Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Roland]

7 minutes ago, Archer said:

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

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


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

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





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

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

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


 

Thanks for the details. You’re quite off on your assumption about my motives. This is the first time you’ve described exactly what you’re doing as a team. We do appreciate detailed and descriptive criticism that is courteously given so thank you. 

[Eduho]

Buenas . en mi humilde opinión es un juegazo , habra cosas que corregir , pero para eso esta la beta , para ver en que se puede mejorar , en cualquier caso sabiendo que habra actualizaciones que corregiran cosas , no hay que frustrarse . siempre las críticas constructivas ayudan mas que las negativas, el estilo de juego es muy particular en cada persona , no todos piensan igual y por supuesto no actuan de la misma manera.

[icehot]

Just wanted to throw out a positive to this alpha (I took a week off work to play this, and have gotten to day 35 btw, so played a lot this week), just because I think a lot of people are complaining about the magazines predominantly... I've definitely come across bugs for sure, but it's experimental, and tbh for experimental, there's a lot fewer bugs than I thought there'd be, it's good!

 

The graphics are incredible, the new stations, trader compounds, the POI's, yes the doors too lol.. and the RWG is all amazing!

 

I also like that food/water survival is much harder, with water being scarcer, and cooking taking more realistic times, the early game was definitely a struggle.

 

What I really wanted to talk about though was the magazines, and I wanted to throw out a positive comment for it.  I think it's good, it definitely helps with wanting to quest.  What I like about it, is that you know at some point you WILL get the recipes you want to craft the next thing, it also really paces the game out, and I think a lot of people being negative are perhaps just wanting to rush things along, and have augers by day 7 or something.

 

I like to think about the character you're playing, like you're a survivalist, a bit of a camper or bear grylls type of guy, maybe have been in the SAS or something, and knows how to survive, and happened to have the right genetics to not get the zombie virus.  But beyond that, you're not going to know most things, even as someone into all that most people won't know how to craft IRL any of this stuff.  If this were a simulation of R/L then if you had those skills, you would still need to learn a hell of a lot to craft an AK47 or an Auger.  My first stop might be the local library in such a R/L situation.  But there'd be a tonne of books and info, that might not all be relevant.  You also would have zero idea of what you're going to find there, you'd just hope there might be something useful to help you out especially now there's no internet around.

 

It just makes sense that you'd be learning what you can, but you'd be out there trying to find stuff to help you learn, and just hoping the right things come your way.  It's not some magical land where a postman delivers everything you ever needed to know about surviving the zombie apocalypse.

 

I was quite sceptical about that system before I played it, but thinking about it along those lines, what do people expect?  Sit inside like a hermit all your life and in a world with no internet you wont learn anything.

 

Other than some bugs and balancing things, I don't think I have a single complaint to make.  Imo, the game as it stands right now, makes a huge amount of sense.

[Morloc]

23 minutes ago, Roland said:

We do appreciate detailed and descriptive criticism that is courteously given so thank you. 

 

You're talking about you and the other Pimps?...or are you talking like the queen again?

 

/concerned 😕

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

[Archer]

Also, for note: Not a fan of the changes to water. 
Our rooftop is usually a place where we grow crops on our bases, and now it's got 11 dew collectors on it, and doing quests or going to different traders to get the water filters is another thing that isn't exactly 'fun' to keep up with the demand on trying to hydrate close to a couple dozen people. Am I mistaken in that the only way we can drink from rivers, streams, and lakes now is with our hands, and if we do it that way, we end up with a % chance of getting diarrhea? 

Maybe instead of this bulky, huge, ugly Dew Collector thing, you guys make us possibly filter out the water before we boil it which takes a certain amount of time rather than this system of running around from trader to trader to build them? Make it a step with a countdown on it or something - pour water into a single large item like the Dew Collector, let it filter down - then out of it comes 'filtered but not sterile' which we then boil like we used to? 

People have (both in game, and in real life) been building settlements and cities on the edges of bodies of water for a long time for a lot of good reasons, and while transport may not be a factor here, having access to potable water has always been one of them. If nothing else just keep the dew collector in game as an *option* for people who would rather base themselves away from bodies of water. Build closer to one, you have easier access to it, although you still have to filter and boil it or something. 

Just a suggestion.
 

