Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[IrishGhost]

16 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Then you probably either use up too much stamina with your playstyle or you don't create good food. If all you eat is grilled meat but work in the mines and run around in heavy armor you just didn't adapt to your playstyle. Nonetheless good idea to mod if you just don't like it.

In my last playthrough I ran unarmed with heavy armor so yeah it chipped away pretty quick. Built quite a bit to. I can understand this for thirst but not so much for hunger, at least at the rate it is in vanilla. My diet consisted of bacon and eggs. Drugs for dessert on horde night.
Really this is all with consideration that recipes stay the same. If they tweak most to take 1 unit of water at most (with some special exceptions here or there), I can see this new drinking system easier to balance out. I can see collection a 5 units of water on a average day that you looted and having to balance them between food, drinking, and crafting. 
 

 

16 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Result: When you are usually finding quality 2 AKs top, you could buy a AK of quality 3 at price * 1.5, quality 4 at price * 2, quality 5 at price * 2.5 (compared to what they cost now).

Doesn't sound like a bad of an idea. And if you take the bartering perk this would reduce the price overall, making it much more valuable as an option overall compared to what it currently is. 

Edited January 9, 2023 by IrishGhost (see edit history)

[Fanatical_Meat]

8 hours ago, faatal said:

Yes, I am reading this stuff.

I actually generated an 8K RWG (in 1:45!) yesterday and played a few hours. Feels pretty good to me. After 2 days, I'm close to making my first dew collector, but need a bit more coin to buy the filter. My biggest complaint was that combat hits feel bland, probably by comparison to some of the games I played over the holidays.

Joel is actually what is motivating the vehicle damage changes. He just had me tweak more values on Friday.

For context are we talking one minute forty five seconds or one hour forty five minutes?

[Doomofman]

Please don't drop A21 the same week as Sons of the Forest...

 

Thank you 😉

[Aldranon]

17 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I know it's just a small detail... but I'd rather have them add a new type of item named "ruined book/magazine" that you can scrap to paper. Lots of people complain about finding tons of paper in the bookshelves of a Crack a Book store, and don't understand the paper represents ruined books and magazines.

 

That would add a bit of "realism" IMO and ease players into understanding why so much scrap.

 

 

Thats a good suggestion!

I bet many newcomers to the game do some type of "What the heck??"

The role-player side of me would be pleased as well. 

[meilodasreh]

2 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

For context are we talking one minute forty five seconds or one hour forty five minutes?

😄 You're so mean!

Yes, I can imagine him, thoroughly testing A21 on a vast variety of hardware,

and one time he spent almost 2 hours in front of this really old rig, displaying "...creating world...",

and he's like "dammit...did it freeze or does it still work...ok let's give it another final 5 minutes or so...come on ATARI you can do it" 

Edited January 9, 2023 by meilodasreh (see edit history)

[faatal]

5 hours ago, Blake_ said:

Have you tried them? the vehicle changes I mean. Do they feel satisfying to you or are they a bit of a survival chore to the player?

 

I would say they sound ok, but it is a hard system to imagine vs "feeling" it as opposed to the water changes, hence the question.

Well, I tested them as I was the one making the changes, but not yet as far as a long term play session goes. That is what Joel is doing.

4 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

For context are we talking one minute forty five seconds or one hour forty five minutes?

The short one!

[Fanatical_Meat]

37 minutes ago, faatal said:

Well, I tested them as I was the one making the changes, but not yet as far as a long term play session goes. That is what Joel is doing.

The short one!

Good man, I sort of assumed that but you know….

Is it true the server client generates worlds slower because they don’t use the graphics card memory? Makes sense to me in my admittedly amateur understanding of Hardware.

[beHypE]

Since faatal reads everything, do you guys hire, and if so do you do any Java? 😆

 

I guess I can get used to .NET if I have to. 😝

 

Jokes aside, release the krakeeeeen

[Morloc]

10 hours ago, meganoth said:

Result: When you are usually finding quality 2 AKs tops, you could buy a AK of quality 3 at price * 1.5, quality 4 at price * 2, quality 5 at price * 2.5 (compared to what they cost now).

