Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Jay_ombie]

2 hours ago, PoloPoPo said:

New Alpha but Zombies still able to partially glitch and hit through bars, doors, hatches... 😞

I think that's limitations on the unity engine. 

 

It just happened to me where I was silent/crouched with a closed door behind me and just get attacked through the door completely random like.

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Jay_ombie (see edit history)

[Mister Forgash]

17 hours ago, Neminsis said:

Two player teams are a whole lot more common a playstyle than that. 

Yes, there is nothing extreme about a two player team unless...

 

17 hours ago, Neminsis said:

Here's the challenge: 2 players on Navezgane, Survivalist, 1 player does not quest only gathers, builds and sells bulk craftables to the trader, and see where you are by day 7.

🤦‍♂️ With so much loot being found in PoI - loot that you really need in the early game: Food, water, medical supplies, cooking pots, ect. it's going to be a very difficult playthrough, and yes, it is an extremist playstyle.

I don't see it as that much different from loading up Final Fantasy 1, killing off 3 of the 4 starting team members and playing a solo blackbelt build. It'll take 5x as long and yes, you would have to reload, probably multiple times, every time you're up against enemies that could give you debilitating status effects. Some players enjoy that kind of thing, putting restrictions on themselves for the sake of fun or challenge.

In this game, it sounds about as fun to me as shooting myself in the foot. I have no desire to play your challenge, but it sounds like it's something you do regularly. Let all of us know in what ways it's better and worse with this Alpha- Tell us how different it is now from where you normally end up on day 7. Let us know in what ways you had to change up your tactics or if you're just doing all the same things that worked before.

With the way things have changed, I think all of us will have to make changes too- but some more than others.

[spiritking]

What's the typical timeline until a21 comes out of experimental. Trying to take my vacation around the 1st week of that coming out so I can play all week lol

[Eduho]

Bueno solo decir que FANTASTICO .    Gran trabajo 🙂

 

[Strengthinside]

Oh man what a release! super fun! Zombies somehow feel harder, I get hit way more often than before! And had way more of those oh sh** moments. But water scarcity isn't really that challenging, 1st day - settle near trader, push first 10 quests fast, and during day 2 I already have water collector, and plenty of water looted plus a pot. 

No game breaking bugs, performance is great! Really an amazing release!

[Riamus]

54 minutes ago, spiritking said:

What's the typical timeline until a21 comes out of experimental. Trying to take my vacation around the 1st week of that coming out so I can play all week lol

It varies but you can expect a few weeks or so.

[Morloc]

3 hours ago, Khissi said:

All you nay-sayers need to get out there and PLAY!

 

I think I need a hug too!....I'm stuck at work and can only read about what's going on. Bah.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[Archer]

So far: 
Everything in the update is great *EXCEPT* the magazine/book changes. 

It just throws things off so weird for a group of more than 2 or 3 people trying to play this game at the same time, the world doesn't generate enough magazines even though the way it works now it seems like every human being who previously lived in Navezgane basically read/hid/had magazines and books *every* where for whatever reason, (maybe it was just an extremely literature oriented society I guess (it just is weird and bizarre to find books and magazines all over the world in the abundance they exist now). 
We're trying to go at this as a group, but there's really not enough of a supply of these things out there to supply *all* of us and we're having to not just specialize, but *hyper* specialize everyone's role which kinda makes things a bit more repetitive and makes the incentive/need to go out and find more of these things to feed the crowd working back at base less of a fun, optional adventure and more of a demanding chore that forces more of us to stop building and to go out and find these things. 

Textures = awesome.

New models = fantastic.

Trader changes = a bit weird, but I think most of us could get used to them, although again there's this weird problem of having to travel *super* far for the quests themselves, which is the same problem we're having with the books/magazines, we just have to walk *constantly* (because its so early in our game we only have 1 minibike right now, so everyone but one of us is on foot)  more of us are essentially *forced* to abandon trying to prepare ourselves for the blood moon and spend so much time hanging out in the woods or at some POI, it's just *so* much time just plain walking around, so I would just prefer the old system. It was goofy, but it at least made sense for groups to play. 

