Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[unholyjoe]

15 minutes ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

What’s going on with the trees either moving or growing in that small period of time?

2 different alphas and 2 different seeds. they WILL NOT be the same. trees and deco are not manually placed in the wilds.

Edited July 27, 2022 by unholyjoe (see edit history)

[Gamida]

54 minutes ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

What’s going on with the trees either moving or growing in that small period of time?

 

Those are from 2 different games he started, A20 and A21. So from about same area but would be different.

 

(lol, I should have read on a bit before answering that one )

 

Also @unholyjoe, after seeing you two pics I always wanted to ask why the land claim block is still included in start up items. It is super easy to make now (5 stone) and I don't recall it ever being included in any of the beginning basic quests. I noticed watching new players that they keep it in their inventory taking up a valuable slot. Shouldn't it be retired.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Gamida (see edit history)

[unholyjoe]

47 minutes ago, Gamida said:

 

Those are from 2 different games he started, A20 and A21. So from about same area but would be different.

 

(lol, I should have read on a bit before answering that one )

 

Also @unholyjoe, after seeing you two pics I always wanted to ask why the land claim block is still included in start up items. It is super easy to make now (5 stone) and I don't recall it ever being included in any of the beginning basic quests. I noticed watching new players that they keep it in their inventory taking up a valuable slot. Shouldn't it be retired.

while i see your point. if we took it out then there will be fights from the pvp side saying we dont care about pvp and wanting to know why it was remove...something like that is best left to the modders as it would affect the players who want it or dont. so, we leave some things in... we have to TRY to appease everyone and it is very difficult.

 

also its just as easy to drop it by the player instead if they didnt want it in any slots.

 

similar to the dukes note... atm really serves very little purpose (just a little story in it), but who knows what is in store for it later.

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by unholyjoe (see edit history)

[Survager]

4 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

also... water is still WIP and no there are no fish, no large sea monsters or crocodiles.

sorry... what?!?!?

 

do you plan to add fish, large sea monsters or crocodiles?

fishing? 😁

[Uncle Al]

3 hours ago, FranticDan said:

That's what the Loot% settings is for.

However, unfortunately, that doesn't affect the Harvest% from wrenching, mining, woodchopping and animal harvests.

Having a Harvest% setting would go hand-in-hand with the current Loot% setting

Absolutely!  Really you either want an abundance setting that affects loot, quest rewards, harvesting and mining yields or individual settings for all four.

 

You could have one for trader prices but you don't actually need it to keep everything relatively balanced if the other four areas listed above scale, as you've proportionately reduced your income already.

 

Yes you can decrease block damage to slow up mining but that impacts your ability to clear obstacles.  Straight reducing mining yield is slightly different.

 

I've given up playing lowerered loot for now as all it does is make a trader heavy playstyle even more optimal.  A setting that proportionately impacted all main acquisition strategies to keep them in balance would be great.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Survager said:

sorry... what?!?!?

 

do you plan to add fish, large sea monsters or crocodiles?

fishing? 😁

 

Only when @unholyjoe himself is in the water...

 

In seriousness though, the water voxel overhaul has a narrow and specific scope. Performance, works with terrain and submerged blocks and decorations, doesn't result in holes or Moses partitions, and looks good.

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

16 minutes ago, Roland said:

Moses partitions

 

I am going to miss those.  I have taken a ton of screenshots with the title I am Moses MF  😁

[Fanatical_Meat]

4 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

2 different alphas and 2 different seeds. they WILL NOT be the same. trees and deco are not manually placed in the wilds.

Ah I missed that part.

I sort of assumed A21 random world gen would be a completely different result from A20 random world gen.

45 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

Only when @unholyjoe himself is in the water...

 

In seriousness though, the water voxel overhaul has a narrow and specific scope. Performance, works with terrain and submerged blocks and decorations, doesn't result in holes or Moses partitions, and looks good.

 

Dammit now I want a Moses Partition perk!

[maxousara]

2 hours ago, Survager said:

sorry... what?!?!?

 

do you plan to add fish, large sea monsters or crocodiles?

fishing? 😁

I like the ideas of crocodiles and fish.

[Gamida]

4 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

while i see your point. if we took it out then there will be fights from the pvp side saying we dont care about pvp and wanting to know why it was remove...something like that is best left to the modders as it would affect the players who want it or dont. so, we leave some things in... we have to TRY to appease everyone and it is very difficult.

 

also its just as easy to drop it by the player instead if they didnt want it in any slots.

 

similar to the dukes note... atm really serves very little purpose (just a little story in it), but who knows what is in store for it later.

