Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Old Crow]

Here's another thing I had a question on @Roland if you happen to know - "Explosion kills can trigger buff effects"

What's this mean? Would a zombie death by say, a contact grenade, trigger the stamina regain of Flurry of Blows rank 3?

[Roland]

1 minute ago, RipClaw said:

It has always been said that it is a safety net but then you would expect an approximate equal distribution in the magazines. But if you look at the streams, you'll notice that players are finding significantly more magazines for their specialization. Either luck is on the players side or the boost is bigger than you think.
 

All I can speak to is my own experience and we have had streamers ask on the discord if the boost was functioning because they didn’t feel like they were finding the parts and mags that lined up with their perks. Those same streamers could start a new world and have a different experience. I’ve seen it both ways but I’ve always always gathered in a large variety of magazines and with multiple looters you find a ton that everyone can use. 
 

After Monday we will have threads reporting that the progression is too fast because the boost is too strong and threads demanding that the boost be fixed because it’s Day 7 and their perked weapon is still an orange level primitive…

[Jost Amman]

35 minutes ago, Archer said:

Someone who loots is rarely the same person who crafts tools and items. 

How is that a problem?

 

Suppose that the guy who goes out looting is specialized in shotguns. He will need better shotguns, right?

 

Well, you said that back at home, you have the "crafters". That guy will also find more shotgun related magazines, but he will bring them back to the crafters so that they can become great at crafting shotguns. Once they do, they'll craft better and better shotguns for their friends who are looting.

 

The same goes for every other type of specialization, every looter will need better versions of what they use as a weapon/armor or tool, so the crafters will have more magazines to support them by crafting what they need.

 

That's the PLUS of the new system. Now let's get a look at the NORMAL part.

 

Your crafter builders will want to be able to craft better tools, some workstations and maybe some vehicles, so they need magazines for that.

In this case, they won't get the BONUS on loot, because their friends won't be specialized into that stuff.

 

But that's easily counterbalanced by the fact that a lot of people who go out looting will still find A LOT of other magazines for stuff they're not specialized into, PLUS they can go to "themed" POIs where you know you'll find MORE of the magazines your friends need, PLUS, the "questers", can get Magazine Bundles as quest rewards and have a bigger chance to get also magazines for their friends, PLUS you can BUY magazines from the trader.

 

All in all, it doesn't look that bad to me.

 

Also, I don't think it's fair, both in real life and in a game, to get rewards for things you don't do yourself (e.g.: if you stay home, fine, but why should you get the loot bonus??).

[Roland]

5 minutes ago, Old Crow said:

Here's another thing I had a question on @Roland if you happen to know - "Explosion kills can trigger buff effects"

What's this mean? Would a zombie death by say, a contact grenade, trigger the stamina regain of Flurry of Blows rank 3?

Sorry. I don’t know for sure. I doubt it would affect flurry of Blows since that is specific to clubs but it may affect buffs you currently have from candy like bonus xp gain from kills etc. Just guessing. 

[Neminsis]

56 minutes ago, Roland said:

I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the new progression.

And I think that you're not taking into account how the exp gain rate for miners and builders is tied to the quality of the tools they're using.

 

7 minutes ago, Roland said:

It actually hurts the group for looters to read everything they find.

And yet the looters are incentivized to do just that by the sheer number of books, the overall generous amounts of loot, and the limits of inventory and encumbrance. 

We've been testing this dynamic specifically, and yes the stay at homes can keep up levels wise for a time, but once the looters have a bicycle their exp gain takes off. If you do not do those quests at the same rate as the looters you're left behind. The looters are incentivized to progress through the quest tiers as quickly as possible, which only widens the gap in exp gain and equipment levels. 

Part of the problem is that looters need the same tools as the stay at homes, which sets up competition for the tool crafting books. It's somewhat offset by the ability to sell bulk resources to the trader and buying books, but the area around the base is quickly stripped and then you're facing mobility problems. You have to quest and when you do you'll be under equipped and subject to the same party game stage 'bonus' so your solo questing will be extra difficult or you're playing tagalong. It really doesn't matter how altruistic your teammates are, you have to quest.

[PoloPoPo]

14 minutes ago, Archer said:

After the game progresses to a certain point, if you're supporting a population of more than 10 individuals, the 'looted' radius around the base grows quite quickly after a couple of weeks, and you have to go further, and further, and further out to find an adequate amount of a particular item or resource. Brass especially becomes a difficult thing, and we sometimes in very late game in the current build would melt down a lot of our dukes (I mean thousands of 'em) to make it through the next blood moons in the later game stages in the 200+ range. 