POI changes = honestly kind of a cool idea, not sure I'll really notice them much myself, personally since quests/missions/jobs are far from the reason I play 7 Days, if I wanted to do stuff like that there's 1039520359305 games in my steam library that already do that for me)


This is a review put in by someone playing in a (probably?) larger than average group of players, anywhere between 8-15 of us have been online to try out the new update together on our server. 

Ultimately, I feel these changes were made specifically to make the streams on twitch more 'entertaining' for viewers, and more oriented towards streamers. What it 'looks like' on a screen and how a single players adventures go with maybe one or two other people that are primarily going around looting or 'exploring' the navezgane map (we've been playing this for 10 years, it's cool seeing new stuff added in, but let's be honest - no matter what ya do to the map itself, other than adding in new areas or expanding the physical size of the map itself - we've seen it all already and that's how it's gonna be) taking on missions, exploring POI, those are all actually more entertaining to watch on streams, I get that part and I get that twitch is a major source of hype/exposure for the game itself, so it does make sense to cater to that crowd.

At the same time though, the rest of us who picked this up and regularly played it because it was a "capital 'C' crafting" game are feeling like the pull to make the game 'look more interesting' on twitch streams is not just ignoring crafters/builder players, but actually impacting the gameplay in a negative way and forcing us to do stuff we never wanted to do to begin with. 

I'll say this: I've noticed that the people who tend to defend/support the magazine/book thing all have like...over 1k comments in here. Some upwards of 3k comments, and then those same people chime in 'people here on the forums complained about crafting/exploring etc.' 

I would argue that feedback is coming from a very dedicated/involved fanbase, but they represent the tiny tiny minority of people that tend to hang out in the official forums of places like this and similar titles like Zomboid. Devs get feedback from the most hardcore, fanatical (I don't mean this derogatorily btw, I'm just saying they're *really* big fans of the game) players, and the impression on how their product is received by its player base gets skewed because a minority of hardcore players are always going to burn through content fast, most of them tend to play alone, and most of them are asking for more 'stuff' in these areas. 

I'll say again as I've said in previous comments about the changes: Some of the feedback is going to be distorted by this loyal and enthusiastic demographic, but for better or worse, people who play your game for 3 or 4 or 5 thousand hours (or for that matter people who have thousands of comments on their profile in a game's official forums) are not the best place to get your feedback from about stuff, and I think that tiny group's feedback is a major reason why at least some of these changes were made. I'm sure the devs came up with *how* to respond to that feedback, but the feedback itself is not representative of the bulk majority, and I do think the bulk majority of your playerbase picked this up because it had the word 'crafting' in the title of it. 

If it was a change made on data points from watching how people play the game and interact with the product, if you're noticing people didn't explore/scavenge/do missions for traders as much, then I'll repeat a point I've said on here previously about that ; maybe it's just something that people don't really care about and no matter what you do to them, they never will. It's just not what they showed up for, so to speak. 

When the mechanics drag us away from the 'crafting/building' to go dig through garbage piles on the road even *more* (we did this enough already) otherwise we're not going to be able to survive a blood moon, you may be going in the wrong direction. I realize there's a little group of people who have formed a bit of a community in these forums who will pile comments on and replies that contradict what I say here, but again, just consider that I made this account just to voice concerns and have well over 900 hours in the game without ever saying a word; that's because things were going fine as they were, and I liked the direction things were heading in. 

It may seem counterintuitive, but just consider the title (seems) to have sold very well in its older form. Lean into that. 
Don't lean into what people on these forums say as being gospel. Even my own comment is just coming from one of dozens of game communities, but I worked as a data analyst for 6 years IRL, so I've got a good bit of experience in "hmm, maybe the feedback we're getting is not in fact representative of what most of our customers actually think" scenarios, and the wonky books/magazine thing is definitely one of the first things I would have looked at as being representative of that feedback fallacy. 

Anyway, much love to the fun pimps, y'all were doing great, and most aspects of this update are fantastic, but I'm sticking to my guns, and joining the chorus of people who I've seen every single YouTuber who made a video about this update acknowledge, "I know a lot of you guys are complaining about the books & magazines, but it's a great system I really suggest you guys give it a try" means that my concerns are not alone. 

