Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Neminsis]

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

But let me ask you: If bringing back magazines is such an advantageous method in the game that you call it perfect play or the player a perfect player then isn't that proof that there is an incentive to doing it?

Well, if you'd noticed that I'd argued multiple times by that point that it doesn't solve anything, then you could've concluded rightly that it wasn't hyperbole but sarcasm to call it "perfect".  🙄
 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

If you still think there is an issue here, please answer this question: Exactly which magazines does a builder need to read for himself in your opinion?

Considering that when I offered what I think are potential solutions of bumping up the exp gain on resource gathering and the prices to sell bulk materials to the trader before following that with "and 'maybe' ensuring that tool mags were always available", so that the stay at home can buy their own books and tools, your conclusion should've been that magazines aren't my emphasis. 🙄

This may already be partially solved dependent on RNG in (b313), by there at least being a chance to find an affordable tool that will synergize with resource gathering perks.

• Adjusted quality ranges of tools and weapons in trader inventories for more variety.

And as of (b317) the dynamic between quester and stay at home has shifted again, both in that it's reduced the crafting skill gap and that it's reduced the number of transferable magazines, especially the ones that are quickest to transfer to the stay at homes, the quest reward bundles. 

• Crafting magazine bundle is no longer fixed as a guaranteed quest reward 
• Reduced the quantity of crafting magazines in quest reward bundle from 3/3 to 3/2 
• Reduced the quantity of crafting magazines found in mailboxes, file cabinets, book piles, and crackabook shelves 
   

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

Right now we all are just guessing like we have done for months

This isn't exactly true since I've had it since streamer weekend and the problem comes up in early game, which makes it a breeze to restart and retest. (b317) will be my third restart focusing on the first 7 days, and my 4th in total as I'm also playing one through to watch for changes in progression over the longer game. You wouldn't believe how much time you have to play when you're old and retired. 😂

 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

So who was moving the goal posts to level 35 exactly? 😉

That would be you. The struggle is pretty much over after the first 7 days and unless you're playing on 300% exp you're just not going to make lvl 35 in that time and you're definitely not going to do it without questing.

 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

Oh, come on, is this a contest now where we have to try to find more rhetorical strategies/fallacies than the other?

Then maybe don't do that and I won't respond likewise?

 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

Have you tried this with A21?

Yes, I gave an approximation of hours played by restricting it to the first 7 days and the number of restarts, besides engaging in every possible harvesting task and turning those into building tasks the only viable adaptation is questing, and I understand the push to get more people questing, but an awful lot of people are just never going to do that until they're 'ready' and making it more difficult for them to get that way is counterproductive to that goal.

 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

Our role in EA besides spectator is tester, not analyst.

It's a good thing that's not my job and I'm not applying for the position then, huh? 😂

 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

Yes. This is very difficult to balance. Someone here said he has done 10 tier1 quests on the first day.

That wouldn't be surprising if they spawned with a trader near a city, wilderness and Navezgane spawns not so much.  I don't think that anything that I've suggested would make those city spawns more OP. In fact, city spawns might already be a wash for the stay at homes because of the number of cars and other resources available from scrapping, but I really like wilderness and Navezgane spawns.
 

 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

but he went on quests as well.

That's the kicker right there. 

 

On 6/14/2023 at 7:19 AM, meganoth said:

Yes, it needs tested, and maybe tweaks.

Agreed.
 

[Banginurz]

1 hour ago, JayzenFreeze said:

Now I am @%$#ed. The update today reset my level and all my read books to 0 I got all my stuff but cant make stuff now.

Happened to me too. Welcome to experimental, I guess?  Not stable means not stable.  But it's annoying 😛

[faatal]

4 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Suggesting the other player turn up loot abundance means they will get a lot more of everything when they only want the crappy magazines.

That may be a temporary remedy, but is a cheap, sloppy, insulting suggestion which does more harm than good.

That was addressed at their play style, which actually needs more of all loot. As an example, if I had 3 people hanging out at base and not wanting to loot, so I was the sole looter supporting them, then I would certainly turn up loot abundance to feed them all the items they want. Granted I now have a transport issue, but I would not be going so far as nearby loot containers would have x2. If it was me, I'd tell them to do their own looting and not have to change abundance.

