Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[BFT2020]

39 minutes ago, Weazelsun said:

 

My personal issue with clubs is that in terms of weapon "meta" they are the de facto top tier weapon. I also think it's because clubs have multiple mods that basically make it powerful. Such as the barbed wire mod (adds bleed chance), metal chain mod (knockdown effect). Not to mention that a player can do the combo of burning shaft mod (fire) + barbed wire mod or burning shaft + metal chain. Now I understand that obviously weapons should NOT be all on par with each other. I just want their niches to at least be buffed, I guess? Like knives maybe give them a higher base dismemberment chance. Spears be stackable I suppose. 

Knives are great as they are IMHO.  My first playthroughs I am going with the knives as I find them extremely fun to play with.  The bleed affect really works well.  Attack and retreat, then let the dot do its thing.  Wandering hordes are fun to go against, just keep tagging different zombies and then eventually they just start dying on you while you keep kiting them  😁

[Weazelsun]

7 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

Knives are great as they are IMHO.  My first playthroughs I am going with the knives as I find them extremely fun to play with.  The bleed affect really works well.  Attack and retreat, then let the dot do its thing.  Wandering hordes are fun to go against, just keep tagging different zombies and then eventually they just start dying on you while you keep kiting them  😁

 

Indeed, I should redact my comment regarding knives needing to be buffed. As I believe they have been already, lol.  I don't know what difficulty you play but, the server I play on is set to Warrior. And I have consistently counted power attacks and for most zombies, specifically normal zombies it takes around 3 power attacks to the head when not stealthier. THREE! Mind you that is using a bone knife. Stealth obviously is a one hit kill.

[JaxTeller718]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

Whaaattt??? I totally disagree, but let me preface that everyone plays different, and has different skill levels and choices that influence how a particular build can play out.

I prefer to build my own base. The time wasted plugging holes and wasting mats on a temp base, is simply that time wasted.

Upgrading blocks requires gathering materials, which in itself sets you back in terms of what technology and books you can acquire looting. There is no way it can keep up with killing XP either.

 

Why are you forced to sink points into workstations? You don't need workstations right away. But from the sound of it you like staying home and upgrading blocks so maybe getting out there and bashing heads in isn't appealing to you. I find workstation schematics in loot and vehicle schematics are found or purchased. I never put a single point into INT and had all I wanted on my last play through.

 

Clubs are WAY better than knives. The range and damage are superior. At least early game. Eventually my knives got ok but I remember the club always feeling superior. But you need to get sex rex and the right mods to really make it shine. Sure with agility I had unlimited knife power attacks late game with sex rex as well, but with a club you don't need unlimited power attacks. Personally I feel fists are better than knives. But I don't like running around as my enemies bleed out, I like to pulverize them to bloody pulps with my fists or clubs.

It all depends on what you FEEL like you need. After all it is just a FEELING and not a factual statement. Workstations are a convenience but not really a necessity early game. Eventually you might feel the pressure of not having one, but I tend to raid about 5 tier 3's a day and get loads of loot and find a schematic for one fairly quickly. I did get hosed by the random gods on my chem station though and paid double for glue and GP until level 50 or so. But still I didn't NEED one, it was just a convenience to have one.

 

You log in at the exact place you logged out at.

Absolutely, I was by no  means saying this is the way it needs to be. Just offering my feedback based off how I was playing it for that run. 

 

I will say I love that you can not just go to a trader and have guaranteed working stations. That was an awesome change and forced me to change my play style.

 

All in all though you guys knocked it out of the park. This alpha reinforced my allegiance to the United States of The Fun Pimps. Now go on and release that kickstarter or whatever for anything new that you guys may be doing. I want to hand you more money. Or make a 7 Days shot glass, beer mug or bottle opener. I will gladly add them to my collection!

2 hours ago, dcsobral said:

I said on stream that Alpha 20 felt like the JaxTeller Edition. 😂

I adore you good sir. Here have more ferals!

[JaxTeller718]

Now THIS is what Im talking about!! This Drive In is AMAZING!!!!!

 

Kudos to the team!

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

13 hours ago, faatal said:

A20 does not work like that. You hit a sleeper in a volume and the rest go active. Active ones are still sleeping, but they can hear you, so a stealth player might keep killing them without aggro, while a non stealth player may wake them depending on weapon noise and distance.

