Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Neminsis]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

Not so. When you play in a group it becomes obvious very quickly that it is monumentally stupid for everyone to read every book they find without coordination. 

I'm not going to disagree about the level of stupidity of this behavior, but given the encumbrance limits and the number of books at the start of game it is going to happen. People are going to take the quickest, shortest, most direct route unless 'explicitly' incentivized to do otherwise. Yes, you can coordinate pretty easily if you have a group that you've been playing with for a while, and you're all online at the same time, and that group is large enough to offset the resource requirements/encumbrance ratio, but that's not going to happen for brand new players, and first impressions matter.

 

5 hours ago, Roland said:

If you and I are competing in any way as a cooperative team then we are dooming ourselves.

When there's a limited number of resources and carry capacity, competition is inevitable because ultimately it's a competition between those resources, carry capacity, and the ticking of the clock. Those crafting skills can be carried around free of charge in the looters head and be employed at their convenience when they're back at base while at the same time maximizing the amount or resources that can be carried back to the group. It's perfectly logical for the looter to not carry everything back.
 

6 hours ago, Roland said:

Feeding books to the right people isn’t altruism. It is self interest strategy.

If you were farming social credits maybe, but it doesn't really have any negative effect on the looter to be able to cook their own food, make their own tools, or craft workstations, at the same point they'd be dropping off the books for someone else to do it while leaving the resources to do so behind.
 

 

6 hours ago, Roland said:

Then your opinion about playing in a group would have more weight in consideration?

I've stated explicitly that my tests were limited to the constraints of streamer weekend so that I could only test solo and two player, and my speculation was that larger groups would find less of an issue with this. I do also play with a group but for streamer weekend it was deemed best to limit it to those with responsibility for the channel to reduce the possibility of a leak. 

Conversely, if you've only played this with a larger group that's used to coordinating you might not even notice this edge case and be completely baffled when others express concerns. 

No, I don't know what to say to those that want to stay at home and build, but what I'm not going to say is, "Get better people to play with.", or "Get more people to play with so that it all just works.", or "You have to play in the 'sandbox' exactly how you've been told to."

Since most people build their bases within walking distance of the trader however, perhaps a rebalance of what books are available there might be the solution, or maybe even a mailbox or a tiny library that resets daily like the vending machines...It wouldn't make much difference to solo play or larger groups, but it could smooth over the hump for small and disorganized groups.

 

[RipClaw]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

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.

That's all well and good but I don't understand why Daring Adventurer or the quest tier is part of the trader stage calculation. To be fair, I haven't had a chance to look at the XML file myself to confirm this. So I go by the information from WaywardEko's video where he showed the formula by which the trader stage is calculated.
 

When MadMole and Roland mentioned the trader stage in the interview with Temreki and said that what the trader sells will be just a little bit better than what you can craft, I thought that the game would create a custom trader inventory for the player based on his crafting skills.

 

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

[Neminsis]

4 hours ago, Riamus said:

True, but we are removing 3 brass items, 2 lead items, glass jars, and empty cans. 

Of all of those items only jars wouldn't be scrapped into the same resource piles that you're going to find and keep anyway, and jars could be discarded without consequence because they were so easy to make, so it's not really a gain of space.

[Riamus]

2 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

Of all of those items only jars wouldn't be scrapped into the same resource piles that you're going to find and keep anyway, and jars could be discarded without consequence because they were so easy to make, so it's not really a gain of space.

That depends on the player.  You lose 25% of material by scrapping and not everyone will scrap for that reason.  I want just pointing out that you have extra spaces for anyone who isn't constantly scrapping stuff.  Everyone plays differently and what works for one won't for another.  Personally, I see no issue with magazines or with sharing them with others.

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

[Roland]

24 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

I'm not going to disagree about the level of stupidity of this behavior, but given the encumbrance limits and the number of books at the start of game it is going to happen. People are going to take the quickest, shortest, most direct route unless 'explicitly' incentivized to do otherwise. Yes, you can coordinate pretty easily if you have a group that you've been playing with for a while, and you're all online at the same time, and that group is large enough to offset the resource requirements/encumbrance ratio, but that's not going to happen for brand new players, and first impressions matter.

