Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Khalagar]

34 minutes ago, unholyjoe said:

drone was redone to be basically a small pack mule for the player.. not something to make anyone over powered.

 

Um okay, then hopefully Int gets a t3 weapon / item at some point . . .

 

People have been using the drone as a reason why Int doesn't need a t3 weapon, but ATM the Drone is completely unrelated to any attribute and is more like a vehicle where it's just an item that all can use. I guess drone doesn't require max int / robotic perk line to use because the devs spent so much time making it and they want people to use it, but that just means it's not special for intellect investment

 

A flashlight mod on it would be more impressive if the drone wasn't a late game item after everyone already has helmet light mods, and the heal uses your own resources you supply to heal you, so . . . it saves a hotbar slot I guess? Except since you have to talk to it to heal you, you can't do it in combat so it just saves a single inventory slot I guess?

 

I dunno, to me it's basically just a flying storage box at this point, which is neat but not much different than just pulling out your pocket jeep and loading it full of crap outside the door to your POI

 

36 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

I know they seem against giving it offensive capabilities, but that seems like a logical thing to tie to the perk so INT heavy build gets more from the drone than others. Then it could get the same style bonuses the junk turret gets.

 

Drone could have some really neat buffs based on perk investment, like if at different stages it buffed the mods on it. Like a max perk drone could give better health regen over time / chance to not consume healing items,  or a max perk drone could increase stamina regen more than an unperked one does with the stamina augment etc. Upgraded flashlight could either turn into a floodlight or maybe an alarm system to warn if zombies are near etc

 

It has a lot of options for non combat stuff, but it's pretty disappointing / confusing that they put so much work into it only for it to just be for storage late game

Edited December 3, 2021 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

12 minutes ago, Aldranon said:

 

I bet that will change.  Int is weak with little reason to stay in it for more than a few days Mid-Late game.

 

Huh?  I played late game with Int only and didn't find it weak at all.

3 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Except since you have to talk to it to heal you, you can't do it in combat so it just saves a single inventory slot I guess?

I thought from the Dev Streams that once its healing function was activated, it would continued to do so after the cooldown expired and you have a specific amount of HP loss.  They messed up showing that feature because they put in normal bandages instead of the first aid ones.

[Aldranon]

2 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

Huh?  I played late game with Int only and didn't find it weak at all.

 

Compared to strength for an extreme example, it is.

[Khalagar]

11 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

Huh?  I played late game with Int only and didn't find it weak at all.

 

You probably used off build weapons like a shotgun. Int is good and bad. It's good because you can use the turrets as a back up to your actual main weapon, but it's bad because . . . it's a back up to your actual main weapon. 

If you try to play solely using stun baton and turrets you are going to have a really really slow, really meh time. Especially when your turrets drain 10,000+ iron to clear a single late game PoI and you have to go spend 10 minutes mining every day or two

 

Int is good in the sense that you can use a shotgun and throw your turrets out for big fights, but it's not really in a great spot over all IMO since so many of it's benefits are invalidated by just looting, finding books, or buying from traders. A lot of your perk points feel wasted if you spend them on most of the intellect crafting perks and then you find a forge schematic right after

 

Junksledges and the quest reward perk are the only reasons to spec into int at all IMO

 

11 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

I thought from the Dev Streams that once its healing function was activated, it would continued to do so after the cooldown expired and you have a specific amount of HP loss.  They messed up showing that feature because they put in normal bandages instead of the first aid ones.

 

Maybe, I haven't seen anyone use the healing function besides asking it to heal so you might be right. Still not much different than just keeping a painkiller on your hotbar like I'd assume everyone does

 

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[unholyjoe]

16 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

Maybe, I haven't seen anyone use the healing function besides asking it to heal so you might be right. Still not much different than just keeping a painkiller on your hotbar like I'd assume everyone does

the mod is the auto heal even though you can ask it for a heal manually if you dont have the mod and another mods boosts your healing factor too.

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by unholyjoe (see edit history)

[Khalagar]

Yeah, so my point being, those don't scale with your perk investment at all, and actually nothing on the drone does, so it's weird that it was marketed as a T3 int item. I thought maybe mod slots or cargo spots or something scaled with int so that someone who actually, y'know, invested in the robotic line would have a better robotic drone than a level 1 player.

 

The patch notes even still say "The drones abilities can be augmented and enhanced by the player’s intellect, but players can still acquire and use a Drone without perking into it."   so I guess the idea for it to just be an unrelated vehicle was a pretty recent one?

