Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[danielspoa]

and zip l.. oh

anyone that watched today's stream, did they give any update on how its progressing?

 

[POCKET951]

4 hours ago, Falcon197 said:

 

 

Although, one thing I'm still having a tough time comprehending is the decision to simplify the material upgrade chain by removing rcon, metal, cobble, and some of the other mats.  Pulling out rcon in particular was a real gut-shot for me, but I'm willing to wait and experiment with the new system before leveling judgments on it. 

 

Can someone answer whether the addition of all the new block shapes influenced the mats change for performance reasons, or was it done purely to reduce the number of building materials?

As far as I know there's still the same number of different materials. as for concrete, they removed Rcon but concrete got buffed to be as strong as  Rcon. also when building horde bases it means no longer waiting for concrete to dry which was time consuming and unpredictable, and was a huge inconvenience in proper building that forced me to often layer concrete and just in general made building a time consuming pain in the ass.

the new system will be far more seamless and quick, and overall a huge QOL improvement for building.

 

Its Particle board>wood>cobble>concrete>Steel

They wanted to streamline the building/upgrading process, which also introduces much QOL also.

another aspect was that before alpha 20, certain materials would have access to a particular set of shapes or blocks and it was also super convoluted and confusing.

with the new shape menu, everything will exist in every material.

[POCKET951]

16 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Oh, you ARE supposed to play liike this. And then TFP is supposed to notice this and ...

 

 

... rebalance so it doesn't break anymore. We are the crash test dummies.

 

what do you mean by break? even if you fully min max bartering you will never ever sell for more than the cost to buy, if you could achieve  that then it would be actually broken.

I also don't see how the trade/bartering perks are broken because they require a considerable amount of skill point investment to fully unlock and utilize.

maybe traders inventories shouldn't be unlocked by perks and it should have some kind of favor/rep system where you unlock by completing quest and bartering with them

Idk..  as I said I don't think its busted. by the time I am swimming in oodles of tokens from min maxing bartering, I have already trivialized the rest of the game by that point and already have tonnes of mined materials to make all the ammo and food and everything else I already need. 

At that point the trader just gives me a bit of extra ductape or glue every once in awhile and traders are just so hit and miss with what they sell and they aren't really essential

now if the trader reliably sold quality 6 weapons and armor, that would be busted

it would be okay though if you could get quality 6 stuff as quest rewards on rare occasions

so what is so broken/busted about the trader system atm?

 

[Khalagar]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Sorry, sometimes I make jokes that are very difficult to understand... 

 

I know the pain, I make sardonic jokes with over the top sarcastic emojis and Ironic Trademark Symbols™ and people still think I'm srs 🙄

 

 

  

6 hours ago, Falcon197 said:

Although, one thing I'm still having a tough time comprehending is the decision to simplify the material upgrade chain by removing rcon, metal, cobble, and some of the other mats.

 

Mostly just that they added nothing of value and were just confusing to new players / casual players. I think a lot of posters here miss the unstated (sometimes stated by Madmole actually) fact that TFP are trying to look at things from a new player perspective rather than from people with 1,000+ hours in the game perspective. You and I  already bought the game years ago on sale for $7 and have got our money's worth out of it, and we don't make TFP a single penny because we aren't buying anything or spending money on a game we already bought. If anything, we costing them money by posting on the forums and trying to weedle minor changes into the game from the devs

 

TFP look at what new players don't like and what they stumble over, and are trying to fix those things, as to, y'know, survive as a company, they need to make money by having those new players buy the game and not refund it after they play for an hour and hate it. Things like the crafting system having 12 superfluous extra materials didn't really add anything of value because veteran players just skipped past the random useless stages like Scrap Iron and went Wood -> Cobble -> Concrete, and new players didn't understand the system at all.

 

I've got a friend with 500+ hours in the game who almost certainly *still* can't actually build a building out of concrete and wouldn't even know how to make rebar frames in the forge, as he plays the game like how most casual players do. He picks up a weapon and runs into buildings and dies to zombies and loses all his crap, or limps back home to drop it off in the unorganized storage box he stuck in a PoI he cleared.

