Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Matt115]

12 hours ago, Gazz said:

 

Star Citizen started with multiple times the funding and is currently 9 years in development / EA.

(to be fair - buying ingame items in the cash shop is working fine)
 

 

Nope, no one can. It's a genuine mystery for future generations to solve. =P

Gaaz can we expect some DLC in the future ? i mean not horse armor (good old oblivion) but in old style- corruption forces pack to star wars empire at war, expension pack to cod1 etc you know- a lot of content 

[pregnable]

Pretty sure I said this before, but maybe not...

 

Since the usefulness of stealth comes up every so often, it would be cool if bows, crossbows, and maybe knives, kept part of their sneak attack bonus, when they are sneaking, but have been discovered. 

 

Maybe something like 50%, or whatever balance dictates.  Maybe on the last rank of a skill. 

 

That way stealth is still useful on horde night, and also works when POI triggers auto break stealth. 

[Blake_]

39 minutes ago, pregnable said:

Pretty sure I said this before, but maybe not...

 

Since the usefulness of stealth comes up every so often, it would be cool if bows, crossbows, and maybe knives, kept part of their sneak attack bonus, when they are sneaking, but have been discovered. 

 

Maybe something like 50%, or whatever balance dictates.  Maybe on the last rank of a skill. 

 

That way stealth is still useful on horde night, and also works when POI triggers auto break stealth. 

For crossbows it's not needed. For knives there's  already bleeding, which is OP enough without having to add any extra sneak damage bonus. I mean, I'm partial to that effect if the bonus is given by future armour sets.

[Khalagar]

1 minute ago, stallionsden said:

Do you play the game. I kill radiated all the time in stealth 1 shots. 

 

You must be on a really low difficulty then. Even fully perked into stealth and into the sniper (which isn't even in the stealth tree for some reason), a headshot wouldn't one shot an irradiated on the difficulty I play on

 

They are right that stealth is pretty much useless because of the way the game treats stealth. It doesn't matter if you have zero points in stealth and an unsilenced weapon, as long as you are outside of the sleeper aggro zone they won't aggro when you shoot unless you miss and hit the wall / floor. You can stand outside the room with 12 zombies asleep in it, crouch with an unsilenced hunting rifle, and just sit there head shotting the 12 zombies one by one. There's some small chance the room will wake up each time you hit an entity in the room, but you can usually clear most of the room before they aggro.

 

Stealth also doesn't even work on the most important night of the week, so all the points you invested in stealth are completely useless on the hardest part of the game.

 

Until they rework the sleeper system, stealth is just a RP / "nice to have I guess" thing that isn't really worth putting points into unless you just want to for RP reasons. All of those points in stealth could just go into weapon damage and parkour instead and it would be much more impactful

[POCKET951]

17 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

You must be on a really low difficulty then. Even fully perked into stealth and into the sniper (which isn't even in the stealth tree for some reason), a headshot wouldn't one shot an irradiated on the difficulty I play on

 

They are right that stealth is pretty much useless because of the way the game treats stealth. It doesn't matter if you have zero points in stealth and an unsilenced weapon, as long as you are outside of the sleeper aggro zone they won't aggro when you shoot unless you miss and hit the wall / floor. You can stand outside the room with 12 zombies asleep in it, crouch with an unsilenced hunting rifle, and just sit there head shotting the 12 zombies one by one. There's some small chance the room will wake up each time you hit an entity in the room, but you can usually clear most of the room before they aggro.

 

Stealth also doesn't even work on the most important night of the week, so all the points you invested in stealth are completely useless on the hardest part of the game.

 

Until they rework the sleeper system, stealth is just a RP / "nice to have I guess" thing that isn't really worth putting points into unless you just want to for RP reasons. All of those points in stealth could just go into weapon damage and parkour instead and it would be much more impactful

to me, if you know the POI you are doing very well, stealth is simply a way to clear lots of zombies in a POI without using any bullets.I usually always carry a crossbow for this

[BFT2020]

11 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

You must be on a really low difficulty then. Even fully perked into stealth and into the sniper (which isn't even in the stealth tree for some reason), a headshot wouldn't one shot an irradiated on the difficulty I play on

 

I must be missing something.  Looking at the T3 bows, I don't see any tags for Perception or any perks in the perception tree.  I just see 

 

<item name="gunBowT3CompoundBow">
    <property name="Tags" value="weapon,ranged,bowDrawPenalty,archery,bow,attAgility,perkArchery,canHaveCosmetic"/>

 

and

 

<item name="gunBowT3CompoundCrossbow">
    <property name="Tags" value="weapon,ranged,holdBreathAiming,reloadPenalty,sideAttachments,smallTopAttachments,mediumTopAttachments,attAgility,perkArchery,crossbow,canHaveCosmetic"/>

 

For Perception to affect anything on those weapons, you would need attPerception and perkDeadshot....at least that is what I thought.  I see nothing on those items referring back to Perception or Deadshot.

