Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Diragor]

7 hours ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

but I will have a big drop in fps

I never have FPS problems and I play on max settings. Just a 1500€ computer and it plays super smooth even If I break tall buildings, no lag ^^ If you have a potato there, you might need to change graphic settings or upgrade your pc. If thats not the case jst wait, the performance will definitely be better^^

[Games'n'Grumble]

3 hours ago, Diragor said:

I never have FPS problems and I play on max settings. Just a 1500€ computer and it plays super smooth even If I break tall buildings, no lag ^^ If you have a potato there, you might need to change graphic settings or upgrade your pc. If thats not the case jst wait, the performance will definitely be better^^

No, no, no, I'm not talking about the game that I have now, I'm absolutely fine with it. I'm talking about the city of skyscrapers. No one city in RWG can give such an experience now. And if you put several skyscrapers side by side manually, then you will see the fps drop too🤷‍♂️

[Diragor]

20 minutes ago, Games'n'Grumble said:

No, no, no, I'm not talking about the game that I have now, I'm absolutely fine with it. I'm talking about the city of skyscrapers. No one city in RWG can give such an experience now. And if you put several skyscrapers side by side manually, then you will see the fps drop too🤷‍♂️

Maybe that will change with the window update they are doing.

 

[Kalantris]

4 hours ago, Diragor said:

I never have FPS problems and I play on max settings. Just a 1500€ computer and it plays super smooth even If I break tall buildings, no lag ^^ If you have a potato there, you might need to change graphic settings or upgrade your pc. If thats not the case jst wait, the performance will definitely be better^^

 

No idea what kind of 1500€ PC you have there, but me and four of my friends had to downgrade to low or mid with some stuff on off/low to have two-digit FPS during horde nights regardless of our hardware. We span from R5 to overclocked R7s, from 1080 to 3060 and we're all at 32gb+ of RAM. The game works terribly bad, I get drops to 8fps on blood moons with my CPU/GPU at 20% usage. Missions in cities are extremely hard, if we linger too long, night falls and random zeds start spawning, we're all down to 20-40fps. I'd gladly skip all new content in A21 in favour of at least a bit of optimization, because right now it's extremely bad.

 

Best regards,

Kalantris

[Grs]

2 hours ago, Kalantris said:

 

No idea what kind of 1500€ PC you have there, but me and four of my friends had to downgrade to low or mid with some stuff on off/low to have two-digit FPS during horde nights regardless of our hardware. We span from R5 to overclocked R7s, from 1080 to 3060 and we're all at 32gb+ of RAM. The game works terribly bad, I get drops to 8fps on blood moons with my CPU/GPU at 20% usage. Missions in cities are extremely hard, if we linger too long, night falls and random zeds start spawning, we're all down to 20-40fps. I'd gladly skip all new content in A21 in favour of at least a bit of optimization, because right now it's extremely bad.

 

Best regards,

Kalantris

I second that. While I do Max out zombie numbers during horde nights, the fps goes below 10. I believe it has something to do with how the game uses cpu and zombie pathfinding. 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Grs (see edit history)

[Diragor]

2 hours ago, Kalantris said:

 

No idea what kind of 1500€ PC you have there, but me and four of my friends had to downgrade to low or mid with some stuff on off/low to have two-digit FPS during horde nights regardless of our hardware. We span from R5 to overclocked R7s, from 1080 to 3060 and we're all at 32gb+ of RAM. The game works terribly bad, I get drops to 8fps on blood moons with my CPU/GPU at 20% usage. Missions in cities are extremely hard, if we linger too long, night falls and random zeds start spawning, we're all down to 20-40fps. I'd gladly skip all new content in A21 in favour of at least a bit of optimization, because right now it's extremely bad.

 

Best regards,

Kalantris

I got the same setup but no problems. Weird I play solo and without a server, maybe thats the difference?

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Kalantris said:

 

No idea what kind of 1500€ PC you have there, but me and four of my friends had to downgrade to low or mid with some stuff on off/low to have two-digit FPS during horde nights regardless of our hardware. We span from R5 to overclocked R7s, from 1080 to 3060 and we're all at 32gb+ of RAM. The game works terribly bad, I get drops to 8fps on blood moons with my CPU/GPU at 20% usage. Missions in cities are extremely hard, if we linger too long, night falls and random zeds start spawning, we're all down to 20-40fps. I'd gladly skip all new content in A21 in favour of at least a bit of optimization, because right now it's extremely bad.