 

I don't know if this varies by POI or requires you to be in a specific volume for this to work properly but I have definitely seen evidence of this not working how you describe. For example, the new Joe Bros Housing Development POI with the Night Power Quest does not appear to work this way. First, when you walk into the volume vultures appear to spawn as soon as you enter. Maybe if you crouched in they wouldn't spawn but this seems like a pretty hard trigger to me. Second, and more importantly, you can stand on the roof of the loot room (first garage on the left) and break the roof and pick off each zombie (while crouched, with an unsuppressed weapon, and no points in stealth) and none of the other zombies wake up even if you aggro one of them.  Walking on the roof doesn't wake up the sleepers. Shooting a zombie with an unsuppressed weapon does not wake up the zombie next to him or her. Walking on the roof from one side to the next after killing the first batch of zombies does not wake the rest up.  The zombie bear does not aggro until you shoot it.  As far as I can tell the "volume" you are in still seems to play a role in whether the zombies wake up. In the Joe Bros example, I gave I am about 3 blocks from the zombies when I am shooting them.

 

I have the feeling that what I observed is due to how the POI was designed. The basic idea being  you break a door, find a zombie bear, kill it, and then enter the room.  At which point, 6 zombies fall from the rafters catching you by surprise. While my memory is a little foggy as I've now cleared that POI multiple times, I'm pretty sure the first time I completed the quest following the path, the sleeper zombies did not wake up while I was battling the bear and I was caught by surprise when a bunch of zombies fell on my head. Now don't get me wrong, it's an enjoyable POI and it was a great experience but it did not play out how I would expect based on your description of how stealth checks work.

[bachgaman]

Thanks for answer

2 hours ago, madmole said:

Just use some self restraint and don't do any repeat quests. Turn off loot respawn. It's not perfect but role playing through self restraint can solve problems.

Even if I write down the names of the completed POIs, sooner or later (most likely sooner), all five proposals will be completed. He will not offer me POI on the other side of the world, if a similar one is closer. Therefore, I will have no motive to go to another city. And I will be trapped in several POIs located near the first trader.

2 hours ago, madmole said:

Its a multiplayer game we can't not reset POIs for new players to experience it.

I did not understand how it interferes. Why not have a common global variable on each POI, which says that the quest in this POI is not available? No quests nearby? Someone else did all the work before you, so what? Plus it could be a non-coercive slider like loot respawn. I think it is normal that different game modes (SP / MP) use different game settings

[madmole]

45 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

I hear what you are saying here....but:

 

1) I don't think crafting should be so trader reliant especially not when you are unlocking a recipe with a perk point. The trader is great but there should be viable alternatives. My point was that the accumulation of shotgun parts in particular was so abysmal that crafting your T2 primary weapon was either impossible or ill-advised since you would eventually loot a comparable or better weapon and should be saving parts for the T3. I am also willing to be patient and slowly acquire parts but by the time I've acquired the parts I will have already looted a better or comparable gun.

 

2) I have not seen an abundance of shotguns at the trader. I will keep a better eye out on my next play through.

 

3) There seems to be a drastic reduction in the number of parts that drop from loot in A20. In addition to impacting the crafting of primary weapons, it has a knock on effect to turrets (both pistol and shotgun). While the turrets are out of favor now due to Demo Zombies, it would still be nice to craft them when you get lucky and find the schematic for defending your crafting base. But when such a small number of parts drop, you end up saving them to craft a weapon since those have much more value than turrets.

We might have to completely rebalance weapon parts for 21 because of the new crafting system I'm working on. The system will make crafting more granular so you craft many ranges of weapons (crafting a blue pipe shotgun at skill level 25 or so, lets you craft a brown double barrel at that skill level.). Even an increase of 1 will allow you to potentially craft a little bit better weapon, so I can see players frequently re-crafting weapons in a long game to get the micro improvements as their skill goes up.

[Kosmic Kerman]

16 hours ago, DarlingCows said:

Ok I’ve done this before where I log out right before day time after a horde night after I’ve finished my horde night early. But then I logged back in and the horde started again but I’m not at my base and I die. Can this be changed? 