 

Those kinds of players as well as new players with under 100 hours in the game will find the new block system a lot easier to understand and more approachable, and they won't know or care about the removed building tiers. For players like us who actually know how to play the game and are bored of the basic mats, that's where mods come in

 

 

 

[Vlinch]

11 minutes ago, POCKET951 said:

As far as I know there's still the same number of different materials. as for concrete, they removed Rcon but concrete got buffed to be as strong as  Rcon. also when building horde bases it means no longer waiting for concrete to dry which was time consuming and unpredictable, and was a huge inconvenience in proper building that forced me to often layer concrete and just in general made building a time consuming pain in the ass.

the new system will be far more seamless and quick, and overall a huge QOL improvement for building.

 

Its Particle board>wood>cobble>concrete>Steel

They wanted to streamline the building/upgrading process, which also introduces much QOL also.

another aspect was that before alpha 20, certain materials would have access to a particular set of shapes or blocks and it was also super convoluted and confusing.

with the new shape menu, everything will exist in every material.

I disagree with calling it a QOL upgrade. To me, you said it was better because now it plays more like Minecraft or Legos, just place the block and it's ready to go. But for me, I liked the intricacies of setting up the rebar and then having to fill it with concrete. The "random" drying never bothered me because real concrete doesn't dry uniformly either. We went from having different blocks that utilize different mechanics in a (somewhat and relative) complex system, to just copy/paste blocks that have different stats in an idiot-proof environment. "Its Particle board>wood>cobble>concrete>Steel" Bam, done, ez, I'm great, next.

[POCKET951]

22 minutes ago, Vlinch said:

I disagree with calling it a QOL upgrade. To me, you said it was better because now it plays more like Minecraft or Legos, just place the block and it's ready to go. But for me, I liked the intricacies of setting up the rebar and then having to fill it with concrete. The "random" drying never bothered me because real concrete doesn't dry uniformly either. We went from having different blocks that utilize different mechanics in a (somewhat and relative) complex system, to just copy/paste blocks that have different stats in an idiot-proof environment. "Its Particle board>wood>cobble>concrete>Steel" Bam, done, ez, I'm great, next.

As someone with almost 1000 hours in this game I liked the nuance of the system at first, but as started to build more bigger and complex bases and buildings, or if I wanted to finish upgrading a horde base before a deadline, It just became stressful and tedious and superfluous and annoying to deal with blocks that have RNG and invariable drying time. if I wanted to make a solid structure I would have to build in layers to make sure everything was reinforced concrete and it just sucks sitting there waiting for all the concrete to dry before you can move on to the next step of the project. and it isn't like you can drive away and it will dry on its own. you have to be in the area and if it's a horde base and I am waiting on concrete to dry and have nothing else to work on all I can do is wait  or punch grass? 

It just results in unnecessary  tedious waiting and time wasting. I would much rather have a finished product quicker because my time is valuable and I have other things I want to do

My time is far more valuable, and if there making a change that gives me more time at the cost of a bit of complexity or nuance, I won't complain about it

They are also adding corner Bars/blocks which I am really happy about because it will save me alot of time making cages, instead of having to use advanced rotation and super finnicky placement of  bars on the inside edge of an adjacent block to make corners in the current system.(It is tedious and it sucks)

 

building in general will just be so much faster and  more intuitive and I won't have to use as many Structural integrity gimmicks

[Burrfly]

It's impossible to make a game where everyone likes all of it. Some people really like the new building system, while some people will prefer the current (in A19) (I personally do as well prefer the A19 building system with the wet concrete).

 

But it's totally okay. TFP are making a very epic game, and a lot of other cool things are coming which overal improves the game a lot (from as far as I've seen; A20 looks amazing - it's the most exciting I've been for a game (even though this is 'only' an update)).

 

They even interact with their player base. I've said it before but will say it again: The Fun Pimps are doing better than larger companies like Bethesda and WildCard. ARK Survival isn't even finished yet with the countless gamebreaking bugs, but WildCard only makes DLC's for money now. 7 Days to Die is more finished in alpha state than ARK Survival is in released state XD. (Although ARK can be a really great game, tho, I just hate that the devs don't focus on fixing and balancing the main game.)

 

So, thank you, TFP

[danielspoa]

Thats for sure. Impossible to appeal to everyone, they are doing great on whats possible. My only complaint ever was removing something that we couldnt implement back - and that wasnt a performance issue -.