Two people reading the same magazines and duplicating their effort to progress half the distance they could’ve gone is not the shortest quickest most direct route. There is no scenario in existence that would put two people reading the same books just to save inventory space ahead of two people who are making sure to read different books. I’m sorry you can’t see that. 
 

I think new players will understand that in moments since they don’t have the history of about 12 previous versions where players were incentivized to read every book they found immediately.

 

The incentive of getting to T5 quality tools and bacon and eggs and a workbench faster is plenty of reason for people to share books as I’ve described and I think it will be obvious to new players if not so much to veterans.  
 

24 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

If you were farming social credits maybe, but it doesn't really have any negative effect on the looter to be able to cook their own food, make their own tools, or craft workstations, at the same point they'd be dropping off the books for someone else to do it while leaving the resources to do so behind.

Again, I’m purely talking about progression in crafting and not making friends or being seen as nice. You can’t see the advantages from a crafting progression standpoint so you think I’m talking about the social aspect of the game. You’re going to have to have the epiphany yourself, I guess. 

 

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

[Fanatical_Meat]

Any significant changes to the dedicated server client & server set up?

[Roland]

41 minutes ago, Archer said:

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. 

You are making a faulty assumption about the way TFP develops the game. They make all design decisions and then use feedback to fine tune those decisions. We on the forum play test and give feedback which does influence the devs to make adjustments. But we don’t sit at the design table. 
 

This change was not made in response to people on the forum asking for it. It came from the minds of the developers and now we will play and give feedback.   

[Neminsis]

23 minutes ago, Riamus said:

Personally, I see no issue with magazines or with sharing them with others.

Yes, you lose some resources on scrapping, but I've yet to see someone that wasn't part of a large group tote them home to be smelted. Have you ever seen a stack of cans sitting in a smelter? 

If you play with a large enough ratio of looters to stay at homes, there wouldn't be a problem, but when one guy has to sort 10 stacks of books in their inventory while the clock is ticking, things will happen.

[Falcon197]

34 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

If you were farming social credits maybe, but it doesn't really have any negative effect on the looter to be able to cook their own food, make their own tools, or craft workstations, at the same point they'd be dropping off the books for someone else to do it while leaving the resources to do so behind.

 

If looters are grouped with other players who opt to specialize in something other than looting, it benefits the looter to pass along stuff they find that is more useful to the other people.  Because assuming the others aren't complete lazy loafs, they can specialize in things like cooking, crafting, or building and all of those lend support back to the looters - if nothing else by saving them the time required to do all of those other things themselves.

 

The critics will gush: "But good solo players can do EVURTHANG!  #TimeManagement!!" - but that's only true up to a point.  Meanwhile, there are negatives of looters in groups soaking up everything they find, be it skill books, food, weapons, gear, whatever; all of that ultimately applies an opportunity cost to the group's potential.

 

Help your teammates help you.  Otherwise why roll in a group to begin with?

[Riamus]

One thing I have noticed in A21 that I think really needs to be addressed is zombies at broken doors.  Because the door is broken, they don't have something to hit (I am guessing this is the cause) and so they are constantly dropping to a crawl.  This defeats the purpose of hitting zombies through the door as they can be a pain to hit when they are constantly dropping to the floor.  It doesn't happen all the time and they'll keep standing up again so you can hit them at those times but it definitely seems like they are dropping to a crawl far more often now.  They shouldn't ever drop to a crawl at a broken door, imo.

 

I also thought the devs said that the danger meter popup only occurred once per POI but that isn't what I'm seeing in the weekend streams.  Maybe they just meant the skulls only appear once as the later popups don't seem to have these and just show the name?

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

[Neminsis]

21 minutes ago, Roland said:

There is no scenario in existence that would put two people reading the same books just to save inventory space ahead of two people who are making sure to read different books.

It's not just inventory space though is it? It's also encumbrance, mobility and food/water drain. Do keep in mind that I'm talking specifically about the first 7 days where every single resource needs to be toted back to base and it's got to cover two people. I'm sorry that you can't see that.