[Ralathar44]

22 minutes ago, Roland said:

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

If I may this is prolly part of the core issue.  In early alphas of the game you had to go out and scavenge alot to get key bottlenecking items and its only really the last couple updates in which that has not been the case.  I think during that 1 1/2 years alot of people got used to being able to just build and farm and do almost nothing else but with the game returning to its roots and making scavenging important again and not something you can just ignore by farming/building harder and using trader people who got used to not scavenging are now being forced to go out and scavenge again.

Personally I think this is a good thing and that the ability to be almost pure builder/farmer was never intended but rather was a balance issue contingent on further refinements (which we've just received) to fix.  And trust me, I'm a builder/farmer too.  Here's my A17 Day 7 base with 4 block thick cobblestone walls on day 7.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzzzZRluIjg That's 7 days straight of solid farming to make that and I make tons of bases.   There is no magical I can do anything via exp and then, for niceties, you drive around on a motorcycle and hit crack a books.  Now we must scavenge too.


BUT TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES you'll want someone spec'd at least 2 points into miner69er and someone spec'd at least 2 points into advanced engineering and lockpicking and someone spec'd at least 2 points into grease monkey on your main loot crew.  Grease Monkey dood gets looiting priority at gas stations and vehicle shops, miner69er and advanced engineering + lockingpicking gets looting priority at working stiffs and construction sites.  Funnel all the magazines for vehicles to one person and all the magazines for forge ahead to 1 person.  You only need 1 person who can make the station or vehicles for the entire group, spreading out the magazines would just slow things down.

[Roland]

8 minutes ago, Morloc said:

 

You're talking about you and the other Pimps?...or are you talking like the queen again?

 

/concerned 😕

 

 

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀

You should be. Our response to your affront to our person can only be, “Off with their head!”

[Archer]

10 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

If I may this is prolly part of the core issue.  In early alphas of the game you had to go out and scavenge alot to get key bottlenecking items and its only really the last couple updates in which that has not been the case.  I think during that 1 1/2 years alot of people got used to being able to just build and farm and do almost nothing else but with the game returning to its roots and making scavenging important again and not something you can just ignore by farming/building harder and using trader people who got used to not scavenging are now being forced to go out and scavenge again.

Personally I think this is a good thing and that the ability to be almost pure builder/farmer was never intended but rather was a balance issue contingent on further refinements (which we've just received) to fix.  And trust me, I'm a builder/farmer too.  Here's my A17 Day 7 base with 4 block thick cobblestone walls on day 7.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzzzZRluIjg That's 7 days straight of solid farming to make that and I make tons of bases.   There is no magical I can do anything via exp and then, for niceties, you drive around on a motorcycle and hit crack a books.  Now we must scavenge too.


BUT TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES you'll want someone spec'd at least 2 points into miner69er and someone spec'd at least 2 points into advanced engineering and lockpicking and someone spec'd at least 2 points into grease monkey on your main loot crew.  Grease Monkey dood gets looiting priority at gas stations and vehicle shops, miner69er and advanced engineering + lockingpicking gets looting priority at working stiffs and construction sites.  Funnel all the magazines for vehicles to one person and all the magazines for forge ahead to 1 person.  You only need 1 person who can make the station or vehicles for the entire group, spreading out the magazines would just slow things down.

I just fundamentally disagree with this. 
If you're playing by yourself - sure. 
If you're playing with one or two people - sure. 
But with a group of our size it's just not *possible* to sustain ourselves in the mid to late game like that which is why we specialize like we do. 
In some of the other comments people are talking about how the magazine system makes teams have to rely on each other more and we have to be more specialized in order to get by. 
In yours you seem to be suggesting that specialization into roles shouldn't be as important and this forces us 'back to our roots' which I think is just absurd. We've literally been playing this way - the same way - for almost a decade. There's always been crafters, looters, scavengers, farmers/hunters and everything else, and I don't think that ever needed to change at all. We didn't have to constantly scavenge in A20, we didn't have to constantly scavenge 3 years ago, or 5, or 8 or whatever. 

It just hasn't been that way ever, at least for us. 

[Ralathar44]

33 minutes ago, Archer said:

Also, for note: Not a fan of the changes to water. 
Our rooftop is usually a place where we grow crops on our bases, and now it's got 11 dew collectors on it, and doing quests or going to different traders to get the water filters is another thing that isn't exactly 'fun' to keep up with the demand on trying to hydrate close to a couple dozen people. Am I mistaken in that the only way we can drink from rivers, streams, and lakes now is with our hands, and if we do it that way, we end up with a % chance of getting diarrhea? 