 

About traders I do think it gives too much to the player without major consequences, I personally edited a lot of stuff on my server. Maybe gonna release it as a mod once A20 is around. Thats part of whats easily modifiable so I dont think its a real issue for the devs to work on. There's no right or wrong there.

[mstdv inc]

16 hours ago, Blake_ said:

You can joke all you want. But WE ARE forced to use them if we don't want to end up like Tom Hanks conforting Wilson while crying in a cave. You can't possibly defend that we can play ALL of the game without them because trader quests are a significant part of it. And they will have even more weight in future alphas. Now, if an event system could offer more quests that are not the "note ones" in the form of "help me at X plz" or " bandits stole my butt piercing" from a random walking farmer or whatever, then things could change and Traders would stop to have that much importance. Reducing the ridiculous amount of items they have would also help quite a bit, but I gather that should be optional because multiplayer happens.

You didn't write this in all seriousness, did you?
Is it possible to survive without traders at all? Of course you can.
Is it possible to play 70 hours in one world and not complete more than one task? Of course, yes.
The beauty of playing now is that you have a choice.
or or or.
You can find an item, or craft an item, or buy an item, with rare exceptions, but we'll skip that for now.
Everyone will choose an interesting path of development for themselves.
There is no difficulty in adding missing crafting recipes and items to loot.
And if in the future there will be a binding of development to the trader, we will get a game, each survival in which will go on rails.
At this stage, you will only need to find, at this only craft, and at this point only buy. It's terrible.
Trader should remain an alternative, but not a duty.

[POCKET951]

14 minutes ago, mstdv inc said:

You didn't write this in all seriousness, did you?
Is it possible to survive without traders at all? Of course you can.
Is it possible to play 70 hours in one world and not complete more than one task? Of course, yes.
The beauty of playing now is that you have a choice.
or or or.
You can find an item, or craft an item, or buy an item, with rare exceptions, but we'll skip that for now.
Everyone will choose an interesting path of development for themselves.
There is no difficulty in adding missing crafting recipes and items to loot.
And if in the future there will be a binding of development to the trader, we will get a game, each survival in which will go on rails.
At this stage, you will only need to find, at this only craft, and at this point only buy. It's terrible.
Trader should remain an alternative, but not a duty.

what if they had an engineer trader? his specialty would schematics/recipes for things and building materials/supplies and maybe even mods for things

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

what do you mean by break? even if you fully min max bartering you will never ever sell for more than the cost to buy, if you could achieve  that then it would be actually broken.

 

I used the word "broken" tongue-in-cheek as the poster I replied to used "broken" and I wanted to mimic his language. Seriously I would say the barter perk is merely OP, simply as a consequence that the trader himself is OP and the perk allows you to utilize the trader fully to circumvent many of the limits the game puts before you.

 

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

I also don't see how the trade/bartering perks are broken because they require a considerable amount of skill point investment to fully unlock and utilize.

 

5 perk points is nothing. If you want you can have barter 3 (like any other perk) on day 1 by reaching lvl 3 and üutting all points there. Then make a few quests and sell stuff. Since you also get XP for selling and buying you accelerate your lvl advancement as well. A player well versed into trading (which I'm not, I never tried to optimize the trader game, but I know at least one person who is skilled in it) can accumulate absurd amounts of money in a relatively short time and buy the best stuff the trader has to offer, **In A19**.

 

The trader has many problems, including offering too good stuff too early and if you have the money you can simply buy yourself almost everything you need.

 

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

maybe traders inventories shouldn't be unlocked by perks and it should have some kind of favor/rep system where you unlock by completing quest and bartering with them

 

I don't mind INT to be specialized in trading and having perks for it, there must be something INT is really good at to offset its disadvantages in fighting capabilities. Once the trader is better balanced and maybe, just maybe this includes toning down the barter perk as well, then bartering could still be a way to win the game, but not as easy as now.

 

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

Idk..  as I said I don't think its busted. by the time I am swimming in oodles of tokens from min maxing bartering, I have already trivialized the rest of the game by that point and already have tonnes of mined materials to make all the ammo and food and everything else I already need. 

 

That's you. Maybe not that good with min max bartering if you need until the endgame.

