Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Roland]

15 hours ago, Zombiepoptard said:

All the non combat perks would be on this tree without the gate keeping attribute system. Some skills will cost more points to level up.

 

If you are willing to have some skills cost more points to level up then the current organization handles that exactly. The non-combat perks that are in your chosen attribute cost less and the ones that are in other attributes cost more.

 

Under your system, the same non-combat perks would always be the same every time you played. If Living off the Land was chosen to be an expensive perk to level up it would always be so every single game. In the current system, Living off the Land is cheap whenever you decide to do Fortitude but expensive whenever you choose to follow one of the other attributes so there is some variance in play.

 

I don't understand why you are willing to allow some skills to be more expensive and some to be cheaper but currently hate paying more for skills that outside of your chosen tree. It is the same thing but with the added bonus that you also gain some ability in other weapons.

 

Your Way

I choose Strength for my main attribute.

I want to farm so I pay the more expensive upgrade costs of Living off the Land

All I get for those extra costs are the perks and skills granted by living off the land.

 

Current Way

I choose Strength for my main attribute.

I want to farm so I pay the more expensive upgrade costs of Living off the Land

I get the LotL perks plus my headshot chances and damage increases whenever I use machine guns and knuckles.

 

Extra cost is extra cost. You already admitted that you would be fine paying extra cost for some non-combat perks if they were moved out of the attribute trees into a general category. So if you are fine with that added cost why are you not okay with the current added costs?

 

I like how you organized and showed the relative strengths and weaknesses of each tree where it concerns combat. I think that what your organization doesn't show is the advantages some attributes have in noncombat skills being cheaper if you pick that attribute (because you removed them). This is important because it makes the attributes asymmetrical in nature granting different challenges and higher difficulties depending on what is chosen.

[Callum123456789]

On 8/11/2022 at 7:12 AM, 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^^

Could also be because the games in alpha too right? And not everyone can have a pc that's worth something like $2000. And more notably the game doesn't handle so many zombies like it used to since they're all HD zombies if you have like a horde of 60 they will affect your pc 10x more than the original zombie models would as well as that the game is unoptimised and each alpha the optimisation need is getting higher and higher I think the general audience of this game generally don't have beasts of a pc like me my pc is equivalent to a $750 pc but yet I still have fps issues especially in the downtown area.

 

Edited August 12, 2022 by Callum123456789 (see edit history)

[Callum123456789]

On 8/11/2022 at 10:49 AM, Diragor said:

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

 

Yeah the bullet proof glass of doom in the downtown district does cause a lot of fps drops especially if there are skyscrapers next to each other.

[BadPlayer]

On 8/10/2022 at 1:17 AM, RipClaw said:

In the rwgmixer.xml there is the following section

 

               <property class="city">
                       <property name="few" value="1"/>
                       <property name="default" value="2"/>
                       <property name="many" value="3"/>
                        
                       <property name="mintiles" value="14"/>
                       <property name="maxtiles" value="18"/>
               </property>

 

The labels few, default, many correspond to the choices you have under the Towns slider. 

 

You can just give it a try. Create a map with different Towns settings and check in the result if there are more or less cities on the map.

 

And, right above that there a section for town.

That leads me to believe that there can be a city slider too.

[Astronomical]

19 hours ago, Zombiepoptard said:

Orange is weapon related yellow is combat support perks

 

Anyone who is even the least bit color blind is just scratching their head right now. 🤔 😃

Edited August 13, 2022 by Astronomical (see edit history)

[Zombiepoptard]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

 

If you are willing to have some skills cost more points to level up then the current organization handles that exactly. The non-combat perks that are in your chosen attribute cost less and the ones that are in other attributes cost more.

 

Under your system, the same non-combat perks would always be the same every time you played. If Living off the Land was chosen to be an expensive perk to level up it would always be so every single game. In the current system, Living off the Land is cheap whenever you decide to do Fortitude but expensive whenever you choose to follow one of the other attributes so there is some variance in play.

 

I don't understand why you are willing to allow some skills to be more expensive and some to be cheaper but currently hate paying more for skills that outside of your chosen tree. It is the same thing but with the added bonus that you also gain some ability in other weapons.

 

Your Way

I choose Strength for my main attribute.

I want to farm so I pay the more expensive upgrade costs of Living off the Land

All I get for those extra costs are the perks and skills granted by living off the land.

 

Current Way

I choose Strength for my main attribute.

