Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Kosmic Kerman]

2 minutes ago, Roland said:

What mechanic did they add? Quests and daring adventurer have been in the game for years. If you don’t want to skip tiers then don’t. I agree that there could be more down to balance things towards crafting even more but I still do craft a lot more in A21

 

Roland,

 

I couldn't find anything in the patch notes about the Trader rebalance. Can you share anything about how it was rebalanced? For example, is it balanced on game stage or on something else?

[Professor-Pip]

19 hours ago, mstdv inc said:

Are they really little gnomes who put everything in its place at night? Maybe a caring aunt? Zombies? The government? UFOs? 

My personal head-canon is that as you learn to survive, you begin to see more resources you can actually use and you search more thoroughly. So after 30 days (my loot respawn setting) I might go back through a building I looted once before and find more loot, things that I missed before.

[Archer]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

Then your group should probably enable the creative menu and just play the sandbox aspect of the game or find a mod that allows you to ignore the parts of the game you don’t like. Looting and scavenging are major fundamental aspects of the game. 
 

You began by saying there are 10-30 of you who play together and that some like to loot but most like to do base activities. With just three looters out of thirty you should be able to progress along all the magazine trees pretty well. But now you’re changing the goalposts by saying that nobody in your group likes to loot and you all just enjoy building.  That’s great and there is a setting for that available to your group. 
 

The fact that you could play before by ignoring one of the major pillars of the game was simply due to the unfinished nature of a game still in active development. Thankfully there will be mods that will allow your group to play the game with your extreme play style of thirty people who only ever build. 

Looting and scavenging were fine the way they were before, there was nothing wrong with it because for the few of us who did it they could bring enough utility from what they did that it remained beneficial while the rest of us could continue playing the way we wanted - and when I say 'nobody enjoys looting' if it's literally less than 4 people in a group of 30 then yes it's *practically* "nobody" doing it. 1 or 2 people could loot enough to sustain the rest of us and it was like that for years and there was nothing wrong with that, it just allowed each of us to play as we wanted to without need or want to change anything. We pretty much always just played vanilla, default settings, no mods, the game was in a state that kept at least my crowd happy. 

Btw, if it seems like I'm making up a community to give my comments more weight so they seem like the perceived opinions of dozens, I'm in a gaming server of over 2,500 people, there's at least 260ish players on the server who have probably 500 hours or more in it, I'd be more than happy to give you a link to our server to let you go in and see for yourself. 

Scavenging was never completely ignored, we always needed electric & mechanical parts, brass, etc. from the activity, I'm just saying there was no need to put more incentive on that aspect of the game, it was fine the way it was and the way it's changed makes the 'crafting' part of the zombie survival crafting game a little 'c' crafting game. 

I didn't want to use sandbox mode, we just wanted to play the game as it had been, that's all. Updated graphics, new traders, all cool stuff - would still rather keep the old system in place than this new one. 
 

[RipClaw]

17 minutes ago, Archer said:

The rest of this stuff looks good for streamers and I understand it's important for the success of their game to have streamers and YouTubers making entertaining videos and watching videos of people just building bases all day is boring - so I get the logic behind the change itself. 

It depends on how creative the base builder is. WaywardEko did some streams a while where he did nothing but talk and build a base in the prefab editor. People really loved it.

 

[Archer]

Just now, RipClaw said:

It depends on how creative the base builder is. WaywardEko did some streams a while where he did nothing but talk and build a base in the prefab editor. People really loved it.

 

Fair point, tbh I don't actually watch many gaming videos, I've usually got code or a Discord server up on my other screens when I'm playing lol

[Riamus]

You have to understand that although there are many players who only build or mine or craft, many more will play the entire game or at least most of it.  They are not developing the game just for people who play a single part of the game but for those who play all parts of the game.  It may not be what you like but it's just how it is.  You also have to remember that you haven't played A21 yet.  What you see on streams isn't going to give you a complete picture of how the game works for you and your playstyle.  And when it comes down to it, if your playstyle needs a little tweak with the update, then you'll just have to make that tweak.  This is what happens when you choose to play a game that is in early access.  You have chosen to play a game that is changing and those changes may or may not be what you like.