 

Best regards,

Kalantris

 

I play on a ryzen 5 2600x, rx580 and lots of stuff turned off, with a dedicated server and 3 friends. Even on horde night we all get acceptable FPS above 40, night does not change FPS at all (at least not in a way that I would notice)

 

Reasons why you could have problems when I with weaker hardware do not, are: No dedicated server, a slow dedicated server, bad network connection, dynamic mesh not turned off, ...

 

7D2D seems especially fickle with network connections. If you can, try different servers whether that changes anything.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[outhous]

15 hours ago, maxousara said:

I have see somewhere in the forum they have talk about a permadeath options in the game. Do you know if its in the game or in the futur ?? A game with 1 life.

Why would this be needed as an option/setting? You can just quit the game when you die? Why would/should TFP spend time working on an option that the player can easily accomplish already?

[Astronomical]

20 minutes ago, outhous said:

Why would this be needed as an option/setting? You can just quit the game when you die? Why would/should TFP spend time working on an option that the player can easily accomplish already?

 

Maybe for those weak willed individuals who suffer from impulse control and commitment difficulties?

 

Oh not me of course I'm, uh ..asking for a friend? 😅

[Syphon583]

1 hour ago, outhous said:

I have see somewhere in the forum they have talk about a permadeath options in the game. Do you know if its in the game or in the futur ?? A game with 1 life.

@maxousara I believe there has been talk, but nothing officially announced. Not sure it would be implemented before gold.

 

1 hour ago, outhous said:

Why would this be needed as an option/setting? You can just quit the game when you die? Why would/should TFP spend time working on an option that the player can easily accomplish already?

Of course they could do it on their own now. But it's not like they're asking for a huge lift here (we're likely talking a few lines of code) and MANY games have permadeath options where players could easily self-impose it. It's a logical question to ask.

 

44 minutes ago, Astronomical said:

Maybe for those weak willed individuals who suffer from impulse control and commitment difficulties?

 

Oh not me of course I'm, uh ..asking for a friend? 😅

This is why I set my games to DELETE ALL when I die. Gives me just enough incentive to start a new run. 😄

Edited August 11, 2022 by Syphon583 (see edit history)

[Eromivus]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I play on a ryzen 5 2600x, rx580 and lots of stuff turned off, with a dedicated server and 3 friends. Even on horde night we all get acceptable FPS above 40, night does not change FPS at all (at least not in a way that I would notice)

 

Reasons why you could have problems when I with weaker hardware do not, are: No dedicated server, a slow dedicated server, bad network connection, dynamic mesh not turned off, ...

 

7D2D seems especially fickle with network connections. If you can, try different servers whether that changes anything.

 

 

 

If you don't mind, what are the specs of the dedicated server? I just cobbled one together with some friends, but we haven't set it up yet. I have no real frame of reference for what kind of performance we should expect.

[Fanatical_Meat]

1 hour ago, Eromivus said:

 

If you don't mind, what are the specs of the dedicated server? I just cobbled one together with some friends, but we haven't set it up yet. I have no real frame of reference for what kind of performance we should expect.

I am running it on a 3800x, 32GB 3200 ram, I was doing an ssd but I moved up to a gen 3 PCIE NVME WD Black.

I run the game client & server client on the same machine, I typically have 4 to 5 players connected (this includes me).

I have few horde night problems I’ve had it set for 16 zombies per player. This doesn’t mean it is problem free but it is not a slide show either. People connected with various aged machines seem to have problems when zombies go above 8 per player and 12 is the max tolerable.

My internet speed is 100 up & down.

Edit: server doesn’t care about video card but game does. I currently use a 1660ti.

Simply put, the unity game engine just doesn’t appear to be super awesome at tracking a bunch of entities. Works fine until it slows then it slows rapidly. I do not think it is a reasonable expectation to think you’ll have hundreds of zombies and players doing stuff all at the same time.

Edited August 11, 2022 by Fanatical_Meat (see edit history)

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Eromivus said:

 

If you don't mind, what are the specs of the dedicated server? I just cobbled one together with some friends, but we haven't set it up yet. I have no real frame of reference for what kind of performance we should expect.

