Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Jost Amman]

42 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

You make a lot of assumptions on what you can and can't do, in a game.

You're confusing me with TFP maybe... 

[overgoat]

5 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

I feel like I'm one of the only people left who still builds fort/castle/bunker type bases. Haha. (To each their own! Just making a casual observation.)

I usually go that way for my main base, but for horde bases I like smaller footprints as they are easier to repair/maintain. 

[MechanicalLens]

1 minute ago, overgoat said:

I usually go that way for my main base, but for horde bases I like smaller footprints as they are easier to repair/maintain. 

 

I'm the opposite as you then. Lol I go big or I go home. People always ask if I have an 8 person server running when they see my solo bases. Haha

 

I'm just going through my old A17 and A18 bases on Imgur right now... The nostalgia is hitting me like a tidal wave.

[Red Eagle LXIX]

Here are my issues with the block change.

 

I am curious. There are 352 blocks that were impacted by this change.

How did you identify in game, not using XML or outside resource which 352 blocks? AFAIK, the only way would be to place them as frames and upgrade to at least wood (or place directly as wood or higher material) then damage each block shape. Of course the meta game cheesers (who don't believe they cheese) will just remember each one they encounter even if their character didn't.

Then there is the resource cost which is unbalanced.

There is the fact that larger blocks do not get boosted (example take the shape 'Cube 3x3x1', by this logic that should have 9 times the HP since it fills 9 full blocks. I'll save you the effort of checking; it does not have 9x the HP it has the same HP as a single block.

The change is illogical, broken, unfair, and can't even be expressed properly in game with current mechanics.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

1 hour ago, overgoat said:

 

I use them as structure to keep the base of the tower narrow, but they are a key support structure that allows me to have a wider area at the top.  They usually only get attacked if/when the stairs go down, but that has happened more than once!

From what I could tell the 1/4 blocks and 50 pillars weren't affected.  From mucking around in game and in the xml, it seems like the only blocks affected are plates, poles, and small corner pieces.  Anything that was equivalent or smaller than a plate or pole (door trim, the tiny pillars, etc.) had the HP reduced.  Pretty much any full or mostly full width block thicker than a plate seems to have 100% HP. 

[Aldranon]

29 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

You're confusing me with TFP maybe... 

 

Nope, just going off what you're typing.

[Kosmic Kerman]

5 minutes ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

Here are my issues with the block change.

 

I am curious. There are 352 blocks that were impacted by this change.

How did you identify in game, not using XML or outside resource which 352 blocks? AFAIK, the only way would be to place them as frames and upgrade to at least wood (or place directly as wood or higher material) then damage each block shape. Of course the meta game cheesers (who don't believe they cheese) will just remember each one they encounter even if their character didn't.

Then there is the resource cost which is unbalanced.

There is the fact that larger blocks do not get boosted (example take the shape 'Cube 3x3x1', by this logic that should have 9 times the HP since it fills 9 full blocks. I'll save you the effort of checking; it does not have 9x the HP it has the same HP as a single block.

The change is illogical, broken, unfair, and can't even be expressed properly in game with current mechanics.

 

 

From my testing some of the blocks show their HP when you target them with your fists (and possibly other tools/weapons).  I'm not sure why this is the case for some blocks and not for others. Many, but not all, of the reduced HP blocks would show their HP if you targeted them (no damage required), at least the particleboard frames would, showing 50/50 or 25/25. I agree that the larger than 1x1 blocks like some of the arches should now have increased HP especially since crafting costs now bear no relation to HP.

[gpcstargate]

WELL .. That Sucks big Time ... Steel Plates only have a 5000 hit point compared to the 10000 that steel normally does.

 

You just killed the Game for a lot of builders, thanks alot

[Red Eagle LXIX]

19 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

 

From my testing some of the blocks show their HP when you target them with your fists (and possibly other tools/weapons).  I'm not sure why this is the case for some blocks and not for others. Many, but not all, of the reduced HP blocks would show their HP if you targeted them (no damage required), at least the particleboard frames would, showing 50/50 or 25/25. I agree that the larger than 1x1 blocks like some of the arches should now have increased HP especially since crafting costs now bear no relation to HP.

I just tested this out and you are right it will display for full HP blocks BUT only if they have been damaged and repaired at some point.

It does not display for blocks that have never been damaged.