 

@RipClaw Page 289 isn't loading properly for me, so I can't quote you.  You said that you can't get an increase to a magazine without reducing others.  This may be correct, though it can be done by simply having that boost be a chance of getting something in addition to what you normally get.  So the container gets 100% of loot distributed in a certain way and then your boost gives you the chance to get one extra magazine on top of that.  Now, I don't know that it is doing that.  It's just how it could work.  I am pretty sure I saw a dev or perhaps a moderator state that the boost does not reduce the chance of finding other magazines.  But a really quick search didn't turn it up.  Either I misread it or it is there and just not easy to search for.  Honestly, either way is fine by me.  I don't think it's an issue.

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

[Larry_Flynt]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

Just a note... we are supposedly allowed multiple land claims in A21 rather than only 1, so this shouldn't be an issue.  I don't know how many we're allowed to have but even 3 would cover most people's needs.

You can define the allowed number of active Land Claim Blocks already in A20 in the serverconfig.xml 
I guess that setting will still be changeable in A21.

[Roland]

20 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

But WaywardEko only plays on default settings.

 

The formula for the trader stage is "player level * (1+trader quest level) + (Daring Adventurer level * 10)". In the formula, Daring Adventurer has the highest weight. If you put most of your points into Daring Adventurer, the trader stage will rise very quickly.
 

They added the trader stage. Daring adventurer only gave you more options you could choose from but now it pretty much determines the trader stage.

I see what you’re saying. The trader stage allows for greater control on balancing and also is another dial that modders can tweak to make the trader more or less significant. I don’t see that as an addition that nullifies attempts to keep the trader from outpacing the player’s crafting ability. 
 

The devs will always offer choices so that if there are players who like getting awesome trader rewards and don’t care about crafting there is a path for that. Nobody who wants more crafting in the game must perk up daring adventurer. 

[Archer]

17 minutes ago, Riamus said:

You have to understand that although there are many players who only build or mine or craft, many more will play the entire game or at least most of it.  They are not developing the game just for people who play a single part of the game but for those who play all parts of the game.  It may not be what you like but it's just how it is.  You also have to remember that you haven't played A21 yet.  What you see on streams isn't going to give you a complete picture of how the game works for you and your playstyle.  And when it comes down to it, if your playstyle needs a little tweak with the update, then you'll just have to make that tweak.  This is what happens when you choose to play a game that is in early access.  You have chosen to play a game that is changing and those changes may or may not be what you like.

They were doing fine.
I liked what they did before.
From A15 up to the most recent one, we had no complaints.
Bugs were there, sure but bugs happen in early access. 
It's taken a little longer than expected to develop, that's fine, sometimes teams run into unexpected roadblocks, ideas don't pan out the way they were planned, I get all of that. No complaints. 
This sudden change of course was just not necessary because before we were a shining example of how *everyone* got to do something they enjoyed. If the developers want to make it so that people who play the game for different reasons in different ways can all enjoy themselves, I would say that was already well accomplished. 
Looters, builders, crafters, all stayed busy, all progressed fairly evenly, and it was fine. I *understand* that for people who loot, they want to have more of a *reason* to do it, they want more of an incentive there to motivate them to get out there and see the world, and how that's a hard thing to do because if the main reason you play is looting and exploring, you're always going to hit that wall of "well, now I've explored, and looted everything - now what?" so the fun pimps I would imagine are looking for ways to cater to that crowd. 
Totally makes sense - I get the dilemma. 
And they absolutely should get their additional content, I don't want to 'punish' people who enjoy exploring and looting, if they need a better reason to get out there and do it - great, give them a reason. Just don't use this as the carrot on the stick. 
I just think this medicine is worse than the disease. 
I agree lots of people play for lots of different reasons, totally in agreement, I'm just saying that the way that was balanced out before was fine, at least for us - we never had any complaints about it. 
It's just a 'not needed' change. 
Edit: Maybe it needed tweaks here and there and some knobs dialed up or down a bit, but it didn't need this overhaul that it got.