 

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

At that point the trader just gives me a bit of extra ductape or glue every once in awhile and traders are just so hit and miss with what they sell and they aren't really essential

now if the trader reliably sold quality 6 weapons and armor, that would be busted

 

I profoundly disagree. The on average less than 10% better quality 6 weapon (compared to 5) does not win the game, you can easily afford to use 10% more ammo to be as good as with the top weapon. Meanwhile the INT player already won the game when he bought the tier 3 weapon at the start of mid game when you are still searching for tier 2 armor and weapons. He also is able to buy himself a lot of ammo from multiple traders while you might have to conserve most of it for horde night and have a much slower way through POIs.

 

 

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

it would be okay though if you could get quality 6 stuff as quest rewards on rare occasions

 

Irrelevant. Do a few quests and just have a high enough level and you'll automatically find your quality 6 trophies. Your progress in early and mid game decides whether you have it easy or not ot reach endgame

 

3 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

so what is so broken/busted about the trader system atm?

 

 

[Doomofman]

I noticed a blue loot bag drop during one of the hordes that gave better loot. Is there two tiers of loot drop from zombies now or potentially more?

[Matt115]

18 hours ago, Morloc said:

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc

Morloc, i think @SnowDog1942 have bad influence.....

So we will have perverted necromancer....

Damn.... HEY DEVS YOU NEED TO CUT FROM 7DTD EVERYTHING "SEXY" 😂

[LTKarhel]

6 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Sorry, sometimes I make jokes that are very difficult to understand... 

I always laugh alone at my sayings ...... the others just look if everything is still clear in my head. Yes, I know the problem ... only too well😏

[Matt115]

7 hours ago, Roland said:

 

 

But first....Twitch Integration and Drones.

<L4D1 FRANCIS STYLE MODE> I hate twitch could you just give us soemthing... i don;t know something grimdark? XDDDD

27 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't mind INT to be specialized in trading and having perks for it, there must be something INT is really good at to offset its disadvantages in fighting capabilities. Once the trader is better balanced and maybe, just maybe this includes toning down the barter perk as well, then bartering could still be a way to win the game, but not as easy as now.

 

I hope they will left traders how they are working now- maybe they are op but logical alternative for scavenging because crafting is still so weak  now

[JStanleyF]

Yeah mods will balance what you need to for now usually - they work pretty good. I myself will likely be limiting trader loot to tier 4 and reducing the sell prices of weapons/armor while leaving harder to earn stuff like electrical parts/mechanical parts/duct tape etc etc normal. Tier 4 lets you get something you want while still wanting to get a better version of it - giving an incentive to go out and loot more difficult POIs. People on my server will team up until someone one of them gets an easy dig quests, dig loot - ditch the zombies and just drive back to the trader without having to fight anything - high reward - no risk. It should be a quest requirement to kill all the zombies spawned by the dig spot before it can be completed if you ask me. Digging a hole and getting an auger a week into the game in my opinion just kills any sense of balanced progression. Solar banks should require a lot of dukes. Right now with the magnum,  cheesecake, drink and perk buffs you can knock a solar bank down to a laughable amount, same with just about all trader stuff-  of the original price which in my opinion needs to be nerfed. I don't think barter perks should affect the best end game stuff. It should be useful but end game should have unique very rare drop items that are highly sought after, which gives an incentive to stick around and play with friends instead of jumping to another game which is what people tend to do end game. They get bored after getting tier 6 weapons/armor. There needs to be content that takes awhile to achieve and is worth the time to complete if you ask me. The content should outlast the players ability to obtain it - there should always be a something to do. I don't think there needs to be trader work before A20 or anything, but it would be cool if you included it as part of a content/quest/story/progression thing later on when you guys work on factions/traders/NPCs/humanoid enemies.

[dcsobral]

18 hours ago, bachgaman said:

I agree that this can be done by workarounds, but still the trader's settings should be in the game menu. Why is there the amount of loot, the amount of experience, but there are no settings for the value of the merchant's rewards, his assortment? Why can't I just disable the trader with one button? Just why?

Traders are intended to be a significant part of the game. To disable traders in alpha 19 you'd have to change the tutorial quest line, and remove all quests since the award is given by traders. Removing all quests also requires changing loot. As far as I can tell, you'd also have to change world generation on alpha 20 since cities are connected by trader tiles.