 

29 minutes ago, Roland said:

The incentive of getting to T5 quality tools and bacon and eggs and a workbench faster is plenty of reason for people to share books

Except that it's not faster unless you have multiple looters looting in different areas for every stay at home. There is no time saving advantage when the looter can put everything on to craft and walk away compared to the time to drop off books.
 

 

33 minutes ago, Roland said:

Again, I’m purely talking about progression in crafting and not making friends or being seen as nice.

So am I, but there is no advantage to progression over that first 7 days when the ratio of looters to stay at homes is 1:1 other than that, and there is advantage to the amount of resources, speed and reduced food/water usage to just use the books themselves. It really doesn't matter who pushes the buttons on the crafting stations. Yes, it does leave the stay at home weaker and slows their long term progress. You might have missed my post stating that. 

Please don't mistake me as saying that this is behavior is ideal, it's not, but that it's not is the crux of my concerns. We do agree on what the ideal is here, but as before I'm pointing out an edge case where it might be possible to broaden the playstyle options and thus broaden the user base. I mean, water is working out great so far and the increase of bones shows that my previous concerns were addressed, and that there is value in expressing my concerns here...Right?


 

[Callum123456789]

I just hope that crawling animation gets changed seeing a zombie instantly duck down when trying to get a headshot in certain areas can be agitating at times maybe a slight delay would be nice or a new animation specially designed for when zombies need to crawl.

 

 

 

[Neminsis]

25 minutes ago, Falcon197 said:

Help your teammates help you.  Otherwise why roll in a group to begin with?

Except that it really doesn't matter who presses the button on a crafting station, it's the end product that's important, the tool or weapon, both of which no longer spawn in loot at the same frequency as in previous versions. So if you're waiting for your looter to bring you back a nice new iron tool or even a higher tier stone axe so that you can keep up with their exp gain you're better off waiting on them to craft it for you.

[Archer]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

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.

What are ya talkin about dude - I've said in several comments now in the thread we play in specialized roles, which means some of them are still looting and scavenging, this is just how people in groups tend to play, especially if it's more than just 3-4 people we've always been doing "all the things". What are ya talkin' about?

[vergilsparda]

Not a streamer and haven't watched one do it yet, so is it really confirmed that splints/bandages cure sprained ankles instantly? If so, I could cry!! That's one of the biggest things I wanted in the game since I learned they didn't 🥹

 

And damn TFP for not having a release time for experimental yet. how dare you foil my plan of camping my butt on steam come midnight 😭

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

Except that it really doesn't matter who presses the button on a crafting station, it's the end product that's important, the tool or weapon, both of which no longer spawn in loot at the same frequency as in previous versions. So if you're waiting for your looter to bring you back a nice new iron tool or even a higher tier stone axe so that you can keep up with their exp gain you're better off waiting on them to craft it for you.

 

You are correct that the looter could as well read the tool books and craft the tools, because that is done in a second. But I don't think the looter will be happy when he his asked back to base every 10 minutes even in daytime because the builder needs a few new traps, someone wants some more meds crafted or the food ingredient box is full and someone needs to start a serious cooking session? Oh, and the farmer asks to come back because he can't craft the seeds and the looter should please come back for that. This may also be the moment when the farmer says to the looter that he'll be looking for a new group where he can actually work as a farmer.

 

Maybe then the looter has learned his lesson.

 

This isn't about social niceness. The looter obviously doesn't want to farm and cook and build but if he doesn't bring back those magazines no one else will do it.

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Archer said:

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. 

 

What a few forum posters here were saying was that there were players who didn't like how crafting was (actually in response to your "Nobody wanted this" if I recall correctly).

 

What they didn't say was that this change was done **because** of those players not liking it.

 

TFP could see the disadvantages of the old crafting system as well as many players. And so crafting was changed.

 

 

[zztong]

2 hours ago, Neminsis said:

Yes, you lose some resources on scrapping, but I've yet to see someone that wasn't part of a large group tote them home to be smelted. Have you ever seen a stack of cans sitting in a smelter? 

 

Not cans, but door nobs and brass trophies. Radiators too, but they only stack to 5, so sometimes I'd scrap them. I don't know about A21, but in A20 I would reach a point where I needed lots of bullets. Bullets need brass. Combine that with being higher level with a larger active inventory: pockets, vehicles, etc. I'd also need less of other things since I was well established, so I could tote around brass in multiple forms.

