Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[zztong]

8 hours ago, faatal said:

We found that the great majority of the time we all just took the 9 magazines making the other choices pointless.

 

I'm doing this right now too, but I'm not sure I'll keep doing that. Magazines are pretty new and I'm starting to think I might have been better off taking some equipment, even if I just sold it for Dukes. The interesting thing about a grab bag of magazine is it is a lottery. I'm advancing my knowledge on lots of fronts, but not necessarily getting anything out of it. I'm not saying the system is bad. I'm saying it might be too early for players like myself to fully understand the economics of our decisions.

[Aldranon]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

Just a quick note on this. In A21, the game stage depends on the biome you are in. So you will encounter feral zombies much earlier in the desert and the hordes are much harder.

 

 

I'm aware of that and in theory that should be true.  I'm only playing 1 level above default dificulty and its day 5, so things are pretty easy still.

 

As the forest is within sight, I could end up making my horde base outside as looting POI's is GOOD in the desert!

I now have 4 stacks of first aid bandages and will try my binging dirty water until I used up 2 stacks of the first aid bandages.  Once I need water that is (I only have 4 vitamins left).

 

I dumped my spear build as (I had hoped otherwise) the club is still overpowered.  

Having a few ranged weapons is aways a good idea and (of course) the strength's shotgun (even my pipe one) is brutal when you "line up" the zeds. (AND the meta horde base is perfect for shotguns (with some minor changes).

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

[Exxodous]

4 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

i checked in the editor and gas station 10 is not set up for infestation. it does not have the special red sleepers (infested) and the collored treasue box (color per tier level)

 

Well that is interesting.  I hadn't even thought about the special treasure box not being there (it wasn't).  I wonder why the game called it an infested quest then?

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

[BFT2020]

12 minutes ago, unholyjoe said:

i checked in the editor and gas station 10 is not set up for infestation. it does not have the special red sleepers (infested) and the collored treasue box (color per tier level)

 

The POI itself may not be setup with the proper sleepers, but it is coded as such

 

  <property name="QuestTags" value="clear, infested" />

 

so @Exxodous is not going crazy

[meganoth]

28 minutes ago, kattenijin said:

It rains every day. Often multiple times a day. For hours. IRL there would be an abundance of water.  Yes, it would need purification; we have pots to boil it in, a chemistry station to distill it in, we now have filters to filter it. Luckily enough on day one I found a water purifier mod so I don't need to fuss with all that. Kind of makes all your forced changes pointless. I now fully expect loot tables will be "fixed" so you can't get it early anymore because we are continually being forced into playing a certain way.

 

You did but hundreds of others had to pay for a filter. I think TFP is fine with the occasional hamster escaping the treadmill 😁

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

[Exxodous]

6 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

The POI itself may not be setup with the proper sleepers, but it is coded as such

 

  <property name="QuestTags" value="clear, infested" />

 

so @Exxodous is not going crazy

Well, I may actually be if you ask my wife, but thanks for looking that up!

[Riamus]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I think that isn't cast in stone. Sure, MP will always have some advantage. The synergy of finding something only the other needs is always there (this includes items and books and magazines). And the ability to pool money for expensive stuff is also something the single player will never have.

 

But apart from that looting by itself is quite balanced between SP and MP. A single player can loot about as much as someone in a group in MP.  He is slower in clearing a POI but he got all loot for himself, and the group of 8 players would need to clear 8 POIs in the same time to get the same loot amount as the single player **per player**. If it weren't for the quest rewards and the shared XP the group of 8 players might only catch up to the SP if they split up and each would do his own quest!

 

In my own experience with 4 players we are naturally faster at clearing a quest POI than a single player, but not at 4 times the speed.

 

So the task of SP/MP balancing for TFP is to tune the quest rewards and shared XP so that it still gives an incentive to quest together but that synergies and the boost of quest rewards together are just a bit better than what a single player would get.

You are describing normal loot and for that, yes, it is pretty well balanced for SP/MP.  However, for magazines you aren't sharing the loot equally among all players.  All players are looting to give magazines to one player (even if that's spread around, it's still each type of magazine goes to only one player until that player maxes it out).  At least, that's the intention even if not everyone wants to share.  So let's say a player can average 10 magazines in a quest and complete it in 15 minutes.  We'll ignore quest rewards for now but those exacerbate the issue.  With a single player, that player will get 10 crafting skill points in 15 minutes.  If you have 8 players, you might complete that quest in 5 minutes and get the same magazines and those would go to one player (or at least, each magazine to a specific player), so in the end you have 10 crafting points in 5 minutes instead of 15 minutes.  Now, these are just example numbers and are not intended to be actual speeds and numbers of magazines.  I don't have actual numbers to work with but this should be a good enough example of the problem.  Now, I'll admit that with more players all questing, you'll also level faster and so that will help to balance things somewhat.  But keep in mind that this only affects questing for the most part.  If everyone is running around scavenging instead of questing, then the amount of shared XP is limited but the amount of loot goes up so you're getting more magazines without any faster XP gains.  This is why it quickly becomes unbalanced.