I want to farm so I pay the more expensive upgrade costs of Living off the Land

I get the LotL perks plus my headshot chances and damage increases whenever I use machine guns and knuckles.

 

Extra cost is extra cost. You already admitted that you would be fine paying extra cost for some non-combat perks if they were moved out of the attribute trees into a general category. So if you are fine with that added cost why are you not okay with the current added costs?

 

I like how you organized and showed the relative strengths and weaknesses of each tree where it concerns combat. I think that what your organization doesn't show is the advantages some attributes have in noncombat skills being cheaper if you pick that attribute (because you removed them). This is important because it makes the attributes asymmetrical in nature granting different challenges and higher difficulties depending on what is chosen.

You are fighting a ghost here. You would just have separate skill points for combat and social skills. That way when you start out you can progress down your combat route and your life style route with out having to waste points crossing over attributes. (you would still have the ability to cross over but it would only be within combat) The separation keeps the player focused on combat builds while having managing the social elements in another window. You shouldn't have to compromise on two totally different systems. Instead the compromise should be within combat and within social skills. Do you want to play a thief type character or a tanky brute. Then on the other side do you want to be a builder, miner, barter, looter and quester. The system right know is a lot of wire crossing to get off skills that should even be in the same room.

59 minutes ago, Astronomical said:

 

Anyone who is even the least bit color blind is just scratching their head right now. 🤔 😃

the strong survive

Edited August 13, 2022 by Zombiepoptard (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

4 hours ago, BadPlayer said:

And, right above that there a section for town.

That leads me to believe that there can be a city slider too.

And above that is a section for "countrytown" and then above that is one for "oldwest". It depends on the programming whether you create separate sliders for each section or combine everything under one slider. Someone would have to look at the DLLs but my guess is that these sections are combined under one slider.

[Roland]

4 hours ago, Zombiepoptard said:

waste points crossing over attributes.

 

You aren't wasting points. You are paying a higher cost for some of the non-combat perks that you want. Again, I'm not understanding where the actual difference lies in what we have and your proposed system other than those non-combat perks being in a generic category. You stated that you are okay with some non-combat perks costing more. If you can forget for the moment that the extra points you are paying to cross over are giving you abilities that you don't necessarily care about and simply see those extra points as the more expensive cost then you'll understand that you've already got what you want.

 

When I cross over to get perks in a different attribute than I've been spending in, I see those perks as being more expensive with some added benefits for a few other weapons. When you cross over to get perks in a different attribute than you've been spending in, you see those perks as being more expensive with additional benefits that are totally wasted because you don't care about them. If we change it to your method the higher expense will be there for some perks but none of the extra benefits which I guess will make you happy since you don't want them but I like them since I often use a variety of weapons besides what I am most fully perked into.

 

We agree that at least some of the non-combat perks should be more expensive. I'm happy with the way they are more expensive now and like it better than the way you propose. The way you propose whichever non-combat perks are chosen to be the more expensive ones will always be the more expensive ones. The way it is now it depends on what your primary attribute is. Those non-combat perks will be cheap and the rest expensive. It makes it different when you choose different paths.

 

I do agree that more perks would be fun though.

[maxousara]

Just a question like that if in a20 we're level max can we have enough points for have every perk max or we dont have enough points for everything and need to buy with strategy ??

 

Dont tell me to test myself for now i can't. Thanks

 

 

[Uncle Al]

1 hour ago, maxousara said:

Just a question like that if in a20 we're level max can we have enough points for have every perk max or we dont have enough points for everything and need to buy with strategy ??

 

Dont tell me to test myself for now i can't. Thanks

 

 

 

You can take every perk.  You end up with about 20 perks points left over that you can't spend if you go all the way to the level cap, which is 300.

[POCKET951]

1 hour ago, Uncle Al said:

 

You can take every perk.  You end up with about 20 perks points left over that you can't spend if you go all the way to the level cap, which is 300.

 on this note, though not planned for alpha 21, will we eventually see TFP take another look at the skill tree/levelcap and tweak it a bit (i.e  making 250 levelcap and trimming the skill tree so you only need 250 points, or maybe adding new skills to add back up to 300?

[JCrook1028]

18 hours ago, Callum123456789 said:

HD zombies if you have like a horde of 60 they will affect your pc 10x more than the original zombie model

That's wrong tho. The newer zombies actually use LESS resources despite looking better.

