Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Ralathar44]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

Well, since LazMan said they are working on a change for it, any ideas are moot but I'm curious on your response.  Shouldn't we want players to upgrade?  You shouldn't be using stone if you can use iron or iron if you can use steel.  Those should be better.  Mods shouldn't make stone better than iron.  And really, how many mods do you end up having for stone before you upgrade as it is currently?  1, maybe 2 if you are upgrading slowly or happen to be lucky in what drops early game (at least normally; you can always have a game where you find a lot of mods)?  You really shouldn't have stone long enough to max out the mods.  If you do, then it's probably because you don't want to craft a quality 1-3 or 4 iron weapon because it's actually worse than keeping your quality 5/6 stone weapon.  Not because you can't do so.  The stone really should not be better than iron regardless of mods.

 

Even for cloth, you can stealth in military armor.  I understand why that's not the preferred option but they could look into making it a better stealth option for players if they wanted.  In the end, cloth is just cloth.  It shouldn't be the best armor in the game.  You shouldn't be able to buff it with mods enough that it's a great option for anything other than just being quiet for stealth, imo.  (I know anyone who uses it this way will disagree and I understand why but at the same time it really doesn't make sense and is just what players are used to and so want to keep.)

This is now like 3 separate conversations.  Choose 1 at a time and we can do this.  Otherwise its just going to be huge walls of text :D.  Qaulity upgrades have been covered.  So I'd say either choose mods or cloth armor.  Though with hyperbole like "Cloth shouldn't be the best armor in the game" (misleading at best, just flat wrong at worst) I would prolly avoid the cloth armor conversation :D.

 

[Syphon583]

13 minutes ago, Claud said:

A21 b317

I don't know where to post, but I will post it here. I found 2 bugs so far. One of them I'm not quite sure if it's a bug.

 

1) When it begins raining, the brightness settings indoors goes down dramatically, to the point you can barely see anything at all, only in areas where there's no available source of light. If you see the video in this link, you will see how going back to a zone where it has light normalizes everything, going downstairs makes everything pitch dark, and even by solely looking downstairs, everything goes pitch black:

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/697933906879447130/1121840816428679178/7_Days_To_Die_2023-06-22_16-06-58.mp4

 

2) When I was playing, I alt-tabbed, doing so froze the game, then my entire computer, then both of my screens went pitch black, to the point they stopped detecting video source as if my PC was turned off for few seconds, and when it got back, it alt tabbed, but the game froze.

When I opened the game again, every single time I try to load my world, it gets an error and the game keeps freezing, which I assume that this now corrupted my world for good. This is the error I get every single time I try to load in. The last action I did before alt tabbing was completing a quest and I selected as reward the crafting bundle.

 

Computer specs:

-i9 10900

-RTX 2070 Super

-32GB Ram

-Game is installed on a M2 disc.

 

I hope this helps, because my world now can't be loaded since I get this error every single time.

 

 

There is nice big red banner at the top of every screen where you can post bugs.

 

Direct Link: 

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Syphon583 (see edit history)

[sillls]

One thing that could be improved is the tents. The tent is so brittle that it fell apart when I went inside to pick some medicine.

[Laz Man]

45 minutes ago, sillls said:

One thing that could be improved is the tents. The tent is so brittle that it fell apart when I went inside to pick some medicine.

 

Recall which POI that was?

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Nope, I actually did think of that.  You're not thinking of this with balance brain. 

First of all it is a global balance change, you're changing the balance of literally every weapon and tool lol.  Q5 stone gets nerfed by 8% globally, which might not sound like much but if you cross any hit thresholds it becomes substantial.  And that's going to happen across the range of quality/weapons/enemies/tools.  So it won't be 8%.  Let's take the common zombie.  Lets say pre-nerf it took Q5 stone 3 hits and a power attack on the ground to kill...all headshots.  Now it takes 4 hits and a power attack.  That's effectively a 25% nerf for the most common weapon in the game.  Players are going to notice their stone tools are weaker.

