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madmole

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Question.

 

A while back there were some comments about building/adjusting things for a 30-50 hour game. And recently meganoth mentioned similar hours.

 

Wondering if those hours had general targets as to player progression? Level x, generally wielding Tier x Qual x for their main weapon, etc.

 

Reason I'm asking is I've passed 35 hours (90min days), as a miner/builder, lvl 31, no Combat Perks, sporting a qual 1 Ak(bought) & Pistol(toilet). I know my progression was slowed by my own choices, curious what 'normal' progrssion might be.

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3 minutes ago, Gromit said:

Is that 2% from the data you've acquired so far? I would have expected the number of builders to be much higher than that.

I'd be really curious to see some of the data they've managed to gather so far. Not to pick on TFP but just out of general interest.

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1 minute ago, Nugetti said:

I'd be really curious to see some of the data they've managed to gather so far. Not to pick on TFP but just out of general interest.

When we play on the family server, only my hubby likes to build. We are 4 players normally. I know that doesn't answer your question, but for us, its 1 in 4. Me my kid and brother in law like different things too. Me and my kid (not a child) like killing zeds, my brother in law farms like it's his job and my hubby build huge buildings. When we played with 8 ppl on the server, my hubby was still the only builder.

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13 minutes ago, madmole said:

Robotic parts are plenty common, you either haven't played long enough or you have got bad RNG. We already have something similar, the perk that gives you additional choices for rewards. I don't like rewards being specialized because there are no decent high end medical items so Jen would become the useless trader to do quests for, and everyone would flock to Hugh for his guns.

The plan is to game stage the rewards to stay ahead of loot by a few levels so the rewards are better than what you could find, but not game ending, until game end.

 

Hey, thanks for hearing me out! I don't know too many game designers willing to chat with forum-goers, so I appreciate it.

 

My robotics shortage could be rough RNG, I just noticed it because I have 15-20 for just about every other weapon, and like 50+ military armor parts. 

 

I see what you mean about Jen. Maybe unshackle the rewards from the trader's specialty, so Jen could give gun quests? But if that's not the direction you have in mind, I understand that too. Thanks!

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8 minutes ago, Nugetti said:

I'd be really curious to see some of the data they've managed to gather so far. Not to pick on TFP but just out of general interest.

Yeah, I'd be interested as well.

 

Modding doesn't look very complicated for the features I want so I'll likely just mod in the building features I want.

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49 minutes ago, Nugetti said:

I'd be really curious to see some of the data they've managed to gather so far. Not to pick on TFP but just out of general interest.

I'm interested in the data but leery of how some will cherry pick and try to twist it to "make their point". I think it'd be best if TPF chose to keep the info close to chest.

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2 hours ago, madmole said:

There is no need for a sticky, if people like it, and talk about it, it will stick itself.

Sorry but how am I supposed to react to such argument? No topic stays constantly on top, no matter how popular it is. Then new topic emerges, but it is already without prior builds. Purpose of sticky is to have all of it at one place. There is already sticky topic for seeds, why not builds? 

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1 hour ago, madmole said:

The plan is to game stage the rewards to stay ahead of loot by a few levels so the rewards are better than what you could find, but not game ending, until game end.

Will you be setting up each tier of quests to have a minimal tier of rewards? This would make there be an incentive to challenge yourself with higher tier quests early instead of just grinding out low tier quests as long as you can.

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1 hour ago, Gromit said:

Is that 2% from the data you've acquired so far? I would have expected the number of builders to be much higher than that.

We're not considering any data from experimental, since it is mostly hardcore players.

1 hour ago, FileMachete said:

Question.

 

A while back there were some comments about building/adjusting things for a 30-50 hour game. And recently meganoth mentioned similar hours.

 

Wondering if those hours had general targets as to player progression? Level x, generally wielding Tier x Qual x for their main weapon, etc.

 

Reason I'm asking is I've passed 35 hours (90min days), as a miner/builder, lvl 31, no Combat Perks, sporting a qual 1 Ak(bought) & Pistol(toilet). I know my progression was slowed by my own choices, curious what 'normal' progrssion might be.

I don't think there can be a normal. Actually you gain tons of experience mining/upgrading, so I don't really see that as slowing things down much.

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1 hour ago, madmole said:

Everything requires RNG though. You should be swimming in parts if you put the work in. Are you level 30 because you are mining and building? Or level 30 because you are shooting and looting? Obviously the looter shooter will have way more parts than the miner/builder.