[unholyjoe]

22 minutes ago, Exxodous said:

 

i suspect it will get infested but probably an over sight now. just as i didnt check the xml... crap happens.. good catch tho

maybe @Laz Man can check into it. gas station 10

 

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

[zztong]

1 hour ago, Strengthinside said:

GUYS, is stealth working in this alpha? I maxed out stealth perks, using padded armor for no noise penalty, and it's weird, zombies just spawn when I am near them, immediately waking up and smacking my *ss to oblivion 🤣 Does steal require some additional knowledge on how to use it?  Not every zombie is like that, mostly during an infestation quest, or near the POI loot room.

 

I'm finding it works pretty much the same, which I think is pretty effective, so long as you pay attention to your stealth meter and play the environment light, sound, proximity, and zombie pathing options are all factors.

 

There are more tricks available to the POI creators now that can lead to zombies being activated. An activated zombies is not necessarily locked onto you. I just played fire_station_04 (Tier 2) and I'm pretty sure the intended final encounter activates the zombies when you enter the volume. (I need to look at the POI in the editor to be sure, which I haven't done yet.) But taking all of the factors into play made that encounter easy. They activated, couldn't get to me, lost track of me, and died to the bow.

 

Back to the environment:

 

Light - Stay out of the light; consider salvaging or destroy lights that are just inside your reach.

 

Noise - Movement. Stop and let your stealth meter drop back down. Avoid crossing the trash that makes noise.

 

Proximity - Keep your distance, when possible.

 

And finally, I encourage stealth players to get creative when moving through, or around, a POI. The "dungeon path" isn't your friend. It leads to ambushes. It uses doors that open via triggers that you cannot close. It leads to pits.

 

Stealth takes more than just moving slowly through the POI. You have to embrace all of the factors. Even then a Zombie might awaken and attack, and that's okay. Dealing with one zombie beats dealing with four. Even if they do see you now they can lose track of you if you arrange for enough time to pass.

[Riamus]

49 minutes ago, PoloPoPo said:

- Magazines were way too abundant. b317 improved that situation a lot.

 

- Magazines are a nice idea but so far I constantly find better loot than I'd be able to craft. Talking about basic loot from zombie bags and POIs, no trader quests.

These kind of contradict one another.  You need more magazines to get crafting speed up to that of loot, so if you're not able to craft as good of gear as you are looting, then you need more magazines not less.  It feels like there are too many, yes.  But fewer magazines mean even slower crafting skill gains without any reduction in loot gains and quest reward gains so that you're not able to keep up with the loot while crafting.

[Scarman422]

A lot of people are complaining of spawning at level 1 after the update; it seems it happens randomly. I play with my brother, and our progress isn't affected. Is there something we can do to prevent this from future updates? I know it's experimental but a21 is so good and i want to play it now xD

[Nero10791]

Ever since alpha 21 it seems like I get major lag spikes in cities even with everything turned down to the lowest settings and mesh turned off it never happened in alpha 20 anyone eles experiencing thos issue?

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, Aldranon said:

s the forest is within sight, I could end up making my horde base outside as looting POI's is GOOD in the desert!

With the forest so close, you could even exploit the game mechanics a little if you wanted to.

 

The gamestage is locked as soon as the horde starts. So if you build a horde base on the border between forest and desert and you quickly run over to the desert after the horde starts, you have a forest horde with a desert lootstage. 😁

 

2 minutes ago, Scarman422 said:

A lot of people are complaining of spawning at level 1 after the update; it seems it happens randomly. I play with my brother, and our progress isn't affected. Is there something we can do to prevent this from future updates? I know it's experimental but a21 is so good and i want to play it now xD

If it really happens at random, it is best to make a backup of the game state before you start and when the character is reset you can restore the backup and try if it happens again.

 

 

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

[Ralathar44]

6 hours ago, Gronal said:

I suppose we do have to acknowledge that a lot of us who are posting here on the forums, and complaining about progressing a bit too fast, are probably veterans of the game at this point and we're probably power-gaming and taking full advantage of mechanics we've had plenty of warning to adapt to.