 

This was my repeatable result, place 2 blocks. Damage and repair 1.  Switch to fists.  Only the block you damaged will show HP 50/50, 100/100 whatever numbers based on shape and stage.

 

Edit: I should note that since this works with fist, it means the basic frame shapes can be tested without upgrading by which I for some reason forgot about simple punching as I don't go fisticuffs with the zeds.

[Kosmic Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

I just tested this out, and you are right, it will display for full HP blocks if they have been damaged and repaired at some point.

It does not display for blocks that have never been damaged.

 

This was my repeatable result, place 2 blocks. Damage and repair 1.  Switch to fists.  Only the block you damaged will show HP 50/50, 100/100 whatever numbers based on shape and stage.

 

 

That wasn't entirely my experience. I was able to see the HP of some reduced HP blocks without ever damaging them. Maybe there was a persistence issue as I would place a block and then damage it if there was no HP bar, repair it, pick it up, and then place a new shape. For example one of the blocks that would show HP without damage was the square plate with a circular cut out. 

[Lord Morphleyes]

2 hours ago, pregnable said:

 

It will probably confuse newer players and annoy them when they find out they used inferior blocks, with nothing to let them know it is inferior until after it is upgraded.

 

As a new player I found it inconsistent with my expectations when I discovered that poles and posts had the same HP as full on 1 meter cubes.  My expectations were based on, you know, reality and I found it immersion breaking.  I thought it was just lazy programming I excused it because the game is in Alpha.  No way in hell I would accept that from a finished product game unless it only cost like $9.99. Its just dumb. 

 

As far as costing less materials, that totally makes sense and would be a nice (although not necessary) adjustment. By the time I am getting fancy with my bases I am not micro managing my materials like that since they are more than abundant. I much rather TFP spend their time on making crafting viable.

 

To you all the are complaining about the materials cost not being adjusted down to match the HP, your level of butt hurt 7wood, 7cobblestone, 7......  really makes me question the sincerity of your argument.  It seems like there is something else you are not saying and it makes it difficult for me to recieve your opinion with the gravity I hope it deserves.

 

I haven't been able to get in the forums in awhile so...

 

+1 to all the folks who came back on and said they over reacted to new farming system and find it enjoyable.

 

Of course loot would respawn, I am not the only person in the world, and how many cans and scrap and crap do I drop when traveling and looting, not to mention dropping on death. Totally plausible that someone passing through during the night was fighting zombies and dropped their desert eagle and didn't have time to pick it up. 

 

Feral sense on at night??? You guys are insane!

 

We need more weapon and armor parts.  Since the trader is not a source of q1 guns, then there should be more in zombie loot. Or just parts, or introduce a broken gun that gives you parts. A q0 no damage gun that is only good for parts.

 

Thank you TFP for A20! You have rekindled my wife's desire, to play 7d2d.

 

We never had CTD but it happened after the 12/16 update to my wifes and my computers. Both CTD at the same time and hers did again later during a BM when I died.  just FYI at this point, if it continues I will do a wipe and try and replicate and all that good stuff for an official bug report.

 

[Mechanimal]

53 minutes ago, Lord Morphleyes said:

 

As a new player I found it inconsistent with my expectations when I discovered that poles and posts had the same HP as full on 1 meter cubes.  My expectations were based on, you know, reality and I found it immersion breaking.  I thought it was just lazy programming I excused it because the game is in Alpha.  No way in hell I would accept that from a finished product game unless it only cost like $9.99. Its just dumb. 

 

As far as costing less materials, that totally makes sense and would be a nice (although not necessary) adjustment. By the time I am getting fancy with my bases I am not micro managing my materials like that since they are more than abundant. I much rather TFP spend their time on making crafting viable.

 

To you all the are complaining about the materials cost not being adjusted down to match the HP, your level of butt hurt 7wood, 7cobblestone, 7......  really makes me question the sincerity of your argument.  It seems like there is something else you are not saying and it makes it difficult for me to recieve your opinion with the gravity I hope it deserves.

 

I haven't been able to get in the forums in awhile so...

 

+1 to all the folks who came back on and said they over reacted to new farming system and find it enjoyable.

 

Of course loot would respawn, I am not the only person in the world, and how many cans and scrap and crap do I drop when traveling and looting, not to mention dropping on death. Totally plausible that someone passing through during the night was fighting zombies and dropped their desert eagle and didn't have time to pick it up. 

 

Feral sense on at night??? You guys are insane!