Someone ping me when a mod comes out that gives us the old crafting system with the rest of the graphical & model updates.

Thanks for reading.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Archer (see edit history)

[Fanatical_Meat]

On 6/12/2023 at 11:07 AM, Robbing Zombie said:

Speaking of servers, did something change about creating a dedicated server, or is it still just create the random gen map, insert the name, do the other stuff and go go?

 

I set one up last night. Pretty much same thing.

mess with the xml config file

RWG- Name

wait about 10 minutes, world absolutely generates faster.

there are a few changes to the confit file like chunk reset and some added text to clarify what the item is

[HB_H4wk]

2.3 k to the trader?? What a walk this is going to be.

 

[Quantum Blue]

5 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

200% xp adds to difficulty, beacuse you level up fast, and so does your gamestage rise, which makes enemies tougher, whilst your equipment mostly won't keep up with that.

In short: boosting xp gain messes up balancing a good bit.

At least the very first horde night is especially tough then. Good luck!

 

 

Actually, that is not how the math works.  If you check Game Stage on the wiki (https://7daystodie.fandom.com/wiki/Gamestage) it shows this:

 

([Player Level] + [Adjusted Days Alive]) * [Difficulty Factor] (1.2)

 

Note that the formula uses BOTH player level AND time elapsed.  Doubling the XP amount does NOT affect Adjusted Days Alive.  The 'game' will be 'faster' from a player perception, because the Game Stage IS increasing faster IRL.  But, inside the game (inside the formula), the character is actually leveling faster compared to time.  What this means is that if you double the amount of XP, the character will have twice as many levels at a certain time as compared to one who is at 100%.  (Horde Nights for example.)

 

I know for a certainty (because I did some extensive testing on this, as well as separate tests on increasing the Day Length Time) that doubling XP makes the game easier.

 

Alpha-21 sort of changes how 'large' the effect is.  Pre-Alpha 21, character level/Game Stage affected an awful lot of things that the character did, or access to.  Like which weapons were available  (ability perks), etc.  That is no longer governed by character level/Game Stage, but by number of magazines read.

 

Number of magazines read is obviously going to have a lot of value.  But, character leveling has lost that value.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 13, 2023 by Quantum Blue (see edit history)

[Fanatical_Meat]

Is there a way to change the text size in the server config xml, the welcome message is what I want to make larger.

I want to have “NO POLITICS TALK” 

[Belgarion32]

So, couple notes of feedback after playing for a couple hours last night:

 

Trader spawns in the middle of nowhere = me immediately quiting the world and regenerating a new one.

 

Quest distances all are over 400m+ for tier 1 = more looting any building closer because walking that far for t1 loot is an immediate no go.

 

Trader specializations = see answer to Trader spawns, Rekt/Jen is not favorable and I'd rather find a Hugh or Bob as the first trader now.

 

Books/magazines in basically every container = much less actual loot for the same area.

 

Recommended solutions:

Trader spawns on only town edges should be an advanced gen Boolean.

 

Quest distances for t1 should be in a 200-500m distance bracket. I'm not playing walking simulator for a reason.

 

Trader specialization needs toned down, all traders should have much smaller amounts of what the others specialize in, not none. (Ex. My Jen spawned with no weapons available to purchase, not even a pipe one)

 

Books/Magazines - I really don't have a good solution for this other than make there be more loot in containers overall (ex. Instead of 2 items in trash make it be 3 items if both items are just books/magazines). 

 

Otherwise, the performance in noticably better and it's been fun popping heads!

[Riamus]

1 hour ago, Quantum Blue said:

 

Actually, that is not how the math works.  If you check Game Stage on the wiki (https://7daystodie.fandom.com/wiki/Gamestage) it shows this:

 

([Player Level] + [Adjusted Days Alive]) * [Difficulty Factor] (1.2)

 

Note that the formula uses BOTH player level AND time elapsed.  Doubling the XP amount does NOT affect Adjusted Days Alive.  The 'game' will be 'faster' from a player perception, because the Game Stage IS increasing faster IRL.  But, inside the game (inside the formula), the character is actually leveling faster compared to time.  What this means is that if you double the amount of XP, the character will have twice as many levels at a certain time as compared to one who is at 100%.  (Horde Nights for example.)

