Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Lunaura said:

"Empty glass bottles" being removed is absolutely unrealistic and a bad change to the game.

 

The glass jars are not actually removed. They are just not physically represented in the game any longer. They still show up in the icons for water, tea, etc and when you drink you will still be drinking from a jar. It is simply an abstraction exactly like every other container in the game. It is no worse than not getting an empty bowl or plate after eating a meal, or not getting an empty canister after using gas or acid. Somehow....some way...you have been able to play the game and not be bothered by the realism of there not being any empty containers of anything in the game-- except for drinks. I can promise you that it doesn't take very long at all for your mind to accept the absence of physical glass jars exactly the same way as your mind has been accepting the absence of all of the rest of the empty containers of the consumables you've been using in the game for years.

 

For preventing the player from having an infinity loop of drinkable water on the very first day of the game it is actually a very good change. As to whether you end up enjoying the gameplay of it or not, that remains to be seen.

 

2 hours ago, Lunaura said:

"Players can drink directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e"" <-- If we can do this then we're going to be even more tied to a water source than before. OR! Now, let me dig deep in my thinky organ here, we could take this thing called a "bottle" or a "jar" and umm, ok now let me think, dip it in to the now apparently fresh drinkable water, and take it with us to drink while we're out and about in the world. Revolutionary idea I know. 

 

The water from water sources is murky. It isn't fresh drinkable water without consequence. You take damage from drinking straight from a water source and you have a small chance to get dysentery. So really it is just for emergencies until you can get your dew collector farm up and running. You will also find some murky water already in bottled form as you loot which you can take home and boil up for clean water also in a jar. You are still going to be able to carry jars of water around with you in your inventory. But the jars disappears after you drink the water so you can't refill them.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

11 minutes ago, Roland said:

like every other container in the game. It is no worse than not getting an empty bowl or plate after eating a meal, or not getting an empty canister after using gas or acid.

Well, if I had to do the devil's advocate, I could say that, unlike water will do in A21 with streams/pools, you WILL get fuel canisters by wrenching cars... so how do you explain that? If fuel worked like water, you shouldn't be able to get fuel from Fuel Pumps and by wrenching cars.

[Roland]

26 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

Well, if I had to do the devil's advocate, I could say that, unlike water will do in A21 with streams/pools, you WILL get fuel canisters by wrenching cars... so how do you explain that? If fuel worked like water, you shouldn't be able to get fuel from Fuel Pumps and by wrenching cars.

 

Those are not empty gas cannisters you are getting. They are full of gas. It is no different than opening a toilet and getting a bottle of murky water. What you don't do is fill your motorcycle with those full cannisters and get back an empty cannister which you can then take to the pump and refill with gas. Water now works the same way. You can harvest water from your dew collectors and find water in loot and buy water and other drinks from the trader. In all of these cases the jars are filled with liquid. Once the liquid is used the container is gone.

 

I guess someone could mod the game so that when you use a bucket while standing in a lake-- instead of drinking the water it would put full jars of murky water into your inventory. This might make it a bit more consistent with harvesting units of gasoline that can be transported for use later. Unfortunately, that would also totally make hydration survival completely trivial and break the survival game, in my opinion, which is why it probably would be best left as a mod for those folks who don't care about the survival game and just want to always have plenty of water at their disposal.

Edited November 10, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[hiemfire]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

The water from water sources is murky. It isn't fresh drinkable water without consequence. You take damage from drinking straight from a water source and you have a small chance to get dysentery. So really it is just for emergencies until you can get your dew collector farm up and running. You will also find some murky water already in bottled form as you loot which you can take home and boil up for clean water also in a jar.

 

Probably need to update the changes to water mechanics portion of the first post to reflect that:

1. The player takes damage from drinking murky water.

2. The water in water sources is murky water.

[bloodmoth13]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

The water from water sources is murky. It isn't fresh drinkable water without consequence. You take damage from drinking straight from a water source and you have a small chance to get dysentery. So really it is just for emergencies until you can get your dew collector farm up and running. You will also find some murky water already in bottled form as you loot which you can take home and boil up for clean water also in a jar. You are still going to be able to carry jars of water around with you in your inventory. But the jars disappears after you drink the water so you can't refill them.