 

 

So....what yer sayin' is that if a train is travelling west from Boston at 45 mph, and another train is travelling east from Chicago at 60 mph, then....

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[hiemfire]

1 hour ago, Morloc said:

 

 

So....what yer sayin' is that if a train is travelling west from Boston at 45 mph, and another train is travelling east from Chicago at 60 mph, then....

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

The first is on the way to Buffalo, the second going into Lake Michigan...

[faatal]

8 hours ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

Good man, I sort of assumed that but you know….

Is it true the server client generates worlds slower because they don’t use the graphics card memory? Makes sense to me in my admittedly amateur understanding of Hardware.

RWG has not done processing on the GPU for a year or two, so the server generation should be similar and with a21 also faster.

7 hours ago, beHypE said:

Since faatal reads everything, do you guys hire, and if so do you do any Java? 😆

 

I guess I can get used to .NET if I have to. 😝

 

Jokes aside, release the krakeeeeen

Most everything in this thread, the rest, not much.

 

No Java. 7dtd is C# in Unity.

https://thefunpimps.com/jobs/

 

The kraken is still awakening.

[wolfbain5]

will we ever be able to modify the smg and shotgun turrets? Think it would be fun if we could add some of the gun mods to them, or even just swap out ammo types.

[zookeeper]

39 minutes ago, wolfbain5 said:

will we ever be able to modify the smg and shotgun turrets? Think it would be fun if we could add some of the gun mods to them, or even just swap out ammo types.

I agree!

[meilodasreh]

Never really used those turrets much, or electricity and corresponding "trap/turret stuff" in general, because wiring stuff up, for me it is too tedious and looks ugly.

 

A21 invisible wires fixes that one point for me (finally no more ugly wires criss-cross hanging and you're mostly busy to hide stuff the best way instead of getting it functional)

 

Yes, mod slots for those turrets would even more add to the fun (btw di$% puncher and junky already have those, or is this a DF thing again that I mix into vanilla?)

 

Still, two more points seem to stay untouched which will probably keep me from using electricity more:

-stuff gets worn down too fast

-wiring is the opposite of intuitive for me, I keep cutting existing branches by accident, and then trying to fix it often leads to an even bigger mess.

  

 

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

On 1/9/2023 at 7:58 AM, IrishGhost said:

In my last playthrough I ran unarmed with heavy armor so yeah it chipped away pretty quick. Built quite a bit to. I can understand this for thirst but not so much for hunger, at least at the rate it is in vanilla. My diet consisted of bacon and eggs. Drugs for dessert on horde night.
 

Bacon and eggs are essentially an entry level food. If this is what you were eating in mid-game no wonder you had hunger issues. The trade off for not engaging in the farming/recipe mechanics is having to eat more. As soon as you start farming and unlock the recipes for meat stew or equivalent, food becomes more sustainable and more nourishing. The ability to grow corn/potatoes and make meat stew is one of the break points in the game: you no longer have to worry about gathering eggs and you get more from each meal.

[Vintorez]

Made a thread in Pimp Dreams but figured I'd mention it here since it's a pretty small thing; Should there always be at least one thing in sealed crates and treasure chests when playing with reduced loot settings? When I set loot to say 50%, I expect such containers to have half as much stuff, not for half of them to be empty. I normally enjoy survival games with reduced loot but that one quirk kinda turns me off from it in this game.

[Ouch Quit It]

Coughs *AIRPORT POI* Coughs

 

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, meilodasreh said:

-wiring is the opposite of intuitive for me, I keep cutting existing branches by accident, and then trying to fix it often leads to an even bigger mess.

That's probably because of your talons...

[Grue]

On 1/6/2023 at 5:22 PM, Roland said:

Point 1: Player Choice

If player choice is of interest to you then you will be pleased to know that the changes have increased player choice by a fair amount. In the past, due to having infinite water from the very start there was zero choice for how to utilize your water ever. You always had plenty to do everything. In A21 you will have to make some choices for how you utilize water. This is a very good thing.