 

It is a rented virtual server, the provider isn't very forthcoming with that info and inside the virtual machine you can't see the real hardware. But 2 years ago he installed new AMD EPYC's and I changed immediately since the older generation didn't cut it.

As usual with server CPUs clock is relatively low with about 2.1-2.3 Ghz (it didn't even change between the two gens), but the big caches and data paths make up for that.

 

What you can do is run a test game and look into the server logfile. If you see the server is always above 20 (a limit below which the game does not work correctly anymore) and not fluctuating wildly you're good. I looked into one of my logfiles now and FPS there was usually around 37 and the lowest value I could find was 29 (except for the two values at startup and shutdown).

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[maxousara]

3 hours ago, outhous said:

Why would this be needed as an option/setting? You can just quit the game when you die? Why would/should TFP spend time working on an option that the player can easily accomplish already?

Because they have talk about that before not a reason for be angry lol this is just a question nothing else the game is almost finish anyway if they have time for that why not.

2 hours ago, Syphon583 said:

@maxousara I believe there has been talk, but nothing officially announced. Not sure it would be implemented before gold.

 

Of course they could do it on their own now. But it's not like they're asking for a huge lift here (we're likely talking a few lines of code) and MANY games have permadeath options where players could easily self-impose it. It's a logical question to ask.

 

This is why I set my games to DELETE ALL when I die. Gives me just enough incentive to start a new run. 😄

I'm happy to see somebody understand me haha

[Zombiepoptard]

On 8/10/2022 at 10:33 AM, meganoth said:

 

The attributes look exactly like classes in RPGs to me. Why is a cleric in Pathfinder never able to ride a horse as well as a fighter? Why is the druid easily better at sense motive, even though he might be less intelligent than the fighter? 

 

A few reasons to do this come to mind:

It offers the player structure he can follow, models so to speak.

It makes it easier for the player to make a really different character the next time. If you can freely select perks you tend to always use the same ones.

And it is easier for TFP to balance classes than the individual perks in a totally open system.

 

 

The main point is the grouping of skills unrelated to features of the game in said trees. You should have more combat skills so that it would work like how you said. There should be a separate point system for combat and life style skills. You'd still have trees but it wouldn't feel like the game is choosing for you on those 2 big chooses that are completely unrelated. I should be able to progress towards a farming and sniper build without investing a boat load of skill points on these gatekeeping attribute system. My argument isn't that skill trees are dumb my argument is how you guys implemented skill trees is kinda dumb.

 

The two types of skills need to be separated and combat skills need to be expanded. Why do you see build videos for other rpg games and not for 7 days to die? You only see guides for what skills you should start out with. Maybe it's because the combat rpg portion of the game leaves much to be desired but first you need to reorganize how you guys do skills trees. 

Edited August 11, 2022 by Zombiepoptard (see edit history)

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Zombiepoptard said:

The main point is the grouping of skills unrelated to features of the game in said trees.

 

I don't understand this sentence. There are no skills unrelated to features of the game.

 

1 hour ago, Zombiepoptard said:

You should have more combat skills so that it would work like how you said.

 

In what way does it not work, which of the 3 reasons I gave does not work because there are too few combat skills? Maybe give an example.

 

1 hour ago, Zombiepoptard said:

There should be a separate point system for combat and life style skills. You'd still have trees but it wouldn't feel like the game is choosing for you on those 2 big chooses that are completely unrelated. I should be able to progress towards a farming and sniper build without investing a boat load of skill points on these gatekeeping attribute system. My argument isn't that skill trees are dumb my argument is how you guys implemented skill trees is kinda dumb.

 

There are a lot of possible RPG systems. Your proposed system is used by Obsidians Pillars of Eternity series for example where social skills are separated from weapons skills. As I said TFP uses a system more like AD&D/Pathfinder. Those RPGs have a stricter class system and players are also limited in their choices by the attributes (i.e. you can't select a feat with less than 14 INT, or you could but it would make no sense).

 

In other words: Some RPGs give the player more, some give less freedom in their choices.

 

What is missing a little in TFPs scheme is a strong theme, an explanation with which to explain the limits and groupings. AD&D calls a class Rogue and many of the skills and feats thematically follow from how people think a rogue could or should be, but not all.