 

 

I also see your point but again it is not being removed from game, just from the start items. It can still be very easily made. Unless they tell new players what it is for though they may never know. As it just as easy for players to drop it that is also what I mean. New players are thinking, "Well if they gave it to me from the start it must be important, I should keep it"

And yes the note at beginning also is not overly helpful. I know I am not a new player and know about these things but I have been dropping the claim block and note as soon as I start a new game for a very, very long time.

[unholyjoe]

4 minutes ago, Gamida said:

 

I also see your point but again it is not being removed from game, just from the start items. It can still be very easily made. Unless they tell new players what it is for though they may never know. As it just as easy for players to drop it that is also what I mean. New players are thinking, "Well if they gave it to me from the start it must be important, I should keep it"

And yes the note at beginning also is not overly helpful. I know I am not a new player and know about these things but I have been dropping the claim block and note as soon as I start a new game for a very, very long time.

i xml that note out... but the lcb i keep until i have made the campfire for the starter quest, i then place it down to pick up my campfire and then delete/destroy it. then i move on to find a temp base and set campfire down... i motivate a lot when by myself.

[POCKET951]

2 hours ago, Roland said:

 

Only when @unholyjoe himself is in the water...

 

In seriousness though, the water voxel overhaul has a narrow and specific scope. Performance, works with terrain and submerged blocks and decorations, doesn't result in holes or Moses partitions, and looks good.

 

will treasure maps and buried treasure quest still spawn in big bodies of water? I had one in the middle of a big lake once? I won't be sad if the answer is no because it provides an interesting challenge to overcome.
 

I put on my big boy boots, grabbed my augur and fished it out from the deep waters (it was 200+ meters away from shore), but it felt risky because it took me half my oxygen to reach the bottom and start digging. definitley could have died drowning if I didn't do this properly.

Also, one of my fears for Alpha 21 is that we will get the Int tree in a severely gutted state because of the magazine/crafting changes.

Is the Int rebalancing mandatory for Alpha 21 release or is there a chance we could get A21 experimental with a neutered int tree because of lack of time/resources?

Intelligence is going to be pretty sad if the only value perks are the trader ones. I hope whatever happens to advanced engineering/grease monkey/physician makes them appealing or worth considering/thinking.

[Roland]

The perk rebalance is another big piece of the puzzle but it is still a work in progress and completely Madmole's baby. He will talk about it when he's ready most likely in a developer stream. He is totally aware of the holes left by moving crafting over to magazines. We will have to wait and see how he decides to fill them.

[Fanatical_Meat]

1 hour ago, Roland said:

The perk rebalance is another big piece of the puzzle but it is still a work in progress and completely Madmole's baby. He will talk about it when he's ready most likely in a developer stream. He is totally aware of the holes left by moving crafting over to magazines. We will have to wait and see how he decides to fill them.

Hopefully he fills them with his @madmole BDE

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

6 hours ago, unholyjoe said:

..we have to TRY to appease everyone and it is very difficult.

 

That is two things:

 

1. Garbage. Digging zombies was removed because the devs and others didn't want other players to be able to hide when they saw fit and avoid bloodmoons they weren't prepared for* - a change that certain people not only wanted, but didn't want people like me to be able to toggle on or off/ undo (without absurd suggestions like play without any bloodmoons ever or tolerate the change - which is logically fallacious, or the current bizarre mechanic of die and respawn in a bunker where you won't be targeted unless you present yourself to the zombies again.) That is not appeasing everyone, that is necessarily appeasing one party.

 

* I wish to emphasise this, because a game that involves more player freedom to have their playstyle facilitated with toggles, or other options enabling a truly customisable and unique experience, is objectively better than one which limits the player to a certain preset.

 

And yes, there are people vocal on these forums in favour of less options, where I am a strong advocate of having less restriction and more freedoms (without having to resort to mods, which are inherently useless in regard to hard coded unchangeable aspects of the game.)

 

2. A pitiful excuse of game design. Certain aspects of the game could have been kept and reworked with some of the simple suggestions from the playerbase, like Guppy for instance.

 

Instead, however, things just get removed, using snow for water, and filling jars, and yet still other systems (LBD) replaced with repetitious magazine collection for example, which is an atrocious and absurd concept to me, and is; as I maintain, lazy gating in order to extend play time.

 

Sometimes it's the little things in survival games, using flower pots, boots, plastic or glass bottles, or other things to gather and store water, that adds the satisfaction of manually collecting and storing your own. The whole dew collection; as previously mentioned, just makes things eventually passive like farming anyway, and so getting water will become an eventual triviality. So much opportunity and yet so little taken.