 

As for dew collectors they are absolutely optional. You can find portable water in loot and you can purchase it from the trader. For drinking you can go to a stream or lake or even a nearby gutter and drink your fill. You can survive at a very basic level purely on what you scavenge or trade for. Now if you want the luxury and quality of life of having infinite water to be able to once again reach the point where you have enough to do whatever you want with it without needing to make tough choices, you may create a dew collector farm which will see you stocked with all the water you'll need. Its a choice....a player choice.

 

Point 2: The concept of removing containers that hold water in order to force players to use the dew collector is bad

This isn't a new concept. There are no containers for any consumable in the game. Glue, gas, stew, steak and potatoes, pie, canned food, acid, first aid kits, repair kits, and more are consumables that are depicted as being in a container and yet no container actually exists. You can't make a huge pot full of stew and then craft a stack of bowls to go scoop out stew to carry around with you and then bring back the empty bowls to scoop out more stew. You can't fill up your empty gas canisters at a pump and then pour the gas into your vehicle and then bring back the empty canisters to fill them up again. None of the consumables in the game that are depicted in your inventory as being in a container give back that empty container so that you can refill it and they never have. How have you and others possibly been able to continue playing the game without all of these empty containers to be refilled? I will tell you that however it is you have been managing to figure out glue and the rest, you will quickly adapt to water since it will be behaving the same exact way every other single consumable in the game behaves and has behaved for years and years.

 

The change is not to force players to use dew collectors. You don't have to use dew collectors technically. The change is to bring consistency to the game across the board and at the same time close the book on infinite water beginning at day one. 

 

Point 3: There's no need to waste dev time on the craft system with magazines

Water under the bridge. The feature was done months ago. Now that it is done they WILL release it to their early access players to evaluate and determine how it should be tinkered. They are extremely happy with this latest evolution of the crafting/player progression system. Just as you stated that the hybrid of spending points and collecting schematics was a good balance they will get to a great balance of skillpoints, schematics, and magazines after several months of obtaining player feedback about the system from people who have spent time playing with it instead of making a decision to scrap it from people who are just imagining worst case possibilities using incomplete knowledge and guesses.

 

Point 4: Players want to play in a Sandbox

Players can play in a sandbox still. But you have to understand that a true sandbox is a play area without rules or constraints so that the player can do whatever they desire. For this game that means you enable godmode and creative mode. Those two modes enabled make 7 Days to Die into a true sandbox experience. In its default form 7 Days to Die is not meant to be a pure sandbox. It is meant to be a game with rules, limits, and consequences. With godmode and creative mode enabled you never need water or food at all and you can build anything out of anything with anything the game has--including some dev tools not available in the default game.  You can do whatever you want. You can fly around and spawn a bunch of zombies surrounding a POI and then fly away turn off godmode and approach the POI killing all the zombies guarding it. That's just one example but the sandbox options are endless. If players truly want a sandbox it is always available to them. When they're ready to play a game that has rules and limits and choices that is always waiting for them as well.

 

 

Water:

Point 1: Your alternatives to being able to collect water from the environment is basically the equivalent to saying "Let them Eat Cake".

You can loot or buy any resource, but that is a good excuse to remove chopping wood and mining from the game? Obviously not.

 

Point 2: Even if the goal is to remove all "containers", that does not necessitate removal of the ability to collect surface water.

 

Balance:

Point 3: Basically all you are saying is here "Too late now! Lay back and take it, it will be over soon."

Point 4:  If the game is so bloody broken that your best solution is to "tuRn oN GoD MOdE", then what does that say about the balance of the game?

 

On 1/6/2023 at 5:50 PM, Roland said:

Your playstyle is not typical and by catering to your playerstyle the devs would be cutting out the lionshare of the community. Looting is a staple of this game and always has been. The changes in A21 do enhance scavenging and that change will positively impact the vast majority of players who do enjoy that part of the game. If you really do feel like TFP should listen to its player base then honestly you cannot deny that enhancing the looting and exploring portions of the game is them doing exactly that. You may not like it but you have to admit that "minimal looting" is not going to be the norm for the typical player of 7 Days to Die.

 

You really mean to tell me that I am the only one who likes building bases? Or mining? Or crafting?