 

I know for a certainty (because I did some extensive testing on this, as well as separate tests on increasing the Day Length Time) that doubling XP makes the game easier.

I think the point was that what you get for weapons and armor will not scale with your level unless you are also increasing loot.  This isn't necessarily a problem if you are looting higher biomes or get good RNG but generally speaking, you will have looted less in the same number of levels because you have played less time and so anything based on loot or mining or anything like that will be lower and can affect difficulty even if it may not always.

 

54 minutes ago, Belgarion32 said:

Quest distances all are over 400m+ for tier 1 = more looting any building closer because walking that far for t1 loot is an immediate no go.

I understand the reason for the change and I support the change for the same reason.  Too many POI that could be quested were never quested because they weren't right next to the trader.  However, I also agree with you that until you complete tier 1 and get a bicycle, quests that are far away are now much fun.  I had made a suggestion before A21 that quests allow for greater distance but that it doesn't change tier 1 quests or that it only changes tier 1 quests after you complete tier 1 at one trader so you have transportation.  I think that would be a good adjustment to this change.

Edited June 13, 2023 by Riamus (see edit history)

[Roland]

2 hours ago, Archer said:

It just throws things off so weird for a group of more than 2 or 3 people trying to play this game at the same time, the world doesn't generate enough magazines even though the way it works now it seems like every human being who previously lived in Navezgane basically read/hid/had magazines and books *every* where for whatever reason, (maybe it was just an extremely literature oriented society I guess (it just is weird and bizarre to find books and magazines all over the world in the abundance they exist now). 
We're trying to go at this as a group, but there's really not enough of a supply of these things out there to supply *all* of us and we're having to not just specialize, but *hyper* specialize everyone's role which kinda makes things a bit more repetitive and makes the incentive/need to go out and find more of these things to feed the crowd working back at base less of a fun, optional adventure and more of a demanding chore that forces more of us to stop building and to go out and find these things. 

If you feel you can’t find enough magazines for everyone even though you admit there are gobs of magazines being found then you have too many in your group reading the same magazines. I did warn you about that even before A21 released but I guess your group decided to go with everyone just reading the same magazines as each other so that you could have several people who could cook grilled meat instead of one person who could cook meat stew. 
 

You can still play the way you’ve chosen but the progression will be slower which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Specializing and coordinating isn’t hard. Nobody has to memorize what everyone else does. All you need is a central place to drop off books so that the ones who are specializing can read their own books. 
 

As far as whether it is fun to work as a coordinated team of specialists, that depends on the players involved. I find it incredibly rewarding and this change has really improved the fun of team play for us. 
 

2 hours ago, Archer said:

I would argue that feedback is coming from a very dedicated/involved fanbase, but they represent the tiny tiny minority of people that tend to hang out in the official forums of places like this and similar titles like Zomboid.

 

I already told you that this conspiracy theory was wrong but you also are ignoring me on this point as well. It seems like your group has done a lot of speculating and have engineered what you believe the truth to be and aren’t open to being corrected. The magazine change as well as the drinking water change were shocking news to the forum community. The biggest question that was asked by fans with 3k hours on the forum was “Why did you make these changes that nobody asked for?”. The most positive reactions from the dedicated fans here on the forum was a grudging acceptance to reserve judgement until it could be playtested….
 

I’ll tell you again that TFP is very independently minded when it comes to introducing new features into their game. They are not puppets of a small vociferous minority on their forum when it comes to design issues. They will listen to feedback when making balancing adjustments but most of that will be in later A21.x updates once all the knee-jerk reactions calm down and they have plenty of data to make decisions. No, your group’s collective analysis about why this change was made is inaccurate. It was made because the developers came up with the idea and after discussion and planning decided to integrate it as the next iteration of player progression. 
 