[Zombiepoptard]

9 hours ago, Roland said:

 

You aren't wasting points. You are paying a higher cost for some of the non-combat perks that you want. Again, I'm not understanding where the actual difference lies in what we have and your proposed system other than those non-combat perks being in a generic category. You stated that you are okay with some non-combat perks costing more. If you can forget for the moment that the extra points you are paying to cross over are giving you abilities that you don't necessarily care about and simply see those extra points as the more expensive cost then you'll understand that you've already got what you want.

 

When I cross over to get perks in a different attribute than I've been spending in, I see those perks as being more expensive with some added benefits for a few other weapons. When you cross over to get perks in a different attribute than you've been spending in, you see those perks as being more expensive with additional benefits that are totally wasted because you don't care about them. If we change it to your method the higher expense will be there for some perks but none of the extra benefits which I guess will make you happy since you don't want them but I like them since I often use a variety of weapons besides what I am most fully perked into.

 

We agree that at least some of the non-combat perks should be more expensive. I'm happy with the way they are more expensive now and like it better than the way you propose. The way you propose whichever non-combat perks are chosen to be the more expensive ones will always be the more expensive ones. The way it is now it depends on what your primary attribute is. Those non-combat perks will be cheap and the rest expensive. It makes it different when you choose different paths.

 

I do agree that more perks would be fun though.

 

If I wanted to max out cooking on another tree it would cost me 16 points just for the attribute alone and getting no benefit on the attribute itself because I'm crossing over without the intent to use the weapon it applies to. I'd then have to spend 5 points on cooking mastery. That in total would be 21 points just to max out one perk that isn't on my preferred weapon's skill tree. It would be a huge task to do all of that leveling when it could just be fixed with an organized and cost efficient system. Have combat perks and social perks be leveled up with two separate skill points so you could pursue both at the same time. This way you don't have to spend a lot of time leveling up 2 perks with a boat load of skill points. The devs could balance how much skill points cost for combat and skill tree. The players would look forward to the new combat perks that this system would need to add to make it work. 

[Rabbitslovecactus]

With all the new vehicle decorations being put into the game, will there be a lot more of them in cities and on roadways leading out of cities? This would give the impression of people leaving the city when the outbreak just occurred. 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Zombiepoptard said:

If I wanted to max out cooking on another tree it would cost me 16 points just for the attribute alone and getting no benefit on the attribute itself because I'm crossing over without the intent to use the weapon it applies to. I'd then have to spend 5 points on cooking mastery. That in total would be 21 points just to max out one perk that isn't on my preferred weapon's skill tree.

 

I know you were just using cooking as an example and I get your point. But I will say also that in the case of cooking as well as several other non-combat perks, the crafting recipe portions of those are gone now and separated to magazines. So a big portion of absolutely needing to max those out is gone in A21.

 

Secondly, I understand the costs. It's expensive. The difference between us is you see the benefits of the second attribute wasted because I guess you won't use a suboptimal weapon even if it does the job. So if you are fully perked in Machine Guns you won't touch a shotgun even though you are fully maxed in Strength in order to max cooking. In my case I'll have machine guns and shotguns on my belt and use both even if I haven't spent a single point in shotguns. Just the full Strength bonus alone makes shotguns pretty amazing as a secondary weapon. The fact that the 16 points is of no benefit to you is your choice by you ignoring those benefits. But they are still there.

 

Finally, the way the perks are separated makes it so that in some games you are a master cook but in other games you are not and you have to adapt and play differently. If cooking was separated into a generic category and its cost was set then every time you played, it would be the same.

 

1 hour ago, Zombiepoptard said:

Have combat perks and social perks be leveled up with two separate skill points so you could pursue both at the same time.

 

What determines which type of skill points you get when you level up? Do you get one of each type? That just sounds like eliminating tough choices. You no longer have to choose between purchasing a combat perk or a non-combat perk. Now you can do both. Maybe I'm not understanding what you are proposing with two separate skill points but I see that as a loss of hard choices.

 

I like your ideas. If they were in a mod I think I would have a lot of fun playing that mod. I think all of these ideas about how to organize the perks are interesting but I think TFP's version is also interesting and has pros and cons but...doesn't need to be fixed. It isn't broken--just different.

 

If your ideas were the game's default version and TFP's was the mod I would enjoy playing the mod with their version as well.