 

We need more weapon and armor parts.  Since the trader is not a source of q1 guns, then there should be more in zombie loot. Or just parts, or introduce a broken gun that gives you parts. A q0 no damage gun that is only good for parts.

 

Thank you TFP for A20! You have rekindled my wife's desire, to play 7d2d.

 

We never had CTD but it happened after the 12/16 update to my wifes and my computers. Both CTD at the same time and hers did again later during a BM when I died.  just FYI at this point, if it continues I will do a wipe and try and replicate and all that good stuff for an official bug report.

 

I think, currently, it's mainly a balance issue.
I'll buy the realism argument when:

- the material costs reflect HP proportionately.

- larger blocks get equivalently more HP(and can cost more too, ok).

- pre-existing and all POI blocks follow the same rule/logic.

Until then it's just a devastating blow to base building, after that it's just an unfortunate detriment that can eventually be shrugged off. I agree it would make more sense, smaller/less massive blocks have less HP, but ONLY if materials cost is mirrored in that.

Regardless I'll never forget that one shiny week where base building was at it's peak awesomeness. However this gets resolved I am afraid that level of creative sweetness may never get recaptured.

...
 

Also... what's with iron bars now upgrading to concrete... and then steel? Right... right? I sure hope so, fine if can then be steel, rly confusing nerf if not. Like, I'll just use the other railings and upgrade those to steel then. Wait, is their HP nerfed too?

These changes just feel like a huge uneccessary ripple in what was once a smooth and soothing pond. But we'll wait and see what sifts out. I adapted fine to the farming changes, just weird to go from excitement over base building to suddenly having HP anxiety over what piece is what now.

[bachgaman]

Bliss. Little fans of exploits and cheat-bases burned out

[Mechanimal]

Just now, bachgaman said:

Bliss. Little fans of exploits and cheat-bases burned out

I don't build cheese bases, and I don't care who does either. Who hurt you?

[bachgaman]

Just now, Mechanimal said:

I don't build cheese bases, and I don't care who does either. Who hurt you?

Then why are you whining?

 

Speaking of whining, I remember one of the local people who argued that whining on this forum never leads to anything. Now recall that 90% of A20 complaints were related to the new farm, which, by the way, is positive, even without LOTL (for those who are friends with school mathematics). And what do we see

Quote

• Living off the Land level 2 now has a 50% chance to harvest 1 additional crop 

LOL

So go on to tell how the decrease of durability of blocks hinders to receive aesthetic pleasure, and not to cheat the game (I believe). Maybe the change will be canceled if there are ten more offended cheaters

[Tete1805]

14 hours ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

On Grand Spartan's stream tonight (around the 2:46 min mark), he had a base collapse and in addition to the elevated platform blocks breaking the support pillars broke as well. I've never seen support pillars collapse before. Has something changed about SI in A20?

 

MustFixCount += 1;

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

1 minute ago, Tete1805 said:

 

MustFixCount += 1;

 

Could you explain this to me like I'm 5? 

[Tete1805]

Sorry, it means this adds another must fix bug to the existing list of bugs to fix before stable.

[Mechanimal]

1 minute ago, bachgaman said:

Then why are you whining?

 

Speaking of whining, I remember one of the local people who argued that whining on this forum never leads to anything. Now recall that 90% of A20 complaints were related to the new farm, which, by the way, is positive, even without LOTL (for those who are friends with school mathematics). And what do we see

LOL

So go on to tell how the decrease of durability of blocks hinders to receive aesthetic pleasure, and not to cheat the game (I believe). Maybe the change will be canceled if there are ten more offended cheaters

We're reacting to the change, a dramatic one at that. That's what these forums are for, discussing the changes as this thing mutates and grows. Again I just think this one is currently out of balance, if it sticks it should be, and likely will, go through yet more balance changes. Hopefully not a neverending constant update to what blocks are what now. It was easy before, greases the creative gears, now it's far more complicated, and that is a creative hinderance, period. 

Why you and a few others become obsessed with how other people play is a weird kind of sickness. I don't build cheese bases, but I just abandoned my 100 hr playthrough because my perimeter wall went from 5000HP to 1250 HP overnight and I don't want to deal with it now. The pieces aren't a single pole in mass either, more like 3 times the mass of a pole, but still got grouped with pole blocks. Was a neat ass wall too, oh well, I guess. If the material cost was reflected I might just upgrade it to steel, cause the cost would not be 10 pieces per -75% HP results it gave, so I'd adapt to that. But at full mat cost the least they could do is balance that out. Still won't like it, but I'd adapt and accept the realism argument. I do think that's the kind of feedback TFP needs and part of what this forum is for. Being obsessed with how others play is your own weird issue to resolve.