 

Oh yes, Q5 gets nerfed but now players learn to change faster to iron tools tier 1 and 2 because those are actually taking over the place of stone q5. While currently you stop at Q5 stone and there is a "long" stretch of progression where you are NOT progressing at all.

 

Naturally that is till a change overall, but now you have a smooth progression instead of a jumpy one. I don't think the jumpy progression was intended. There is no guarantee for a q5 stone axe doing the same damage between alphas. The interesting thing with this change is though that the length of overall progression is exactly the same. If you have a q5 steel tier weapon on day 40 on average before you will be there exactly at the same time.

 

 

2 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

It also STILL runs into much the same problem as currently.  Right now its a question of "x is literally better than y", but even if you squish everything numerically you're forgetting about the repair costs.  Stone Spear does not have repair kits required to maintain.  If Iron upgrades are only a tiny bit better (and with the mod amount differences they'll prolly still be worse) then its not better at all unless you have infinite repair kits.  In a game state where the water economy has been hit and glue and duct tape have significant value then Stone Spear is still going to be the better choice for smart players until roughly the same quality break point...iron 3.  This is even worse for Stone Axe since its good for everything and now Stone

 

As it is now stone q5 is miles above iron tier 1, not only in damage but also like you just explained in repair cost. I.e. even if compression is not enough it still changes the balance in the right direction. And if it wasn't compressed enough it can be compressed more or more advantages added to the higher tier. 

 

2 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Not only that but you've made this change at a cost.  Quality now matters alot less.  Not only might you still skip Quality 5 stone to Q3 iron, you might just skip qualities more in general now because it takes 2 qualities to make the difference of 1 now.  5% vs 6% for two compressed qualities.

 

So? I have done that in the old system as well, ignoring steps because the change was not worth whatever dukes or work or material was necessary. That is every users personal choice how much damage more is worth a change. If you get the next tier for naught (aka through looting) even 1 more damage may be enough to switch, if you have to pay 12000 dukes for it, not even 6 more damage may be enough to sway someone. But when you already have something lower-tier that is objectively better, NOBODY will ever switch to it. 

 

Remember that one reason the crafting system was changed that there almost never was a reason to craft a large section of the weapon progression, and this is still a remnant where progressing feels like not worth it.

 

[Laz Man]

5 hours ago, sillls said:

I would not mind seeing this as a POI.     11:40  

 

 

 

 

Love seeing what players create, especially castles.  Unfortunately there are not many castles in Arizona to warrant a full on castle like that one.

 

I do have a couple of castle facade house designs that could make it next Alpha.  Will see...

[Jost Amman]

6 hours ago, RhinoW said:

Durability is not an issue in this game, especially for stone stuff. It's a near instant repair that costs 1 of very easy stuff to get.

Unless it breaks during combat.

 

Edited June 23, 2023 by Jost Amman (see edit history)

[Yopo]

Yo, what happened to the cube 3x3x1 block? It’s no longer in the black shape menu. 

[Riamus]

2 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

This is now like 3 separate conversations.  Choose 1 at a time and we can do this.  Otherwise its just going to be huge walls of text :D.  Qaulity upgrades have been covered.  So I'd say either choose mods or cloth armor.  Though with hyperbole like "Cloth shouldn't be the best armor in the game" (misleading at best, just flat wrong at worst) I would prolly avoid the cloth armor conversation :D.

There are many people who consider cloth armor to be the best in the game.  Whether it is or not is an opinion.  There are benefits like stamina and detriments like lower armor.  My point was that I don't think it should be considered by anyone to be the best armor in the game.  You can see various posts about it being the best every so often here.  I'm fine with the idea that military armor (still light armor) might be considered to be the best by people who like the light armor route but not that the first armor you get in the game is considered by anyone to be better than later armor.

 

Any change to rework the levels with quality and tiers will most likely also affect cloth armor and will likely upset those who consider it the best armor.