 

Here I believe is the sneak bonus damage

 

    <effect_group name="sneak damage bonus">
        <requirement name="CVarCompare" cvar="_crouching" operation="Equals" value="1"/>
        <requirement name="CVarCompare" cvar="_notAlerted" operation="GT" value="0" target="other"/>
            <passive_effect name="DamageBonus" operation="base_add" value="2"/>
            <passive_effect name="EntityDamage" operation="perc_add" value="2" tags="perkArchery"/>
            <display_value name="dEntityDamageSneak" value="2"/>
    </effect_group>
</item>

 

Stealth doesn't affect bows as they have their own bonuses (just like knives).  What I meant to say.  Hidden strike doesn't affect bows and knives.  Archery is the perk you need to level up to improve bow damage, not hidden strike or perception.  If you been leveling up the wrong perks, that is why you are not seeing good results

 

Always proof read what you write and verify it reads what happens

 

Hidden strike affects all weapons except sledgehammers.  Bows and knives have an additional item modifier for sneak damage.  Fully perked hidden strike with any weapon other than knives and bows will give you a sneak damage bonus of 3x.   With bows and knives, you get additional bonus damage with hidden strike.

[stallionsden]

54 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

You must be on a really low difficulty then. Even fully perked into stealth and into the sniper (which isn't even in the stealth tree for some reason), a headshot wouldn't one shot an irradiated on the difficulty I play on

 

They are right that stealth is pretty much useless because of the way the game treats stealth. It doesn't matter if you have zero points in stealth and an unsilenced weapon, as long as you are outside of the sleeper aggro zone they won't aggro when you shoot unless you miss and hit the wall / floor. You can stand outside the room with 12 zombies asleep in it, crouch with an unsilenced hunting rifle, and just sit there head shotting the 12 zombies one by one. There's some small chance the room will wake up each time you hit an entity in the room, but you can usually clear most of the room before they aggro.

 

Stealth also doesn't even work on the most important night of the week, so all the points you invested in stealth are completely useless on the hardest part of the game.

 

Until they rework the sleeper system, stealth is just a RP / "nice to have I guess" thing that isn't really worth putting points into unless you just want to for RP reasons. All of those points in stealth could just go into weapon damage and parkour instead and it would be much more impactful

I play 3rd hardest option. 

[Roland]

36 minutes ago, stallionsden said:

I play 3rd hardest option. 

 

Which is also the fourth easiest option.

 

Noob!

[stallionsden]

18 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Which is also the fourth easiest option.

 

Noob!

Lmao I just re enquired from the server I play on and it is the 4th one - warrior no loot respawn.  Still can stealth a radiated.  

 

Compound bow maxed on archery maxed on hidden and in the shadows . Full to military gear inc stealth boots.. 

 

You still looking for your ziplines in the game lol 😝

[nielm269]

9 hours ago, Morloc said:

 

PROTIP: Never forget the double-bag rule.

 

 

Arch-Necromancer Morloc

Don't need a bag, I can just use the wrench to take all the teeth out what's the worst that can happen I get gummed to death?

[Gazz]

6 hours ago, Matt115 said:

Gaaz can we expect some DLC in the future ? i mean not horse armor (good old oblivion) but in old style- corruption forces pack to star wars empire at war, expension pack to cod1 etc you know- a lot of content 

 

Well, horse armor would be a good start. What do you mean we need horses, too?

[MechanicalLens]

1 hour ago, Gazz said:

 

Well, horse armor would be a good start. What do you mean we need horses, too?

 

How about zombie bear armor?

[Outlaw_187]

15 hours ago, nielm269 said:

I have over 1800 hours and have bought many copies of this game for people (maybe my favorite game of all time), I have one small request..... can you make it so I can cut the arms and legs off a striper zombie and keep it in my base......  for um weapon testing (yeah I'll stick to that reason).

Just please....for all that is holy.....make sure you have plenty of antibiotics on you!!! 

Oh and make sure it's the blue & white pill....don't think the green pill or honey will do here! 

[Demonoid74]

3 hours ago, Gazz said:

 

Well, horse armor would be a good start. What do you mean we need horses, too?

Who needs horses...we could just use that armor to ride trader jen across the wasteland...be like one of them Skyrim mods... ... ...

[Mistwraith]

Hello.

 

tl;dr Game better then Fallout, needs tweaking and new assets.

 

I am pretty new to the game, but have 230 hours on my account within a few weeks now. (I am at home atm, as you can guess .. serious illnesses).