Someone has to stay home to build, at the very least, a functional horde base for the group.

Or is base building "not the norm" in your opinion?

Do you just run from one POI to the next looting piles of garbage with no place to store any of it?

[faatal]

44 minutes ago, Vintorez said:

Made a thread in Pimp Dreams but figured I'd mention it here since it's a pretty small thing; Should there always be at least one thing in sealed crates and treasure chests when playing with reduced loot settings? When I set loot to say 50%, I expect such containers to have half as much stuff, not for half of them to be empty. I normally enjoy survival games with reduced loot but that one quirk kinda turns me off from it in this game.

It depends. A container with 10 feathers would reduce to 5, but if there was going to be 1 item in the chest, then you now have a 50% chance of it being there. The system does not try to replace your 1 item, with a crappier 1 item.

[Vintorez]

1 hour ago, faatal said:

It depends. A container with 10 feathers would reduce to 5, but if there was going to be 1 item in the chest, then you now have a 50% chance of it being there. The system does not try to replace your 1 item, with a crappier 1 item.

Maybe it has to do with how it calculates, like if it goes through each item individually or applies to the container as a whole. Like if it would generate 4 pieces of single-stack gear, does it factor those items against each other to try to reduce it to 2 or does it have a 50/50 chance of having 4 or 0?

Admittedly it's been a year or so since I've tried a reduced loot run, but the lower level PoI end chests and containers like weapon bags definitely felt more lacking than I expected. Maybe the current system unfairly reduces the frequency of single stack items?

 

Though now that you mention it it would be kinda cool if it could replace gear with crappier items, like a bad roll causing a container to be treated as if it was opened with a lower gamestage or converting loot into their scrapped components.

Edited January 10, 2023 by Vintorez (see edit history)

[meilodasreh]

1 hour ago, Grue said:

Someone has to stay home to build, at the very least, a functional horde base for the group.

Or is base building "not the norm" in your opinion?

Do you just run from one POI to the next looting piles of garbage with no place to store any of it?

 

Aren't you sticking a bit too much to the extremes here?

 

base building is of course one strong aspect in the game, as well as looting always has been. Or mining. And fighting. And the list goes on.

The new system does encourage looting more, but still has to balance between all the aspects,

because in single player you just have to do them all to survive...and of course this variety of different aspects is mostly what makes the fun in the game.

 

People who do exclusively one aspect have to be part of a group that does the rest, they all depend on each other.

Your playmates depend on you building/fortifying the base, 

while you depend on them bringing you materials, food, guns, ammo,...

 

So why can't they bring you the corresponding magazines about building/crafting they find?

They will all find few because there's a bigger chance that they find the ones they specced in...but they're a group, so it should add up for you one lonely housekeeper hero.

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

That's probably because of your talons...

yeah I might also have forgotten to admit that I can't help nibbling on the insulation to keep my beak sharp...you know...habits

Edited January 10, 2023 by meilodasreh (see edit history)

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Grue said:

 

Water:

Point 1: Your alternatives to being able to collect water from the environment is basically the equivalent to saying "Let them Eat Cake".

You can loot or buy any resource, but that is a good excuse to remove chopping wood and mining from the game? Obviously not.

 

I don't know what you are trying to say by the "Let them eat cake" reference. Your analogy for removing chopping wood and mining from the game are poor. The ability to harvest water has not been removed. Build some dew collectors and you will harvest plenty of water that can be carried around. Find jars of water in POIs and you are harvesting water that can be carried around. Go to a river and drink your fill which is harvesting water as well. That water can't be carried away but it is harvested and used. 

 

1 hour ago, Grue said:

Point 2: Even if the goal is to remove all "containers", that does not necessitate removal of the ability to collect surface water.

 

What necessitates the ability to collect surface water is the infinite supply that it represents. Infinite anything in a survival game is bad news. It may be realistic but it destroys the gameplay. Having actually played it I can attest that it is an interesting and rewarding gameplay loop at least for me. I suspect that most people will like it once the change settles in. For the rest, it shouldn't be hard to mod infinite free water supply on day 1 back into your game.