Well I meant to mention that.  I think I am on day 12 or 13... the way I play I usually power level, so maybe the balance is right. 

 

Nah, you can kinda bypass RNG with certain builds. 

 

That build I start strength and get miner and motherload asap, and I use the stone axe as melee.  I find the trader and do quests if they are not stupid far away and then have a cobblestone base good enough for the 7 day horde before the start of day 2. 

 

Then I make a blunderbuss and iron fire axe(for a melee weapon, when I can) and start questing during the day and building and digging at night. 

 

I also will take points in intel for cement mixer and forge and start spamming concrete asap. 

251570_screenshots_20200726033436_1.jpg

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Alright. I had to say something at this point. 

 

I game on PC and console. I own and enjoy the game on console. I will not be purchasing it on PC until TFP becomes a little more responsive to the community that supports their work.

 

To create a game that is obviously centered around building and then lambast people who enjoy that aspect of the game is a little childish. I find the "2% vanity builder" stat to be highly suspect. I mean, c'mon - the very first description of the game I read, written by TFP, described it as a "voxel based zombie survival game." It really sounds like your feelings are a bit hurt over the fact your user base isn't playing the game exactly as you would like them to. Are you developing a game for others to enjoy, or for yourself to enjoy vicariously by dictating play styles that you don't (for some strange reason) agree with?

 

I think you're alienating a good portion of your fans at this point. Its a little ironic criticizing that style of play with a handle like 'madmole'. And to push the responsibility off on modders to "fix" what is obviously shortcomings in the core game itself is a little ridiculous. 

 

As I said - I love the game. I'd love to see it get to a place on PC where I could purchase and enjoy it for what I wanted it to be and what it was initially described as. Its just not there unfortunately. As I heard posted on a separate forum...if I wanted a standard FPS zombie game where the focus was on zombie hunting and looting, I have many other, more polished options. 

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1 hour ago, EggsAisle said:

 

Hey, thanks for hearing me out! I don't know too many game designers willing to chat with forum-goers, so I appreciate it.

 

My robotics shortage could be rough RNG, I just noticed it because I have 15-20 for just about every other weapon, and like 50+ military armor parts. 

 

I see what you mean about Jen. Maybe unshackle the rewards from the trader's specialty, so Jen could give gun quests? But if that's not the direction you have in mind, I understand that too. Thanks!

They send you to whatever POIs are near. THe reward groups are identical per trader.

43 minutes ago, Onarr said:

Sorry but how am I supposed to react to such argument? No topic stays constantly on top, no matter how popular it is. Then new topic emerges, but it is already without prior builds. Purpose of sticky is to have all of it at one place. There is already sticky topic for seeds, why not builds? 

We don't have time to decide what is stick worthy or not. If it is important to you book mark it. Same thing as a sticky without us having to manage it.

44 minutes ago, Tmodloader said:

Will you be setting up each tier of quests to have a minimal tier of rewards? This would make there be an incentive to challenge yourself with higher tier quests early instead of just grinding out low tier quests as long as you can.

You will have to graduate to the next tier like now, but when you do, you might have access to lower tiers yet instead of it being mainly current tier with some random low ones.

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7 minutes ago, Daruma said:

Alright. I had to say something at this point. 

 

I game on PC and console. I own and enjoy the game on console. I will not be purchasing it on PC until TFP becomes a little more responsive to the community that supports their work.

 

To create a game that is obviously centered around building and then lambast people who enjoy that aspect of the game is a little childish. I find the "2% vanity builder" stat to be highly suspect. I mean, c'mon - the very first description of the game I read, written by TFP, described it as a "voxel based zombie survival game." It really sounds like your feelings are a bit hurt over the fact your user base isn't playing the game exactly as you would like them to. Are you developing a game for others to enjoy, or for yourself to enjoy vicariously by dictating play styles that you don't (for some strange reason) agree with?

 

I think you're alienating a good portion of your fans at this point. Its a little ironic criticizing that style of play with a handle like 'madmole'. And to push the responsibility off on modders to "fix" what is obviously shortcomings in the core game itself is a little ridiculous. 

 

As I said - I love the game. I'd love to see it get to a place on PC where I could purchase and enjoy it for what I wanted it to be and what it was initially described as. Its just not there unfortunately. As I heard posted on a separate forum...if I wanted a standard FPS zombie game where the focus was on zombie hunting and looting, I have many other, more polished options. 