Maybe instead of this bulky, huge, ugly Dew Collector thing, you guys make us possibly filter out the water before we boil it which takes a certain amount of time rather than this system of running around from trader to trader to build them? Make it a step with a countdown on it or something - pour water into a single large item like the Dew Collector, let it filter down - then out of it comes 'filtered but not sterile' which we then boil like we used to? 

People have (both in game, and in real life) been building settlements and cities on the edges of bodies of water for a long time for a lot of good reasons, and while transport may not be a factor here, having access to potable water has always been one of them. If nothing else just keep the dew collector in game as an *option* for people who would rather base themselves away from bodies of water. Build closer to one, you have easier access to it, although you still have to filter and boil it or something. 

Just a suggestion.
 

Honestly im kinda baffled at people coming out of the woodwork with 10+ people to a base.  I don't even know what you'd do with more than 4-6 people in a base haha.  I'd have figured for larger groups you'd end up with multiple mid to large sized bases rather than 1 based crammed full of people like sardines :D.  For a variety of reasons.  Storage space, crafting space, farm space, POI coverage, creating safe travel routes, multiple trader coverage, etc.

And dew collectors definitely work for 4-6 people bases.  But these 10+ people megabases, I dunno if the game is even designed for them.  Heck I dunno if a blood moon could scale properly to threaten 10+ people without destroying the server lol.


A note for people and potable water though: Boiling water was not as common as you think.  Not only did people often not do it bag in ye olden times but even if they knew they often simply didn't have enough fuel to burn to do so because the average person is super wealthy today compared to people at most times and history.  Often all they could do is strain water through cloth.  Also, quite frankly, people didnt used to know what germs were.  So if the water looked fine they usually just assumed it was fine.  It would only be noticeably contaminated stuff you'd consider cleaning.  ALOT of people died or got sick in ye olden ages due to bad water.  But we assume people knew better and did things closer to what we do today.

10 minutes ago, Archer said:

In yours you seem to be suggesting that specialization into roles shouldn't be as important and this forces us 'back to our roots' which I think is just absurd. We've literally been playing this way - the same way - for almost a decade. There's always been crafters, looters, scavengers, farmers/hunters and everything else, and I don't think that ever needed to change at all. We didn't have to constantly scavenge in A20, we didn't have to constantly scavenge 3 years ago, or 5, or 8 or whatever. 

It just hasn't been that way ever, at least for us. 

That is literally the opposite of what I suggested.  I suggested pretty strong specialization quite literally in the same comment you responded to.  Literally designating people for forge building, for vehicle building, and for looting and changing who looted what POIs depending on their specialization.  As such I apologize but I'm going to dismiss your umbrage at my comment as its not accurately targeted but instead a misunderstanding on your part.

I do however talk about huge group issues in my next comment just above (already made before yours was posted) and IMO the game has always been broken for groups over 4-6 people.  It's just been broken in your favor since there is no way Blood moon hordes can scale to threaten that many people appropriately.  A single experienced player can build a base and hold 32/64 zombie bloodmoons on warrior.  What could you possibly do to threaten a commune of 10+ people without turning the enemies into some walking bullshiet, bullet sponge heck, or spawning more enemies than the game can handle performance wise?  Honestly even infested POIs prolly lose their teeth when you can potentially have as many players there fighting the zombies as active zombies lol.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Ralathar44 (see edit history)

[Noctoras]

19 hours ago, DrunkZombie said:

Is the remade Navezgane map supposed to always spawn you in the middle of nowhere and the trader is always Joel who is also in the middle of nowhere?

 

In my RWG it's only trader Jens so far - granted, I only know three traders on my maps, so it might be the odd one out, but copycat traders seems to be a trend

[Exxodous]

1 hour ago, Archer said:

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




 

That's interesting.  My wife and I play coop and we're on day 7.  I think she already has 15 forge ahead books and probably 20 tool mags.   I'm not even perked into them and I probably gave her 8 forge ahead books.  Are you guys only looting food trucks lol (joking)

[Archer]

2 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Honestly im kinda baffled at people coming out of the woodwork with 10+ people to a base.  I don't even know what you'd do with more than 4-6 people in a base haha.  I'd have figured for larger groups you'd end up with multiple mid to large sized bases rather than 1 based crammed full of people like sardines :D.  For a variety of reasons.  Storage space, crafting space, farm space, POI coverage, creating safe travel routes, multiple trader coverage, etc.