[bender 182]

I have a question, When i am in snow or burn biome or when around me is very much zombies, my FPS droped from 59 to 33. My PC: intel i5 7400 3GHz, Ram 2x8GB DDR 4 2400Mhz, nVidia 1060 GTR 6GB, game is on SSD disk. Have somebody same PC and have same problems? How can i fix problems with droping FPS? Wait to GOLD version of game or buy better processor?

[icehot]

11 minutes ago, bender 182 said:

I have a question, When i am in snow or burn biome or when around me is very much zombies, my FPS droped from 59 to 33. My PC: intel i5 7400 3GHz, Ram 2x8GB DDR 4 2400Mhz, nVidia 1060 GTR 6GB, game is on SSD disk. Have somebody same PC and have same problems? How can i fix problems with droping FPS? Wait to GOLD version of game or buy better processor?

 

Honestly upgrading won't gain you much in this game, the bottleneck is unlikely to be in the system, I spent £5,000 on a new computer, and barely got 10 to 20 fps increase in this game, it's not fully utilising the hardware at all, my GPU sits at 30% usage.

[Ricowan]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

You're confusing me with TFP maybe... 

The thing is, TFP has actual data from the game.  They know exactly how many players are doing X vs. Y.

You only have a handful of angry people posting here, which is NOT representative of the player base by a long shot.

I don't know if the data that's collected is driving TFP's game design decisions or not, I'm just pointing out that they do actually know a lot more about how people are playing their game than we do.

[icehot]

Just now, Ricowan said:

The thing is, TFP has actual data from the game.  They know exactly how many players are doing X vs. Y.

You only have a handful of angry people posting here, which is NOT representative of the player base by a long shot.

I don't know if the data that's collected is driving TFP's game design decisions or not, I'm just pointing out that they do actually know a lot more about how people are playing their game than we do.

 

It may or may not, but some of us have been here for years, and seen the knee jerk changes that go way too far, it happens all the time, they swing too far one way, then dial it back again after seeing some of the reactions.

[orak]

If some blocks have lower HP im ok with it (25% seems a bit low tho, 50% would be more viable) but I definitely think the upgrade cost should be scaled.

It already takes up a square space where you could put a full HP bloc anyway,

the advantage is that you get a bit of room for players if the bloc is small or the ability to see through.

 

The blocs you can choose from is great now, it would be a shame if most players use only full HP blocs.

Plus as many mentions in the forum, it will always be easy to cheese the Z's during horde night if the player really want it.

 

I've thought about a design concerning this:

 

- remove the ability to place wood, cobblestone, concrete and steel blocs

- frames cost all the same

- give the ability to choose the upgrade type by pressing the R button (just like you change ammo type)

- scale the upgrade cost and the player XP with the bloc HP

- show the relevant info (HP, stability...) when you choose blocs in the UI frame menu

 

Also for bigger blocs that take multiple blocs in the game, it would be great to place the frame as a whole;

then it would create multiple frame blocs that you can either destroy or upgrade.

it would simplify things a lot if some "mega bloc" would be added, like 25 degrees ramps, roof parts etc

 

 

 

 

 

[DEADFACE]

25 minutes ago, orak said:

- remove the ability to place wood, cobblestone, concrete and steel blocs

- frames cost all the same

- give the ability to choose the upgrade type by pressing the R button (just like you change ammo type)

- scale the upgrade cost and the player XP with the bloc HP

- show the relevant info (HP, stability...) when you choose blocs in the UI frame menu

This is exactly what I was hoping for with the new block system. It's what seemed like the obvious way to do it to me, but instead we have to deal with either force upgrade paths (time consuming) or placing blocks and having to deal with either mistakes or being unable to reconfigure the build prior to committing resources.

 

The new block system is on the cusp of being perfect and this is the change that would make it that way.

 

Also, I don't understand everybody calling the block hp change "illogical", if you wanted logical you would be in favor of reduced hp for smaller blocks along with reduced resources. I personally don't care either way, I'll play the game and enjoy it regardless.