 

Early game, though ... yep, gonna scrap stuff to save space. That, or leave it in a chest to pickup later in the game.

 

Lead and Iron are different. I always scrap those because you can go mine those and have all you like. I guess I have put low capacity batteries into the forge late game.

Edited June 12, 2023 by zztong (see edit history)

[mstdv inc]

6 hours ago, Professor-Pip said:

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.

I don't go back to the same poi twice because I'm used to collecting everything I need at once. 
It takes me longer for each poi, but at the end of the week my "warehouse" is evenly filled with almost all the necessary resources.
Therefore, when I want to craft something, there is a 90% chance that I have the resources to do it on the base.
In addition, on the way to poi, I try to disassemble cars so that there is always a supply of electronics and fuel.
This style of play allows me not to devote whole days to mining iron, stones and other important resources.
Of course, this has its drawbacks. I visit far fewer pois than I would if I were collecting only the main loot.

Edited June 12, 2023 by mstdv inc (see edit history)

[klude45]

will we get to know when the update drops tomorrow? or is it done when its done. 

 

[Pernicious]

19 minutes ago, klude45 said:

will we get to know when the update drops tomorrow? or is it done when its done. 

 

It's done when it's done.

It is what it is.

You can't hurry love

No, you just got to wait.

Love don't come easy...

 

I don't think an official time has been announced. A few people said "any time after 12pm CST" based on some dev announcement being "afternoon" and speculating whose afternoon it is. 

 

I'm regrettably going to be asleep when it releases, then straight to work, so it matters not one bit to me. 

 

[danielspoa]

was about to ask the same, and also if they found any game breaking bugs that would have to delay it. Anything you could share wish us? 😃

 

edit: guess my answer came while I wrote this. Ty for the "afternoon", this 12pm/am confuse the hell out of me.

 

Edited June 12, 2023 by danielspoa (see edit history)

[Riamus]

2 hours ago, danielspoa said:

this 12pm/am confuse the hell out of me.

Hehe.  1200 hours.  PM adds 12 hours to whatever the actual hour is.  1PM = 0100 + 1200 = 1300.  The only time that is confusing with that is 1200-1259 because you're adding 12 to 0000, so aren't just adding 12 to the hour listed in front of the AM/PM.  And I suppose 0000-0059 for a similar reason.  One of the wonderful inconsistencies in calculating things in the world and most of it caused by us in the US.  Lol.  I don't really mind AM/PM and I would hate to use Celsius but I really wish we used metric for measurements.

[Aldranon]

11 hours ago, Roland said:

So the husband is supposed to get some say?  What’s that like?

 

My wife gave me some archive material on how thats like, reference materials like: "John Carter of Mars" and "Tarzan of the Apes".

She said these true events show that men are made to fail, and woman are made to save them...

As she is the best cook that I've ever known... I believe her! 

[AlaricBalthi]

4 hours ago, mstdv inc said:

I don't go back to the same poi twice because I'm used to collecting everything I need at once. 
It takes me longer for each poi, but at the end of the week my "warehouse" is evenly filled with almost all the necessary resources.
Therefore, when I want to craft something, there is a 90% chance that I have the resources to do it on the base.
In addition, on the way to poi, I try to disassemble cars so that there is always a supply of electronics and fuel.
This style of play allows me not to devote whole days to mining iron, stones and other important resources.
Of course, this has its drawbacks. I visit far fewer pois than I would if I were collecting only the main loot.

Different playstyles, i'm much too of a scouting/adventuring-type to do this. I like wandering around and exploring

Generally, i loot everything from the boxes i can carry but don't disassemble anything. Quick-loot and onto the next house. If the loot-run happens in a far away town/village, i put a stash box in visible place and dump everyhing in it. That way when i'm heading home, i can just grab the best stuff i found from the location and easier to grab what's left the next time i'm close-by. Sometimes i do strip some buildings bare if i need large number of cloth, pipes and such but it's quite rare.

Later when i find wrenches and need more electrical parts and such, i start making runs for the one thing. Again to go and drive around the beautiful post-apocalyptic landscape....