And dew collectors definitely work for 4-6 people bases.  But these 10+ people megabases, I dunno if the game is even designed for them.  Heck I dunno if a blood moon could scale properly to threaten 10+ people without destroying the server lol.


A note for people and potable water though: Boiling water was not as common as you think.  Not only did people often not do it bag in ye olden times but even if they knew they often simply didn't have enough fuel to burn to do so because the average person is super wealthy today compared to people at most times and history.  Often all they could do is strain water through cloth.  Also, quite frankly, people didnt used to know what germs were.  So if the water looked fine they usually just assumed it was fine.  It would only be noticeably contaminated stuff you'd consider cleaning.  ALOT of people died or got sick in ye olden ages due to bad water.  But we assume people knew better and did things closer to what we do today.

Been playing it that way for years man - we sometimes get some FPS drops on blood moon because the game spawns in some massive hordes, but it's so much fun when there's 2 dozen of us (or even more) all in the same base, that we all worked on, all pitch in on, and all built together. Every bullet, brick, and bomb was all something we made so when we defended it, it felt like we're defending our one big collective home, and people depend on each other in that situation. It's fun. Plus everyone I play it with are neighbors of mine, we're all part of a almost 3,000 person Discord server for gamers in our little part of the Pacific Northwest, so we get along great and know how to not make a Discord channel with 30 people in it sound like 'audio soup' lol

[jorbascrumps]

50 minutes ago, Archer said:

close to a couple dozen people

 

I stopped reading after this. The game is not balanced for that number of players. No wonder you're having issues.

[Archer]

15 minutes ago, Exxodous said:

That's interesting.  My wife and I play coop and we're on day 7.  I think she already has 15 forge ahead books and probably 20 tool mags.   I'm not even perked into them and I probably gave her 8 forge ahead books.  Are you guys only looting food trucks lol (joking)

When we move into a town, it looks like a wave of locusts washed over it and picked it clean afterward lol we loot everything we see. 
I am seeing other people on this thread though mentioning they're not finding crafting books as a reasonable enough rate. I don't think it scales whether it's 1 person or 100 persons in a single game (maybe?) that might be influencing the way the loot table works or something - I honestly have no idea, I just know it seems off and wonky in the spawn rate of magazines, and I think it's partly because the primary people doing the looting spec themselves out with stuff that makes them better at what they're doing - i.e. sneaky, or powerful or capable of using a weapon better etc. The crafting magazines are for crafters - who stay at base usually and do what their job is - to build. 
So the bonus to finding the magazines that crafters need in order to build better tools and weapons doesn't exist unless the builders quit working on the base and go loot stuff themselves. Thus the 'flow' of these magazines ends up coming in at rates that are disproportionate to their need. We *need* forging magazines, but the only way to find more of them is A. I leave base and go look more, neglecting my construction and organization of inventory or B. Someone 'wastes' magazines, by reading a bunch of them and then increases the likelihood they'll find them. This sucks because someone is using magazines, to learn skills they won't ever apply to anything, and eats up the supply of mags we'd need early game to find them. So if it's a smaller group these balances seem fine, I guess. One or two or maybe three players, it's no problem. But parties can be size 8. Servers can hold somewhere around 32 players before becoming unstable. And lots of people like to play this with two opposing factions that fight sometimes, as well. There's a lot of servers where the larger multiplayer experience is just a big bowl of spaghetti now. 

As I said before - it's a great update for solo players and small groups, but for people who play this with friends, or on servers where factions exist, etc. it's super confusing now and the rates at which stuff we need drops is askew for everyone. The people who don't need magazines end up getting perks and bonuses and boosts for magazines that they don't need, and the people who do need them have no way of boosting their rate of getting them unless they essentially neglect their job and go scavenge as well, which leaves the base (again this is a base that stores, protects, and gives enough adequate room for crafting for a dozen or more people) in complete disarray, no one can ever find anything, the scavengers coming back in have to stop and put stuff away because we can't 'afford' to have enough folks stationed there to keep an eye on crafting, building, upgrading, and sorting out the inflow of raw materials, or the outflow of refined ones (like guns, ammunition, armor, and other equipment/supplies that the scavengers/looters would use) 

We've drastically cut down on the size of the home base team, but out of need for more magazines to build things like bellows or other items in those tool trees, we spend too much time looking for those books and because the looted radius is already 1/4 of the map at this point, we're having to travel a crazy amount of distance to find unlooted stuff. 