So it becomes fundamentally necessary for looters to go further out, and thus be gone longer and longer to get to and from those places. Even with all the vehicles unlocked and available in the game, it takes a lot of time to support a base with a big crowd of people. 

In my opinion you are overthinking the whole magazines topic. If you have 10 people looting the whole time simultaneously they will bring back hundreds of magazines to your base per day. You, as the crafter / builder / whatever, that never leaves the base, will read magazines much more frequently than a solo mode player could ever dream of simply because the amount of found magazines is multiplied by the amount of people looting. If your looters don't read the magazines themselves but bring them back to you there won't be any problems, I am sure just from what I have seen in the A21 streams yesterday.

[Old Crow]

4 minutes ago, Roland said:

Sorry. I don’t know for sure. I doubt it would affect flurry of Blows since that is specific to clubs but it may affect buffs you currently have from candy like bonus xp gain from kills etc. Just guessing. 

 

No worries! I was using the current Flurry of Blows as an example but I get what you're saying.

[Aldranon]

I bet spears get nerfed in a week if not sooner.

I hope not, because it would be fun to try a "fully operational" spear build for a few months.

[Archer]

3 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

How is that a problem?

 

Suppose that the guy who goes out looting is specialized in shotguns. He will need better shotguns, right?

 

Well, you said that back at home, you have the "crafters". That guy will also find more shotgun related magazines, but he will bring them back to the crafters so that they can become great at crafting shotguns. Once they do, they'll craft better and better shotguns for their friends who are looting.

 

The same goes for every other type of specialization, every looter will need better versions of what they use as a weapon/armor or tool, so the crafters will have more magazines to support them by crafting what they need.

 

That's the PLUS of the new system. Now let's get a look at the NORMAL part.

 

Your crafter builders will want to be able to craft better tools, some workstations and maybe some vehicles, so they need magazines for that.

In this case, they won't get the BONUS on loot, because their friends won't be specialized into that stuff.

 

But that's easily counterbalanced by the fact that a lot of people who go out looting will still find A LOT of other magazines for stuff they're not specialized into, PLUS they can go to "themed" POIs where you know you'll find MORE of the magazines your friends need, PLUS, the "questers", can get Magazine Bundles as quest rewards and have a bigger chance to get also magazines for their friends, PLUS you can BUY magazines from the trader.

 

All in all, it doesn't look that bad to me.

 

Also, I don't think it's fair, both in real life and in a game, to get rewards for things you don't do yourself (e.g.: if you stay home, fine, but why should you get the loot bonus??).

You make some good points here, but I still have to point out that the need for 'looted-only-stuff' in the game goes up significantly under this mechanic, and you mentioned 'a lot of people who go out looting will still find a lot of other magazines', in most servers I've ever played in at least since A15, that's usually 1 out of 10 people. Most of us either stay at base, go collect a particular resource like wood or minerals, and 1 or 2 people quest, 1 or 2 might be a scavenger/looter.

This makes it sound like we'll need more people in that role now to go out and find these magazines, which may be a thing that was intended but the 'Crafting' part under the title of the game is honestly what drew my crowd into it.

And as a sort of final comment on it - *why* are we again changing the dang perks? They were *fine* before and have been fine for quite a long time 😕 I love everything else in this update but the new system (and again, I've played this since like, early 2014) just seems the most convoluted/weird/unnecessary out of all the changes I've seen from the game over the past 9/10 years. I'm rarely the type of person to go and make an account on a game forum lol. Maybe I'm just getting old and it feels like the grocery store has rearranged its aisles again, but I'm not sure this really should have been overhauled the way it was done, if it should have been overhauled at all.  Without trying it out, I can tell you that if you'd left it the same as it was before, you'd still have gotten another 1,000 hours at least of play out of the crew and me, if not more. 

9 minutes ago, PoloPoPo said:

In my opinion you are overthinking the whole magazines topic. If you have 10 people looting the whole time simultaneously they will bring back hundreds of magazines to your base per day. You, as the crafter / builder / whatever, that never leaves the base, will read magazines much more frequently than a solo mode player could ever dream of simply because the amount of found magazines is multiplied by the amount of people looting. If your looters don't read the magazines themselves but bring them back to you there won't be any problems, I am sure just from what I have seen in the A21 streams yesterday.

The big thing is that most of us just like to build / mine / harvest . 1 out of 10 people maybe loot, the rest are mining iron, coal, lead, others are working the forges and making forged iron or steel to upgrade the walls, others are making bullets and sorting out the sorting box that looters drop their inventories into after they come back from a long run. 90% of us are playing to just build stuff, and fight off the big hordes that come on the blood moons. The quests, the missions, etc. all that stuff is done by literally less than 2 or 3 people for 12-15-20 humans all online at once. 