As a 45 years old gamer that played games since the C64 I have to say, that 7DTD is pretty addictive and is one of the best games I have encountered in my entire life. Open World RPGs are my weakness anyways and there is a lot of stuff that is done the right way here. Thank you very much for this experience.

 

I especialy enjoy the base building over games like Fallout 4. There are way more creative possibilities here and I can't wait for the new shapes in A20. Beeing able to lay electric cables within blocks is a great plus as well, I hated the way Fallout handles power lines.

 

Also great, but with a grain of salt, is painting your buildings. On one hand I love the feature to give different appearances to my buildings, like an old shack or an abandoned manor. But on the other hand its a very tedious and tiring work to paint thousends of surface blocks for no ExP gain.

There is no relation to, lets say, smith 1k of steel bars. I dont even have to be there to smith steel bars and I get ExP for it. Painting a building for 2 hours should give a reward as well, because the work I as a player do, is significantly higher.

 

Another point of concern is the lack of Zombie models. They get really boring after a while. I think that a solution that is managable to this is to use the meshes for player clothing on them as well. I dont care if its always the same Darlene, if she is wearing different stuff from time to time. Other games do it the same way and it creates a great illusion of diversity. Glowing eyes and skin doesn't do it to fight the inside jokes my wife and I make about the most prevalent cloth line in your world. They effectively became a joke because of that.

 

The building assets are great overall, I took us a while to discover that almost all of them have some hidden places with the good loot. But there are too few, still. After a few weeks you know exactly where everything is. The community has done great assets so far, but this brings me to the point of this section: The asset creator and world builder. Its nearly impossible to find tutorials or other documents that teaches us how to use them. Despite my Google-Fu I just found some obscure tips and hints on how to actually save the changes you made. I would like to create new assets as this is my forte as you may have guessed, but the lack of information on how to use the tools is limiting. Perhaps I just failed in finding it, I tend to be blind to the obvious sometimes. If this is the case, then please respond with a link, anyone. Thank you.

 

I also have an idea for a new item. The lawn-mower. Seriously, I would like to have one. Our bases are always surrounded by a clear strip of land for visibility, which means to eradicate all the grass by hand. Having a lawn-mower that cuts grass would make this less boring. Especially because lawn-mowers tend to be very loud ....

You could pack that into the mechanics perk tree and even make a (very loud) weaponized version of it.

 

This next point also is about the world building: In A20 it looks like this point is adressed already. The terrain gets better, and it looks like that some of the regions look more urban. This is something the game desperately needs. Urban regions. I would love to do assets for that (see two points above) because it really bugs me to see a ranch, a field, a rural coal mine, a skyscaper, a farm building and a shed next to each other in a rural region all of the time. "Which construction company decided that it is a good financial investment to build a skyscraper next to a few sheds?", is the question that always comes to mind when roaming through the world. And that, at least for me, breaks immersion in a great way.

 

Another point is the lack of information I have before I build or cook something. It would be really helpful to know that a cake that is using lots of my precious lard has way less nutrition value than another item I can do more easily at the moment that has more value. You have to make the items blind and note down or remember the values for each one for the next time. Some of the food items especially dont make sense. I cook for my family for years now, and an item that uses "4 lard" that is equaly or only slighlty more nutritious than one that is using only meat and egg doesnt make sense from a cooks perspective.

 

Our two cents to the inventory controversy: Please let us stack more items. Clothing items, cigars and tools with the same lvl/stats really dont need to be in seperate slots. There are always PhD's mods for those that really need to carry their whole neighbourhood with them, but as a former construction and metal worker I can assure you, that I can carry more then a few tools. Also, people that are stronger then others tend to be able to carry more, as well. They dont need a perk for that. Strength alone is sufficient. I understand and fully support limited inventory space. But not beeing able to loot a single house (at the beginning) just makes you run circels back to your chests all the time. And because you did that a few times now there are no zombies, nothing is happening. Therefore it feels like the "Slow Walking Simulator with nothing happening" always after you start a new game. Its gets better with the perks and mods during the game, but a new start always tends to be boring slowly walking back to your chest.

 

Despite all this: Great game. I love it.

 

A last word for those that rant about the continuous alpha status of the game: Please, calm down already. Learn to differentiate between two brothers with a dream and Todd Howard. They are not the same. You can't hold them to the same standards. I am one of the many people that tryed to make a game in Unity and failed myself, despite of planing a learing how to do stuff beforehand. Making a game is not that easy.

[Khalagar]

6 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

I must be missing something.  Looking at the T3 bows, I don't see any tags for Perception or any perks in the perception tree. 