3 minutes ago, jorbascrumps said:

 

I stopped reading after this. The game is not balanced for that number of players. No wonder you're having issues.

There's literally dozens of servers that have more than 20 people online at any given time, and have been for years and years, dude. The built in server player cap is 32. So I'll say the game *was* balanced for that number of players before A21, and it worked fine. None of us had issues or complaints. 

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

[Ralathar44]

5 minutes ago, Archer said:

There's literally dozens of servers that have more than 20 people online at any given time, and have been for years and years, dude. The built in server player cap is 32. 

Ok, I'm going to draw a very VERY clear line in this conversation right now to prevent some of the stupid back and forth.

There is a helluva difference between 20 people on a server and 20 people in a single base.  20 people on a server is quite viable.  20 people in a single base or small area the game is likely not built for and prolly never will be.  And while I'm glad yall have enjoyed the game during some prior updates where things happened to work how yall wanted for that style of play, so long as the game is designed around much smaller sets of people it's always eventually going to diverge and that's not anyone being malicious or bad or mean or etc.  That would just be the devs doing their jobs because the needs and designs necessary to serve those needs difference between group sizes.  As you're pointing out here in this very thread.  And unfortunately the majority population and core design is always gonna win out on this.

I'm sure TFP will try to be flexible if they can, but there is a good chance they just cannot while still properly serving their core audience.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Ralathar44 (see edit history)

[Teezer]

59 minutes ago, icehot said:

Just wanted to throw out a positive to this alpha (I took a week off work to play this, and have gotten to day 35 btw, so played a lot this week), just because I think a lot of people are complaining about the magazines predominantly... I've definitely come across bugs for sure, but it's experimental, and tbh for experimental, there's a lot fewer bugs than I thought there'd be, it's good!

 

The graphics are incredible, the new stations, trader compounds, the POI's, yes the doors too lol.. and the RWG is all amazing!

 

I also like that food/water survival is much harder, with water being scarcer, and cooking taking more realistic times, the early game was definitely a struggle.

 

What I really wanted to talk about though was the magazines, and I wanted to throw out a positive comment for it.  I think it's good, it definitely helps with wanting to quest.  What I like about it, is that you know at some point you WILL get the recipes you want to craft the next thing, it also really paces the game out, and I think a lot of people being negative are perhaps just wanting to rush things along, and have augers by day 7 or something.

 

I like to think about the character you're playing, like you're a survivalist, a bit of a camper or bear grylls type of guy, maybe have been in the SAS or something, and knows how to survive, and happened to have the right genetics to not get the zombie virus.  But beyond that, you're not going to know most things, even as someone into all that most people won't know how to craft IRL any of this stuff.  If this were a simulation of R/L then if you had those skills, you would still need to learn a hell of a lot to craft an AK47 or an Auger.  My first stop might be the local library in such a R/L situation.  But there'd be a tonne of books and info, that might not all be relevant.  You also would have zero idea of what you're going to find there, you'd just hope there might be something useful to help you out especially now there's no internet around.

 

It just makes sense that you'd be learning what you can, but you'd be out there trying to find stuff to help you learn, and just hoping the right things come your way.  It's not some magical land where a postman delivers everything you ever needed to know about surviving the zombie apocalypse.

 

I was quite sceptical about that system before I played it, but thinking about it along those lines, what do people expect?  Sit inside like a hermit all your life and in a world with no internet you wont learn anything.

 

Other than some bugs and balancing things, I don't think I have a single complaint to make.  Imo, the game as it stands right now, makes a huge amount of sense.

Totally agree, TFP need to continue this way, it's by far one of the best update.

(You forgot to mention the horrible eating sound tho haha)

[Archer]

13 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

Ok, I'm going to draw a very VERY clear line in this conversation right now to prevent some of the stupid back and forth.

There is a helluva difference between 20 people on a server and 20 people in a single base.  20 people on a server is quite viable.  20 people in a single base or small area the game is likely not built for and prolly never will be.  And while I'm glad yall have enjoyed the game during some prior updates where things happened to work how yall wanted for that style of play, so long as the game is designed around much smaller sets of people it's always eventually going to diverge and that's not anyone being malicious or bad or mean or etc.  That would just be the devs doing their jobs because the needs and designs necessary to serve those needs difference between group sizes.  As you're pointing out here in this very thread.  And unfortunately the majority population and core design is always gonna win out on this.