Im not excited about randomly getting dyssentry, no matter how small the chance. 

Id rather a different system where you can drink a certain amount of impure water before getting sick. Heres a quick idea, you have a sickness bar, eating rotten food, drinking murky water or getting a hit from a zombie fills the bar up by a small percent, at 100% you either vomit or get dyssentry. 

 

With this system you dont get randomly punished for doing something small wrong but repeatedly doing something small wrong. Basically its blackjack instead of the lottery. This i think would make sense, rather than risking a big punishment for small gains you get a big punishment for 'playing wrong'

 

 

I think that will be a far better system, even if it results in more dyssentry in the long run players will at least think to themselves 'i deserve this i should have watched out for my sickness bar' instead of '5%? this is bull@%$#!'.

 

 

You could play into this too with some new medication and recipes to manage sickness.

 

[Jinx_DG]

11 minutes ago, bloodmoth13 said:

Im not excited about randomly getting dyssentry, no matter how small the chance. 

Id rather a different system where you can drink a certain amount of impure water before getting sick. Heres a quick idea, you have a sickness bar, eating rotten food, drinking murky water or getting a hit from a zombie fills the bar up by a small percent, at 100% you either vomit or get dyssentry. 

 

With this system you dont get randomly punished for doing something small wrong but repeatedly doing something small wrong. Basically its blackjack instead of the lottery. This i think would make sense, rather than risking a big punishment for small gains you get a big punishment for 'playing wrong'

 

 

I think that will be a far better system, even if it results in more dyssentry in the long run players will at least think to themselves 'i deserve this i should have watched out for my sickness bar' instead of '5%? this is bull@%$#!'.

 

 

You could play into this too with some new medication and recipes to manage sickness.

 

Would there be a medication to bring your "sickness bar" back down to zero at any point during it's progress to full? 

 

If so, what's the difference between taking something to "cure" your sickness bar or taking something to cure your dyssentry? 

 

If not, I'd have to hard pass on that idea because at some point the bar would get full and you'd get sick anyways. 

[Damolann]

Well in most of the last few versions of the game you could get dysentery from drinking murky water so that really hasn't changed.  I'm not sure how hard it will be to find the books needed to make the water purification mod for your headgear or if the perk still exists that reduces dysentery chances as you level it.

[Roland]

38 minutes ago, bloodmoth13 said:

Im not excited about randomly getting dyssentry, no matter how small the chance. 

Just the fact that you think this is a new feature underscores how little of a presence murky water has had in the game. The percent chance of getting dysentery has been in the game for years. It shows how badly something needed to change to make dysentery and murky water even have relevance in the game
 

It can be mitigated by taking vitamins or by drinking goldenrod tea and I’m talking right now in A20 as well as in A21. 
 

in real life we don’t know when we will get sick. Someone can smoke and get lung cancer and someone else never does. I don’t like the idea of a bar that you watch and game with— drinking right up to the limit and then stopping because you know the next drink will cause sickness. We don’t know those things nor have that much control.
 

Bad events that happen to us can be random and then we deal with overcoming rather than having full knowledge about our biochemistry and exactly how much to drink and then never having a bad event happen. 
 

 

 

Edited November 11, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[bachgaman]

9 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

Not a fan of this idea.  As someone who on many occasions thrown down a frame block or two to get away from a pack of zombie dogs, I don’t want to die because a counter has yet to reach zero.

How about avoiding deaths with skills rather than exploits? I am sure that I would have died more than once because of this, if this idea was realized. But such a decision would encourage players to play harder, rather than abuse poorly developed mechanics. Therefore, the game would be more interesting

[Star69]

9 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

Not a fan of this idea.  As someone who on many occasions thrown down a frame block or two to get away from a pack of zombie dogs, I don’t want to die because a counter has yet to reach zero.