 

I dunno, it's neat to have it in the game since it's a new vehicle basically and I don't want to sound ungrateful, but it's just kind of souring when int doesn't get a t3 cool flashy end game item like everyone else does. Or rather . . . gets one that everyone else also gets for free. Like sure, I can use the t3 sniper rifle, but mine won't be anywhere near the level of a fully perked one used by a perception focused player that's shooting through a whole crowd of zombies, where as every end game player will just have the same drone following them

 

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[hiemfire]

Quote

Crops no longer downgrade to seedlings when harvested 

What happens instead of "downgrading"? Does the plant just break?

[MechanicalLens]

8 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

What happens instead of "downgrading"? Does the plant just break?

 

Pretty sure, yeah. You need max living off the land perk to make farming sustainable, as far as I can tell.

[hiemfire]

12 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

You need max living off the land perk to make farming sustainable,

The way program rng tends to work there is a pretty decent chance that even then allot of people won't be able to get their food source to be sustainable before they just go "@%$# it, I'm wasting my time". If that's what TFP is going for, okay...

[Kosmic Kerman]

38 minutes ago, hiemfire said:

What happens instead of "downgrading"? Does the plant just break?

 

The line immediately below provides the answer, no? 

 

Quote

Player planted crops now give 2 fruit per harvest with a 50% chance of a seed

 

There's a 50% chance of getting a seed that would need to be replanted. It would follow that a harvested plant just disappears they way they do in the wild.  I don't know how or if the Living off the Land Perk was changed but we will find out soon enough.

[hiemfire]

5 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

 

The line immediately below provides the answer, no? 

 

 

There's a 50% chance of getting a seed that would need to be replanted. It would follow that a harvested plant just disappears they way they do in the wild.  I don't know how or if the Living off the Land Perk was changed but we will find out soon enough.

Not really since it isn't stating that harvesting player planted crops has been replaced with the same result to the "block" as harvesting crops generated at world gen or POI reset. It may be implied, but that is still a grey area that should be made clear. It's par for the course with TFP changelogs though, copy paste from internal update log that was referenced for progress check during dev by people who were privy to other conversations touching on the subject the note pertains to. Which most of us outside of TFP are not.

[bdubyah]

One quick observation from watching Woodle's stream: I would've thought pipe weapons would at least take a workbench to assemble. Day 1 isn't even half over and he could craft one of each pipe weapon and had several rounds for each. Seems a bit much to me.

[MechanicalLens]

47 minutes ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

 

The line immediately below provides the answer, no? 

 

 

There's a 50% chance of getting a seed that would need to be replanted. It would follow that a harvested plant just disappears they way they do in the wild.  I don't know how or if the Living off the Land Perk was changed but we will find out soon enough.

 

I was watching someone play A20 on stream and I asked them to look at the perk. There seems to be no change. It seems that rank 3 = 5 fruit per harvest, meaning at that point farming is sustainable.

31 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

One quick observation from watching Woodle's stream: I would've thought pipe weapons would at least take a workbench to assemble. Day 1 isn't even half over and he could craft one of each pipe weapon and had several rounds for each. Seems a bit much to me.

 

I personally iffy most on the pipe machine gun. It seem a little too OP in my eyes. I think it needs much higher recoil to balance it with the other pipe weapons.

[Matt]

31 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

One quick observation from watching Woodle's stream: I would've thought pipe weapons would at least take a workbench to assemble. Day 1 isn't even half over and he could craft one of each pipe weapon and had several rounds for each. Seems a bit much to me.

 

They have been saying from the beginning that pipe weapons can be crafted from the backpack and would use same ammo as real weapons.  This is not new news.

[hiemfire]

6 minutes ago, MechanicalLens said:

 

I was watching someone play A20 on stream and I asked them to look at the perk. There seems to be no change. It seems that rank 3 = 5 fruit per harvest, meaning at that point farming is sustainable.

That would be a change since in A19 the increase in harvest return was +1 at rank 1 and +2 at rank 3 meaning it'd be capped at 4 per plant if there was no change.

A19 Living off the Land Rank 1

Quote

Harvest 2 items from wild or planted crops. Craft seeds for flowers and decorative plants like goldenrod, chrysanthemum, aloe, and yucca. Farm plots cost 30% less to craft.

A19 Living off the Land Rank 3

Quote

Harvest 3 items from wild or planted crops.

 

Edited December 3, 2021 by hiemfire (see edit history)

[Roland]

3 minutes ago, Matt said:

 

They have been saying from the beginning that pipe weapons can be crafted from the backpack and would use same ammo as real weapons.  This is not new news.

 

It has been a good shot in the arm for the crafting game. I have often crafted my first pipe weapon that I wanted before I could find one. It feels awesome even though the dang things are practically a waste of ammo to use shooting at zombies...lol

 

But I waste that ammo every single time.

 

Good to see you here Matt

1 minute ago, hiemfire said:

That would be a change since in A19 the increase in harvest return was +1 at rank 1 and +2 at rank 3 meaning it'd be capped at 4 per plant if there was no change.