I'm sure TFP will try to be flexible if they can, but there is a good chance they just cannot while still properly serving their core audience.

Again - it was never a problem. Even in the barebones early versions of it when I still played this game on an old office hand-me-down machine, we were able to host a dedicated server and play that way just fine it was never an issue. 

I'll also point out: how do you respond to all these other people in here who play solo or in a duo that are also saying the magazine drop rates are creating bottlenecks and preventing them from doing one thing while having an overabundance in ability to build something else? It's not *just* groups, it's such a complex way of managing a crafting system that relies so heavily on one item being available to make a bunch of others. It makes no sense to see people having 60+ magazines of one type that allows them to build augers on day 14 (way too early for an auger, but not too early for a workbench) but can't build the auger, because they *also* can't build workbenches since only a handful of those magazines have arrived. 

I'm not telling you that we're seeing technical problems. It's a *drop rate* problem, whether we were all in separate bases and areas or not, for the volume of players on the server that we have, we're still seeing weird drop rates of magazines. Not only that - but because of again the VOLUME whether they're in a base in one end or not, we've cleared roughly 25% of the loot on the map already, and we're still 2-3 weeks away from loot respawn. That works out later in the game when people have to travel further to get to it so it isn't consumed as quickly, but the point is there are only so many magazines on the map - whereas before you could have 20-30 people on a single server spread out OR in one spot, it didn't matter, we could all progress at a rate and time that we needed to. Under the new system - whether we're across on opposite ends of the map or right next to each other, the drop rates for magazines are wonky, and the sheer ratio of 'lootable spots' vs 'magazine drops' just doesn't compensate for that off-balanced rate drop. 

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

[Roland]

51 minutes ago, Exxodous said:

That's interesting.  My wife and I play coop and we're on day 7.  I think she already has 15 forge ahead books and probably 20 tool mags.   I'm not even perked into them and I probably gave her 8 forge ahead books.  Are you guys only looting food trucks lol (joking)

It’s all random. The perk boost is not a guarantee. You and your wife are flush with Forge Ahead mags this playthrough but could experience a famine of them next playthrough. It is different every time I play. Sometimes it’s parts I can’t find and sometimes it’s magazines and other times I have plenty of everything. 
 

@Archer and his group could restart and have a gush of all the right magazines that new game. As expected, there have been people wondering if the perk boost is bugged and others claiming it is too powerful. 

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

[Ralathar44]

20 minutes ago, Archer said:

I'll also point out: how do you respond to all these other people in here who play solo or in a duo that are also saying the magazine drop rates are creating bottlenecks and preventing them from doing one thing while having an overabundance in ability to build something else?

I'd say this has always been the case even in the Learn By Doing days.  The only difference is the thing you blame.  In Learn by doing it was the sheer grind required to level each thing up that was the bottleneck, which is why people spam crafted things for hours and hours.  In the following heavily gated attribute system it was the gating of needing huge amounts of an attribute to do something.  In the following more lightly gated system they relaxed it into that we just got out of it was recipes from crackabooks as well as attribute specific key perks like sexy rexy and flurry of blows and miner69er and etc gating specific things progressing quickly behind specific attributes.  And now that they made that gating softer still with magazines we'll blame drop rates and the magazines.

Also part of the picture, beakers/calipers/crucibles/acid/etc that just wouldn't drop.  Same story, different day.  But objectively and realistically the game progresses like 10 times faster today than it used to.  The only time its ever been faster is when you could basically skip all RNG for all core elements via "I have exp so I magically know how to fight even though all ive done is build!" (or vice vera) and they got a ton of complaints about that so they fixed it.  Much to your chagrin.  Personally I could play either way.  I don't have a "side" per se.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Archer said:

 It's not *just* groups, it's such a complex way of managing a crafting system that relies so heavily on one item being available to make a bunch of others. It makes no sense to see people having 60+ magazines of one type that allows them to build augers on day 14 (way too early for an auger, but not too early for a workbench) but can't build the auger, because they *also* can't build workbenches since only a handful of those magazines have arrived.