TFP tries to do this from attribute directly to perk and that works for half or 3/4th of the perks and the rest looks somewhat unconnected. The theme is there but it often is a weak link only.

 

But that doesn't mean it fails at being a sort of half-open class system.

 

1 hour ago, Zombiepoptard said:

 

The two types of skills need to be separated and combat skills need to be expanded. Why do you see build videos for other rpg games and not for 7 days to die? You only see guides for what skills you should start out with. Maybe it's because the combat rpg portion of the game leaves much to be desired but first you need to reorganize how you guys do skills trees. 

 

Edited August 11, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Uncle Al]

10 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

What is missing a little in TFPs scheme is a strong theme, an explanation with which to explain the limits and groupings. AD&D calls a class Rogue and many of the skills and feats thematically follow from how people think a rogue could or should be, but not all.

TFP tries to do this from attribute directly to perk and that works for half or 3/4th of the perks and the rest looks somewhat unconnected. The theme is there but it often is a weak link only.

 

 

 

I completely agree on this one.

 

I think if the attributes had been called something like "Thug, Hunter, Technician, Assassin, Tough Guy" or whatever, then much of the dissonance a few people get from the attribute system wouldn't occur.  I do understand why 'How come putting points into strength doesn't make me hit things harder with a spear?" is a complaint that comes up fairly regularly.  Folks are used to thinking of attributes working in a certain way in RPGs. In 7DTD they are called attributes but actually much closer in function to what would traditionally be class levels.

 

Not certain how much effort a change would be.  Might be worth considering to make the game more intuitive for new players, but I doubt it's a top priority even if it has been considered.

[Star69]

7 hours ago, outhous said:

Why would this be needed as an option/setting? You can just quit the game when you die? Why would/should TFP spend time working on an option that the player can easily accomplish already?

The most important reason is dying on a pub server with absentee admins. If you want to keep playing on the same server, you need an admin to delete your dead player profile files in order to start over.

[maxousara]

11 hours ago, Syphon583 said:

@maxousara 

 

😄

I suggest permadeath for people like me who played major part of time in solo. If you active that on multiplayer its just too complicated and not recommended we have some situation for this options and other not. This is why is suggest an (options) for have the choice its not my fault if people can't use this options correctly like the people complain about 7 days is too easy or too hard but can't ajust their settings.

[Zombiepoptard]

@meganoth

 

If you were to separate the social skills from the combat skills this is what you would be left with.

This emphasizes the trees that are lacking perks relating to combat. 

 

Orange is weapon related yellow is combat support perks

 

 

Perception: Has few support perks

Dead Eye

Demolition

Javelin Master

The Infiltrator

(weak to situational needs a buff) The Infiltrator

 

Strength: Has few support perks

Boomstick

Pummel Pete 

Skull Crusher

Heavy Armor

Sexual Tyrannosaurus

 

Fortitude: Relatively good but still needs more perks in general

The Brawler

Machine Gunner

Pain Tolerance 

Healing Factor

(maybe) Rule 1: Cardio

 

Agility: Perfect 👍

Archery

Gunslinger

Deep Cuts

Run and Gun

Flurry of Blows

Light Armor

Parkour

Hidden Strike 

From The Shadows

 

Intellect: Few weapons no support perks turrets are fun though

Electrocutioner 

Robotics

 

Social Perks: All the none combat perks would be on this tree without the gate keeping attribute system. Some skills will cost more points to level up.

 

 

My idea would included fleshing the combat perks out then having a separate tree for the social skills. I feel like I'm wasting my points when I cross trees to play the game differently and that's partly due to the type of perks that are rapped together. This is a multi-genre game that should have a skill system that is optimized for it. Combat and social perks shouldn't step on each others toes just to bring the illusion of a filled out skill tree. Add more depth add more perks.

 

 

 

[FinkPloyd]

15 hours ago, Eromivus said:

 

If you don't mind, what are the specs of the dedicated server? I just cobbled one together with some friends, but we haven't set it up yet. I have no real frame of reference for what kind of performance we should expect.

 

My current dedicated server is a 6600K, 16 Gb RAM, SSD drive, LAN to internet and a 2060.

 

No clients report any issues with 7D2D (max was 5) and server always appears to have lots of headroom.

 

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Zombiepoptard said:

@meganoth

 

If you were to separate the social skills from the combat skills this is what you would be left with.