 

Hardly temporary as you would be playing the whole game like that.

5 hours ago, Belgarion32 said:

Not too sure what happened but uh, I guess good bye to that save with today's patch, spawned in to a death and after doing a quest I realized that the character itself is entirely reset progression-wise and has only 1 skill point after leveling up once from the quest.

Sometimes data changes break things. It can be worked around. My daughter's game is on day 42. She used the giveselfxp console command to get her level back up and used the creative menu to get magazines back to approximately where she was.

[Riamus]

2 hours ago, JayzenFreeze said:

Now I am @%$#ed. The update today reset my level and all my read books to 0 I got all my stuff but cant make stuff now.

See the topic in General Discussion for info on regaining that.  Note that this is experimental and such things are going to happen with updates.

[Phoenixshade35]

So far so good on the update for me, also im loving the sparks coming from my damaged bike, tis amusing

[Kosmic Kerman]

2 hours ago, Neminsis said:

Yes, I gave an approximation of hours played by restricting it to the first 7 days and the number of restarts, besides engaging in every possible harvesting task and turning those into building tasks the only viable adaptation is questing, and I understand the push to get more people questing, but an awful lot of people are just never going to do that until they're 'ready' and making it more difficult for them to get that way is counterproductive to that goal.

 

 

 

If the problem is people don't want to start looting until they are both overgeared and overskilled for Tier 1 quests it sounds like they need to lower the difficulty or adjust zombie movement speed.  If they are playing experimental, they should probably just try questing from the start of the game as it seems less punishing with early gear, especially now that they have adjusted how often zombies get criticals on you. 

[beerfly]

2 hours ago, JayzenFreeze said:

Now I am @%$#ed. The update today reset my level and all my read books to 0 I got all my stuff but cant make stuff now.

There are change logs for every version released out there. Description of fixes, additions and what is not compatable. Some things that could explain why this happens. Mostly, because of replacing some stuff with new, fresh, working better for everyone. 

 

As usual, for good. 

 

Happened to me and the guys I play with, but we knew it was because of the better things brought in and we accept it and moved on. 

[FinkPloyd]

3 hours ago, SyKo said:

 You and I and every other of the dozens upon dozens of us in this thread that have taken the time to post will immediately be dismissed, responded to flippantly and without regard, and then sacrificed upon the alter of salt, as we, the players, know nothing. It's cute, lol. Just know there's literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of us players that see the exact same thing you do. Their Emperor has no clothes. ;]

 

LOL.

 

I am so glad I develop software that has an empirical measure of its effectiveness (accuracy in $ / tonnes) so I don't have to deal with users who's feeling have been hurt by design changes I made, and don't have the conflict resolution skills to effectively communicate.

 

 

[Phoenixshade35]

@faatal Question for you.

I just went to a poi where i was able to climb a rope similar to climbing a ladder, is it possible we can have that as something we can attach at base? it would be fun to use around to climb with and can be added to the crafting under like Rope Ladder, maybe have it be like 5-7 blocks high and have to attach to a pole, can we have that?

[Archer]

8 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Then increase the loot tables above 100%. That is the only way it is going to work if your group insists on everybody reading all the magazines. Most groups are going to specialize and then there is single player. If the magazines were increased to the point that a team of 8 humans can all progress to the top of the same exact crafting trees it would break the game for the groups that are working as a team and for single players.

 

Most of the feedback coming in is that there are already too many magazines in loot and in rewards. If your group is stuck at low levels of crafting because everyone is reading the same magazines to just craft their own stuff then you probably need to adjust the loot setting in the options menu to fit the playstyle of your group.

Why do you keep saying this? 
We are *not* just reading all the magazines we come across, I'm streaming the game dude, we bring everything back to the base what is your deal with always insisting it must be something *we* are doing wrong? 