The magazines that allow you to build Augurs are the Harvesting tool magazines and it takes 60 to max it out.  Harvesting tools are pretty important for everyone and you have 30 people on your server.  Seeing 60+ of those, in context, actually only makes sense.  Especially since Miner69 increases how many of them show up and alot of people always get miner69er.  100 Harvesting magazines spread between even 10 people is only just barely maxing stone axes and shovels and barely starting iron tools.  This "gotcha" argument is unfortunately very very weak if not directly counterproductive to your intended arguments.

Lockpicking and Advanced Engineering however were not so popular ever since people took the gating out and alot of people consider them wasted skill points.  I'm wagering far less people took Advanced engineering and took less points on average than people did Miner 69er.  And that goes triple for lockpicking.  Both are now very valuable, but alot of people think they can get away without taking them because you can get magazine drops without them and thy basically optimize themselves into a corner lol.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Ralathar44 (see edit history)

[jorbascrumps]

47 minutes ago, Archer said:

There's literally dozens of servers that have more than 20 people online at any given time, and have been for years and years, dude. The built in server player cap is 32. So I'll say the game *was* balanced for that number of players before A21, and it worked fine. None of us had issues or complaints. 

 

There's a difference between the developers allowing you to do something vs them designing for it. That the developers allow you to play with so many people is a blessing and you should be appreciative. But officially, TFP only designs and balances their game around a small number of players. You are playing outside of their design parameters and are surprised it's not working out well for you. Just because you were able to play with that volume of players and it "worked fine" does not mean that it was in fact fine when compared with the intended design of the game.

 

As a solo/ small group co-op player, I hope they do not balance the game around your expectations as it would ruin the game for me.

[Archer]

6 minutes ago, jorbascrumps said:

 

There's a difference between the developers allowing you to do something vs them designing for it. That the developers allow you to play with so many people is a blessing and you should be appreciative. But officially, TFP only designs and balances their game around a small number of players. You are playing outside of their design parameters and are surprised it's not working out well for you. Just because you were able to play with that volume of players and it "worked fine" does not mean that it was in fact fine when compared with the intended design of the game.

 

As a solo/ small group co-op player, I hope they do not balance the game around your expectations as it would ruin the game for me.

Where does it 'officially' say that? 
Also: We've played 'outside of their design paramaters' and never were surprised about it for almost 10 years. 
They haven't been making their game as intended for 10 years? 

20 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

I'd say this has always been the case even in the Learn By Doing days.  The only difference is the thing you blame.  In Learn by doing it was the sheer grind required to level each thing up that was the bottleneck, which is why people spam crafted things for hours and hours.  In the following heavily gated attribute system it was the gating of needing huge amounts of an attribute to do something.  In the following more lightly gated system they relaxed it into that we just got out of it was recipes from crackabooks as well as attribute specific key perks like sexy rexy and flurry of blows and miner69er and etc gating specific things progressing quickly behind specific attributes.  And now that they made that gating softer still with magazines we'll blame drop rates and the magazines.

Also part of the picture, beakers/calipers/crucibles/acid/etc that just wouldn't drop.  Same story, different day.  But objectively and realistically the game progresses like 10 times faster today than it used to.  The only time its ever been faster is when you could basically skip all RNG for all core elements via "I have exp so I magically know how to fight even though all ive done is build!" (or vice vera) and they got a ton of complaints about that so they fixed it.  Much to your chagrin.  Personally I could play either way.  I don't have a "side" per se.

 

 

The magazines that allow you to build Augurs are the Harvesting tool magazines and it takes 60 to max it out.  Harvesting tools are pretty important for everyone and you have 30 people on your server.  Seeing 60+ of those, in context, actually only makes sense.  Especially since Miner69 increases how many of them show up and alot of people always get miner69er.  100 Harvesting magazines spread between even 10 people is only just barely maxing stone axes and shovels and barely starting iron tools.  This "gotcha" argument is unfortunately very very weak if not directly counterproductive to your intended arguments.

Lockpicking and Advanced Engineering however were not so popular ever since people took the gating out and alot of people consider them wasted skill points.  I'm wagering far less people took Advanced engineering and took less points on average than people did Miner 69er.  And that goes triple for lockpicking.  Both are now very valuable, but alot of people think they can get away without taking them because you can get magazine drops without them and thy basically optimize themselves into a corner lol.

The way this reads it almost sounds like you're replying to someone else, you're making all sorts of points that I don't see how it applies to what I've said at all. 