[maxousara]

6 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

 

You can take every perk.  You end up with about 20 perks points left over that you can't spend if you go all the way to the level cap, which is 300.

Thanks

[Xeen]

I think the new crafting and weighted looting system sounds inspired and who ever thought of it is a genius. I think it is going to revolutionize the game, good job pimps.

[Uncle Al]

1 hour ago, Xeen said:

I think the new crafting and weighted looting system sounds inspired and who ever thought of it is a genius. I think it is going to revolutionize the game, good job pimps.

I agree it's a decent looking piece of design, from what we've been shown, but I do have a couple of concerns regarding supporting systems required to make new crafting really shine:

 

Removing the Q5 crafting cap.  Madmole has said he'll consider it, so I have hope.  Without that, however shiny our new toy is, the entire tool/weapon/armour half of the system just becomes redundant as soon as Q6 gear becomes available. That seems like a terrible shame.

 

Doing a perk rebalance.  Without that we're going to have a ton of sub-par perks who used to have some value because they granted recipes.  Master Chef, Advanced Engineering, along with half the INT tree, and even LotL 2 are glaringly bad when they no longer provide crafting recipes. Putting points into a terrible perk just to weight your magazine drop chances would feel horrible, especially if you're then unlucky with getting spec appropriate drops. 

 

I'm sure the designers have already considered these issues when desiging the new crafting, so I do have plenty of faith that we'll get them.  Or we'll get something else to mitigate the issues the new crafting system would have if it was just dropped into the rest of the game with no changes to other systems. 

 

What I'm really hoping for is a perk rebalance that increases the value of the perks that lose recipes, while also bringing a bunch of the other unloved perks up to par a bit.

Edited August 14, 2022 by Uncle Al (see edit history)

[Zombiepoptard]

9 hours ago, Roland said:

 

I know you were just using cooking as an example and I get your point. But I will say also that in the case of cooking as well as several other non-combat perks, the crafting recipe portions of those are gone now and separated to magazines. So a big portion of absolutely needing to max those out is gone in A21.

 

 

 

 

Yeah that's one of the good things about that update.

 

9 hours ago, Roland said:

 

The fact that the 16 points is of no benefit to you is your choice by you ignoring those benefits. But they are still there.

 

The increased headshot and limb damage is a odd benefit that only applies to a weapon when your using it. Agility should be more stamina, fortification should be more health, strength more damage on power attack, perception more headshot damage intelligence less chance to get debuffed and more effective at dealing with debuffs. That's just ideas off the top of my head.  

10 hours ago, Roland said:

Do you get one of each type?

 

Yes you would get one of each. You could balance it out my adjusting the cost.

10 hours ago, Roland said:

Maybe I'm not understanding what you are proposing with two separate skill points but I see that as a loss of hard choices.

 

There's a difference between a hard choice and a shotty choice. 7dtd limits the 2 big defining factor of how your going to play by making you compromise one for the other. Unless you just happened to play the way that tree wanted you to play but sometimes it compromises both. Example: I want to play fortitude not because I like the shotgun that much and not because I like farming that much but because I feel like it's an okay bundle of stuff and it limits me from play differently. Where if I had those two big choice to mix and match it would open up the rpg element of customizing how you want to play and adding more variety to my experience. People want to play differently and switch things up anyways you don't have  to encourage there choices by bundling two unrelated features together. The hard choices would be within the two skill categories. You would just have to make more choices / perks for the combat trees... Probably make a hacking perk for intellect tree to make enemy poi turrets and enemy drones to turn on bandits/ zombies. You could probably do a lot more with hacking. 

11 hours ago, Roland said:

 

I like your ideas. If they were in a mod I think I would have a lot of fun playing that mod.

 

Thank you Roland

 

If I could mod this in I would. Maybe sometime in the future I'll start learning code and modding who knows. I hope modders are listening. I like skill trees in 7 days to die and don't want to go back to alpha16 but I feel like ever since alpha 17 the perk system has been a ruff draft. TFP's need to add more perks and fill out it's potential. 

[Jost Amman]

11 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

Without that, however shiny our new toy is, the entire tool/weapon/armour half of the system just becomes redundant as soon as Q6 gear becomes available. That seems like a terrible shame.

Well, considering you didn't waste a single skill/perk point on it, it's not a big deal anyway.

Many things that are essential early game, become obsolete at a later stage. I see no difference here (again, consider the above).