Dude I build cooler forts than 99% of the public. For the record I've tried to convince the team to make it possible to get coffee pots and more decor available, but the fact is most players just take over a POI, and they definitely don't use high polygon decorations. So I put my personal feelings as a decorative builder aside for the bigger picture that average players don't build vanity forts. A 2 second mod or CM gets you that, we are in alpha and don't have time to handle all the edge cases of letting players "have it all", as I explained the FPS would tank and 20 other problems.

It is a voxel game. We let you place voxels, not 14000 polygon coffee pots. 

We're alienating who exactly? The game has a higher review score than it has in years and sales are better than ever. Seems like we are on track if you ask me. We focused on building and crafting for years, and finally give guns a little love and not even 10% of the effort that went into building and somehow you view that as abandoning the builders? We still have great things to come to building. I like to build so its not likely we'll leave building as is, we have some great ideas to improve it, it is just a matter of somehow squeezing it on the roadmap, then bandits and other stuff gets pushed back, further, again and again. Eventually we have to save some @%$*#! for the sequel, we can't stay in alpha forever and someone is going to feel like they got screwed.

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20 minutes ago, Daruma said:

Alright. I had to say something at this point. 

 

I game on PC and console. I own and enjoy the game on console. I will not be purchasing it on PC until TFP becomes a little more responsive to the community that supports their work.

 

To create a game that is obviously centered around building and then lambast people who enjoy that aspect of the game is a little childish. I find the "2% vanity builder" stat to be highly suspect. I mean, c'mon - the very first description of the game I read, written by TFP, described it as a "voxel based zombie survival game." It really sounds like your feelings are a bit hurt over the fact your user base isn't playing the game exactly as you would like them to. Are you developing a game for others to enjoy, or for yourself to enjoy vicariously by dictating play styles that you don't (for some strange reason) agree with?

 

I think you're alienating a good portion of your fans at this point. Its a little ironic criticizing that style of play with a handle like 'madmole'. And to push the responsibility off on modders to "fix" what is obviously shortcomings in the core game itself is a little ridiculous. 

 

As I said - I love the game. I'd love to see it get to a place on PC where I could purchase and enjoy it for what I wanted it to be and what it was initially described as. Its just not there unfortunately. As I heard posted on a separate forum...if I wanted a standard FPS zombie game where the focus was on zombie hunting and looting, I have many other, more polished options. 

So you're judging the game to be "centered around building" and you've never even played it? Yes, I mean what I said. Playing it on console is not even remotely playing the same game anymore.

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2 hours ago, madmole said:

Yeah I wish we could just force two voxels in the same space. Who cares?

This is actually a specific topic that I want to talk about. Voxel-based games can support multiple voxels in a single block space, the minecraft modding community does it via various multipart APIs. Unfortunately, based on previous comments you (I think? maybe it was another dev?) have made, it would probably require block entities that require individual draw calls which are inefficient. It basically requires one block that acts as a container for the other blocks and some mechanics that control which blocks can simultaneously occupy the same place. Means you can do things like have a block that has bars on both sides and a satchel in the middle.

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29 minutes ago, pregnable said:

Well I meant to mention that.  I think I am on day 12 or 13... the way I play I usually power level, so maybe the balance is right. 

 

Nah, you can kinda bypass RNG with certain builds. 

 

That build I start strength and get miner and motherload asap, and I use the stone axe as melee.  I find the trader and do quests if they are not stupid far away and then have a cobblestone base good enough for the 7 day horde before the start of day 2. 

 

Then I make a blunderbuss and iron fire axe(for a melee weapon, when I can) and start questing during the day and building and digging at night. 

 

I also will take points in intel for cement mixer and forge and start spamming concrete asap. 

251570_screenshots_20200726033436_1.jpg

I don't build on day 1 because then you have to mine with poor tools and low perks. I just loot until day 5 and by then I'll have a forge and can craft iron tools and have enough stone left over from mining gunpowder (at night) to build a nice base. At any rate unless you are looting daily you are not going to have a lot of parts.

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Thanks for the polite response. I honestly expected less cordiality. 

 

I love the game. As does my wife. When we were looking for a co-op survival game that checked all the boxes, there was 7 Days. Literally nothing else had everything we wanted in that genre. 

