A20 Developer Diary Discussions

[BFT2020]

On 2/20/2021 at 8:38 PM, vinanrra said:

@faatal i think i found a bug with pressure plates:

 

It's already a known bug (it's in the bug report)

[meganoth]

42 minutes ago, roughgalaxy said:

Is there a planned change to Traders? Right now we can't collect any of their crops since it's not E to collect anymore and they have trader immunity. Is TFP planning on removing the crops or otherwise making them available to players or are we doomed to be teased with coffee every time we go to visit Trader Joel?

 

I like your use of the word "doomed" 😁

[Roland]

9 hours ago, roughgalaxy said:

are we doomed to be teased with coffee every time we go to visit Trader Joel?

 

Trader Jen teases us with a lot more than coffee every time we visit her and I doubt there will be an action assigned to E in order to tap that.

 

Unless, of course, 7 Days to Die has some kind of "Hot Coffee" going on....

[Blake_]

11 hours ago, roughgalaxy said:

Is there a planned change to Traders? Right now we can't collect any of their crops since it's not E to collect anymore and they have trader immunity. Is TFP planning on removing the crops or otherwise making them available to players or are we doomed to be teased with coffee every time we go to visit Trader Joel?

Here's what I know:

 

I asked sometime ago about when would making traders mortal/destroyable/pickable be a thing. Traders being cheesy because of their invulnerability , various Tower defense cheese strategies and general exploits and nuisances like those you mention  and some others (you can build a tall tower right next to the invulnerable area and fill the trader with inmmortal rubble/debris  by collapsing said tower, no kidding) are just the tip of the iceberg. 

 

 @Gazz (dev) said that it was not a priority (I guess compared to other more important things at the moment like human npcs and quests).  The issue of it being destroyable is quite a can of worms because of the following:

 

1. Trader needs to respawn when dead with faction relation damage for the specific player/s that killed him or contributed to his death, plus the respawn needs  to be another generic trader (requires NPCS, Character Creator tool and faction relation code).

 

2.Trader needs to maintain the current quest status of each player (maybe except the one who killed him, which will be obviously failed) . This Needs programming.

 

3.Trader Outpost has to be made with locked doors, safeplaces and enemy behaviour that either ignore it or be repelled when the"safehaven fee" is paid by the player. Needs optimization to allow a very limited amount of npcs guarding the outpost.

 

4. Those locked doors are in addition with a steal mechanic for npcs, preventing player from cheesing  farming seeds and loot like it were Christmas. Needs programming.

 

5. All of the above need to be voice acted or written with a minimum reaction mechanic with speech for thieving, and without bugs. Needs dev time and programming.

 

So it is a main feature mechanic that in order to make it just OK and balanced needs quite a bit of work.

 

So @faatal , we are counting on you ! that's just a couple of hours of your time, you can easily do it when you finish the pathing AI for the Mars lander, O-o

[vinanrra]

16 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

It's already a known bug (it's in the bug report)

Thx didnt know

[Khalagar]

I dunno what the streamer plans for A20 are, but you guys should consider reaching out and try to get the Hololive girls to play 7 Days again. The JP ones played it in the past, and I bet the EN ones would be open to playing. If you snagged EN, it would likely be nuts even if they only played it once. Gawr Gura alone gets 25K-70K+ live views on literally anything she streams, she had like 30K+ people listening to the audio of her making a cake in the background lol

 

Even if only the JP ones played again, they pull quite big numbers themselves even among international fans and you guys apparently gave them permission in the past to stream it. Coco was just streaming it like a month ago apparently

Edited February 24, 2021 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[meilodasreh]

Since the introduction of the new loot progress "stone tools bad quality to good quality, then iron tools bad to good, then steel...-") I have experienced that I always keep my fully modded stone axe (you rather quickly get a purple one, so 4 modslots) until i get an at least mid quality steel axe, and totally skip iron ones.

The iron pickaxe does just a little more damage, but drains a lot more stamina, and at first you get bad ones with less mod slots (intended, i know)

So after all it seems even slower...at least there is no "yeah finally" moment when you find them, but "meh...instant scrap".

 

And it's not only axes. Almost every weapon/tool you find of the higher tier is of bad quality, and due to the lesser modding slots its useless compared to the ones I have.

Tools is more the problem because of stamina drain, as already said, but same i feel for weapons.

 

I know the new system has advantages, but I really miss the former moments of for example: "YES finally the first pickaxe"

 

Now you know when you will start to find them, and that they will be definitely garbage at first.

 

Does anybody else feel the same?

Is that on the "still tweaked" list?