[Ralathar44]

Magazines are absolutely not a problem IMO, people will learn the system and adjust and stop being so stubborn with their points.  If you're on like day 14 in a group with nobody having a forge and you're not sharing your mags and nobody put 1 point into both advanced engineering and lockpicking then YOU are the problem.  Funnel the forge mags to 1 person who spends those 2 skill points or fully invests, that person goes out with everyone else and actively loots at least until you have a forge and workbench.  Do the same with bicycles and vehicle mags.  Remember, the advantage of a group is efficiency, 5 people are not gonna hit 5 times the POIs.  That's just unrealistic.

We've had many updates people HAD to spend a skill point to unlock those things, its silly that people are optimizing themselves into a corner now by refusing to spend those same skill points because they don't "need" to, but they also want to get the magazines as fast as if they full invested lol.

And as far as water goes?  I don't think its a big problem but the addition of a rain catcher or letting the dew collectors be built without the water filter, but only collect murky water, would prolly help.  Just add an upgrade slot like forges and campfires have.  I'd say rain catchers would be nice too, but it rains too much, you'd have infinite water all the time again. 

And with water go out of your way to get a few yucca fruit.  If your water is limited you want to maximize your hydration to minimize usage.  This is where your farmer comes in handy.  Yucca fruit + water = Yucca Juice for 34 hydration, 10 more than goldenrod tea or red tea.


Oh, and I heard some people with air drops off complaining, turn your air drops back on.  Much like the trader they are rebalanced.  They are a good source of magazines and mods and stuff but so far nothing super powerful has dropped in my playthrough.  Those 9 magazine boxes with 3 sets of 3 mags each make a big diff though.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Ralathar44 (see edit history)

[Phoenixshade35]

I did notice that quest rewards do not yield a book box every time now, im kinda glad as that was overpowered, are they now a random thing that will show up or not at all now?

[Riamus]

2 player game- forge by day 3, workbench was either day 4 or 5 (I wasn't paying attention).  Tier 5 stone spears by day 2-3, Tier 5 iron spears possible by day 5 but not enough forged iron until day 7.  Crafted 2 minibikes day 7.  No magazine rush (i.e. no running all around town trying to loot all the mailboxes and newspaper stands, no crack a book until we came across one around day 6.  Just looting as we went along.  Never going out of the way to find magazines.  Still got plenty of magazines.  This was before the update that lowered magazines.

 

My issue with magazines right now is what I said before... it can't really be balanced properly.  A solo game will receive magazines at a far slower rate than a MP game, with more players in MP speeding this up even more.  The rate at which the player and gamestage level up remains relatively the same regardless of the number of players, so the result is that either the solo player won't bother crafting because they'll usually find better stuff in order to keep the 8 player specialized group from maxing out all the magazines in a week OR you make it so the solo player gets enough magazines that they can craft at least equal to what they'll find in loot and quest rewards and then the 8 player specialized group will be swimming in magazines.  How do you balance this properly?  Unless you scale magazines by number of players, which this game isn't designed to do (I don't think), you can only place the numbers so that the average sized group among all games played is where the balance is and if you have more players, you'll level up crafting faster and if you have fewer players, you'll level it up slower.  No real way around that with this system.  That is my main complaint with it because if it can't be properly balanced, then it's not a good system.  And that's just number of players... add in the possibility of rushing magazines by hitting every mailbox and newspaper stand in the town on day 1 as well as crack a books versus just collecting them as you are doing other things and you unbalance things even more.  Do you try to balance it for the person rushing so that they can't level up crafting too quickly at the cost of the person not rushing?  Or do you balance it for the person not rushing (this is what I think should be done) and ignore that the rushing person can level up crafting to max in a week?  Combine the two balance problems and you have a huge balance problem that really can't be fixed.

 

I like the magazines but the balance is an issue if the goal is to have people craft.  If you slow magazines down as they just did, then your solo player will likely not craft any more than they did in A20 because loot will easily outpace crafting skill.  It might be fine for the 8 player groups but as your number of players decreases, so does the rate at which you upgrade crafting and then loot and quest rewards goes up faster and crafting gets ignored once again.