 

From the stuff I heard on the forums over the years, traders will also be essential to moving the storyline and will tie in all the factions. That's pure speculation and even if not it is subject to change -- if they try something and it just doesn't work, they'll drop it.

 

So here's what disabling the trader with one button requires:

• Tying a setting to the world generation as opposed to the game creation (no other setting does that).
• The UI changes to add the setting.
• Some mechanism to selectively remove loot items depending on settings.
• Some mechanism to change the quest line based on settings.
• Adding an alternative to trader tiles to be used on world generation.
• Supporting "no trader" option all through future developments, some of which are expected to be heavily reliant on traders.

After that they might have to consider balancing the game for no trader games, if people choose to play no traders and get frustrated because of the things they are missing on due to the lack of traders. Even if you think all these missing things are exactly right, there will be people who want "no trader" to be exactly like "trader", except without traders. Even if no balance is done, they have to spend time taking these complains into consideration.

 

All of this is doable, but it is definitely not trivial. The next step is answering this question: is it worth spending the time and resources in this instead of the other features on their list? Should they spend time on that instead of fixing water? Should they have spent time on that instead of fixing rwg? Should they spend time on that instead of doing bandits, since doing this will have consequences to what they do with bandits?

 

Now let's compare to the setting changing the amount of experience. First, it works like all other settings: you choose it when loading the game and it can change at any time afterwards. Second, it doesn't add any new systems to the game, just limited changes on the code. Third, it does not need to be balanced since the whole purpose of the setting is changing balance. Fourth, it has no impact whatsoever on future developments.

 

So amount of loot, amount of experience are one-time investments with limited impact and (relatively) cheap development, and disabling traders is expensive with wide ranging impact and will make development of planned features more expensive as well as have it's own maintenance cost.  That's why.

 

7 hours ago, danielspoa said:

and zip l.. oh

anyone that watched today's stream, did they give any update on how its progressing?

 

Yeah, they have hopes. Or at least Richard has hopes. But then Allan had to go and break the game by turning someone into a ghost.... ah, well. 😄

 

(tongue in cheek, but kind of true)

[Laz Man]

2 hours ago, Doomofman said:

I noticed a blue loot bag drop during one of the hordes that gave better loot. Is there two tiers of loot drop from zombies now or potentially more?

Yes

[Doomofman]

4 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

Yes

That's cool. I wont pry more, I look forward to finding out more about it relatively soon

[bachgaman]

10 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't get the impressions you are making any concessions for the game still being in development. The 200 bullets quest reward was acknowledged to be a bug months ago and is supposedly fixed in A20.

I agree that the difficulty setting should include some further changes, but adding to it and balancing it when the game isn't feature-complete is possibly premature. While we players can give suggestions it is the advantage of being a developer to be able to decide on what work needs to be done now. In the meantime the game is working well enough.

 

You were warned that EA is not without downsides, weren't you? Play something else and wait for this game to be released if you want to play a finished game

 

If they fix 200 bullets to 150 or 50 it doesn't change the meaning of my claim. The point is that by tweaking "25% loot" you will still get "100% loot" from the trader's rewards and the trader's assortment, which makes him even more OP when playing with low loot levels. They will still balance it according to "100% loot", right? (I doubt that the word "balance" is appropriate here, most likely it is still OP) And thus, until the loot settings do not affect the trader or we do not have a separate setting for the trader, it becomes impossible to play with trader and "loot 25%"

As for the fact that the game is in development, I am not against flaws, I understand everything, but excuse me when you build a house, the first thing you do is a toilet and electricity, not an amusement park with drones and light music. I emphasize that this is my IMHO.

  

9 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Its only ridiculous if you think they are finished and the options that are currently being offered is all that will ever be offered. You are told to go to the xml files and use mods to get what you want by helpful people as an interim solution if you cannot wait for when the developers decide to shift from the work they are doing to filling out the options menu with additional switches. There is no guarantee that all the switches you want will every be included but the fact that they are missing right now isn't a statement that they are against including them in the game. It simply is that their priorities are pointed elsewhere which is perfectly reasonable and not ridiculous at all seeing as how they are the developers of the game.

 

Its also perfectly reasonable for someone such as yourself to not necessarily be happy with the desync between YOUR priorities and THEIR priorities. But hopefully you understand now that the game is not finished and there is still a year or so of future development and the options page may yet change in ways that will be more to your liking.