 

This still is tied to options to adjust quality levels and/or mods for tiers but if you want to only talk about one part at a time, I'll leave what I said before as my comment on that rather than continue the rest of the discussion.  Either way, since they are already working on a change, nothing we say is really going to matter at this point.  The discussion might have made a difference before they started.  But since they've already chosen their path we'll just have to deal with whatever that path ends up being.  Oh well.  I can live with whatever they do.  I don't have to go through all quality levels and tiers even though that would be preferable.

13 minutes ago, Yopo said:

Yo, what happened to the cube 3x3x1 block? It’s no longer in the black shape menu. 

Unfortunately, they removed it.

[sillls]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

 

Recall which POI that was?

It was a tent in front of a truck? It had a camp fire in front. 

Inside was a cooler, a lantern and some medical supplies. 

[hiemfire]

1 hour ago, Riamus said:

Any change to rework the levels with quality and tiers will most likely also affect cloth armor and will likely upset those who consider it the best armor.

 

& @Ralathar44

 

It is the "best" for a couple of specific play styles, one of which I admittedly prefer to play in any game, for the simple factors of no mobility reduction (being able to cover distances faster when not in a vehicle and being able to actually get out of a bad situation to open up the needed space to deal with threats), no stamina penalties at all from the armor (move faster and farther for longer) and no additional "noise" generation (until about player lvl 50ish when for some reason most of the zombies can't even tell if an unperked sneaker in steel is within 5 blocks, this keeps a sneaking player from getting attacked at the cost of taking allot longer to move through POIs) while still giving the player access to the mods allowed for armor and adding a slight mit of crit mitigation. Those of us who use it do so knowing that when we get hit it will hurt allot more than what others consider the "best", but weigh that against the stark increase negative effects even leather (Mil, Scrap, Iron, and Steel armors are worse much than leather on this) has on any of those things I mentioned. Not going to go into the argument over stealth/mobility playstyles vs TFP POI design philosophy that renders those playstyles more and more the purveyance of hardline masochists here.

Honestly, in my opinion, any discussion about the current armors ingame outside of supposition around what TFP is planning to replace them with when/after bandits and the new player creation system hit public is completely moot.

Edited June 23, 2023 by hiemfire (see edit history)

[Boop]

3 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Unless it breaks during combat.

 

This is on par with a broken condom in how quickly and drastically it changes the remainder of your life.

[sillls]

4 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Love seeing what players create, especially castles.  Unfortunately there are not many castles in Arizona to warrant a full on castle like that one.

 

I do have a couple of castle facade house designs that could make it next Alpha.  Will see...

Thanks.   😃

You know you could task someone to make a whole new map of some territory in Europe where castles are a thing. 😀  There are no shortage of people who would want to add content to the game. Many of them don't even work for TFP;s. You could ask them. 

Edited June 24, 2023 by sillls (see edit history)

[Professor-Pip]

5 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Love seeing what players create, especially castles.  Unfortunately there are not many castles in Arizona to warrant a full on castle like that one.

 

I do have a couple of castle facade house designs that could make it next Alpha.  Will see...

 

It would be great to see some of the "castles" that do exist in AZ, though. https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/arizona/castles-az/

 

My favorite is Camelback Castle. 

Spoiler

 

[Ralathar44]

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Oh yes, Q5 gets nerfed but now players learn to change faster to iron tools tier 1 and 2 because those are actually taking over the place of stone q5. While currently you stop at Q5 stone and there is a "long" stretch of progression where you are NOT progressing at all.

 

Naturally that is till a change overall, but now you have a smooth progression instead of a jumpy one. I don't think the jumpy progression was intended. There is no guarantee for a q5 stone axe doing the same damage between alphas. The interesting thing with this change is though that the length of overall progression is exactly the same. If you have a q5 steel tier weapon on day 40 on average before you will be there exactly at the same time.