 

This is a mistake you only make once. For stock settings, i.e. (60 minute days), it's really not a problem to wait until morning to log out. If you are playing on longer days, this is just something you have to account for.

[bachgaman]

2 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

Yes, I guess a 4x4/truck is more fun with all the guys together in one vehicle...thank you for reminding me that I have no friends 😅

Considering speed...well how do you define speed?

Highest mph that the vehicle can reach and time to reach destination are two different things of course if your way isn't just a straight flat line.

Nevermind, maybe I'm just a bad driver with a steering wheel, I need handlebars. 😉

But I will definitely check out the A20 4x4 now, you all got me curious about its actual behaviour, just in case I happen to find one/the schematics/parts. 

I just remember this moment from my first game in A19, we played three, two of us moved in a truck and one person on a motorcycle. And I rode a motorcycle behind a truck and the distance between us did not change. Hence the speed is the same. I agree that it can be difficult to drive a truck off the road. You can get stuck somewhere and so on, it happens. The motorcycle is better in this regard.

[madmole]

1 hour ago, Uncle Al said:

Not anymore you don't heh - Level 1 weapons (well, the ones that give parts, you can still get level 1 primitive weapons) have been removed from all traders.  I'm guessing the main reason was to get away from stupidly cheap $400 guns being available on day one, but a side effect is you can't hoover up cheap weapon parts any more either.

That is a very good point. Still though I had no issue crafting what I needed, so I must stand that this needs more time to evaluate the need for a change. I bought a tier 4 JUST for the parts. You gotta do what you gotta do if it's important for you.

[bachgaman]

16 hours ago, DarlingCows said:

Ok I’ve done this before where I log out right before day time after a horde night after I’ve finished my horde night early. But then I logged back in and the horde started again but I’m not at my base and I die. Can this be changed? 

One of my no-death runs ended in the same way. It was unpleasant

[hiemfire]

4 minutes ago, madmole said:

We might have to completely rebalance weapon parts for 21 because of the new crafting system I'm working on. The system will make crafting more granular so you craft many ranges of weapons (crafting a blue pipe shotgun at skill level 25 or so, lets you craft a brown double barrel at that skill level.). Even an increase of 1 will allow you to potentially craft a little bit better weapon, so I can see players frequently re-crafting weapons in a long game to get the micro improvements as their skill goes up.

That sounds similar to something that was implemented previously.

[Kosmic Kerman]

1 minute ago, madmole said:

We might have to completely rebalance weapon parts for 21 because of the new crafting system I'm working on. The system will make crafting more granular so you craft many ranges of weapons (crafting a blue pipe shotgun at skill level 25 or so, lets you craft a brown double barrel at that skill level.). Even an increase of 1 will allow you to potentially craft a little bit better weapon, so I can see players frequently re-crafting weapons in a long game to get the micro improvements as their skill goes up.

Thanks for the response.  It's not a big deal. My initial post was just offering feedback on what I experienced in my first playthrough. Game balance is always a moving target especially when there are substantive changes. 

[meilodasreh]

36 minutes ago, JaxTeller718 said:

Now THIS is what Im talking about!! This Drive In is AMAZING!!!!!

 

Kudos to the team!

 

 

Spoiler

 

I've been there too, and I agree absolutely. It's so cool it seems to be just a random open space, with some nice and easy access loot boxes, but then...

 

btw the dogs are right behind you 😄

[bachgaman]

1 hour ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

I hear what you are saying here....but:

 

1) I don't think crafting should be so trader reliant especially not when you are unlocking a recipe with a perk point. The trader is great but there should be viable alternatives. My point was that the accumulation of shotgun parts in particular was so abysmal that crafting your T2 primary weapon was either impossible or ill-advised since you would eventually loot a comparable or better weapon and should be saving parts for the T3. I am also willing to be patient and slowly acquire parts but by the time I've acquired the parts I will have already looted a better or comparable gun.

 

2) I have not seen an abundance of shotguns at the trader. I will keep a better eye out on my next play through.