[GoofMcGee]

39 minutes ago, Roland said:

The biggest question that was asked by fans with 3k hours on the forum was “Why did you make these changes that nobody asked for?”. The most positive reactions from the dedicated fans here on the forum was a grudging acceptance to reserve judgement until it could be playtested….

2,428.3 hours here.

 

Was not happy about water changes.  Played to day 4.  Not a big deal.  Haven't seen impact on higher level crafting like glue and whatnot, but I'm sure it'll be fine.  Still evaluating the magazines, but it's simple enough to install a mod if I don't likey.  

 

Did install the water filter mod on my helmet, but I've only been able to drink from standing water once.  You must have to be very thirsty I guess?

Edited June 13, 2023 by GoofMcGee (see edit history)

[hiemfire]

6 minutes ago, GoofMcGee said:

Did install the water filter mod on my helmet, but I've only been able to drink from standing water once.  You must have to be very thirsty I guess?

From what I've seen you need to have nothing in your hands, need to not be moving and need to be looking at water that is 1 or more blocks deep & w/n a couple of blocks (looks like normal looting distance) of where you're standing for the prompt to appear.

[Quantum Blue]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

I think the point was that what you get for weapons and armor will not scale with your level unless you are also increasing loot.  This isn't necessarily a problem if you are looting higher biomes or get good RNG but generally speaking, you will have looted less in the same number of levels because you have played less time and so anything based on loot or mining or anything like that will be lower and can affect difficulty even if it may not always.

 

Loot Stage IS separate from Game State.  Especially in A20.  And, while there is some correctness about having less time, there is also the opposite, a character with 200% is going to have more perks, more health, more stamina, etc.  They won't need as much time as those without XP bonuses.  Not to mention more bonuses for killing faster, or crafting transportation sooner, etc.  I have tested this myself, and I am easily more prepared for horde nights with XP bonuses versus when I do not.

 

A21 changes this.  XP bonuses won't help as much, but it should be obvious that extending time with day/night length options will probably make it 'vastly' easier.

Edited June 14, 2023 by Quantum Blue (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

Loving the changes to crafting so far.  Day 6 and I can already craft the bicycle, just need to finish up Forge Ahead to unlock the workbench.  All of this without having to sink many points into the Int tree.

[vergilsparda]

2 hours ago, Belgarion32 said:

So, couple notes of feedback after playing for a couple hours last night:

Trader spawns in the middle of nowhere = me immediately quitting the world and regenerating a new one.

 

[snip]

 

Recommended solutions:

Trader spawns on only town edges should be an advanced gen Boolean.

 

[snip

 

 

Going to have to agree with this one!! I usually end up custom-placing POIs directly across from the trader for ease of access given my own play style (no laughing but basically Zombie House Flipper), and generating worlds trying to get a trader either on a town edge or inside of a town/city has been surprisingly difficult! It would be very nice to have the option to have them spawn anywhere, only around towns/cities, and/or in or around towns cities. I don't know how difficult it would be to do that but it would be pretty sweet.

[Riamus]

9 minutes ago, Quantum Blue said:

 

Loot Stage IS separate from Game State.  Especially in A20.  And, while there is some correctness about having less time, there is also the opposite, a character with 200% is going to have more perks, more health, more stamina, etc.  They won't need as much time as those without XP bonuses.  Not to mention more bonuses for killing faster, or crafting transportation sooner, etc.  I have tested this myself, and I am easily more prepared for horde nights with XP bonuses versus when I do not.

 

A21 changes this.  XP bonuses won't help as much, but it should be obvious that extending time with day/night length options will probably make it 'vastly' easier.

I think it can carry greatly though.  I've had a game in A20 where two of us had experience up to 300% for a quick start.  The first horde night felt like the 7th with every kind of zombie coming after us.  We had very low ammo and defenses... Not even concrete walls yet.  We survived but our base was swiss cheese. We had to keep jumping down to get loot bags just to have some ammo.  Certainly not what I would call easier.

[mprojekt]

5 hours ago, Morloc said:

 

I think I need a hug too!....I'm stuck at work and can only read about what's going on. Bah.