Aye,  I get your intent, I'm just saying that it definitely is a large impacting global balance change and it could have larger ramifications than you may realize, often to specific weapons or tools.  These would be difficult to identify without alot of testing or just letting the individual players get upset at the nerf and bug report it if their weapon/tool is affected more than feels good.

 

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

As it is now stone q5 is miles above iron tier 1, not only in damage but also like you just explained in repair cost. I.e. even if compression is not enough it still changes the balance in the right direction. And if it wasn't compressed enough it can be compressed more or more advantages added to the higher tier. 

 

So? I have done that in the old system as well, ignoring steps because the change was not worth whatever dukes or work or material was necessary. That is every users personal choice how much damage more is worth a change. If you get the next tier for naught (aka through looting) even 1 more damage may be enough to switch, if you have to pay 12000 dukes for it, not even 6 more damage may be enough to sway someone. But when you already have something lower-tier that is objectively better, NOBODY will ever switch to it. 

 

Remember that one reason the crafting system was changed that there almost never was a reason to craft a large section of the weapon progression, and this is still a remnant where progressing feels like not worth it.

Ultimately its a preference thing and something is being lost no matter where you move the air in the balloon.  I'll  play either way ofc, I just push back against the idea that these kinds of solutions actually solve the problem.  They do not.  At bet they reduce it somewhat while potentially causing new problems :).

Edited June 24, 2023 by Ralathar44 (see edit history)

[Ralathar44]

5 hours ago, Riamus said:

There are many people who consider cloth armor to be the best in the game.  Whether it is or not is an opinion.  There are benefits like stamina and detriments like lower armor.  My point was that I don't think it should be considered by anyone to be the best armor in the game.  You can see various posts about it being the best every so often here.  I'm fine with the idea that military armor (still light armor) might be considered to be the best by people who like the light armor route but not that the first armor you get in the game is considered by anyone to be better than later armor.

It's definitively not the best armor though.  If you measure it by the job of being armor its the worst armor in the game hands down.  Even if you're concerned about mobility and stamina and sneaking with mods leather and military are just as good.   Now cloth armor may be best at a particular role, but even that I contend is no longer correct.  It WAS correct back when mobility and noise mods were usable and you could get bonuses, now military and leather are highly competitive in that area.

In fact in this update it is even worse because injuries happen much more often and its got the least injury resistance.  Its the best armor in the game only by ease of crafting and cost.  And if we're going by that then the Stone Axe is the best pick and best Axe in the game :D.

 

 

4 hours ago, hiemfire said:

 

& @Ralathar44

 

It is the "best" for a couple of specific play styles, one of which I admittedly prefer to play in any game, for the simple factors of no mobility reduction (being able to cover distances faster when not in a vehicle and being able to actually get out of a bad situation to open up the needed space to deal with threats), no stamina penalties at all from the armor (move faster and farther for longer) and no additional "noise" generation (until about player lvl 50ish when for some reason most of the zombies can't even tell if an unperked sneaker in steel is within 5 blocks, this keeps a sneaking player from getting attacked at the cost of taking allot longer to move through POIs) while still giving the player access to the mods allowed for armor and adding a slight mit of crit mitigation. Those of us who use it do so knowing that when we get hit it will hurt allot more than what others consider the "best", but weigh that against the stark increase negative effects even leather (Mil, Scrap, Iron, and Steel armors are worse much than leather on this) has on any of those things I mentioned. Not going to go into the argument over stealth/mobility playstyles vs TFP POI design philosophy that renders those playstyles more and more the purveyance of hardline masochists here.

Honestly, in my opinion, any discussion about the current armors ingame outside of supposition around what TFP is planning to replace them with when/after bandits and the new player creation system hit public is completely moot.

As mentioned before this is only true until mods.  Once you add mods in leather and military do the stealth and mobility job just as well.  There was a time long ago this was not the case because cloth armor could also use those same mods to be even faster and stealthier, but they wisely removed the use of those mods from cloth armor multiple updates back.  So baseline cloth is more mobile and sneaks better, but with mods its just an inferior version of leather and military.