 

I wasn't talking about the bows, I was just saying if you are using a stealth focused build you are *probably* using the sniper since it's got the longest range, but yeah I didn't think about people using the crossbow since it gets the headshot multiplier. Even with the multiplier, I wonder if a fully perked crossbow beats a fully perked sniper with both sneak attacking. I've not really done a lot of testing with crossbow beyond trying it and not liking it at all

 

 

[beerfly]

A cool tweet from Madmole. 

Spoiler

 

 

[BFT2020]

On survivalist mode, you can one shot a radiated zombie with a bow in stealth.  Getting a headshot and having the 6x multiplier for stealth helps.

 

Everything though is relative.  Soft targets you are going to one shot.  Hard targets (armored like the soldier) it will depend if you decapitate them.

 

But nobody said it was only against hard targets so yes, it is possible to take out an unaware radiated zombie with the bows.

 

I even was able to do it with a stealth rifle.

[Matt115]

7 hours ago, Gazz said:

 

Well, horse armor would be a good start. What do you mean we need horses, too?

Yes! horse skeleton with skeleton hispanic soldier in museum ! 😁

[Uncle Al]

21 hours ago, nielm269 said:

I have over 1800 hours and have bought many copies of this game for people (maybe my favorite game of all time), I have one small request..... can you make it so I can cut the arms and legs off a striper zombie and keep it in my base......  for um weapon testing (yeah I'll stick to that reason).

This is an excellent idea and just what we need to implement a proper LBS (learn by screwing) system.  The zombie type that you 'weapon test' on could give appropriate perk points - Big Mama gives Motherlode, Bikers give Grease Monkey, Skater Dudes give Parkour and so forth.  To gain Deadeye you need to perform a special move on any zombie with an empty eye socket.

[Aldranon]

6 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

How about zombie bear armor?

 

YES!

And the ability to tame a zombie bear.

I vote the Intelligence line should do it.  Then Intelligence would be a pretty dang cool option!  (of course I have not tried the new toys for Int).  

But... would an intelligent person try to tame a zombie bear or any zombie in the first place?? 

9 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Which is also the fourth easiest option.

 

Noob!

 

Well, all options are the easiest if you allow for respawn.

 

Dead-is-dead or your not doing the Chuck Norris way.

[Gamida]

1 hour ago, Aldranon said:

 

YES!

And the ability to tame a zombie bear.

I vote the Intelligence line should do it.  Then Intelligence would be a pretty dang cool option!  (of course I have not tried the new toys for Int).  

But... would an intelligent person try to tame a zombie bear or any zombie in the first place?? 

 

Well, all options are the easiest if you allow for respawn.

 

Dead-is-dead or your not doing the Chuck Norris way.

I heard Chuck Norris just plays the game in his head. He doesn't need no stinking computer.

[BFT2020]

4 hours ago, Mistwraith said:

 

100% on board with that. My wife only uses the bows and crossbows, old Skyrim habit. I by myself use silenced guns only for testing them out currently, but will defenitely switch back to the Compound bow after that.

With high enough stealth and light armor at max, you can go up to a sleeper and point the arrow directly at their face, one-shooting them every time. Another plus side: They are completely silent. When clearing a skyscraper I really dont want a screamer to interrupt me.

Don’t forget knives.  When I play stealth, I max perk deep cuts.  Nothing like clearing out a room with just a bow and knife.

 

But I always like to carry either a silenced pistol or smg as backup if I wake them up accidentally.  The shottie I typically carry is my last resort

[Blake_]

13 hours ago, Khalagar said:

 

Until they rework the sleeper system, stealth is just a RP / "nice to have I guess" thing that isn't really worth putting points into unless you just want to for RP reasons. All of those points in stealth could just go into weapon damage and parkour instead and it would be much more impactful

What is there to rework? Faatal fixed the instawake triggers for a20 less than a week ago. Now you can avoid them the more sneaky you are. Still very hard without investing though.

 

Edit: That's what she said.

[WheezerAZ]

I personally enjoy the hell out of playing as a stealth character. I'll only wear the padded armor, get the military stealth boots, max out my bow and assassination skills, throw a scope on a compound crossbow and steel bolts and it is freaking deadly. Reload is reasonably fast. The biggest thing is stealth is not fast going through a POI.

 

I had one play through that I concentrated on building up hand to hand. Steel knuckles maxed out and I threw stealth out the window. I just ran through the POI killing things with no worries. Completely different experience to stealth play and that is kind of the point.

 

Ultimately the game should be played the way you have fun. If you like maxed out XP earning and the easiest zombies then go ahead and play that way if you are having fun. Someone playing on 25% loot and insane mode only using the knife is not a better player. They are playing a different game and having fun doing it.