 

3) There seems to be a drastic reduction in the number of parts that drop from loot in A20. In addition to impacting the crafting of primary weapons, it has a knock on effect to turrets (both pistol and shotgun). While the turrets are out of favor now due to Demo Zombies, it would still be nice to craft them when you get lucky and find the schematic for defending your crafting base. But when such a small number of parts drop, you end up saving them to craft a weapon since those have much more value than turrets.

I don't know why you guys are collecting parts. They cost good money and I always sell all the parts, getting a lot of money and exp. Because we cannot craft Q6 items. And for the mountains of money received, I can buy something like autoshogun/auger on the 7th day (secret stash OP)

[dcsobral]

27 minutes ago, madmole said:

We might have to completely rebalance weapon parts for 21 because of the new crafting system I'm working on. The system will make crafting more granular so you craft many ranges of weapons (crafting a blue pipe shotgun at skill level 25 or so, lets you craft a brown double barrel at that skill level.). Even an increase of 1 will allow you to potentially craft a little bit better weapon, so I can see players frequently re-crafting weapons in a long game to get the micro improvements as their skill goes up.

I wish there was a clear split on crafting/looting. Crafted weapons and armors should be potentially better than the best looted ones, to give an incentive on maxing out crafting for them. Weapon and armor mods should be loot only, to give an incentive to keep looting searching for them. And it should not be possible to uninstall a mod, giving an incentive to get more of them as well as recrafting weapons and armor to make use of newly acquired mods.

[jorbascrumps]

9 minutes ago, dcsobral said:

I wish there was a clear split on crafting/looting. Crafted weapons and armors should be potentially better than the best looted ones, to give an incentive on maxing out crafting for them. Weapon and armor mods should be loot only, to give an incentive to keep looting searching for them. And it should not be possible to uninstall a mod, giving an incentive to get more of them as well as recrafting weapons and armor to make use of newly acquired mods.

 

I don't necessarily agree with your entire premise but I like the idea of not being able to uninstall mods. This is a fairly common mechanic in a lot of looter games, especially when the number of potential mods is as limited as 7 Days. Once you find your first of mod X the next time is kinda lame?

[Kosmic Kerman]

3 minutes ago, jorbascrumps said:

 

I don't necessarily agree with your entire premise but I like the idea of not being able to uninstall mods. This is a fairly common mechanic in a lot of looter games, especially when the number of potential mods is as limited as 7 Days. Once you find your first of mod X the next time is kinda lame?

A lot of games with uninstallable mods have an entirely different mechanic though. Mods are usually percentage increases and there are tiers. So there's no harm putting your starter mod in your starter gun because you will always find a mod with better percentages. Those games are also designed to drop weapons and mods at certain keystones (player level, campaign progress, etc.). In 7dtd you would just end up not using mods in starter equipment, saving it for the better equipment you know will come, until you get a duplicate. The play and feel will not be similar. Instead you will simply being using unmodded weapons early game making the start feel worse.

[jorbascrumps]

27 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

A lot of games with uninstallable mods have an entirely different mechanic though. Mods are usually percentage increases and there are tiers. So there's no harm putting your starter mod in your starter gun because you will always find a mod with better percentages. Those games are also designed to drop weapons and mods at certain keystones (player level, campaign progress, etc.). In 7dtd you would just end up not using mods in starter equipment, saving it for the better equipment you know will come, until you get a duplicate. The play and feel will not be similar. Instead you will simply being using unmodded weapons early game making the start feel worse.

 

Fair point. Right now we have the opposite issue, though. Finding a duplicate mod late game doesn't feel good. Mods are in a strange position where they don't scale with loot stage like weapons and armour do. Mod X on day 1 is identical to mod X on day 100.

 

Not being able to uninstall mods would create another interesting choice: do I use this now or wait until I get a better gun? Using it now would make the decision to upgrade require more consideration, as well, because now I'm not just comparing base stats but also considering the mod's added functionality. You'll always find another mod for that late game weapon, it's just a matter of time.

[just.dont]

2 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

On an unrelated note: I haven't seen this discussed much, apart from a report from a streamer from Japan, but the amount of ammo in zombie loot bags seems completely excessive.  On 75% loot I'm getting maybe 4-7 rounds from ammo piles, which seems completely reasonable, and then wham!  a yellow loot bag will contain 40 rounds every time.  Not a bug per se so I haven't bug reported and I'm sure devs are aware and will consider tuning the balance further.