I should know, I used to be one of those people who would wear cloth armor end game :D.  But after those mod changes there is no reason to.

Edited June 24, 2023 by Ralathar44 (see edit history)

[khzmusik]

Has any determination been made that build 317 is going to be the one that goes stable?

 

...and yeah, that's my roundabout way of asking "when is stable coming out?" without asking for a specific date. If there will be at least one more build before stable, then I don't expect stable to be released within a week.

[Boop]

14 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

You missed the easiest option that would not need any global balance changes:  If TFP diminishes the stats range between q1 and q6 weapons, then the differenence between the tiers will be automatically bigger

 

Currently each quality level increases damage by 5% of the base damage for a weapon (if I remember correctly), plus/minus a random value. Reduce that to 3% and a q5 stone axe is not on average 20% better than a q1 stone axe but only 12%. An q1 iron pickaxe would now be 8% better in relation to that q5 stone axe without changing anything about it.

 

 

13 hours ago, RhinoW said:

Durability is not an issue in this game, especially for stone stuff. It's a near instant repair that costs 1 of very easy stuff to get. I would only be skeptical of using something if they required parts to repair, but if I'm not mistaken, nearly everything is repaired with the repair kit. Though I do agree that the difference should be more radical like you said.

 

I do think there's a middle ground, like meganoth said, there could be a tier damage value nerf, or like riamus said, have more specific requirements for mods.

 

To be fair, I agree with both of their ideas. And I personally would handle the situation like this:

 

1. Have the quality disparity/requirements increase based on tier:

    - Stone tools would require 10 magazines to reach max quality, while the following tiers would require exponentially more.

    - However, also make the qualities have different percentage gains based on tier +3%/5%/7%

    - This makes sure that stone tools are average all around (as they should) and the max tier has significant upgrades between qualities, which also take longer to reach, extending the endgame and buffing the early game to mid game progression by getting into tier 2 weapons.

 

2. Rebalance mods to tie with both quality and tier:

   - Stone 1-2 quality would not allow any mods, while 3-4 quality allows 1 and 5 quality would allow 2

   - Iron 1-2 quality would allow 1 mod, 3-4 quality allows 2, and 5 quality allows 3

   - Steel 1-2 quality allows 2, 3-4 quality allows 3, 5 quality allows 4

   - Quality 6 weapons would allow 4 at all times to prevent people from not being able to use their favorite gun (4 is the max right? genuinely can't remember)

 

   Something along these lines, I just wrote this in a few minutes, but each weapon be it tier or quality, would feel very different from each other.

 

 

 

10 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Nope, I actually did think of that.  You're not thinking of this with balance brain. 

First of all it is a global balance change, you're changing the balance of literally every weapon and tool lol.  Q5 stone gets nerfed by 8% globally, which might not sound like much but if you cross any hit thresholds it becomes substantial.  And that's going to happen across the range of quality/weapons/enemies/tools.  So it won't be 8%.  Let's take the common zombie.  Lets say pre-nerf it took Q5 stone 3 hits and a power attack on the ground to kill...all headshots.  Now it takes 4 hits and a power attack.  That's effectively a 25% nerf for the most common weapon in the game.  Players are going to notice their stone tools are weaker.


It also STILL runs into much the same problem as currently.  Right now its a question of "x is literally better than y", but even if you squish everything numerically you're forgetting about the repair costs.  Stone Spear does not have repair kits required to maintain.  If Iron upgrades are only a tiny bit better (and with the mod amount differences they'll prolly still be worse) then its not better at all unless you have infinite repair kits.  In a game state where the water economy has been hit and glue and duct tape have significant value then Stone Spear is still going to be the better choice for smart players until roughly the same quality break point...iron 3.  This is even worse for Stone Axe since its good for everything and now Stone

Not only that but you've made this change at a cost.  Quality now matters alot less.  Not only might you still skip Quality 5 stone to Q3 iron, you might just skip qualities more in general now because it takes 2 qualities to make the difference of 1 now.  5% vs 6% for two compressed qualities.