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

[Riamus]

8 minutes ago, Archer said:

I'm just saying that the way that was balanced out before was fine, at least for us - we never had any complaints about it. 
It's just a 'not needed' change. 

That's kind of the point.  You didn't complain about it but others did for a variety of different reasons based on how they play.  Try it out and see how it works before deciding that it's bad.  That's all I'm saying.

[Roland]

31 minutes ago, Archer said:

Looting and scavenging were fine the way they were before, there was nothing wrong with it because for the few of us who did it they could bring enough utility from what they did that it remained beneficial while the rest of us could continue playing the way we wanted - and when I say 'nobody enjoys looting' if it's literally less than 4 people in a group of 30 then yes it's *practically* "nobody" doing it. 1 or 2 people could loot enough to sustain the rest of us and it was like that for years and there was nothing wrong with that, it just allowed each of us to play as we wanted to without need or want to change anything. We pretty much always just played vanilla, default settings, no mods, the game was in a state that kept at least my crowd happy. 

Btw, if it seems like I'm making up a community to give my comments more weight so they seem like the perceived opinions of dozens, I'm in a gaming server of over 2,500 people, there's at least 260ish players on the server who have probably 500 hours or more in it, I'd be more than happy to give you a link to our server to let you go in and see for yourself. 

Scavenging was never completely ignored, we always needed electric & mechanical parts, brass, etc. from the activity, I'm just saying there was no need to put more incentive on that aspect of the game, it was fine the way it was and the way it's changed makes the 'crafting' part of the zombie survival crafting game a little 'c' crafting game. 

I didn't want to use sandbox mode, we just wanted to play the game as it had been, that's all. Updated graphics, new traders, all cool stuff - would still rather keep the old system in place than this new one. 
 

Looting and scavenging were fine before and they are very much improved now. Your 1 or 2 looters will be very happy. 
 

Two looters will still be able to keep your group flush with magazines just like they kept you flush with electronic parts in the past. If the magazines aren’t coming fast enough for your enjoyment then some of you might need to do a quest here or there. There really shouldn’t be a huge change to what your group is doing other than figuring out who is going to craft what. 
 

In your opening post your main worry was that builders would not be able to level up. Hopefully you understand now that leveling up hasn’t changed and that by building and upgrading blocks you will still earn xp and still advance because the new magazines don’t control that.

 

I can see that I can’t convince you but I’m very confident that your group will see that with some teamwork everything will be okay and builders can still build as they did before. 
 

For single player, that’s not true. You do have to loot as a single player if you want to be able to craft better stuff. But in group play as long as you’ve got someone who likes to loot then you’re fine. 
 

[Archer]

12 minutes ago, Riamus said:

That's kind of the point.  You didn't complain about it but others did for a variety of different reasons based on how they play.  Try it out and see how it works before deciding that it's bad.  That's all I'm saying.

It's a fair point that I haven't played it yet - you're right. 

But if they changed course because of player feedback, 99% of the people who play this game, aren't going to actually give good* feedback. 99% of people who play all games don't give feedback, most don't actually go onto the forums, or even the subreddits or Discord servers, the vast majority just don't. It's more often than not, a bad sample of the people playing the video game. Unfortunately for a lot of businesses, the only truly reliable data most companies have to go off of is whether or not their product is selling. *Sometimes* in *some* cases, games can get review bombed, just like movies or books/shows, etc. and it seems like the customer base of a product is extremely engaged. It happens, but it's honestly rare. But here's food for thought - *I'M* here for the first time ever, and again I've played this game for close to 9, almost 10 years or something like that at this point.
I made this account just to point out how much *I* don't like the sound of where this is going, and I've never complained once about the game or it's direction - ever, until now. 
 

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

[Roland]

8 minutes ago, Archer said:

But if they changed course because of player feedback, 99% of the people who play this game, aren't going to actually give good* feedback.