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

Someone asked for a hug? Here ya go! Play with SCP-999 until your hug-battery is full! Just don't give the little guy any caffeinated soda; it will get sick and unhappy for 12 to 24 hours.

[Quantum Blue]

46 minutes ago, Riamus said:

I think it can carry greatly though.  I've had a game in A20 where two of us had experience up to 300% for a quick start.  The first horde night felt like the 7th with every kind of zombie coming after us.  We had very low ammo and defenses... Not even concrete walls yet.  We survived but our base was swiss cheese. We had to keep jumping down to get loot bags just to have some ammo.  Certainly not what I would call easier.

 

It can - especially depending on difficulty settings.  Although I do believe TFP does try to maintain a 'balance' at default settings.  And I was only referring to XP settings.  Did you modify any other settings?  'Typically' for a default game, Game Stage on 7th Horde night could be about 79.  (30th Lvl + 49 days) * 1 difficulty.

 

That would imply you experienced 72nd character level horde on day 7.

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Quantum Blue (see edit history)

[Neminsis]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

Hey, I am sure this isn't on purpose, but you are strawmaning me here.

I'm not misrepresenting your opinion I'm emphasizing my own that perfectly ordinary players aren't incentivized to play cooperatively as has been argued previously.

 

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

It isn't even necessary for a "co-op looter" to bring back any magazines on the first day

And here you go on to reiterate my point.
 

 

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

Balancing changes may be coming after some playtesting.

Which is the entire point of bringing this up in the first place. You might've noticed that I rarely talk around here unless it's about some edge case that might've gotten overlooked in the rush. 

 

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

Roland reminded us that there is an option for PartySharedKillRange.

Yes, and every change that I've suggested could be modded in minutes, but not one bit of that matters to first time players who you want to have good first impressions. This is why the default settings are so easy and veteran players roll their eyes at them.

My example was restricted to the first 7 days where it's an issue. Moving the goal posts to level 35 would be considered a strawman.
 

 

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

My "easy route" comment was specifically about the tools progression.

It was also borderline ad hominem. Again, this only matters if you're doing a no quest start solo or if you're doing 2 players with a non quester or similar looter to stay at home ratio, and it's probably only critical over the first 7 days, but the initial tool progression is much slower even in the best case for the stay at home in either of those conditions and it ties directly to their experience gain and early character development. 

You can tell that some thought has been put into accomodating these playstyles by allowing things like bulk materials and stone arrows to be sold at the trader, it's just not quite there yet.
 

 

8 hours ago, meganoth said:

Remember that magazines are only determining what you craft. A builder doesn't care about what pickaxe he can craft when he can buy a better pickaxe at the trader. 

Except that you don't make enough dukes farming wood, stone, clay, picking tea and cotton to take advantage of the trader with level 1 stone tools. Overall, I'd agree that the traders are probably still OP but I think that's more related to better barter/daring adventurer strategies, and quest rewards in comparison to other strategies and quality levels in loot. 

If you want to level fast it's still the same route as in a20 just focus on questing and build the very bare minimum you need to survive the first couple of weeks. Rinse and repeat.

Also, just increasing the share exp range doesn't really solve the problem either because the quest reward exp and selling exp when the looter returns to the trader will still outpace the stay at homes exp gain. 

It just needs tested and some minor tweaks. That's all.

[Neminsis]

8 hours ago, Mister Forgash said:

With so much loot being found in PoI - loot that you really need in the early game: Food, water, medical supplies, cooking pots, ect. it's going to be a very difficult playthrough, and yes, it is an extremist playstyle.

Right, but I was specifically talking about players that stay at home and don't quest and set up that extreme example for you to try so these issues would become immediately apparent to you. 

Did you even know that you could previously do the Pacifist Challenge on 7 days? Or a building only start? Or just no traders? There are a lot of these sorts of "extremist" playstyles and they don't affect the average player at all, but there is a lot of players that play them. 

Not everyone wants to play the pump out quests at the trader, put points into better barter and daring adventurer, and just buy everything you need from the trader game loop, but there is a big difference between being extra difficult and being a non starter.