 

Could be adjusted by:

-making mods more efficient in higher tier stuff. For example an "iron breaker" mod in a stone axe gives 15% more damage to iron, while in a steel axe it gives 50% more.

-lower/adjust stamina drain for higher tier tools, so that its significantly faster to use them overall, even when you have to take some pauses to regain stamina.

-stamina drain not only connected to perks like "TRex" but to strength/endurance in general (well that is more or less already the case (1 Point more per character level)

[MechanicalLens]

2 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

Since the introduction of the new loot progress "stone tools bad quality to good quality, then iron tools bad to good, then steel...-") I have experienced that I always keep my fully modded stone axe (you rather quickly get a purple one, so 4 modslots) until i get an at least mid quality steel axe, and totally skip iron ones.

The iron pickaxe does just a little more damage, but drains a lot more stamina, and at first you get bad ones with less mod slots (intended, i know)

So after all it seems even slower...at least there is no "yeah finally" moment when you find them, but "meh...instant scrap".

 

And it's not only axes. Almost every weapon/tool you find of the higher tier is of bad quality, and due to the lesser modding slots its useless compared to the ones I have.

Tools is more the problem because of stamina drain, as already said, but same i feel for weapons.

 

I know the new system has advantages, but I really miss the former moments of for example: "YES finally the first pickaxe"

 

Now you know when you will start to find them, and that they will be definitely garbage at first.

 

Does anybody else feel the same?

Is that on the "still tweaked" list?

 

Could be adjusted by:

-making mods more efficient in higher tier stuff. For example an "iron breaker" mod in a stone axe gives 15% more damage to iron, while in a steel axe it gives 50% more.

-lower/adjust stamina drain for higher tier tools, so that its significantly faster to use them overall, even when you have to take some pauses to regain stamina.

-stamina drain not only connected to perks like "TRex" but to strength/endurance in general (well that is more or less already the case (1 Point more per character level)

 

My advice for iron tools is to get Sex Rex to 3/5, install Ergonomic grips onto them, and drink coffee or blackstrap coffee.

 

The iron shovel though is mostly worthless. A level 6 stone shovel is about as fast as an equivalently tiered iron shovel, uses significantly less stamina, and only takes stones to repair.

[mstdv inc]

Hello.When will it be possible to disable the Stone Age?

In this form, it has no logic.
The player comes to the weapons store and finds wooden bows and blunderbusses, after a month of playing the player comes to the same store and loots automatic shotguns and machine guns.

To make it look realistic, the player should not be able to get into high-level buildings until a certain stage of the game.

Or make these buildings only in large cities, which the player will not initially have access to.

You have to play with an experience rate of 300%, which would be faster to skip the Stone Age.
But there is a big plus, to the 50 day (as I noticed most survive no more than 30-50 game days) I have time to enjoy all the content,including the best weapons, armor, and as much as possible to develop the base.

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, mstdv inc said:

To make it look realistic, the player should not be able to get into high-level buildings until a certain stage of the game.

Invisible walls! 

[Khalagar]

Muh realism in my game with zombies and digging to the core of the planet.

[JCrook1028]

14 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

@madmole A bit early to ask about plans for RWG in A20, but what would you say about an option for single biome worlds? (Ex. All desert, all snow, etc.)

Why would they do that when it would negate the entire biome specific system they are coding in? They already get plenty of bogus "bug" reports of no trader which were caused by not having a forest zone as required for initial starter quest.

[Roland]

18 hours ago, Khalagar said:

I dunno what the streamer plans for A20 are, but you guys should consider reaching out and try to get the Hololive girls to play 7 Days again. The JP ones played it in the past, and I bet the EN ones would be open to playing. If you snagged EN, it would likely be nuts even if they only played it once. Gawr Gura alone gets 25K-70K+ live views on literally anything she streams, she had like 30K+ people listening to the audio of her making a cake in the background lol

 

Even if only the JP ones played again, they pull quite big numbers themselves even among international fans and you guys apparently gave them permission in the past to stream it. Coco was just streaming it like a month ago apparently

 

The plan is the same for A20 as it has been as far as I have been informed.  Looks to me like Coco was streaming A19 and not A20. Nobody has been given permission to stream A20 other than FubarPrime as part of the Developer Series.

9 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

Since the introduction of the new loot progress "stone tools bad quality to good quality, then iron tools bad to good, then steel...-") I have experienced that I always keep my fully modded stone axe (you rather quickly get a purple one, so 4 modslots) until i get an at least mid quality steel axe, and totally skip iron ones.

The iron pickaxe does just a little more damage, but drains a lot more stamina, and at first you get bad ones with less mod slots (intended, i know)

So after all it seems even slower...at least there is no "yeah finally" moment when you find them, but "meh...instant scrap".