 

 

No need to wonder any more. I made a modlet with your suggestions. Removes scaling from mods and scales damage off quality only (and perks). T0 is squished, and T1+ starts at higher and higher scaling levels (resulting in a lower increase per Q but it makes the jump from Q6 to higher tier Q1 more worthwhile). Mods are also based off tier, with T0 having 0-2 mods based on Q, T1 having 1-3 mods based on Q, and so on.

You can fidget with the numbers yourself - I put them all in a very direct format.

https://mega.nz/file/UAhUAAob#vl8zaO--tFHn88RcX_m0jMgBCxKmGErYBB6v2rEwbXs

 

[hiemfire]

1 hour ago, Ralathar44 said:

As mentioned before this is only true until mods. 

Even with mods and perks taken into account, leather and military armor still penalize mobility, noise generation and stamina use. Any value above 0 is more than what padded armor causes.

[NekoPawtato]

1 hour ago, khzmusik said:

Has any determination been made that build 317 is going to be the one that goes stable?

Just my guess here, but I would think they'd want to at least fix the issue with trader quest rewards first before it goes stable, as it's majorly unbalanced right now and they're aware of it

Edited June 24, 2023 by NekoPawtato (see edit history)

[nickasaurus rex]

Quote

Water is slowly accumulated over time at a rate of approximately 3 jars every 24 game hours.

 

Ok so after playing my first 7 days in the game I can confidently say for 2 players this is just not enough. Please increase the rate! 

 

Also, I thought dysentery was the only issue drinking water from a lake but it damages you so much even if I don't get dysentery 🤦‍♂️

Edited June 24, 2023 by nickasaurus rex (see edit history)

[Kamikaze]

On 6/18/2023 at 7:24 PM, faatal said:

It probably should. As a creep around at night stealth player, I am thinking zeds should be more attracted to light like a beacon in the night. Having to hide campfires from sight would be fun as I feel like i should have to do that, yet it does not matter currently.

And you know what would be also great? Smoke mechanics like Valheim have. It's fun mechanics to play with. 

[meganoth]

20 hours ago, Boop said:

That doesn't "fix" the problem though, it just makes it less apparent.

 

The current system needs to go. My guess is that it's an old relic that was patchworked in without much thought and put on the "later" pile.

Items scale poorly because the mod system is completely out of whack. Adding 10% damage per mod surpasses every other benefit, making #mod slots the only thing that counts. Mods are also allowed to suck because you only use them for that sweet damage boost anyway.

 

I am pretty sure it once was only 6% per mod and could well go down again, even to smaller values. I still think it has a positive effect since you'll never be sorry when you find an installable mod even if you are not interested in the function of it itself. But I also would not shed tears if it vanished completely.

 

Mainly I think that adapting that percentage as well as the random variation are balancing details that would be "automatically" looked at and adapted when doing the range shrinking.

 

And yes, the 10% are very probably too much, but consider that currently a q5 stone item has 3, a q1 iron item has 1 mod slot. If all are filled the maximum bonus the q5 item gets from this is twice that bonus. Once the actual gap between q5 stone and q1 iron after the shrinking is known that bonus should be less than half that gap. Fast and easy balancing I would say.

 

Sure, you still have two more mods installed, which could skew the balance. But on the other hand many iron tier items have additional advantages. For example the q1 pistol has also more ammo capacity and the ability to load the magazine extender mod (though that could be a false rumor, I heard it but didn't check it myself).

 

I am not saying that your ideas are bad. Just that the current system has enough knobs to turn to make it work as well

 

20 hours ago, Boop said:

 

The hard solution here is to remove mod increases to damage - no more 10% boost per mod. For the new system:

1 - Quality determines straight up damage, just like it does already. 