Most of us play this for the *Crafting* part of the title, and we were able to stay mostly around our little area and play. 

It was fine, that didn't need to be 'fixed', we're happy just trying to stay alive long enough to reach gamestage level 300, we've done it off and on for years like that. We had enough of a forced need to loot with brass as it was. Now we have this as well.

[Neminsis]

9 minutes ago, PoloPoPo said:

If you have 10 people looting the whole time simultaneously

If you have less than that though...Not so much.

2 players, it doesn't work very well.
3 players, it might work better because of the increased inventory of the 2 looters.
4+ players it would definitely work if the base was actually near enough building/mining resources and you planned on building something gigantic, you still wouldn't keep up in levels with the looters after a point.

[katarynna]

Archer, another thing you are not considering is that your looters don't need to read ANY magazines.

 

ALL that the magazines affect is crafting quality. You can have all of the other up to 30 people feed magazines to the one builder/crafter that is on most often until he finishes a category, then start a second crafter on magazines.

 

If you want to speed rush one particular item... say workstations... you could also have your looters sacrifice 1 point each into the perk related to workstations so that they will get more of those magazines. Or have each looter put one point into one assigned specific perk so that looter A finds more workstation mags and looter B finds more cooking magazines, etc.

 

If you are concerned about weapons specifically, have them prioritize questing at locations that have a high rate of shotgun messiah crates. If you are concerned about tools specifically, focus working stiff crate locations.

 

Since you say most of your group are stay-at-home builder types, you could go together once per day to do a t1 quest as a group. It will take 2 hours max in game time in a large group, you never need to move up to t2 or higher quests to keep it quick and easy, and you often get magazines offered as a reward.

 

Those are just some of the things that came immediately to mind. I am sure there are many others.

 

Also, all the perk points your builder/crafters used to use to get recipes can now be spent on other things to improve yourselves.

 

If you are creative and positive, you almost definitely won't have problems. And if you do, provide feedback in a constructive manner. Note what methods your group used to try to make the system work and how it failed you. This is the first implementation of this system. Feedback based on actual gameplay by people who tried to work with the system but couldn't get a successful outcome will be invaluable for future balancing passes.

[PoloPoPo]

8 minutes ago, Archer said:

90% of us are playing to just build stuff, and fight off the big hordes that come on the blood moons. The quests, the missions, etc. all that stuff is done by literally less than 2 or 3 people for 12-15-20 humans all online at once. 

Just play A21 and see how it turns out 😃

Maybe your group has to tweak things a little bit but that should be expected when participating in an Alpha. If you can't find more people being happy with looting and exploring the map you guys could do burried supply quests to get the magazines as quest rewards from time to time. Or buy more magazines. Or just be happy with slower progression because who cares?

 

If A21 is not for your group (which I doubt) you could always go back to A20 and play another 1000 hours there.

  

Just now, Neminsis said:

[...] you still wouldn't keep up in levels with the looters after a point.

So what? Who says players that stay at a single spot all the time on a huge open world map should keep up with levels of players that explore the map, loot and kill thousands of zombies? If I was a builder I'd be happy to craft and build and certainly wouldn't be bothered with my team mates' levels.

[Neminsis]

1 minute ago, katarynna said:

Archer, another thing you are not considering is that your looters don't need to read ANY magazines.

No, but they do have to carry them in the same slots as other resources and at the same encumbrance as those other resources...and that's where the problem lies.

 

[Archer]

12 minutes ago, katarynna said:

Archer, another thing you are not considering is that your looters don't need to read ANY magazines.

 

ALL that the magazines affect is crafting quality. You can have all of the other up to 30 people feed magazines to the one builder/crafter that is on most often until he finishes a category, then start a second crafter on magazines.

 

If you want to speed rush one particular item... say workstations... you could also have your looters sacrifice 1 point each into the perk related to workstations so that they will get more of those magazines. Or have each looter put one point into one assigned specific perk so that looter A finds more workstation mags and looter B finds more cooking magazines, etc.

 

If you are concerned about weapons specifically, have them prioritize questing at locations that have a high rate of shotgun messiah crates. If you are concerned about tools specifically, focus working stiff crate locations.

 

Since you say most of your group are stay-at-home builder types, you could go together once per day to do a t1 quest as a group. It will take 2 hours max in game time in a large group, you never need to move up to t2 or higher quests to keep it quick and easy, and you often get magazines offered as a reward.

 

Those are just some of the things that came immediately to mind. I am sure there are many others.