Easy to beat....put down a block, put another next to it then place a block on top of first block, jump on it, place block on second block & alternate placing. It will take slightly longer but still manageable and your nerdpole is 2 blocks wide instead of one.

[Laz Man]

Do any of you even live in Arizona?  Everyone in Arizona drinks from glass containers like this. 😁

 

 

[Blake_]

@Kinyajuu what changes have been introduced in a21 that you can talk about? (I mean, aside from those backported to a20.6).

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Edit: I wouldn't mind a screenshot at all, kind sir.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Blake_ (see edit history)

[POCKET951]

so the secret stash is disappearing in A21, another hefty blow to the intelligence tree.

I really hope Madmole has some good stuff cooking for the int tree rework  in A21 or else its just going  to be the flat out most worst most useless tree in the game. 
I understand that the skill tree balance is asymmetric.

but each tree needs to have appealing and interesting/impactful choices . I really hope we don't end up entirely ignoring int because it has become totally unimpactful and irrelevant to gameplay

[Roland]

2 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

so the secret stash is disappearing in A21, another hefty blow to the intelligence tree.

But at the same time a hefty shot in the arm to crafting. I craft so much more in A21.

 

As for the perk trees and skills, you can expect some

 

 

 

[RipClaw]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

But at the same time a hefty shot in the arm to crafting. I craft so much more in A21.

What about the non craftable items from the secret stash ? In particular, the solar cells and the solar bank.

 

[Jugom]

Let them refill empty jars, but only from one of those big blue canisters that will have to be placed inside your LCB area and have to be manually filled with buckets.
But the bucket disappears after each use. 😂
 

[Trankitas]

19 hours ago, RipClaw said:

Do you mean the weight-based inventory system ? That's Undead Legacy.

I mean a little slot based system, like Diablo 2. 

Spoiler

 

1 minute ago, Trankitas said:

I mean a little slot based system, like Diablo 2. 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

That would also mean not being able to carry 20 weapons on your backpack, you would have to store some of them in your now super useful 4x4 Truck

Edited November 11, 2022 by Trankitas (see edit history)

[meilodasreh]

16 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Well, if I had to do the devil's advocate, I could say that, unlike water will do in A21 with streams/pools, you WILL get fuel canisters by wrenching cars... so how do you explain that? If fuel worked like water, you shouldn't be able to get fuel from Fuel Pumps and by wrenching cars.

There is such a big number and variety of different stuff you can pick up/use.

No matter how things are handled, there will always be some inconsistency concerning how stuff behaves, what stack sizes are possible and so on,

at least if one has in mind some degree of realism like "if item A has such behaviour, then this similar item B should have the same".

Question would be: is it managable to get A-Z consistent behaviour over all similar items...and will it maybe kill the fun if achieved...so is it even a desirable goal to put effort in?

[zztong]

19 hours ago, Lunaura said:

"Empty glass bottles" being removed is absolutely unrealistic and a bad change to the game.

"Players can drink directly from water sources with empty hand by pressing "e"" <-- If we can do this then we're going to be even more tied to a water source than before. OR! Now, let me dig deep in my thinky organ here, we could take this thing called a "bottle" or a "jar" and umm, ok now let me think, dip it in to the now apparently fresh drinkable water, and take it with us to drink while we're out and about in the world. Revolutionary idea I know. 

 

I assume it will be possible for a Mod to change it so that you can use your hand to gather a jar of murky water from a water source. Then you could either drink the murky water or carry it away. It would take longer than A20 to gather a bunch of murky water, but I think that's fine. I'm hopeful this would be only an XML change.

 

I wouldn't say the presence/absence of an empty jar is itself good or bad.

[NekoPawtato]

Is trader inventory still going to be shared across all players in A21? Or does every player see a unique list based on their progression?

I'd worry that with removal of secret stash you'd have less pickings on bigger multiplayer servers if trader inventory is still shared. At least if someone buys all the food/medicine from vending machine/trader, you still have a chance in the secret stash.