This isn’t a course change. It’s adding another sail to make the ship make better use of the wind. The course is player progression and they are still on course with that but they’ve introduced a change that really adds to the feature.  Feedback definitely contributed to the changes but did not determine the actual changes. Those came from the creativity of the design team who are not puppets of .01% of the player base that gives feedback. 

[Riamus]

14 minutes ago, Archer said:

It's a fair point that I haven't played it yet - you're right. 

But if they changed course because of player feedback, 99% of the people who play this game, aren't going to actually give good* feedback. 99% of people who play all games don't give feedback, most don't actually go onto the forums, or even the subreddits or Discord servers, the vast majority just don't. It's more often than not, a bad sample of the people playing the video game. Unfortunately for a lot of businesses, the only truly reliable data most companies have to go off of is whether or not their product is selling. *Sometimes* in *some* cases, games can get review bombed, just like movies or books/shows, etc. and it seems like the customer base of a product is extremely engaged. It happens, but it's honestly rare. But here's food for thought - *I'M* here for the first time ever, and again I've played this game for close to 9, almost 10 years or something like that at this point.
I made this account just to point out how much *I* don't like the sound of where this is going, and I've never complained once about the game or it's direction - ever, until now. 
 

True, though feedback comes in more forms than posts.  They get lots of data on how people play the game and what they do in the game and all that helps to determine what works or doesn't.  And as far as complaints go, a complaint is still good feedback because it still shows what people don't like.  They just aren't going to put much stock in such feedback if the person hasn't yet tried the changes.  Afterwards they will pay more attention to feedback and tweak things to work the best overall.  It still might not be what some people want but they'll never please everyone.  There is a reason they support modding.

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

[Archer]

13 minutes ago, Roland said:

Looting and scavenging were fine before and they are very much improved now. Your 1 or 2 looters will be very happy. 
 

Two looters will still be able to keep your group flush with magazines just like they kept you flush with electronic parts in the past. If the magazines aren’t coming fast enough for your enjoyment then some of you might need to do a quest here or there. There really shouldn’t be a huge change to what your group is doing other than figuring out who is going to craft what. 
 

In your opening post your main worry was that builders would not be able to level up. Hopefully you understand now that leveling up hasn’t changed and that by building and upgrading blocks you will still earn xp and still advance because the new magazines don’t control that.

 

I can see that I can’t convince you but I’m very confident that your group will see that with some teamwork everything will be okay and builders can still build as they did before. 
 

For single player, that’s not true. You do have to loot as a single player if you want to be able to craft better stuff. But in group play as long as you’ve got someone who likes to loot then you’re fine. 
 

The skilling up thing was indeed cleared up yes - I understand it's about tool quality and so forth now. 
I hope you're right, but again I still find the change to be the one and only time I've been motivated to pop in on the official forums and actually voice my opinion. I still feel this was mostly to appease a vocal minority who likely played the game quite a lot, and wanted more 'content' to keep them motivated to log in, but people who play the game for 3,000+ hours or something and have burned through all the content that fast aren't really representative of your average player (speaking for myself, even I probably play more than the average player does) and I think they've just been given feedback by a very dedicated, but exceptional portion of their player base. They wanted to listen to the folks who play their game, but the primary feedback comes from that tiny portion - not the vast majority.
They want to deliver a good product, and so they listen to what people tell them, like good game devs do, but for a lot of titles out there, the problem actually is oftentimes listening to their players, unfortunately (I say this as a player myself). The Fun  Pimps were doing great with the direction they had before this drop, and whoever told them otherwise, I don't think represented most of us. 