This emphasizes the trees that are lacking perks relating to combat. 

 

Orange is weapon related yellow is combat support perks

 

 

Perception: Has few support perks

Dead Eye

Demolition

Javelin Master

The Infiltrator

(weak to situational needs a buff) The Infiltrator

 

Strength: Has few support perks

Boomstick

Pummel Pete 

Skull Crusher

Heavy Armor

Sexual Tyrannosaurus

 

Fortitude: Relatively good but still needs more perks in general

The Brawler

Machine Gunner

Pain Tolerance 

Healing Factor

(maybe) Rule 1: Cardio

 

Agility: Perfect 👍

Archery

Gunslinger

Deep Cuts

Run and Gun

Flurry of Blows

Light Armor

Parkour

Hidden Strike 

From The Shadows

 

Intellect: Few weapons no support perks turrets are fun though

Electrocutioner 

Robotics

 

Social Perks: All the none combat perks would be on this tree without the gate keeping attribute system. Some skills will cost more points to level up.

 

 

My idea would included fleshing the combat perks out then having a separate tree for the social skills. I feel like I'm wasting my points when I cross trees to play the game differently and that's partly due to the type of perks that are rapped together. This is a multi-genre game that should have a skill system that is optimized for it. Combat and social perks shouldn't step on each others toes just to bring the illusion of a filled out skill tree. Add more depth add more perks.

 

 

 

 

Additional combat perks sound nice but are there really that many parameters left which new perks could influence? I think TFP wants weapons to feel different so for example AOE damage in fortitude guns or a damage over time (like bleed, even if called differently) on a speer or knuckles would make the weapon choice less relevant.

 

And we have a class that would be impossible in your scheme: Select INT and you are the brainy type with gadgets and social skills. BUT he is no fighter and has a harder time in combat. Your separation would make such a weak combat/high social class impossible. You would need to balance all weapons so they are equal otherwise nobody would select the weak ones.

 

I'm not saying your scheme is bad. It is another scheme that would be quite possible, with some advantages and disadvantages. But also lots of work and difficulties to find more combat perks and something that would push release back another alpha. And the ridicule of people who say TFP rehauls too much would increase tenfold not that that matters much 😉

 

But I'm not TFP. What I say is irrelevant and just guesswork. Just know that other forum posters have proposed similar schemes to TFP already and TFP did not adopt them (yet).

 

 

 

[meganoth]

19 hours ago, Eromivus said:

 

If you don't mind, what are the specs of the dedicated server? I just cobbled one together with some friends, but we haven't set it up yet. I have no real frame of reference for what kind of performance we should expect.

 

Supplementary info: I found hints in their forum that the server CPU I got is likely an Epyc 7702.

[Eromivus]

5 hours ago, FinkPloyd said:

 

My current dedicated server is a 6600K, 16 Gb RAM, SSD drive, LAN to internet and a 2060.

 

No clients report any issues with 7D2D (max was 5) and server always appears to have lots of headroom.

 

 

Thank you all so much for the info. I think what you just listed is very close to what we scrounged together, so that's promising.

[Zombiepoptard]

4 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Additional combat perks sound nice but are there really that many parameters left which new perks could influence? I think TFP wants weapons to feel different so for example AOE damage in fortitude guns or a damage over time (like bleed, even if called differently) on a speer or knuckles would make the weapon choice less relevant.

 

And we have a class that would be impossible in your scheme: Select INT and you are the brainy type with gadgets and social skills. BUT he is no fighter and has a harder time in combat. Your separation would make such a weak combat/high social class impossible. You would need to balance all weapons so they are equal otherwise nobody would select the weak ones.

 

I'm not saying your scheme is bad. It is another scheme that would be quite possible, with some advantages and disadvantages. But also lots of work and difficulties to find more combat perks and something that would push release back another alpha. And the ridicule of people who say TFP rehauls too much would increase tenfold not that that matters much 😉

 

But I'm not TFP. What I say is irrelevant and just guesswork. Just know that other forum posters have proposed similar schemes to TFP already and TFP did not adopt them (yet).

 

 

 

 

I know your not a dev I just had to throw my idea out there. People get mad at things that feel like a change with out adding any depth.  I'm betting they could find some more perks to throw in the game.