A19 Living off the Land Rank 1

A19 Living off the Land Rank 3

 

 There was a lot of discussion about this in the dev chat. Same concerns you are voicing were raised and assessed and after testing it they felt it was viable. You'll have to try playing it to see how it feels for you. The farming change is one we knew would be one of those controversial polarizing A20 features...

[MechanicalLens]

I was watching TacticalFriedRice's stream and he encountered an interesting bug about mountain lions that leap onto blocks do so in extremely slow motion

[bdubyah]

15 minutes ago, Matt said:

 

They have been saying from the beginning that pipe weapons can be crafted from the backpack and would use same ammo as real weapons.  This is not new news.

I'm saying they should make it that way so you at least have to get to the trader and hope, or stumble across a working bench somewhere else. They keep making the beginning of the game easier when there's not much of a mid or late game yet.

 

Also seems to help this along there is also all the ingredients to make a pipe weapon in every container you loot. Really hope there's more balancing coming, but I doubt it. Ammo was already too abundant, but you usually didn't find a gun right off the bat so it kind of worked. But now you can just craft one within about 5 minutes of starting a game. Just feels like it's going the wrong way to me, is all.

[Matt115]

Well i saw new gameplays and my question is : are new hd  characters models implemented or not? because well new RWG looks great but i didn't see new zombie models 😕

I mean new models of old zombie types

Edited December 3, 2021 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[stallionsden]

8 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

I'm saying they should make it that way so you at least have to get to the trader and hope, or stumble across a working bench somewhere else. They keep making the beginning of the game easier when there's not much of a mid or late game yet.

 

Also seems to help this along there is also all the ingredients to make a pipe weapon in every container you loot. Really hope there's more balancing coming, but I doubt it. Ammo was already too abundant, but you usually didn't find a gun right off the bat so it kind of worked. But now you can just craft one within about 5 minutes of starting a game. Just feels like it's going the wrong way to me, is all.

They have looked horribly slow in the reloading of them in the videos.  Not much of a gain at all I don't think. 

[SnowDog1942]

26 minutes ago, Roland said:

Good to see you here Matt

 

What about me? hmm?

[Matt115]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

 

It has been a good shot in the arm for the crafting game. I have often crafted my first pipe weapon that I wanted before I could find one. It feels awesome even though the dang things are practically a waste of ammo to use shooting at zombies...lol

 

But I waste that ammo every single time.

 

Good to see you here Matt

 There was a lot of discussion about this in the dev chat. Same concerns you are voicing were raised and assessed and after testing it they felt it was viable. You'll have to try playing it to see how it feels for you. The farming change is one we knew would be one of those controversial polarizing A20 features...

I don't see notification about your post 0.o strange bug. ( small research: because this is diffrent person) damn i need rest  XD

Okay if you want to play  in this way , you can because this your choice. I'm just dissapointed with "way" how this game is developing.  Gameplay is great but it just "sucks" from aestetic point of view for me. I better option would be if devs decided too keep horror "something between f.e.a.r and silent hill but with zombies" . we don't get this because they wanted to make mad max with zombie. And what i can say @Roland? Cod is terrible- operators in multi, japans with stg in  singleplayer , poor zombie mode as hell. So much bad things. And i can't do anything with this.  

Well i'm so disapointed about most of new  games now ( 7dtd is still new). And what i can do? nothing like with everything. Times of f.e.a.r , dead spaces and fatal frame are gone, plague tale wasn't succesed enough to change mind of people. So we can only expect even more "light and bright" games 

34 minutes ago, SnowDog1942 said:

 

What about me? hmm?

We always remember about you  snowy, you are naughty boi. now bring me you favourite "toy".

Edited December 4, 2021 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[Guppycur]

Anyone mod a20 yet?  😉

[hiemfire]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

There was a lot of discussion about this in the dev chat. Same concerns you are voicing were raised and assessed and after testing it they felt it was viable. You'll have to try playing it to see how it feels for you. The farming change is one we knew would be one of those controversial polarizing A20 features...

I suspect that is why it wasn't brought up in the streams nor on the first page of this thread. We'll see how it plays out with a larger test group. As is from just reading what is there and assuming that what we think is implied is what has been done (The changelog was a bit vague and danced around the change when I last looked, not a good thing if this does become a @%$# storm since it'll make the devs look worse than if they'd not even mentioned the change. There are enough politicians in the world, last thing we need is more game devs acting like that specific type of subhuman parasite.) it is setting off corked and glued rng bottleneck and entropic cyst warning signals in the back of my mind. Hopefully I'll have my replacement power supply by the time A20 hits stable so I can give it a hands on going over in what ever state it is by then.

[KhaineGB]

1 hour ago, Guppycur said:

Anyone mod a20 yet?  😉

Yep