[BFT2020]

3 minutes ago, Archer said:

The skilling up thing was indeed cleared up yes - I understand it's about tool quality and so forth now. 
I hope you're right, but again I still find the change to be the one and only time I've been motivated to pop in on the official forums and actually voice my opinion. I still feel this was mostly to appease a vocal minority who likely played the game quite a lot, and wanted more 'content' to keep them motivated to log in

 

Actually this has nothing to do with adding more content, but addressing a crafting system that was for the most part lacking.  All you had to do was max perk into one of the equipment perks and then you are producing Q5 gear, of any tier.  Now if I play agility, I can still be able to craft higher level non-agility gear without having to go down those attributes.  I can also craft a lower quality item if I don't have enough resources to craft the higher tier.  And just because I can craft a Q5 double barrel shotgun, doesn't mean I can craft a Q5 auto-shotgun now.

[Archer]

2 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

 

Actually this has nothing to do with adding more content, but addressing a crafting system that was for the most part lacking.  All you had to do was max perk into one of the equipment perks and then you are producing Q5 gear, of any tier.  Now if I play agility, I can still be able to craft higher level non-agility gear without having to go down those attributes.  I can also craft a lower quality item if I don't have enough resources to craft the higher tier.  And just because I can craft a Q5 double barrel shotgun, doesn't mean I can craft a Q5 auto-shotgun now.

I guess I just didn't play it with anyone who was bothered by how that was set up.

[LostBoy]

So if we can have multiple Claim blocks and or Vehicles prevent a particular chunk from resetting I should be good.

 

 

Thanks for the answers everyone

 

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, Gamida said:

The above example (and am pretty sure it is not how you meant it but it may sound like it to some) is like a husband and wife where the husband works outside the house and the wife takes care of the home and kids. The earlier example of a typical family. It would mean that because the wife stays home she doesn't get any say on how the family income is spent as she didn't actually make the money.

I don't know if you're a man or a woman, but, no.

To follow your example, it's like if the husband works his ass off at work, and his boss gives, as a fringe benefit, a company car to his wife and not to him.  

 

What I intend is direct correlation: you're a marine, you do something heroic in war, and someone else gets the medal. That kind of stuff.

Or, as a more down to earth example... you work your ass off at the gym, but someone else ends jacked.

 

3 hours ago, RipClaw said:

This is actually not possible. As I understand it, the combined probability for the contents of a loot container is always 100%. So if you assign a slightly higher probability to one item to appear then the probability of the others is automatically reduced. I would compare this to a 16 sided dice with the same number on two sides.

If I'm not mistaken, the perks give you, sort of, an additional loot table on top of the basic one.

But I could have misunderstood on this point, since it was only mentioned once very briefly.

 

Edited June 11, 2023 by Jost Amman (see edit history)

[Sram]

@Roland, @faatal On December 13, our favorite game turns 10 years old! Are you planning to do something in honor of such a grandiose date?

[Jost Amman]

3 hours ago, Roland said:

But if you don’t take daring adventurer and don’t spam quests then the trader is much better balanced compared to A20. So now it’s a choice for how you want to play. If you want to skip to higher tier gear you can take those skills to reflect your desires and awesome stuff will be for sale and rewards. But if you want to craft most of your own gear then do a quest per day and don’t take the perk that increases quest rewards and you can have that kind of fun. In A20 the trader outpaced crafting no matter what you did. 
 

It is interesting to me that questing is modeled right now after LBD. As you quest you get better at questing and the only way to get better at questing and get better quests is to quest.

This is just a joke... but why does everyone keep calling them quests instead of jobs?? 

It's not like you're going to save a princess in distress and bring her back to the castle, you know? 

 

5 minutes ago, Sram said:

@Roland, @faatal On December 13, our favorite game turns 10 years old! Are you planning to do something in honor of such a grandiose date?

Spoiler

 

 

[Jost Amman]

2 hours ago, Archer said:

The "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?" part would be me and basically my whole community. You're just rewarding a *playstyle* more than a different one with this new system which is *bad* I can't stress enough *most* people (and I realize I'm drawing from personal experience, so it's anecdotal) that I've ever played this game with in over 900 *do not play to loot, explore the map, and kill thousands of zombies*. That's kinda the core of the complaint in the new system, the way the game was shaped before people could play how they *wanted* and everyone sort of broke even in the long run, at least we progressed at similar rates as a group. 
If I wanted to wander around a map, explore, do missions, etc. I'd play one of the other dozen or so games in my steam library that accommodate that, the reason we log into 7 Days is we enjoy its base building / horde aspect. 
The rest of this stuff looks good for streamers and I understand it's important for the success of their game to have streamers and YouTubers making entertaining videos and watching videos of people just building bases all day is boring - so I get the logic behind the change itself. 
I just don't like it because it's not what the game (I thought) was going to be centered on when it first started developing ten years ago. 