 

1 hour ago, Grue said:

Point 3: Basically all you are saying is here "Too late now! Lay back and take it, it will be over soon."

 

This only makes you angry because you refuse to accept your role in early access. As long as you disagree and fight against the idea that you signed up to test out the experimental changes the developers make to the game you are going to be perplexed over why TFP changes things without asking us for permission. For 20 alphas now the developers have been making changes and giving them to us to test and play with and then give feedback based on actual play time. I can't think of a single time they reversed something they already implemented before releasing it because some people objected to the theory of it all. Changes and adjustments will be made only after plenty of time has been spent by the larger community playing with the new features and we've moved past all the kneejerk "I hate change" responses and actual constructive feedback can be gathered. So yeah, nothing anyone says will prevent the new changes from being released for A21. People are going to get to try it out and nobody is going to convince the devs to just throw out the latest developments just because it sounds bad.

 

1 hour ago, Grue said:

Point 4:  If the game is so bloody broken that your best solution is to "tuRn oN GoD MOdE", then what does that say about the balance of the game?

 

There is the game and then there is the sandbox. You are confusing the two. The game doesn't need Godmode and it only has elements of a sandbox. The game has limitations and rules the player must follow (or break if they want to cheese something). The game is not intended to be a pure sandbox where you can just do anything and suffer no consequences. I never said the game needs Godmode. You either misunderstood or are intentionally twisting my words.

 

 

1 hour ago, Grue said:

You really mean to tell me that I am the only one who likes building bases? Or mining? Or crafting?

Someone has to stay home to build, at the very least, a functional horde base for the group.

Or is base building "not the norm" in your opinion?

Do you just run from one POI to the next looting piles of garbage with no place to store any of it?

 

No, that's not what I said at all. Base building is awesome and I'd say that if you include POI upgrading with building a base from scratch as "building bases" then it very much is the norm for most people to engage in one or both of those activities. In our group we upgrade a POI for our everyday crafting base and we build a horde night base from scratch so we do both.

 

What I did say (and I suspect you know it full well) is that completely ignoring looting and refusing to do any scavenging or exploring at all is not the norm. I stand by that statement. I am convinced that the majority of players enjoys doing a variety of activities in the game and that exploring poi's and looting them for stuff is very popular.

 

If you are on a team and some are doing all the building and others are out looting predominately that is also normal and fine. As a team you are getting all those activities done. The looters will bring back magazines because it will make sense for everyone on the team to specialize in different magazines. Having everyone read whatever they find themselves will be extremely foolish and as soon as people start playing they will realize this. 5 people all reading Sharp Sticks magazine means all five will be able to craft an orange wooden spear. But giving one person all the Sharp Sticks magazines means that one person will be able to craft top tier spears for everyone on the team. There is zero incentive to read all magazines yourself when on a team as that will horribly dilute the magazines. It may not seem that way when thinking of magazines in terms of current A20 books but when teams start playing they will instantly realize that the only thing that makes sense is to divide up who will craft what and then funnel magazines to each team member. Meanwhile builders will still probably lead their teammates in xp farming as they upgrade blocks as they build...

[unholyjoe]

Roland, the best part i like about no more jars is..

 

1. i dont have a cabinet full of empty jars like in previous alphas.

2. i dont have to worry about going to the desert to get sand to make glass and then forge the jars.

3. less crap taking up needed space in inventory or storage chests.

4. if thirsty stop by any body of water and drink a handful or 2 or take out a jar or so of good water from dew collector.

 

 

[Roland]

24 minutes ago, unholyjoe said:

Roland, the best part i like about no more jars is..

 

1. i dont have a cabinet full of empty jars like in previous alphas.

2. i dont have to worry about going to the desert to get sand to make glass and then forge the jars.

3. less crap taking up needed space in inventory or storage chests.

4. if thirsty stop by any body of water and drink a handful or 2 or take out a jar or so of good water from dew collector.

 

 

 

For me, the best part is that without them the loot containers that used to have them have much better and more useful stuff. Whenever a I watch an A20 streamer open up cupboards and pull out empty bottle after empty bottle I feel like throwing up into an empty bottle.