 

And it's not only axes. Almost every weapon/tool you find of the higher tier is of bad quality, and due to the lesser modding slots its useless compared to the ones I have.

Tools is more the problem because of stamina drain, as already said, but same i feel for weapons.

 

I know the new system has advantages, but I really miss the former moments of for example: "YES finally the first pickaxe"

 

Now you know when you will start to find them, and that they will be definitely garbage at first.

 

Does anybody else feel the same?

Is that on the "still tweaked" list?

 

Could be adjusted by:

-making mods more efficient in higher tier stuff. For example an "iron breaker" mod in a stone axe gives 15% more damage to iron, while in a steel axe it gives 50% more.

-lower/adjust stamina drain for higher tier tools, so that its significantly faster to use them overall, even when you have to take some pauses to regain stamina.

-stamina drain not only connected to perks like "TRex" but to strength/endurance in general (well that is more or less already the case (1 Point more per character level)

 

The entire system is WIP. There are plans in motion to address your concerns.

[SnowDog1942]

6 hours ago, KingSlayerGM said:

Also I've noticed that the RAW format that you use for the heightmap ('dtm.raw') uses a lot more space than a 16bit png... And png is lossless

What do you think?

 

I like it RAW

[pregnable]

I still think it would be cool if you brought back crafting of quality 6 items, if you have 5 ranks in the required skill, but only for primitive tools and weapons. 

 

Then you would not need them as much in the loot pool, and you also do not have to worry about missing the game stage where they drop. 

 

Might become more relevant in A20, for people who want to rock pipe weapons late game. 

 

 

Also, is intelligence going to get a pipe weapon?  Nail gun?  Sledge turret that does not require robotic parts? 

[Khalagar]

20 minutes ago, pregnable said:

 

Also, is intelligence going to get a pipe weapon?  Nail gun?  Sledge turret that does not require robotic parts? 

 

I've been harassing them about this for like 4 months without a reply lol. I think they've said there might be a pipe baton and nothing else so far. I would love a way to get Junk Sledge to work day one, as it's quickly become my favorite weapon in the game since Faatal fixed it after A19 dropped.

 

My suggestion is a blow pipe or something that uses junk ammo / iron darts so that ammo type and skill line has a use early game (which is a big part of why pipe weapons are being introduced). Simple and easy, could even use existing in game iron pipes or something

 

 

 

ATM, there's no int weapon pre-iron age, and there isn't one for tier 3 either since last I heard, the drone is not intended for offense and will take a Junk Turret spot (actually lowering your over all damage). I guess their concern is that you can scrap a junk sledge to get junk turret parts so they don't want them to be a pipe age weapon, but I've not really seen them address the whole "every class can use a drone, except they don't care about losing a junk turret slot like int builds do to use it" issue, so I guess they are probably still trying to figure it out internally how to make the Drone on par with other end game items and builds while balancing every build carrying a free drone vs int builds having to lose 50% of their damage to use their own item

 

Drones not counting against the turret limit would help a lot, but wouldn't really cover the "Two junk turrets are not on par with an m60 or auto shottie" problem if the int builds don't get an actual t3 weapon.  Dual junk turrets kind of feel worse in A19 than they did in A18 even with the new piercing ammo because they drain resources so insanely fast that you'll easily burn 10K+ iron clearing a single building with them compared to a shotgun using a handful of shells.  Shotgun turret ammo just needs a buff all around, it's ridiculously questionable to ever build that over real shotgun shells to the point that . . . yeah I don't know of any situation where I would say the shotgun turret ammo is usable over building shotgun shells and carrying an unperked auto shotgun or even a pump shotgun

Edited February 25, 2021 by Khalagar (see edit history)

[pregnable]

12 minutes ago, Khalagar said:

 

I've been harassing them about this for like 4 months without a reply lol. I think they've said there might be a pipe baton and nothing else so far. I would love a way to get Junk Sledge to work day one, as it's quickly become my favorite weapon in the game since Faatal fixed it after A19 dropped.