2 - Even out mod slots. Each tier has 1 more mod slot, and can gain 2 more slots at higher Q. Q1-2 Stone spear has 0 slots, Q3-4 stone spear has 1 slot, Q5-6 has 2 slots. Q1-2 Iron spear has 1 mod slot, Q3-4 iron spear has 2 mod slots, Q5-6 iron spear has 3 mod slots. Q1-2 Steel spear has 2 mod slots, Q3-4 steel spear has 3 mod slots, Q5-6 steel spear has 4 mod slots. A theoretical T4 spear would start at 3 mod slots and end at 5. This will keep a consistent level across tiers and ensure that at the very least, a Q2 iron spear will be a worthwhile upgrade over a Q6 stone spear.

3 - Mods provide an *effect* that is worth using. The best example of this is the scope for a sniper rifle. 2x, 4x, 8x scopes have a distinct use. The scope doesn't need to provide a 10% damage boost as it provides an effect that changes how you play. Using an 8x scope? Perfect hunter rifle or sniper, but good luck trying to shotgun a zombie at 1m distance.  All mods should be like this. Equipping your weapon with 4 terrible mods would no longer be useful, but thinking about your use case could lead to some significant advantages in the right scenario. And of course generic mods will still be of generic use. The diffficult part is that all these mods need to be created and pondered so that they fit. This is presumably why TFP added the 10% bonus in the first place; as a temporary placeholder so they wouldn't have to think about making all mods useful.

 

What happens with the scaling with this system? A Q5 stone weapon will be slightly worse than a Q1 iron weapon *unless* you have 2 excellent mods. If you only have 1 then Q1 iron will be slightly better.

Scaling will be toned down between Q1 and Q6 as a) the number of mods are lowered and b) mods no longer provide an inherent 10% bonus. The scaling from quality can of course be adjusted to fit whatever numbers are needed on the tiers, and presumably they will be scaled up to account for the 40% extra damage that has been removed from mods. This will also make upgrading quality a worthwhile pursuit in itself.

The big challenge is going to be making interesting and valuable mods; which also happens to be an elegant ingress towards making the weapon classes more distinct.

 

[meganoth]

5 hours ago, nickasaurus rex said:

 

Ok so after playing my first 7 days in the game I can confidently say for 2 players this is just not enough. Please increase the rate! 

 

Do you know that you can have more than one dew collector?

 

5 hours ago, nickasaurus rex said:

 

Also, I thought dysentery was the only issue drinking water from a lake but it damages you so much even if I don't get dysentery 🤦‍♂️

 

Yes, you need to factor in that damage. Either drink only a few sips, eat something afterwards or have a first aid bandage ready.

Edited June 24, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[meganoth]

11 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

Aye,  I get your intent, I'm just saying that it definitely is a large impacting global balance change and it could have larger ramifications than you may realize, often to specific weapons or tools.  These would be difficult to identify without alot of testing or just letting the individual players get upset at the nerf and bug report it if their weapon/tool is affected more than feels good.

 

Players getting upset? Pfft, happens automatically at any change. The magazine and water redesigns and  the last patch had, IMHO, more massive ramifications for players than some flipping points for weapons or tools moving up or down a quality level.

 

The group that will notice it the most will be expert players and I expect them to adapt to new circumstances. Not call for preservation of the status quo.

 

11 hours ago, Ralathar44 said:

 

Ultimately its a preference thing and something is being lost no matter where you move the air in the balloon.  I'll  play either way ofc, I just push back against the idea that these kinds of solutions actually solve the problem.  They do not.  At bet they reduce it somewhat while potentially causing new problems :).

 

Maybe lost maybe gained. Maybe both in different places. The progression discontinuity between the tiers is quite a big "hole" in the design. You may have a different opinion, but I think it obviously violates design rules TFP seems to follow. For example that all items in the game should have value at least once in the game. And tier1 iron items have none. Nobody would ever craft one currently.

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)