In both single player and coop with one other person, I've had a quality 2 or 3 stun baton, and a quality 2 or 3 t1 gun (in my case double barrel shotgun in one game and bolt action rifle in the other) by first horde night. Both games I've been dual speccing into intellect and another skill. Completely default loot and xp settings. Not even specced into daring adventurer, as I already am questing a lot and it would simply make it too OP for my tastes I think. And also the problem with quests imo, is if you're already looting POIs then you'd be silly not to do quests cos quests are just looting POIs and getting paid for it.

How can they balance the game for both new players and very experienced players? It does seem quite challenging.

I'm a veteran but ive been playing the opposite of optimized.  Fortitude/Agility, no points in lockpicking or forge ahead or grease monkey, not targeting POIs, etc.  I'm set up like 1km away from the Trader instead of right next to them.  I'm not doing trader quests because of this.  I hit a T4 super shamway on day 2.  In general I've been playing too aggressively and I've died a considerable amount of times because of it.  12 deaths in 18 days.

In general im playing just like A20 and letting things roll as they do.  Day 14 before I got workbench or bike.  I'm still using level 5 knuckle wraps and level 4 stone axe.  If anything I'd say im hitting my stride right now.  Progression has felt steady and constant and all loot feels valuable.  Water literally ceased to be an issue the moment I got my first dew catcher and I just put up a 2nd for buffer and then a little glue production.  My farm is well under way at this point as well so food basically stopped being an issue too.

5 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

Just had exactly the same in my last game, which I'm abandoning due to the patch. Felt VERY strange to have the crucible available for sale with zero quests done, no points in daring adventurer, and level in the low 20s. I'm over 50 books away from crafting a crucible, and have a point in advanced engineering.

Why is that strange?  An intelligence spec'd person would prolly be getting close to crucible about that point in time.  1 point in something DOES help drop rates, but its nothing compared to stacking more points into it.  If someone with intellect went heavy into both lock picking and advanced engineering they'd be swimming in those magazines relatively speaking.

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, Exxodous said:

I've done the tier 2 infested quest at gas station 10 twice and I think 3 times as a tier 1 and didn't notice it having more zombies, is it just such a small building it wasn't noticeable?  I was expecting more lol.

 

Looks like that POI was not 100% setup for infestation quests.  Will notify the designer.  Thanks!

[DrunkZombie]

30 minutes ago, Scarman422 said:

A lot of people are complaining of spawning at level 1 after the update; it seems it happens randomly. I play with my brother, and our progress isn't affected. Is there something we can do to prevent this from future updates? I know it's experimental but a21 is so good and i want to play it now xD

Did you start a new game for 617?  That will happen if you use saves from 613 so it is best to start a new game.

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

[Exxodous]

1 minute ago, DrunkZombie said:

Did you start a new game for 617?  That will happen if you use saves from 613.

We didn't restart a new game and our characters were fine.  Not sure what the cause is but that isn't it.

[Syphon583]

9 hours ago, Marinxar said:

That's one ugly nerf patch.... 😕

It's called balance. The whole point of a game being in EA.

[retrogamingdev]

Aw, just jumped into my save from 313, back to level 1. No points. But, no starter quests either... 

 

Just adding my info if it is worth anything to devs (and worth anything to other players contemplating starting a game in experimental).  Not mad - just a little sad (but I understand the risks of experimental)

[Scarman422]

7 minutes ago, retrogamingdev said:

Aw, just jumped into my save from 313, back to level 1. No points. But, no starter quests either... 

 

Just adding my info if it is worth anything to devs (and worth anything to other players contemplating starting a game in experimental).  Not mad - just a little sad (but I understand the risks of experimental)

it's weird, my save from 313 is still fine. wonder why so many people got wiped and others not.

[RipClaw]

24 minutes ago, Scarman422 said:

it's weird, my save from 313 is still fine. wonder why so many people got wiped and others not.

Mine seems fine too but I haven't looked too much into it. It seems your character profile can also be half broken. You still have your level and your crafting skills but no point in any perk. Then you have to drink a Fergit'n Elixir and redistribute your points.

 

[retrogamingdev]

27 minutes ago, Scarman422 said:

it's weird, my save from 313 is still fine. wonder why so many people got wiped and others not.

Not sure what the trigger is - maybe certain things unlocked trigger a wipe? 

It would be nice if the starting quests reset too, if that were to happen. But, I just command consoled myself enough XP to get me approximately back to where I was. 

[DrunkZombie]

Patch notes for 317 just say that they recommend a new save due to potential of being reset to level 1. Certain things being unlocked is a good guess I think.

[Aldranon]

 

So, after experimentation you can ignore water for several days with the (Vitamin + Dirty Water + 5 first aid bandages) in the desert very easy as I have Jen in the desert, it's totally broken.  