 

Also, all the perk points your builder/crafters used to use to get recipes can now be spent on other things to improve yourselves.

 

If you are creative and positive, you almost definitely won't have problems. And if you do, provide feedback in a constructive manner. Note what methods your group used to try to make the system work and how it failed you. This is the first implementation of this system. Feedback based on actual gameplay by people who tried to work with the system but couldn't get a successful outcome will be invaluable for future balancing passes.

I think much of this just boils down to we aren't a group that really enjoys scavenging or questing or any of that stuff at all. I literally haven't gone on a quest in probably 3 years, it's not because the quests needed to be 'cooler' or have better loot, or just needed a better mechanic to force/incentivize me to do them, I just don't care about them. The game could literally take quests and traders completely out and it would barely affect how I play at all except sometimes when it comes to getting an auger. That's about it. 
Leaving the base to quest, loot, etc all sounds boring to the bulk of the squad. 

Also - I'd mentioned above that the problem I had is that the looters *dont* need to read the magazines at all, and so even if they don't, there's no perk that helps people at home other than having to make the looters 'sacrifice points' into that in order to get the ones they need faster. That doesn't seem like a feature - that seems like a flaw. 

All the points made about *how* to overcome the concerns I have are absolutely good suggestions - just having ten people looting regularly, or just having faith that the game will spawn them at a rate and amount that keeps everyone up to snuff on what they need to be able to produce based on the game stage we're at, but they're good suggestions for people who play the game for more questing and looting primarily, or have more friends playing with them, who play the game for more questing and looting. Either way the pushback's center of gravity is centered around exactly that - some aspects of the game aren't being played because they were poorly designed or needed to be fixed or reworked or overhauled - people just don't do those parts as much because it's not why they're actually playing, and forcing them to do it through a game mechanic might be a medicine worse than the disease to "fix" quests and traders and skills and so forth. 
 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Archer (see edit history)

[Neminsis]

1 minute ago, PoloPoPo said:

If I was a builder

...then your opinion about playing as a builder would have more weight in consideration? I have actually been playing a21 as a builder and solo player...

As it's balanced now, it's great for solo play or as a looter, as a builder, not really. You might be forgetting that the resource gathering and technology perks actually do require a player to gain levels.

[mprojekt]

15 minutes ago, Archer said:

...
And as a sort of final comment on it - *why* are we again changing the dang perks? They were *fine* before and have been fine for quite a long time 😕 I love everything else in this update but the new system (and again, I've played this since like, early 2014) just seems the most convoluted/weird/unnecessary out of all the changes I've seen from the game over the past 9/10 years. I'm rarely the type of person to go and make an account on a game forum lol. Maybe I'm just getting old and it feels like the grocery store has rearranged its aisles again, but I'm not sure this really should have been overhauled the way it was done, if it should have been overhauled at all.  Without trying it out, I can tell you that if you'd left it the same as it was before, you'd still have gotten another 1,000 hours at least of play out of the crew and me, if not more. 

The big thing is that most of us just like to build / mine / harvest . 1 out of 10 people maybe loot, the rest are mining iron, coal, lead, others are working the forges and making forged iron or steel to upgrade the walls, others are making bullets and sorting out the sorting box that looters drop their inventories into after they come back from a long run. 90% of us are playing to just build stuff, and fight off the big hordes that come on the blood moons. The quests, the missions, etc. all that stuff is done by literally less than 2 or 3 people for 12-15-20 humans all online at once. 

Most of us play this for the *Crafting* part of the title, and we were able to stay mostly around our little area and play. 

It was fine, that didn't need to be 'fixed', we're happy just trying to stay alive long enough to reach gamestage level 300, we've done it off and on for years like that. We had enough of a forced need to loot with brass as it was. Now we have this as well.

 

Offhand, Darkness Falls and War of the Walkers both have their own takes on Learn By Doing, but the changes to the world that these overhauls bring are *extensive* and not much like vanilla 7Days. Those are just two overhauls out of dozens. While many overhauls radically alter the setting, some are only mild conversions and also bring back the LBD model.

 

There is also a smorgasbord of "regular" mods and modlets that do not change much more than a single system or even a single item. If you want to maintain most of the vanilla experience, but desire only for perks and skills to be aligned with what you prefer. there might be something that could be done for you by one of our community's many, talented modders.

[Jost Amman]

50 minutes ago, Old Crow said:

No worries! I was using the current Flurry of Blows as an example but I get what you're saying.

I think I just remembered that in one of the Dev Streams one of the devs said that "dismemberment chance" from your attributes/perks, will also affect explosions.