 

So many other good aspects are gone, too - the zombie smell system, manually increasing skills by enacting them, and so much more, and what this game ends up as I fear will appear a rushed mess with many of the things we recognised as 7D gone by the by.

 

I could go on - the ability to rest on sofas, use them as spawn points, have more interactive appliances, more vehicles, and so on and so on and so on. As I'm writing this, however; and as sad as it is, I realise the futility, and so will end it here and await the dislikes and the apologists 😏👍🏻

Edited July 27, 2022 by Beelzebubs Ghost (see edit history)

[Roland]

7 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Instead, however, things just get removed, using snow for water, and filling jars

 

So...I guess you're wishing about now that your comment that the dew collectors were probably just decorative and not interactive had turned out to be right...lol

[spud42]

I used my moses partition to give me a mid game role.. protect the little western town from the water.. i built a dam wall around the town and cleared up all the water.... 

Edited July 28, 2022 by spud42 (see edit history)

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

5 hours ago, Roland said:

 

So...I guess you're wishing about now that your comment that the dew collectors were probably just decorative and not interactive had turned out to be right...lol

 

You fail again, sir. My comment was:

 

1. In regards to rain collectors, not dew collectors; which were revealed after the fact,

 

2. That people shouldn't get their hopes up when other fluff isn't (or hasn't yet revealed to be) interactive, hence their inclusion in a list of named decorative props,

 

3. Turns out; through one one of the devs explicit reasoning about biome weather calculations, that rain collectors couldn't be possible, meaning I was in fact incidentally right, not wrong.

 

You looked at what I said and deliberately and perversely misapplied it to something I never talked about. Thats a strawman fallacy.

 

You are a troll with the last word mentality of a child, and the sad thing is - you are supposed to be a moderator, and an educator? 🤦🏻‍♂️

Edited July 28, 2022 by Beelzebubs Ghost (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

4 minutes ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

You fail again, sir.

I knew it! Always thought Roland was a failure!

Finally, we have proof! 

 

Spoiler

Com'on, seriously? 

 

[Grs]

I don't mind making the game harder and boosting survival aspect, but doing it artificially, especially going again simple logic is moronic. I like that this game receives tech improvements. But gameplay wise? The fact that you can't melt snow for a water is stupid. If you believe it's making survival too easy, then make it colder or something. Snow biome would be easier to survive on the water side, but harder in something else. It's fun. It brings divercity and choice. And it follows the common sense of the real world. And now you simply dumbing it down for the sake of balance. It's immersion breaking and stupid. Same goes for disappearing bottles. I am very disappointed with this changes. What you do here is a poor game design. 

Edited July 28, 2022 by Grs (see edit history)

[meganoth]

21 minutes ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

 

You fail again, sir. My comment was:

 

1. In regards to rain collectors, not dew collectors; which were revealed after the fact,

 

2. That people shouldn't get their hopes up when other fluff isn't (or hasn't yet revealed to be) interactive, hence their inclusion in a list of named decorative props,

 

3. Turns out; through one one of the devs explicit reasoning about biome weather calculations, that rain collectors couldn't be possible, meaning I was in fact incidentally right, not wrong.

 

You fail again 😉. The developer only explained that it can't be easily **simulated in realistic detail** (i.e. only filling up when it actually rains there). So that rain has to be approximated unless they want to shove a lot of developer resources into a relatively unimportant feature.

 

Observe that almost nothing in the game is really simulated in realistic detail. Does growing of crops check weather conditions or rain? No, all crops grow identical whether in desert, forest or winter biome.

Are zombie and wildlife movements simulated? Would you be able to see the same deer if you came back to a specific area or project where a horde of wandering zombies would be after a day if you looked at their movement? No. Not simulated, still wildlife and wandering zombies are very much possible.

 

21 minutes ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

 

You looked at what I said and deliberately and perversely misapplied it to something I never talked about. Thats a strawman fallacy.

 

You are a troll with the last word mentality of a child, and the sad thing is - you are supposed to be a moderator, and an educator? 🤦🏻‍♂️

 

Edited July 28, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Fanatical_Meat]

28 minutes ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

 

You fail again, sir. My comment was:

 

1. In regards to rain collectors, not dew collectors; which were revealed after the fact,

 

2. That people shouldn't get their hopes up when other fluff isn't (or hasn't yet revealed to be) interactive, hence their inclusion in a list of named decorative props,

 

3. Turns out; through one one of the devs explicit reasoning about biome weather calculations, that rain collectors couldn't be possible, meaning I was in fact incidentally right, not wrong.

