Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[MechanicalLens]

So a steel sheet has 500 HP... and white picket fences upgraded to cobblestone only has 75 HP... May I ask what the thought process was behind this change?

[bachgaman]

30 minutes ago, faatal said:

We don't have a hunched over anim, so I made do with what we have. It needs more work.

By the way, did you know that in this position they can hit through a wall one block thick?

[Blake_]

@faatal I have a question. Let's say screamers start to scream and you let them go about their business for as long as they want without killing any zd. How many entities spawn in total ? Is there a limit?

[Callum123456789]

9 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

@faatal I have a question. Let's say screamers start to scream and you let them go about their business for as long as they want without killing any zd. How many entities spawn in total ? Is there a limit?

form what i remember this a while ago so things may have changed but when i played console a while ago screamers had no scream limit pretty sure they still do but they capped out spawning zombies every 3 or 4 screams but I'm not sure if that cap has been modified or not

[MechanicalLens]

15 minutes ago, Blake_ said:

@faatal I have a question. Let's say screamers start to scream and you let them go about their business for as long as they want without killing any zd. How many entities spawn in total ? Is there a limit?

 

I believe the hard coded limit is 64, but I could be wrong.

[Blake_]

12 minutes ago, Callum123456789 said:

form what i remember this a while ago so things may have changed but when i played console a while ago screamers had no scream limit pretty sure they still do but they capped out spawning zombies every 3 or 4 screams but I'm not sure if that cap has been modified or not

Yes, they only spawn 3 times per screamer. What is the total entity cap on screen though?

[BluntTongs]

On 12/11/2021 at 4:29 PM, Blake_ said:

 

It's subtle, but I enjoyed more planting once than the current system. The biggest thing here was that it saved time.

 

 

This. Or hell, not even that it saves time necessarily, just that I didn't need to go back over and repeat the process after having used up some of the harvest to craft seeds - in A19 I immediately knew how much crop I had to work with and I didn't need to spend the effort to craft and replant like in A16-. I'd much rather have lower yields but an intact plant if the crops are just going right back into the ground anyway; it's the same result, functionally, but with less fiddling around with seed crafting and replanting crops.

 

I'm mostly okay with Living Off the Land being necessary to really do any farming, but even with t3 LOtL the effort involved in replanting isn't something I'm looking forward to repeating over and over, especially when introducing "downgrading" plant harvesting was one of the things I feel A17 did right. I'm sure there's a way to balance recurring-harvest plants that accounts for the lack of busywork involved as compared to A20's system.

I'll probably cope.

[Callum123456789]

1 hour ago, Blake_ said:

Yes, they only spawn 3 times per screamer. What is the total entity cap on screen though?

for what i know its over 200.... then my 7dtd crashed testing it lol

[Khalagar]

3 hours ago, faatal said:

We don't have a hunched over anim, so I made do with what we have. It needs more work.

 

Something I've noticed is it seems like the crouching animation has messed up Junk Sledges where they don't hit very reliably anymore. If you put your sledges in front of a door, the zombies will be ducking and jumping so much the sledges miss and a bunch of the zombies will just zoom right through without even being clipped

 

It happens a lot with fast zombies like wight and ferals, they will just rush right up to your junk sledges and carry on right past them

[Star69]

20 hours ago, dcsobral said:

Acid barrels give gas. And only gas. You can wrench them for acid, but their loot is only gas. Gas on an acid barrel?

I've never gotten acid from wrenching them, only iron, but the gas is an odd thing. I don't have any points in salvage so is that why I haven't gotten acid? This would be a game changer to get acid from them since they are now much harder to find.

[MechanicalLens]

13 minutes ago, Star69 said:

I've never gotten acid from wrenching them, only iron, but the gas is an odd thing. I don't have any points in salvage so is that why I haven't gotten acid? This would be a game changer to get acid from them since they are now much harder to find.

 

Pretty sure you have to find the book to wrench acid from cars, chem stations, etc.

[Khalagar]

Yep, once you get the perk to get acid from cars you have an essentially infinite supply of it. Honestly, with the player being given a free bike and a motorcyle starter kit, I've not really needed acid. I only needed it to make tires for a second bike for my friend, but ended up just buying a minibike before I found the acid.

[MechanicalLens]

4 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Yep, once you get the perk to get acid from cars you have an essentially infinite supply of it. Honestly, with the player being given a free bike and a motorcyle starter kit, I've not really needed acid. I only needed it to make tires for a second bike for my friend, but ended up just buying a minibike before I found the acid.