[Old Crow]

2 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

I think I just remembered that in one of the Dev Streams one of the devs said that "dismemberment chance" from your attributes/perks, will also affect explosions.

 

The line in the patch notes seems to indicate the reverse - rather than buffs affecting explosion kills, it infers explosion kills will affect buffs. (ie stamina regain on kill from my example)

[RipClaw]

49 minutes ago, Archer said:

And as a sort of final comment on it - *why* are we again changing the dang perks? They were *fine* before and have been fine for quite a long time 😕 I love everything else in this update but the new system (and again, I've played this since like, early 2014) just seems the most convoluted/weird/unnecessary out of all the changes I've seen from the game over the past 9/10 years.

The reasoning was that you could skip technology levels in the old system. The developers want you to work your way up through the technology levels.

The second reason was that you could build a Q5 steel pickaxe once you found the schematics. You didn't have to start at Q1.

 

Both problems could have been solved in other ways, but the developers settled on the learn by reading system which is good for players that like looting but not so good for players that don't.

 

49 minutes ago, Archer said:

I'm rarely the type of person to go and make an account on a game forum lol. Maybe I'm just getting old and it feels like the grocery store has rearranged its aisles again, but I'm not sure this really should have been overhauled the way it was done, if it should have been overhauled at all.

I feel the same way. And the worst are these posters who say "We are rearranging the store for you" which is just a lie. The structure of the store is changed so that the customer has to search for the items he wants to buy and on the way he passes shelfs  where he might buy something he original didn't want to buy.
 

Edited June 11, 2023 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

46 minutes ago, Archer said:

*why* are we again changing the dang perks? They were *fine* before and have been fine for quite a long time 😕

This specific change (the craft progression through magazines) was necessary because crafting was underwhelming in A20.

 

One of the main issues was that people were "forced" to spec into something they didn't really want/need, just because they could use that workstation, or that vehicle, or some other stuff that wasn't in their main specialization tree. So, after a while, everyone was, more or less, following the same game meta and always choosing the same "must have" perks/trees (see advanced engineering or master chef as examples).

 

The other issue was that in A20 you didn't find enough parts to craft what you knew how to craft.

Everyone found in loot what they needed way before they could actually be able to craft that same weapon/armor/tool.

 

In A21, when you spec into something, you also have a slight better chance to find crafting parts that are needed to craft whatever you're specialized into.

On top of that, in A20, there was also a mechanic where you outright skipped crafting tiers, because when you were able to craft a Q5 Stone Axe, you'd also be able to immediately craft a Q5 Steel Axe, as soon as you unlocked the corresponding perk.

 

Now, progress is more evenly distributed, and even if you're great at crafting Stone Axes, you still need to learn how to craft good Iron Axes and get there in time.

[katarynna]

48 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

No, but they do have to carry them in the same slots as other resources and at the same encumbrance as those other resources...and that's where the problem lies.

 

You say it is a problem, but i see it as an interesting choice. Which do we need more? 12 mechanical parts or 3 workstation magazines?  

 

If you try the system and hate it, provide feedback based on actual gameplay in a constructive manner, detailing how you tried to work with the system and where it failed you. Feedback like that is valuable for balancing purposes. Feedback based on how you fear it will work.... not so much.

[Neminsis]

7 minutes ago, katarynna said:

If you try the system and hate it, provide feedback based on actual gameplay in a constructive manner, detailing how you tried to work with the system and where it failed you. Feedback like that is valuable for balancing purposes. Feedback based on how you fear it will work.... not so much.

Scroll up, I've mentioned multiple times that I am actually playing A21 and testing this specific dynamic and what my results have been.

[spud42]

ok, just watching jawoodles second stream.  he just found a workbench in the wild that works! is this a thing again? This was upstairs in the truck stop. 

will trader workbenches work now too? Or is it just random workbenches in poi"s ??

played a A20 game recently where i got to the 80th day befor i found a trader to sell me a workbench and still have not found the schematic. 

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, spud42 said:

ok, just watching jawoodles second stream.  he just found a workbench in the wild that works! is this a thing again?

There is no mention of this in the release notes. Maybe the level designer accidentally placed a working workbench instead of the helper block.
 

EDIT: I watched part of the stream and found the scene

 

https://www.youtube.com/live/qebCe1xXmKM?feature=share&t=6610

 

Seems to me like a bug.

Edited June 11, 2023 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[Moldy Bread]

16 hours ago, Gronal said:

This has been talked about a lot, but to catch you up. Yes just like the gas cans, oil bottles, acid bottles, etc.

Oh, so it's a stupid change? got ya.

 

Hopefully fixed by modders.