 

You looked at what I said and deliberately and perversely misapplied it to something I never talked about. Thats a strawman fallacy.

 

You are a troll with the last word mentality of a child, and the sad thing is - you are supposed to be a moderator, and an educator? 🤦🏻‍♂️

1) Who cares why is this relevant 

 

2) You bough an early access game that has always been marketed as an early access game, assuming this is a problem you should wait for the game to be complete

 

3) Why do weather calculation need to tie in with a dew/water collector, it is a game it doesn’t need excessive calculations. What it needs is fun & performance.

There is a damn bin that collect or makes water there is nothing else to understand 

 

Give it a rest man wait until the next alpha and decide if the change ruined the game for you I feel bad however as of now it’s just whining. Nobody likes whiners.

34 minutes ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

 

You fail again, sir. My comment was:

 

1. In regards to rain collectors, not dew collectors; which were revealed after the fact,

 

2. That people shouldn't get their hopes up when other fluff isn't (or hasn't yet revealed to be) interactive, hence their inclusion in a list of named decorative props,

 

3. Turns out; through one one of the devs explicit reasoning about biome weather calculations, that rain collectors couldn't be possible, meaning I was in fact incidentally right, not wrong.

 

You looked at what I said and deliberately and perversely misapplied it to something I never talked about. Thats a strawman fallacy.

 

You are a troll with the last word mentality of a child, and the sad thing is - you are supposed to be a moderator, and an educator? 🤦🏻‍♂️

1) Who cares why is this relevant 

 

2) You bough an early access game that has always been marketed as an early access game, assuming this is a problem you should wait for the game to be complete

 

3) Why do weather calculation need to tie in with a dew/water collector, it is a game it doesn’t need excessive calculations. What it needs is fun & performance.

There is a damn bin that collect or makes water there is nothing else to understand 

 

Give it a rest man wait until the next alpha and decide if the change ruined the game for you I feel bad however as of now it’s just whining. Nobody likes whiners.

I f’ed up an duplicated the response sorry all

 

**Look it is really easy to admit a mistake was made**

[Gideon]

2 hours ago, Grs said:

I don't mind making the game harder and boosting survival aspect...

Wait, you think these changes make the game harder? Well, no you don't, but it's a good gate to the point I want to make.

 

Every update has made the game easier for me. It's at the point now where I have to run the game at 50% loot drop, just to have some challenge and pressure at the beginning. Even this is gone by the first 7 day horde.

I figured the game play loop has gotten easier and easier over time to appeal to a wider and wider audience, hence the steady move away from survival play and towards arcade play.

 

Passive water collection, where you don't have to manage a resource (jars, glass, sand, etc.) and don't have to concern yourself with the location of water in relation to your base with the possibility of being attacked while you are out, but instead just get water continually from a device you can spam build is much easier and much less interactive than what we have now. I expect a passive meat system is in the works somewhere (chicken coops?). Long ago they developers said they were inspired by games like Fallout. Well, which Fallout? Some entries in this are much more survival involved than others. The main line games have pretty much no survival aspects at all. Perhaps this game should be that way?

 

The magazines people are concerned about? I expect it to make zero difference in my games as I get more than enough good equipment from completing quests. Sure it's not super powerful, but it is plenty good enough to get the job done. With the move to pipe weapons and the abundance of ammo, this has gotten much much easier. I don't ever feel a need to rush to exceptional loot. If people are playing on a difficulty where they feel they have to, then there needs to be an examination as to why they are playing at that difficulty. It certainly isn't for the increased challenge vs zombies as they rush to gear to neutralize this enhanced challenge. Is there some other aspect of the game they feel they need the challenge cranked up on, and this loot seeking behavior is just a symptom?

 

I'm not necessarily in favor or against these changes. However, I do think that looking at and experiencing the development of this game, it has long suffered from the "design of the month" syndrome. The developers see the current gaming hotness, or get enamored with a particular game, and try to ape that design. Then they get bored or dissatisfied with it, and move on to reflecting another game design. This game seems to have been suffering from a lack of coherent design from the beginning. This ends up ticking off players who come in for a particular game play loop, only to find that design diminished or eliminated later.

Edited July 28, 2022 by Gideon
Incomplete thought there. (see edit history)

[FranticDan]

Questions about the filter helmet mod:
Does the mod remove or lower the HP cost of dirty water?

Also, how much HP does it cost to drink dirty water each time? Also, is it the same hydration and HP cost from drinking from a water source?

[Guppycur]

3 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

You are a troll with the last word mentality of a child, and the sad thing is - you are supposed to be a moderator, and an educator? 

No need for personal attacks homie.