 

If you can get super corn, Grandpa's Learning Elixir also requires acid

[Geoarrge]

The new Crack-A-Book skyscraper POI is a nice break from the usual pathing, but it seems like there's an underwhelming amount of book shelves & crates.   Also the stairs leading down from the rooftop could do with a guide light, and at the end of those stairs, either a break in the railing (where you have to jump over and follow the ledge) or another light.

[MechanicalLens]

3 minutes ago, Geoarrge said:

The new Crack-A-Book skyscraper POI is a nice break from the usual pathing, but it seems like there's an underwhelming amount of book shelves & crates.   Also the stairs leading down from the rooftop could do with a guide light, and at the end of those stairs, either a break in the railing (where you have to jump over and follow the ledge) or another light.

 

It seems the quantity of schematics and books you get from the old bookshelves has been nerfed as well...

[Sephiroth]

  

On 12/11/2021 at 7:58 AM, Kosmic Kerman said:

This seems to make weapon crafting somewhat pointless. I'm on Day 18 and just found the pump shotgun schematic. I was going to craft it but only had 1 shotgun part. I then turn in my next trader reward and got a Green pump shotgun.  I'm not sure what the value add of crafting is here.  There's no point crafting a blue pump shotgun when by the time I have enough parts I will probably have looted a purple one and I should clearly be saving my shotgun parts to craft a combat shotgun.

Agreed. I would like to request a revisit to crafting in general, specifically regarding weapons, tools and armor. I feel crafting ammunition and resources/materials for building are in a good spot though.

  

On 12/11/2021 at 11:46 AM, Khalagar said:

The trader perks are great for getting to see all the new loot, but crafting perks have never been in a worse spot imo. Even as a crafting character I still don't see any reason to ever take them, especially the vehicle perks. I have a box full of gun and robotic parts and tool parts etc ready to go for when I was going to craft them . . . but there's no point since you just find better ones than you can craft  way faster.

Yeah, looting and scavenging is just far too powerful compared to crafting... Especially with the inability to craft Q6...

 

On 12/11/2021 at 11:46 AM, Khalagar said:

IMO crafting should be the faster route than looting or buying, since you are sacrificing damage and other perk options specifically to try and craft it, but atm crafting is fairly pointless besides mods or something that RNGesus just refuses to give you but you find a schematic for

 Amen to that...

 

10 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

We've been talking about crafting being nerfed, because most people can't find enough parts early enough to craft something that makes crafting worth it vs. just looting or buying better gear from the trader.

I've been seeing that since A18 when crafting lost its ability to craft Q6 anything.

 

Yo TFP, can we go back to the days of survival crafting rather than survival looting? Would be awesome. Thanks.

[MechanicalLens]

9 minutes ago, Sephiroth said:

  

Agreed. I would like to request a revisit to crafting in general, specifically regarding weapons, tools and armor. I feel crafting ammunition and resources/materials for building are in a good spot though.

  

Yeah, looting and scavenging is just far too powerful compared to crafting... Especially with the inability to craft Q6...

 

 Amen to that...

 

I've been seeing that since A18 when crafting lost its ability to craft Q6 anything.

 

Yo TFP, can we go back to the days of survival crafting rather than survival looting? Would be awesome. Thanks.

 

I fully agree with this. At least in A19 you could craft several high tier weapons by the middle of your run. In A20 you'd be lucky to find more than a small handful of parts for a particular class of gun by the end of your fourth week.

[meganoth]

14 hours ago, Jay_ombie said:

Probably already been requested but we need (unless I missed something) to be able to mark and place POI markers on a map and our multiplayer friends can see them as well.

 

Same goes for quests, let us decide or not our friend can also see our quest markers to please.

 

You can. The interface is similar to how quests are shared.

[Gazz]

8 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

So a steel sheet has 500 HP... and white picket fences upgraded to cobblestone only has 75 HP... May I ask what the thought process was behind this change?

 

At a guess, the multiplier is there because sheets are used to cover openings that the player is supposed to break.

[Scyris]

Few things I feel need changing from experimental: Stealth perks at this point might as well be removed with almost every single room in a poi basically being a ambush with zombies in closets, cielings coming out/dropping down, they aggro no matter how quiet you are, completly negating anything spent in stealth, its stupid, as stealth already takes the longest to clear poi's, its bad enough how every damn zombie is always hiding behind a object so you can never get a clear shot, its just stupid that the poi's are like this now, if you plan to stay like this you might as well just remove the stealth perks so people stop wasting points in perks that don't even do anything useful anymore due to the poi design.