[bachgaman]

12 hours ago, POCKET951 said:

so the secret stash is disappearing in A21, another hefty blow to the intelligence tree.

I really hope Madmole has some good stuff cooking for the int tree rework  in A21 or else its just going  to be the flat out most worst most useless tree in the game. 
I understand that the skill tree balance is asymmetric.

but each tree needs to have appealing and interesting/impactful choices . I really hope we don't end up entirely ignoring int because it has become totally unimpactful and irrelevant to gameplay

By playing through intelligence, you can get a concrete base with crucible by the end of the first week even playing on hard difficulty with reduced loot. What other branch of skill tree allows you to achieve this? Given the difficulty of the first BMs, this is an obviously overly redundant progress that was not foreseen by the developers. Intelligence absolutely broken in current state with secret stash and quest trader rewards. 

 

In addition, only by playing through intelligence you are guaranteed to quickly get transport and a workbench. Which also makes the game easier. And it is in the intellect that there is an explosive with which you can protect yourself from any blood moon with the almost free to craft pipe bombs.

[Doomofman]

10 hours ago, Roland said:

But at the same time a hefty shot in the arm to crafting. I craft so much more in A21.

 

As for the perk trees and skills, you can expect some

 

 

 

 

Is that changes necessitated by the Learn by Looting change or are we getting some other changes too? Like making the Strength tree not so OP perhaps

[sillls]

Happy Veterans day! US

Edited November 11, 2022 by sillls (see edit history)

[falloutcloud]

I'm always excited to try new things. Even if I end up not liking the new systems I still want to try them out. I am really looking forward to the steam workshop integration. 

[Howlune]

20 hours ago, Roland said:

 

The glass jars are not actually removed. They are just not physically represented in the game any longer. They still show up in the icons for water, tea, etc and when you drink you will still be drinking from a jar. It is simply an abstraction exactly like every other container in the game. It is no worse than not getting an empty bowl or plate after eating a meal, or not getting an empty canister after using gas or acid. Somehow....some way...you have been able to play the game and not be bothered by the realism of there not being any empty containers of anything in the game-- except for drinks. I can promise you that it doesn't take very long at all for your mind to accept the absence of physical glass jars exactly the same way as your mind has been accepting the absence of all of the rest of the empty containers of the consumables you've been using in the game for years.

 

For preventing the player from having an infinity loop of drinkable water on the very first day of the game it is actually a very good change. As to whether you end up enjoying the gameplay of it or not, that remains to be seen.

 

 

The water from water sources is murky. It isn't fresh drinkable water without consequence. You take damage from drinking straight from a water source and you have a small chance to get dysentery. So really it is just for emergencies until you can get your dew collector farm up and running. You will also find some murky water already in bottled form as you loot which you can take home and boil up for clean water also in a jar. You are still going to be able to carry jars of water around with you in your inventory. But the jars disappears after you drink the water so you can't refill them.

While I wasn't initially a fan of the idea of taking away glass jars, I'm starting to agree with this change. It was a simple case of "oh look, they're taking another thing away and requiring you to think even less*... but I never really thought about the fact a player could go to any water source and instantly get 125 bottles of murky water and basically be set for a very long time with little to no effort. Unfortunately, it still feels as though Food and Water is of little importance to most players as killing yourself and respawning instantly heals all injuries, fills all meters, and just about completely renews you at the cost of a pretty small amount of time wasted. I can understand how difficult it is to balance making survival mechanics matter while not making the game frustrating or punishing enough for players to not want to play... but deaths seem pretty inconsequential when they basically rewind all those injuries, infection, the food and water loss, etc.

 

Something I admired about the wellness system back in the day is on top of you being alive, you had something you had to keep a proper balance of lest you die and lose it. I am not saying wellness was better, it had its pitfalls (like getting to a point you basically can't die, having so much food that gave the most wellness, etc). I get the idea of respawning is like waking up from a bad dream, it's a cool concept... but it feels like players will get a broken leg and not have a splint readily available, so they opt to "wake themselves up again" instead.

Edited November 11, 2022 by Howlune (see edit history)