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

[Ralathar44]

19 minutes ago, Archer said:

The way this reads it almost sounds like you're replying to someone else, you're making all sorts of points that I don't see how it applies to what I've said at all. 

I answered your question.  Directly.  That's how it applies.  I suppose if you don't have a good answer to it then attempting to ignore it completely is as good of a way to concede the point as any. No I will not argue further about this.  Its in black in white quoted above.  However if this is your approach, then the significant amount of sympathy I actually did feel for your position is gone.  I've got no respect for people who try to play mind games in well meaning discussions.   Consider that conversation resolved and tabled.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Ralathar44 (see edit history)

[Archer]

2 minutes ago, Ralathar44 said:

I answered your question.  Directly.  That's how it applies.  I suppose if you don't have a good answer to it then attempting to ignore it completely is as good of a way to concede the point as any. No I will not argue further about this.  Its in black in white quoted above.  However if this is your approach, then the significant amount of sympathy I actually did feel for your position is gone.  I've got no respect for people who try to play mind games in well meaning discussions.   Consider that conversation resolved and tabled.

lol what in the frasier crane 

[xbonedragonx]

On 6/13/2023 at 9:53 PM, SyKo said:

I'm afraid you're incorrect. Players like myself, who've put in literally thousands of hours playing 7DTD will not 'come around'. We're locking our servers at A20. We've been through this too many times at this point. TFPs keep flipping from RNG to skill tree, from skill tree, to RNG, and back and forth, and back and forth. There's very, very little, if anything worth mentioning being added with this update, (You think we care about the outside perimeter of the trader's fence no longer warping players away? Or is it the handful of wonderfully redone sprites, textures, and POIs we're supposed to be impressed with? Just curious...). A21 is another one of Joel's 'Gotta beat the players!' moments. He's done this so many times now, we're just locking our servers on A20. Not just myself, but many players I've spoken with that have similar time invested. We're not participating in Joel's RNG festival, anymore than we're participating in crafting 10,000 shovels to level up tools anymore. We've been through this too many times now. A21 isn't an update. It's a 'gotta beat the players!' overhaul to the game, once again. Nothing more, and TFP can give 1,000,000 copies out to every youtuber and streamer between here and China with at least 500 subs, and we'll still ignore this update.

It's a shame. Some of us have played for close to a decade now. We're done being trifled with. We'll lock the game and wait. If it doesn't revert back to sanity at some point, A20 will be our 'gold'. Not a single one of us have a problem with that. There's no animosity anymore, just disappointment in a dev team that can't pick a lane and stay there. There will always be ways to sidestep anything the game throws at us as far as the way we build, zombies behavior, the POIs, hordes, etc., so constantly reworking the game to try to 'defeat' any and all player's play styles Joel doesn't happen to like, in a sandbox game, with constantly forced RNG *isn't the answer*. It never was, and it never will be. Didn't work with forge books. Doesn't work with crucibles. Won't work with skill points. The only thing TFPs are doing at this point is RNGing their customer base over to other games. So give away a billion copies. It still won't bring the old players back. We'll go play our locked servers and wait for the next revamp, then the next.. and the next.. and the next... and so on, until Joel finally settles on something: Is it a Run n' Gun? Is it a builder? Is it even a Sandbox game at all? When Joel figures this out for himself, THEN, and only then, will many old school players servers be updated, and only if it's not a broken RNG mess. I wish them all the luck in the world. We all really love this game, but trying to make every little thing tedious and an RNG hell isn't the solution. We only hope they eventually listen to reason. And no, it's not 'getting better.' It's steadily getting worse by not focusing on bugs and content, and trying to always 'beat the players'. TFPs need to finish their game and listen to their player base when they don't like what's being done, instead of ignoring them and hiding being the white knights that, I'm sure, will flame this post to hell and back, which is just fine with me. I'd expect nothing less from this forum. =]

Give it all the time you like.

100% agree with this. Regardless of anything all you salty people think, and especially you @Roland, I've played for the past 7 years, and I've experienced so much time gating because you keep changing it to suit such a specific playstyle. Books, attributes, now books again? I'm staying alpha 20, screw this. Beware, Their emperor has no clothes.

[Lady Sakuyama]

played A21 for 16 hours now. love it. the progression feels nice now. please tell me this is the last time the skills will be reworked? its perfect now. 😀