 

Inventory needs to be bigger, at least 2 more rows on the bottom, hell I'd even take 1 for now, there is too much clutter around, and even tossing more than half the stuff I find, I often fill up before I am even half done with a poi. Having to micromanage inventory every single time I go into a poi is just not fun at all. Putting a chest outside does not solve the problem either, as your still going to have to make multiple trips back and fourth. Ways to remove clutter? get rid of: fishing weights, trophies, brass door knobs, radiators, etc and just have it give the raw material instead, alternativly make brass/lead items scrap much faster. Scrapping a brass candle stick takes 1 min 15. scrapping a suit of steel chest armor? 30 seconds, it makes no sense.

 

Lastly the stat system needs to go in the garbage can, seriously its garbage. It was supposedly made to remove level gates, except it just made the problem worse, as there is now 5 gates instead of just one. Lower it to 3 stats, 1 has all weapons, 1 has all defensive stuff, last has survival stuff like cooking etc. Annoys me and others so much that were forced to spend points into stats we have nothing else we want in just so the weapon is viable. Honestly i'd prefer learn by doing for the weapon skills, and everything else having a min char level gate. say 1, 20, 40, 60, 80 for weapons for tier 1,2,3,4 and 5 of the perk, which also ups what u can craft, basically its the perks we have now just no longer stat locked, and locked instead to actually using that weapon type. I've said this ever since it first came in, but I will keep saying it till I see a change. Its a horrid system and really hurts single player games severely.

[Aldranon]

 

I scrap almost everything from POI's (Not Radiators guns, mods, food or ammo), at my base I can remake anything I need.  Radiators are the main reason I clear POIs now!

 

One small benefit of not going all out with mostly weapons perks is that flexibility.  I can only make level 3 weapons so far however.

[Sal]

9 hours ago, faatal said:

We don't have a hunched over anim, so I made do with what we have. It needs more work.

 Hey, you can only work with what you have, and I'm not knocking you at all.  Like I said, I'm really digging the change and I can't wait to see where it goes from here when you have more available options at your disposal.

[Khalagar]

3 hours ago, Scyris said:

Lastly the stat system needs to go in the garbage can, seriously its garbage. It was supposedly made to remove level gates, except it just made the problem worse, as there is now 5 gates instead of just one. Lower it to 3 stats, 1 has all weapons, 1 has all defensive stuff, last has survival stuff like cooking etc.

 

Yeah, I've been saying it since the change a few alpha ago, but I don't think the current attribute system makes sense.  You "waste" points by putting them into an attribute that gives you nothing if you aren't using the weapon type for it. Like if I want to be a better farmer, I have to waste like 7+ points leveling up a trait that only raises m60 and brass knuckle damage even if I'm using a shotgun and a club. I get absolutely nothing out of those 7 points, and it feels bad and makes me just not want to get an otherwise interesting perk 

 

I would vastly prefer if raising the attributes . . . y'know raised your actual attributes. 

 

Raising strength = makes you stronger, so you can carry more stuff. It could literally just give you innate Pack Mule to open up new inventory slots

 

Agility = you're more agile. Either give innate Parkour or Cardio

 

Intelligence = you're smarter. It could unlock crafting perks as you raise it, or give crafting cost discounts etc

 

 

The current system makes you waste a ton of points on things you don't care about, just to get a single perk you *do* care about. I'd prefer just having a damage tree, crafting tree, and mobility tree, where you can put points into the base attribute and then just pick the perks that align with the weapon or play style you actually intend to use .

 

You can pretty easily slot the currently existing perks into a tree that makes sense, or give them innately at certain attribute levels like 5 Strength or w/e. If you level too fast, the devs can always change exp needed per level or exp gained etc

 

 

 

I doubt we will get another perk / attribute overhaul though as the devs are trying to wrap things up to go gold, but I def agree that the attribute system would be one of the main areas I think needs another pass to make it actually make sense and make it more rewarding / engaging for the player

[MechanicalLens]

So I just accepted the traps bundle for T1 quest completion in a creative test world and they are... really quite very horrible? 5 wooden spikes, 5 barbed wire fences, and 15 landmines? That almost feels like a trap, pun not intended. I was expecting a dart trap and/or a blade trap and/or electric fences but...

 

Constructive feedback time: Please TFP, please make this bundle type worth its weight, because currently... it's very bad. haha

[Guppycur]

14 hours ago, faatal said:

We don't have a hunched over anim, so I made do with what we have. It needs more work.

Blend tree the eating the player when they die anim.