Having fat zpacks actually feels rather nice - and yes, the amount of loot in them is rather extreme, compared to normal looting. Bonus points when you do that in wasteland and get a rather extreme lootstage bonus on top of it.

Personally, I solved that issue by reducing zpacks probability twice to thrice (and biome lootstage bonuses as well) via a mod. By default it *does* get pretty bad when you simply loot all the remaining zpacks after a bloodmoon and end up recovering all the ammo you just spent. But otherwise it's much better when a zpack means a nice rare surprise, rather than "oh, it's just a bit of your typical loot".

[Blake_]

1 hour ago, madmole said:

We might have to completely rebalance weapon parts for 21 because of the new crafting system I'm working on. The system will make crafting more granular so you craft many ranges of weapons (crafting a blue pipe shotgun at skill level 25 or so, lets you craft a brown double barrel at that skill level.). Even an increase of 1 will allow you to potentially craft a little bit better weapon, so I can see players frequently re-crafting weapons in a long game to get the micro improvements as their skill goes up.

I am loving what I hear. So you are bringing back a limited version of learn by doing Just for the weapons so you can "Diablo" your way into a purple legendary weapon and have slack for legendary "enchantments" or did I misunderstand? Or Are the weapon points gained just from quests?

 

 

[overgoat]

3 hours ago, dcsobral said:

Is it truly without seeing you? Remember that diagonals between blocks do provide line of sight (like with ramps connected only diagonally), and ground is essentially transparent.

I can't say for sure, but I'll be inside my base away from any open windows and hear the scream and think, "Here we go again!"  It feels like its only feral sense triggering.  

My whole group got wiped by a screamer horde earlier today after burning through about 2k 7.62.  Was truly a horde night experience.  A 'fun' side effect is horde nights are way tougher because we are burning a lot of ammo on the off days. 

TFP devs, if screamers can trigger from feral sense it may be necessary to lower their range or maybe lower their chance to spawn another screamers?  With that said it does make it seem dangerous/scary!  We are definitely our 64 zombie max from screamers fairly often.  

[Star69]

With A20 I’m having to learn to play all over again. I’ve been here since A6, have over 5000 hours, and I died on day 1!!! With so many hours played, I’m so used to tackling the standard poi’s for mats and just systematically clearing them before salvaging. I walked into what appeared to be a new restaurant with only a level 1 club and bow…. I just needed 10 leather to make a forge. Dispatched a few zombies then 2 feral businessmen came at me, one front and one behind…..stunned and dead. Now I know to be a bit more cautious entering pois early on. I haven’t died on day 1 since I first started playing. This is awesome! I’m still @%$#ed that I died but it’s awesome. I play dead is dead so tonites day 1 will hopefully go better. Loving this alpha.

[DarlingCows]

3 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

I guess he meant that he logged out when standing outside of his base, after looting the bags and checking for damages.

So he's not inside his base and when the horde is somehow reset after login, and then he's f***ed up.

 

I assume it's because in early game stages the spawn stops before 4AM after so and so many Zeds, but if you relog before 4AM again it's checked "bloodmoon night between 10PM and 4AM, so here we go again"?

Yea that’s exactly what happened it was first horde night I finished at like 1:30 and logged off cause I had to go. 

[wicketness]

IMO......

 

A20 feels like A19.

It just looks a bit nicer. Multiplayer runs horrible.

I do like the new prefabs and the layouts.

 

And i really like the packages in the creative menu for weapons etc.

I don't get to play very often. my last serious game was over a year ago.

I mainly host game servers for my group and attempt to keep things sane.

 

After 7 years hosting 7 days to die this version does feel pretty good.

Map issues and game corruption has been a pretty big issue on high and standard population servers.

I know things will improve as new patches get released.

 

One thing i noticed right away was how much better aiming feels compared to previous patches.

The new UI was confusing at first but i got used to it and i think it works well.

I still don't like the game stages, it literally prevents zombies from spawning and doesn't work so well for multiplayer.

I feel GS makes the spawning file almost useless early game.

 

I will stop it there as most other things are for bug reports.

 

That's My Nickle.