 

This is their business. If they consider all this mess with xml files and so on to be normal, so be it. My duty is to say my opinion. Just don’t say then that this is a sandbox or that they care about new players.

10 hours ago, Roland said:

 

But first....Twitch Integration and Drones.

 

Why are you trolling hehe

 

[dcsobral]

On 11/5/2021 at 1:37 PM, SpaceBound said:

Dear hardworking Developers, How many MFB is left to fix before hitting Experimental release?

 

On 11/9/2021 at 12:14 AM, faatal said:

30, but new ones are added on a daily basis.

I just love it how it sounds like devs are hard at work adding new MFB! 😂

[dcsobral]

21 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Well, they are offering a bicycle, forge, wrench, etc on Tier1 to Tier2. Who says we can't be offered what you say on higher Tiers' completion? It looks like a potato and sounds like a potato.

Didn't they say each trader has their own tier progression now? That would mean being able to get the tier 1 completion multiple times, particularly if you end up in a world with two traders close by your spawn point.

[The Gronk]

7 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

As someone with almost 1000 hours in this game I liked the nuance of the system at first, but as started to build more bigger and complex bases and buildings, or if I wanted to finish upgrading a horde base before a deadline, It just became stressful and tedious and superfluous and annoying to deal with blocks that have RNG and invariable drying time. if I wanted to make a solid structure I would have to build in layers to make sure everything was reinforced concrete and it just sucks sitting there waiting for all the concrete to dry before you can move on to the next step of the project. and it isn't like you can drive away and it will dry on its own. you have to be in the area and if it's a horde base and I am waiting on concrete to dry and have nothing else to work on all I can do is wait  or punch grass? 

It just results in unnecessary  tedious waiting and time wasting. I would much rather have a finished product quicker because my time is valuable and I have other things I want to do

My time is far more valuable, and if there making a change that gives me more time at the cost of a bit of complexity or nuance, I won't complain about it

They are also adding corner Bars/blocks which I am really happy about because it will save me alot of time making cages, instead of having to use advanced rotation and super finnicky placement of  bars on the inside edge of an adjacent block to make corners in the current system.(It is tedious and it sucks)

 

building in general will just be so much faster and  more intuitive and I won't have to use as many Structural integrity gimmicks

Why not just fix the bug and retain the mechanic?  Having to plan your building with plenty of time to spare is an extra pitfall to avoid late-game, adding extra difficulties should be something to add instead of remove.

[dcsobral]

On 11/10/2021 at 6:38 AM, Diragor said:

I always played on nitrogen maps without Trader. The Trader kills the Sandbox feeling of the game cause he's forcing me to go for specific POIs. Also buying at the Trader feels like cheating. Thats why I hated playing DayZ with friends. Always looting, seeling at Trader, Buying stuff and repeat. Please I wish for a no Trader button when generating the world so I can force my friends and family to play without it.

I have similar feelings. Traders are so immersion breaking for me... And, yet, I can't get myself to not rely heavily on them. I'm not sure exactly why. A significant part is vehicles, books, auger and crucible. Also, no solar power without traders. I think if the traders had no books I would not be so keen on them -- books on the traders are significantly easier than looting, and completing book series can give significant rewards that are very important to my play style.

 

I did have a playthrough this year where I set myself to play the locust plague challenge: disable loot respawn; you may travel to find a city and location you like, but you cannot loot anything but wilderness POIs until then; once you start looting a city, you have to loot all the city; you cannot loot any building that is not the neighbor of a building you have already looted (except for the first building in a city). On alpha 19 it meant no trader because there was no trader nearby, but alpha 20 has a trader per city. If there's a trader I'd say you can do buried supplies but doing a quest on a building follows the same rules as looting the building, plus no double looting. Anyway, it was a really good playthrough, though some of the stuff I couldn't find on loot until day 40-50 was a bit crazy.

[bachgaman]

36 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Traders are intended to be a significant part of the game. To disable traders in alpha 19 you'd have to change the tutorial quest line, and remove all quests since the award is given by traders.

 

I think deleting the quest tutorial is not as hard as it seems. Perhaps I'm wrong and it requires writing code comparable to writing code for a drone, but this is unlikely. What other quests are you talking about? About the notes for which they give 500 dukes and 300 experience?