 

But make no mistake - the big draw for us (and I have to assume more than 2% of other users) was building an effective base to "beat the hord", so to speak. It really seems like some of the updates I've seen on the PC end were implemented specifically to thwart that style of play. I can see and understand the flip-side of that too... just think it's possible to cater to both play styles at once. 

 

Again.. love the game. 

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4 minutes ago, Darinth said:

This is actually a specific topic that I want to talk about. Voxel-based games can support multiple voxels in a single block space, the minecraft modding community does it via various multipart APIs. Unfortunately, based on previous comments you (I think? maybe it was another dev?) have made, it would probably require block entities that require individual draw calls which are inefficient. It basically requires one block that acts as a container for the other blocks and some mechanics that control which blocks can simultaneously occupy the same place. Means you can do things like have a block that has bars on both sides and a satchel in the middle.

Na, programming just needs to force two shapes and colliders into one space. It isn't any more draw calls than before, just more colliders and geo.

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8 minutes ago, JCrook1028 said:

So you're judging the game to be "centered around building" and you've never even played it? Yes, I mean what I said. Playing it on console is not even remotely playing the same game anymore.

Lol - and here comes the fanboy. 

 

Console or PC, my money is just as green. And yes - I'm speaking on the PC. You're assuming because I refuse to purchase it on PC in it's current state that I haven't played the PC version?

 

Sounds like a fanboy assumption. 😉

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2 minutes ago, Daruma said:

Thanks for the polite response. I honestly expected less cordiality. 

 

I love the game. As does my wife. When we were looking for a co-op survival game that checked all the boxes, there was 7 Days. Literally nothing else had everything we wanted in that genre. 

 

But make no mistake - the big draw for us (and I have to assume more than 2% of other users) was building an effective base to "beat the hord", so to speak. It really seems like some of the updates I've seen on the PC end were implemented specifically to thwart that style of play. I can see and understand the flip-side of that too... just think it's possible to cater to both play styles at once. 

 

Again.. love the game. 

No not at all. If you haven't played on PC, then building is tons better than it was on console. TONS. I thought you were referring to the "we can't have all the blocks the cm menu has" stuff. Obviously you need a base to defend yourself, a place to craft. I build all kinds of bases, I think the building is 10x better than any game out there to be honest in terms of how creative you can get and end result is pretty gratifying. Building is shippable but I think we will improve it some more yet.
 

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1 minute ago, madmole said:

Na, programming just needs to force two shapes and colliders into one space. It isn't any more draw calls than before, just more colliders and geo.

I would absolutely love to see multi-part blocks implemented. It's one of those consistent frustrations for both myself and some of my other players to be able to put bars on two sides of the same block space. It's probably my personal priority 2 as far as 'things that just need to be here for basic game functionality'. Priority 1 is multiple people being able to access a chest at the same time.

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11 minutes ago, madmole said:

No not at all. If you haven't played on PC, then building is tons better than it was on console. TONS. I thought you were referring to the "we can't have all the blocks the cm menu has" stuff. Obviously you need a base to defend yourself, a place to craft. I build all kinds of bases, I think the building is 10x better than any game out there to be honest in terms of how creative you can get and end result is pretty gratifying. Building is shippable but I think we will improve it some more yet.
 

I have to ask then - and honest question... sincerely not trying to be confrontational..

 

What was the deal with the digging zombies? It seems like that aspect was custom designed to throw a big wrench in the gears of people with underground bases that had effectively neutralized the horde threat.

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13 minutes ago, madmole said:

Na, programming just needs to force two shapes and colliders into one space. It isn't any more draw calls than before, just more colliders and geo.

Never knew that was a thing.  I wonder how challenging that be to program...sounds like a wonderful feature for not just players but the level designers as well.

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24 minutes ago, madmole said:

I don't build on day 1 because then you have to mine with poor tools and low perks. I just loot until day 5 and by then I'll have a forge and can craft iron tools and have enough stone left over from mining gunpowder (at night) to build a nice base. At any rate unless you are looting daily you are not going to have a lot of parts.

 

Yeah I try to do a bit of both, but you can get to 4/4 miner and mother load really fast just building at the start.  I always have a large mine under my base at a 45 degree angle down to bedrock early game with just a stone axe.  I almost never tech up beyond stone tools.

 

This current world I was really unlucky though... all of my trader quests were like 1,500+ away(no dig quests), so I was like nope and did extra building for a day.  Been looting constantly since day 8 though. 

 

Usually when the quests are not all 1,500-2,000 away I will quest most of the day and do my building and mining at night. 

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