it. Also the machete in your example is a low roll. Mine does 42 damage maxed out. You really need to be perked into Deep Cuts for it to matter. Have you actually tried it with maxed deep cuts? When you get 7 consecutive bleeds going on an enemy, and just switch to killing anther enemy all together, that is going to change your TTK more than you think. I also don't melee radiated zombies. They are dead before they ever wake up.

[madmole]

21 minutes ago, CoolJ said:

I use a Vulture when I am doing T5 Dungeon Crawls. The magnum does do more damage, however, it cannot be silenced. The magazine also cannot be expanded. I use a magnum with AP rounds on horde nights to kill demolishers. Fully maxed out with a 2x scope, it works really well for that one thing alone. Though I feel a sniper or a marksman rifle would probably be better for that with the larger magazines and faster fire rate. Certainly if you are perked into it. I don't even know what the marksman rifle is supposed to do now otherwise.

 

Did you forget that when you are perked into deep cuts, your enemy is slowed? There is no running away. There is only attacking another target while the previous one dies. Not to mention, you can't harvest an animal with a club. Your system puts so much weight in inventory slots, that even saving one matters. It's another reason why the candies are not OP. They take up yet another inventory slot. Once you have a steel pic, carting around lock picks and candy just to open a safe is a complete waste of time and inventory space.

It is probably close when you weigh in all the factors, really it depends on your style and what makes you feel like a badass. I think clubs are better for sure early game but maybe later on knives start to catch up.

[DaVegaNL]

On ‎7‎/‎22‎/‎2020 at 4:52 AM, wolfbain5 said:

no thanks, I know where you have been. "Devega! someone at the door for you!"

Oh he's here again to talk about our lord and savior, Madmole?

[CoolJ]

48 minutes ago, madmole said:

It is probably close when you weigh in all the factors, really it depends on your style and what makes you feel like a badass. I think clubs are better for sure early game but maybe later on knives start to catch up.

 

I would hope that is idea anyway. They feel pretty balanced to me. I only ever get SexyT level one. It is all the class needs. Other melee weapons require more points into it than that. It's just a play style change. If you take advantage of all the class attributes when you can, there are distinct advantages to perking into any of them. Knives are fine.

 

I will say that if you think a full length shotgun with a choke only has a range of six meters, you need to actually shoot a shotgun. I know you want to keep the range down for balance reasons. However, six meters is laughable. My positively ancient Browning A12 patterns 13-16 inches with 00 high brass at twenty meters. Granted I had to pay a gunsmith to fit a proper choke. It was still way better than six meters even with the horrible adjustable thing they called a choke that came on the gun. I would say that there is no problem for them to go out to ten or eleven meters and they still won't be a rifle. Slugs being so short range in this game is a travesty. They wont replace rifles for long range because people that perk into rifles will still use rifles. It would just give strength characters the ability to switch to longer range round if they want to hit something farther away. Keep in mind that it will still cost an inventory slot to carry them and they are way too expensive to use them exclusively. Polymer is far more expensive than brass and paper. Keeping shotguns at such a low range for balance is not any different than making the rifles useless at close range for "balance". It is currently pointless to shoot at a circling vulture with a shotgun. Considering that the shotgun is the go to fouling weapon of choice, it seems kinda contrived.

 

Back when you didn't have a perk system supporting the use of specific weapons, maybe it made sense. I don't feel like the range penalty is warranted.

[DaVegaNL]

Has the few-second-delay-lag been fixed already when encountering new POI's?

[Gazz]

1 hour ago, Khalagar said:

Consistent Testing™ solves everything! TTK is the baseline test that works best for most games, just pick a specific enemy, time how fast it dies to each build, and you've got a pretty unbiased test for 1 vs 1 at least. Definitely not perfect though, since it's just 1 vs 1, and some things are really bad in groups, like the spear being REALLY bad for groups

This mindset is why these discussions are so funny to watch.

If all weapons were set up to be good at an irish boxing approach then yes, it would be optimal.

Since weapons are balanced asymmetrical it serves no purpose.

 

One example: With your approach 2 turrets must be as strong as an auto shotgun or M60 because they are "a weapon" and all weapons are to be tested in isolation and in the same manner.

[MasterScrotis]

Damn Mad Mole You guys have been Busy.. Whether you remember me or not I just want to begin with.. I'm Proud of You guys and what you have accomplished.

and follow up with That I'm honored so many of my modded features have made it into the game now 😃

 

Yes of course I'm cooking something up It should look pretty familiar right down to the science of it Be on the lookout in the mod forum. 

While I'mat it where is my old friend Valmar? I need someone to get me up to speed with how the new modding works and He isn't even on my steam list anymore and these new programs seem clunky compared to what we used back in 2014ish or maybe again I'm just not sure how to use it right lol.

 

Either way boys Sorry for the several year hiatus And I'm So proud to call this the greatest game of all time 😃 see ya around.