38 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Removing all quests also requires changing loot. As far as I can tell, you'd also have to change world generation on alpha 20 since cities are connected by trader tiles.

 

I think you are fooling yourself by talking about some kind of loot balancing or world generation that is necessary in the case of a setting that allows you to remove a merchant. Removing the trader is balancing the loot. Because he is the OP at the moment.

 

Besides, I'm not saying that the trader should be removed for everyone by default. I offer this as an option, the same option as the settings for loot, experience, zombie speed, "difficulty". Or do you mean the game is balanced for the game with 200% loot and 300% experience? Do the loot settings change when the difficulty is set to a insane nightmare? And what about world generation? I do not think. Therefore, dont talk about such things if they are not applied to other already existing options.

47 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

From the stuff I heard on the forums over the years, traders will also be essential to moving the storyline and will tie in all the factions. That's pure speculation and even if not it is subject to change -- if they try something and it just doesn't work, they'll drop it.

Man, this won't happen until 2 years from now, if we're lucky.

48 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Tying a setting to the world generation as opposed to the game creation (no other setting does that).

 

I'm not sure if this is true. Trader's POIs could remain but become empty. Whether it is possible to implement it easily, I don’t know. Perhaps this really only applies to generating a new world. If you do it with minimal cost.

50 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

The UI changes to add the setting.

And?

50 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Some mechanism to selectively remove loot items depending on settings.

False, optional

51 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Some mechanism to change the quest line based on settings.

If you play the game without a trader (I do), then the tutorial quest remains, you get perk points, but you cannot complete it in. Because there is no trader. The only thing that remains to be done is to complete it upon the completion of the penultimate point, and not after finding a trader. I don't think this is a huge amount of work.

54 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Adding an alternative to trader tiles to be used on world generation.

False, optional

54 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

Supporting "no trader" option all through future developments, some of which are expected to be heavily reliant on traders.

Breaking is not building. Cutting off some of the content isn't a big deal. The Trader disable option is a compromise between fine-tuning the trader and doing nothing. Therefore, it could be regarded as temporary. Or not. After all, you can turn off Blood Moon in the settings. How so? After all, Blood Moon is almost the central mechanics of the game. How did it happen that the appearance of this setting was considered acceptable?

58 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

After that they might have to consider balancing the game for no trader games, if people choose to play no traders and get frustrated because of the things they are missing on due to the lack of traders. Even if you think all these missing things are exactly right, there will be people who want "no trader" to be exactly like "trader", except without traders. Even if no balance is done, they have to spend time taking these complains into consideration.

Come on, buddy, what kind of balance are you talking about? There is no balance in the game and no one is doing it. For many years to come, we will be able to destroy hordes with a Pipe Bomb made of 1 coal and 2 grass leaves. We will have a Treasure Hunter and so on for many years to come. In this game, balancing is the lot of the player, not the developer. Everybody declares this openly. They say it's a sandbox. So give us a handy balancing tool.

1 hour ago, dcsobral said:

All of this is doable, but it is definitely not trivial. The next step is answering this question: is it worth spending the time and resources in this instead of the other features on their list? Should they spend time on that instead of fixing water? Should they have spent time on that instead of fixing rwg? Should they spend time on that instead of doing bandits, since doing this will have consequences to what they do with bandits?

I don't think that the development of water, the development of bandits, the development of AI drones is comparable in volume in order to pull xml files into the options menu. In order to ban some POI (trader) from the generation list with one button. They already have this mechanic. The game has other options that are also configured in xml files.

If I offered to change the background in the main menu, would you also tell me that developers need to make bandits, and not waste time on the background image? But the background is not what the players suffer from.

1 hour ago, dcsobral said:

Now let's compare to the setting changing the amount of experience. First, it works like all other settings: you choose it when loading the game and it can change at any time afterwards. Second, it doesn't add any new systems to the game, just limited changes on the code. Third, it does not need to be balanced since the whole purpose of the setting is changing balance. Fourth, it has no impact whatsoever on future developments.

 

So amount of loot, amount of experience are one-time investments with limited impact and (relatively) cheap development, and disabling traders is expensive with wide ranging impact and will make development of planned features more expensive as well as have it's own maintenance cost.  That's why.

Once again, wake up and notice that NO other settings affect anything other than what is written in them. Accept it and stop making lies