 

I plan on stopping that horrible exploit... Soon! 

[Archer]

7 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Can happen when people need to guess. Maybe provide some details:

What day is it in your game? (And are you playing on normal daylength?).

What is the average level of you guys?

What is the highest number of a specific magazine read by anyone of you?

What is the number of magazines read for the respective main melee weapon for each of your 8 guys?

 

Tell us details and everyone here can either tell you that there is either something bugged, that the game is truely imbalanced or that your expectations are wrong or .... 

 

 

I just logged in to actually see what day & skill level everyone was at. 
Still got my inventory. 
0 skills now as if I've never read a magazine and I'm back at level 1. 

Base is still there, inventory still there, and everything physical is still there but my character's skills and everything else are wiped to 0. Nothing is removed from the inventory of my character or from containers, but anything I've read, and everything I'd leveled from XP is wiped. So, I guess I can't tell you the answer now to what level we were, it's day 24 on the server.  (P.S. - Not @%$#ing about it, I understand it's an unstable release)


Right now the forge ahead magazine is by far the rarest, we've found a total of 17 of those, but the medical magazines I think we've recovered like 60-70 of them. 
The 'old school' books and mags that were already in the game seem to spawn at a normal/similar rate as before. 
Lots of 'Tech Junky' magazines are popping up, too, seems to be a disproportionately high amount, I'm at like, level 37 in those? 
Tool mags are spawning in 2nd to 3rd lowest rate which is preventing us from being able to build certain things. 
Over the course of the past three days we've had anywhere between 6 and 22 players on the server at one time, last night was probably our largest crowd (we can't add more than 8 people to a party so we just end up making extras but would really like it if the devs allowed us to make parties larger than just 8 ) 
Bar Brawler, Batter Up, and The Fireman's Almanac seem to be everywhere as well, they're so abundant we also have stacks of them sitting unused. 
The Great Heist, Hunter's Journal, Lucky Looter seem more or less normal rates I guess. 

The problem that keeps happening right now is early 'bottlenecks'. 
We keep needing magazines for another tool or item that we want/need to build in order to make other stuff. 
At the moment - the blood moon isn't actually much of an issue, because we've only played the first 3 of them, so they don't start 'getting hard' usually until a bit later in the game (which to us was normal, and totally fine) 
This forces us to stop working on the base, and go out to help the scavengers. PLEASE NOTE: if this is intended, it's not appreciated. We really did not want to be forced to go out. But the 2 of us (which is a skeleton crew of builders/crafters compared to usual) who are staying behind keep "running out of stuff to do" because we can essentially only do basic tasks with the limited options of tools and recipes available to us, which force us to just go out and look for more of these magazines so we can get back to work.
We always build the baseline outershell first obviously so we don't end up getting a bunch of breaches, but the interior where we organize, build rooms for crafting, storage, and processing materials from one into the next is essentially collecting dust and cobwebs. I can use the forge now which means I can melt stuff down but once that task is done, it's pretty much "whelp, time to go look for magazines" which comprises roughly 80% of the time we have allocated for building stuff, so the base looks like @%$#. It's functional and holds up but it's mostly just empty rooms right now.





I can't think of them all off the top of my head now but overall, each day I play this update I like it less and less. Some of the looters/scavengers in the group were also mentioning that they didn't really care for the 'skulls' system actually, it kind of takes away some of the surprise of 'finding out' just how dangerous an area is before they go in, and now it's as though their character psychically knows how bad the monsters down in the cave/basement/wherever are before they go in. 

The graphics changes made are awesome in the update, love the new forge/workbench models for sure, haven't seen the chemistry station yet except on streams and that looks great, but pretty much everything else, especially all of the 're-works' are an emphatic thumbs down, with the magazine 'system' being front and center of that negative response. Balancing this out for a group of people just seems impossible, I don't know how they would ever adjust loot rates and spawn rates to respond to a # of people on a server. 

And because the moderator on here keeps implying I'm either lying or we're just bumbling through like we've been caught in a '90s infomercial doing a simple task of some kind, I've started streaming/recording our game sessions now and can share a link to the twitch, or if want/need be I'll take the time to upload a video onto YouTube or something of it (I don't stream/record regularly or anything) and to triple iterate this because this seems to be the go-to response to every post that suggests there's a possible flaw in the system: THE LOOTERS ARE NOT READING THE MAGAZINES FFS. THEY BRING THEM *ALL* BACK TO BASE AND WE SORT THROUGH THEM. 
I'm one of the looters MYSELF now, unfortunately. Air Drops are bringing in tons of magazines, in fact they're almost the best place to get them at this point but more often than not it's crap we don't need.