It's all well and good, and I empathize with you and your friends... BUT

Looting and exploring is evidently part of the core gameplay in 7D2D.

 

So, what you're gonna do about it?

Change some core elements of the game because you and your friends refuse to acknowledge that part?

I don't think it's fair. The devs have already given us the tools to use in these cases: modding.

[Gamida]

17 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

I don't know if you're a man or a woman, but, no.

To follow your example, it's like if the husband works his ass off at work, and his boss gives, as a fringe benefit, a company car to his wife and not to him.  

 

What I intend is direct correlation: you're a marine, you do something heroic in war, and someone else gets the medal. That kind of stuff.

Or, as a more down to earth example... you work your ass off at the gym, but someone else ends jacked.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the perks give you, sort of, an additional loot table on top of the basic one.

But I could have misunderstood on this point, since it was only mentioned once very briefly.

 

 

 

Well my example doesn't change if I was a man or woman saying it

I took from your example and from what I know of the game as the bonus getting shared like it is now. I don't know of any thing in game where someone would harvest or loot and they not get any bonus and others in party do.

My example was also probably not the best as was on spur of moment.

[Archer]

14 minutes ago, Jost Amman said:

It's all well and good, and I empathize with you and your friends... BUT

Looting and exploring is evidently part of the core gameplay in 7D2D.

 

So, what you're gonna do about it?

Change some core elements of the game because you and your friends refuse to acknowledge that part?

I don't think it's fair. The devs have already given us the tools to use in these cases: modding.

Looting and exploring were already part of the core gameplay in 7D2D. 
That didn't need to change as it was - we still had to go out and loot *and* explore in order to get by. This is just turning the knob up on that dial more and I'm saying it's not wanted by most, and not needed by any. 

The game was fine before it didn't need a change, it's weird to take the position that, "well just mod it if you don't like it" 
OK? 
Why didn't the people who sat on these forums and asked for this "just mod it" instead of hanging out in here? We played vanilla, liked the game as it had been designed, and if the only reason it's changed course is because people were griping about it being the way they'd originally envisioned it, then again I say, they didn't speak for all, or even a majority, of the people playing it. 

[Riamus]

7 minutes ago, Archer said:

Looting and exploring were already part of the core gameplay in 7D2D. 
That didn't need to change as it was - we still had to go out and loot *and* explore in order to get by. This is just turning the knob up on that dial more and I'm saying it's not wanted by most, and not needed by any. 

The game was fine before it didn't need a change, it's weird to take the position that, "well just mod it if you don't like it" 
OK? 
Why didn't the people who sat on these forums and asked for this "just mod it" instead of hanging out in here? We played vanilla, liked the game as it had been designed, and if the only reason it's changed course is because people were griping about it being the way they'd originally envisioned it, then again I say, they didn't speak for all, or even a majority, of the people playing it. 

Just because your group likes something doesn't mean you are "most" people.  Many people don't do what you do and I'd go so far as to say that most do not.  People tend to play with people who have a similar playstyle and similar likes and dislikes.  That doesn't mean that you're in the majority just because others you play with feel the same way you do.

 

I think the change is a good one and if you read through comments from people in the streams and in here after the streams started, many people have said they like the changes to crafting.  Far more than the couple of people who said they don't.

 

The simple fact is that you play the game in a way that isn't the "normal" way (i.e. playing all aspects of the game, including questing and scavenging) and so the game is going to change to support those who play the entire game and if you want things to be different for your playstyle, modding is there for you.