 

My suggestion is a blow pipe or something that uses junk ammo / iron darts so that ammo type and skill line has a use early game (which is a big part of why pipe weapons are being introduced). Simple and easy, could even use existing in game iron pipes or something

 

 

 

ATM, there's no int weapon pre-iron age, and there isn't one for tier 3 either since last I heard, the drone is not intended for offense and will take a Junk Turret spot (actually lowering your over all damage). I guess their concern is that you can scrap a junk sledge to get junk turret parts so they don't want them to be a pipe age weapon, but I've not really seen them address the whole "every class can use a drone, except they don't care about losing a junk turret slot like int builds do to use it" issue, so I guess they are probably still trying to figure it out internally how to make the Drone on par with other end game items and builds while balancing every build carrying a free drone vs int builds having to lose 50% of their damage to use their own item

 

Drones not counting against the turret limit would help a lot, but wouldn't really cover the "Two junk turrets are not on par with an m60 or auto shottie" problem if the int builds don't get an actual t3 weapon.  Dual junk turrets kind of feel worse in A19 than they did in A18 even with the new piercing ammo because they drain resources so insanely fast that you'll easily burn 10K+ iron clearing a single building with them compared to a shotgun using a handful of shells.  Shotgun turret ammo just needs a buff all around, it's ridiculously questionable to ever build that over real shotgun shells to the point that . . . yeah I don't know of any situation where I would say the shotgun turret ammo is usable over building shotgun shells and carrying an unperked auto shotgun or even a pump shotgun

 

The nail gun seemed to make a lot of sense as the intelligence pipe weapon.  It already used to shoot nails, maybe still does, heh.  The repair ability would need to be nerfed though. 

 

Either way it would be cool if it became a viable weapon linked to intelligence, especially with the "nail some chicks" quest still in the game. 

 

 

Robotic sledges are like my favorite thing in the game... even more since I discovered I CAN actually use my str/intel build when playing insane/nightmare run/64 zombies/horde every night. 

 

I can easily keep up with the horde until I need fortitude.  Actively fighting off the horde in a melee base and repairing with a hammer constantly is a lot of fun. 

[MechanicalLens]

If one were to wire up lights to a generator bank and then activate the power source, the player placed lights would then proceed to emit light, as expected. I haven't played around with lights yet in Alpha 19 but the last I checked there was an option to individually deactivate lights by pressing "E" on each individual bulb. However, even disabled they would still be drawing in watts as if they were powered. Will this be addressed in Alpha 20 or is this a code limitation?

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, pregnable said:

Also, is intelligence going to get a pipe weapon?  Nail gun?  Sledge turret that does not require robotic parts? 

I'd stop asking questions like these... with your nickname and SnowDog around you can never know what happens... 

[NukemDed]

9 hours ago, SnowDog1942 said:

 

I like it RAW

bloody and under done?

 

 

same here 

blue in fact

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Adam the Waster said:

but will Navezgane get more buildings in the areas we could not go in A18.  but got extended during A19 

No, that area was sold to Tesla for a new battery factory 🙃

 

[beerfly]

On 2/24/2021 at 6:07 AM, MechanicalLens said:

@madmole A bit early to ask about plans for RWG in A20, but what would you say about an option for single biome worlds? (Ex. All desert, all snow, etc.)

Or choosing which ones we can get, as part of trying hardest in Wasteland and Snow only for example. Could be fun, we`ll see. 

[unholyjoe]

10 hours ago, MechanicalLens said:

If one were to wire up lights to a generator bank and then activate the power source, the player placed lights would then proceed to emit light, as expected. I haven't played around with lights yet in Alpha 19 but the last I checked there was an option to individually deactivate lights by pressing "E" on each individual bulb. However, even disabled they would still be drawing in watts as if they were powered. Will this be addressed in Alpha 20 or is this a code limitation?

***************************************
i tested and confirmed and reported this.

thanks

QA Tester-unholyjoe
***************************************

[Khalagar]

12 minutes ago, roughgalaxy said:

Got a pair of questions today,

 

Good questions as both are issues imo. Stealth builds are just a bad meme because they can't de-aggro zombies and they are useless on the most important night of the week, and like you said, the way the encounter zones works makes them useless too.  I tested suppressors and I cannot find a single benefit to them. You can sit outside the room entrance and just crouch and use an unsilenced hunting rifle to shoot sleeping zombies, and it will only wake them up if you miss a shot and hit a wall or something.  Best I can tell, the suppressor only matters for wandering zombies out in a field, which are by far the least threatening zombies in the game so it's not worth the item slot imo

 

 

For traps, I agree completely too. Any meta build is just "Stand on a roof throwing molotovs and grenades". The only traps I really see used anymore are the shock wire ones to slow zombies to give yourself more time to deal with them. Turrets will blow your entire stockpile of ammo, and blade traps will just break 2 seconds in

 

A cat walk + Explosion Candy + Molotovs and contact grenades = barely any resource expenditure for a horde night

 

That's more an issue with grenades being insanely OP than anything though. I don't even bother perking into explosives, just the candy + base damage is more than enough

[Adam the Waster]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

No, that area was sold to Tesla for a new battery factory 🙃

 

this is so sad. can we get 4 likes