[Matt115]

9 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Well, considering you didn't waste a single skill/perk point on it, it's not a big deal anyway.

Many things that are essential early game, become obsolete at a later stage. I see no difference here (again, consider the above).

Well that's why older "1-999" quality system was better - now there is no point to craft something like tools/weapons more that 1 time because repair kits are cheep - mods area easy to find so mods are too expensive to care about them - most perks in this scenario is usefull some of them are just useless like well isulted.  But categories are the worst thing - because this is just waste of time. I think - skill tree for every type of weapon + magasines or books for crating and LBD for "body" would be the best option

Edited August 14, 2022 by Matt115 (see edit history)

[bdubyah]

On 8/13/2022 at 7:02 PM, Uncle Al said:

Without that, however shiny our new toy is, the entire tool/weapon/armour half of the system just becomes redundant as soon as Q6 gear becomes available. That seems like a terrible shame.

If only they would bring item degradation back. It solves multiple problems with the current system.

[Diragor]

On 8/14/2022 at 12:42 AM, Xeen said:

I think the new crafting and weighted looting system sounds inspired and who ever thought of it is a genius. I think it is going to revolutionize the game, good job pimps.

Did I miss something? what new weighted looting system O_O I wanna know

[Uncle Al]

18 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Well, considering you didn't waste a single skill/perk point on it, it's not a big deal anyway.

Many things that are essential early game, become obsolete at a later stage. I see no difference here (again, consider the above).

I disagree.  There are things that get less useful late game, but very few things become totally redundant. This seems to be a conscious design decision. I'm really happy about that but that's a personal preference, as I hate heavily enforced early/late power curve systems. I appreciate why they exist but I personally don't like them.

 

The existance of fergettin' elixir would make those kind of systems a really bad fit for 7DTD anyway. You'd end up with a very limited optimal skill progression where you take all the early power curve stuff then respec and take the late stuff.

 

For crafting under the magazine system, even though you haven't spent perk points, you've spent effort and modified your strategy around crafting if you want to reach maximum skill. Taking magazine quest rewards, searching every mailbox you see, targetting gun ranges to find magazines to improve your gun crafting or whatever. To suddenly get a drop that makes all the effort you put into a crafting line worthless feels bad.

 

Being able to craft Q6 if you've already got a Q6 drop isn't a huge advantage, but you can still use the parts you find to craft more Q6 items and hope for a better stats roll. You're getting a little something for your effort. Not much, but a little. It also means parts are still mildly useful drops into end game. That feels way better than 'crafting is totally irrelevant now, never open that page again'

[Jost Amman]

14 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

Being able to craft Q6 if you've already got a Q6 drop isn't a huge advantage

I'd say, it's no advantage at all... unless they make crafted items better than drops.

 

19 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

but you can still use the parts you find to craft more Q6 items and hope for a better stats roll. You're getting a little something for your effort. Not much, but a little. It also means parts are still mildly useful drops into end game. That feels way better than 'crafting is totally irrelevant now, never open that page again'

Again, that's IF they make crafted items better than the looted ones. But even then, you'd have a win only for the "crafters", because for the "looters" it would spoil the thrill of finding that coveted Q6 item in loot. The only way I see parts being useful, is if, like someone said, they reintroduce item degradation and the "repair with parts" mechanics.

 

20 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

I disagree.  There are things that get less useful late game, but very few things become totally redundant. This seems to be a conscious design decision. I'm really happy about that but that's a personal preference, as I hate heavily enforced early/late power curve systems. I appreciate why they exist but I personally don't like them.

I can respect that. But there are already things that become totally redundant late game.

 

A couple of ones that come to my mind are:

1. The Pack Mule perk, which becomes useless as soon as you fill in all mod slots with triple pockets.
2. The Well Insulated perk, which is useless as soon as you find the best clothing in the game.
3. The Grease Monkey perk, which is also redundant as soon as you already have built or bought the vehicles you need.

 

I'll give you that we expect TFP to rebalance some of those perks in A21, so we'll see how that works.

But in general, the concept of something becoming totally redundant into late game is not foreign at all in 7D2D.

 

On top of that, as I mentioned before, some of my examples are of perks, which means skill points that you had to invest.

While in your example, the "wasted time" you speak of when having to hunt for magazines, is just normal gameplay IMO... in that specific period of time you needed to craft better gear, so, in my book, is not wasted time at all, since you earned the better quality stuff you needed at the time.