[mstdv inc]

The 12th day. 60 minutes a day. 25% experience, 25% loot. 
Unfortunately, my stone age ended very quickly. 
The first level of tasks for two sellers is completed.
I have a blacksmith shop, two dew pickers, firearms and a lot of ammunition. Lots of bullets. For 3 tasks of the first level, I received 300 9-millimeter cartridges.
For the other two quests, I got 10 glue each.
The rewards for completing tasks are too good.
I was hoping that the trader's level would depend on the % experience setting.
 

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[faatal]

13 minutes ago, Phoenixshade35 said:

I did notice that quest rewards do not yield a book box every time now, im kinda glad as that was overpowered, are they now a random thing that will show up or not at all now?

It is around 50% random. We found that the great majority of the time we all just took the 9 magazines making the other choices pointless. I did a quest for testing today, did not get the magazines as a choice and was like, wow I have to think about what I want.

[Riamus]

Anyone tried to get screenshots in A21?  I tried taking 2 today and they are nowhere to be found.  The default location would still be %appdata%\7DaysToDie\Screenshots\, right?  No A21 screenshots are there even though I got the screenshot taken popup from Steam each time.  I even used the search box to look for A21 (A20 screenshots start with A20, so I'd assume A21 screenshots start with A21) and got no results.

[Marinxar]

That's one ugly nerf patch.... :/

[RipClaw]

8 hours ago, Roland said:

I don't know how long they want the stone age to last but they do want it to last beyond a few days.

I fought the day 7 horde with a wooden club and had stone tools until day 8. Does that count as "long enough" ?
 

[Robbing Zombie]

2 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

I fought the day 7 horde with a wooden club and had stone tools until day 8. Does that count as "long enough" ?
 

How many rounds of Civilization would that be?

[deftt]

hello everyone, we have been playing with friends for 3 days at 21 alpha. Now with the release of this update, all my studies have disappeared, how to restore them and why did this happen at all? 3 days wasted, right?

[RipClaw]

16 minutes ago, faatal said:

It is around 50% random. We found that the great majority of the time we all just took the 9 magazines making the other choices pointless. I did a quest for testing today, did not get the magazines as a choice and was like, wow I have to think about what I want.

Yes the magazine bundles are tempting and I have to admit that the only time I chose something else was when I was offered a helmet light. 

But it also makes sense that players prefer the magazine bundles. The magazines are the carrot that dangles in front of the nose. You always want to unlock something.
 

[Riamus]

13 minutes ago, deftt said:

hello everyone, we have been playing with friends for 3 days at 21 alpha. Now with the release of this update, all my studies have disappeared, how to restore them and why did this happen at all? 3 days wasted, right?

See the topic in General Discussion about how to handle this.  This is something that can happen in experimental.

[deftt]

2 minutes ago, Riamus said:

См. тему в Общем обсуждении о том, как справиться с этим. Это то, что может произойти в эксперименте.

I can't find this post, could you post the link please?

[Riamus]

10 minutes ago, deftt said:

I can't find this post, could you post the link please?

It'll be further down in the thread.

[Robbing Zombie]

5 hours ago, Grolbu said:

 

No. If it did that you could stand next to a dew collector when it rained and collect more or less infinite water.  What they could do though, which would be a nod to collecting rain without being massively OP, is leave the dew collectors ticking along at their usual pace while it's raining then set them to full when it stops raining.

I think it would still be in the middle of now and A20, if they would work as rain collectors too. But like madmole said, if it's too much for the game itself to compute, I understand the reason. Since there's plenty of stuff that makes things lag and we certainly don't need more of that.

 

In general, we're probably gonna use a faucet mod again, once one comes available for A21. Basebuilding and crafting is our main thing in this game and not the tougher survival this seems to be slowly leaning towards, atleast in the very start. Our group welcomes new interesting challenges every time, like the magazines now in A21, but some things we find to be a bit annoying and for those things we all have our fantastic beloved modders to the rescue and ramping things up ❤️ 

 

In the end I don't judge how other people want to play this fun game. Each to their own playstyle.

 

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Robbing Zombie (see edit history)