Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Xeen]

@The Fun Pimps:

 

Is there a possibility of implementing a car respawn mechanic where all the cars you wrench or destroy will respawn according to the global respawn timer?

Edited August 15, 2022 by Xeen (see edit history)

[Azuro44]

Hello,

 

I am super excited about the direction the game is taking with the new mechanic to learn crafting recipes via looting.

 

I have a question about the following feature and its impact on coop:

• Perks now govern the probability of finding like-themed magazines and parts for those recipes. Perk into shotguns and you will notice more shotgun magazines and shotgunparts appearing in the world

 

Does it mean that in coop we have to be careful about who is lotting which thing?  Let’s say I’m specced in clubs but my friend in bows, does it mean to get club magazines I have to be the one to loot a container?  Or do the probabilities apply across grouo members in some way?

[Uncle Al]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

 

 

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.

Pack mule still has some value as it allows you to use additional armour mods instead of having to use up a slot in each piece of gear with a pocket mod.

 

Well insulated allows you to wear a college jacket for a speed buff instead of a duster/puffer jacket in inhospitable climates.

 

Grease monkey - yeah in single player at least it's redundant once you've used it.

 

All of these though are, I hope, going to change in the future. At least the systems they impact are set to change, hopefully making them more valuable in late game. New armour system is going to potentialy impact pocket mods, weather protection and armour mods generally. Not having to rely on pocket mods may be really valuable in a system with only four apparel slots. Equally you may not be able to cap inventory with just pocket mods in the new system.

 

I'm also really, really hopeful there's a plan to make temperature more impactful again. Logically you'd do this alongside the armour system revamp, so I haven't been surprised nothing has been done on that for a while. More impactful weather plus potentially not being able to achieve total thermal protection with mods alone (possible in the new apparel system) would potentially make well insulated very valuable indeed, even late game.

 

Grease monkey, as you correctly note, is one of those perks that pretty much has to be tweaked under new crafting. Having a perk that only has the effect of lowering the resource cost of something you probably craft once, and buffing your magazine drops a bit is comically bad.

 

We have to wait and see really on this one. If after crafting and armour changes, which we know are coming, and a perk rebalance, which is almost certainly coming, there are clearly perks that are only useful early game, I'll have to accept that making all perks at least slightly useful all game is not a design goal. I really hope that it is, but I accept I've never heard anyone in authority state that. I have inferred it from existing design decisions.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Uncle Al (see edit history)

[Diragor]

5 minutes ago, Azuro44 said:

Does it mean that in coop we have to be careful about who is lotting which thing?  Let’s say I’m specced in clubs but my friend in bows, does it mean to get club magazines I have to be the one to loot a container?  Or do the probabilities apply across grouo members in some way?

If you want the magazines, then you have to loot the container the probabilities are not shared. it's like lucky looter, only you get the bonus

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, Diragor said:

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

The OP is referring to learning by looting.

 

When you invest skill points in perks that are linked to a certain magazine series or certain parts, you get a boost when you loot so that you can find more magazines and parts matching the perks you invested points in. For example, you invest points in Advanced Engineer and find more Forge Ahead magazines. You invest points in Miner69er and you find more magazines for tools and more motor tool and steel tool parts.

 

[Uncle Al]

9 minutes ago, Diragor said:

If you want the magazines, then you have to loot the container the probabilities are not shared. it's like lucky looter, only you get the bonus

 

There's no World of Warcraft 'bind on pickup mechanic' though. If they loot a club magazine, they can just hand it to you.

 

Also from almost everything we've seen stated, the 'find magazines appropriate for your skills' mechanic is a straight bonus. So specialising in clubs doesn't make you find less magazines for other weapons, it just gives you a chance to find bonus club magazines. If it works that way there's no need to get obsessive about who opens what container.

 

My only slight worry is that there was a mechanic mentioned briefly that 'the skills bonus stops working when you reach max crafting'. That wouldn't be needed if the skills influenced looting was a pure bonus, so possibly you do find less magazines of types you don't have perks in if you perk heavily into specific skills.

 

Even if the system works that way, a group should still be able to do fine by just looting freely and then sharing magazines. It does mean having one dedicated looter with max lucky looter could cause problems with mostly finding magazines that match the looter's other perks.

Edited August 15, 2022 by Uncle Al (see edit history)

[Diragor]

Can we expect Dev Stream in September/October? You always start with that around 3 Month before Alpha release and A21 will probably come around December/January. So I wanna ask is there any plan to start with it or not yet?

 

Edit: See thicc words

Edited August 15, 2022 by Diragor (see edit history)

[Trankitas]

1 hour ago, Diragor said:

Can we expect Dev Diary in September/October? You always start with that around 3 Month before Alpha release and A21 will probably come around December/January. So I wanna ask is there any plan to start with it or not yet?

Do you mean Dev Streams? This is the Dev Diary 

[Diragor]

14 minutes ago, Trankitas said:

Do you mean Dev Streams? This is the Dev Diary 

Yes xD Sorry and thank you

[Trankitas]

2 minutes ago, Diragor said:

Yes xD Sorry and thank you

No worries, I'm waiting for them too!

[Azuro44]

7 hours ago, Diragor said:

If you want the magazines, then you have to loot the container the probabilities are not shared. it's like lucky looter, only you get the bonus

Well…then what’s the point of the bonus in coop?  basically it is as if it doesn’t exist or some complicated round-robin mechanic has to exist like in WOW raids or some such.

 

 

7 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

 

There's no World of Warcraft 'bind on pickup mechanic' though. If they loot a club magazine, they can just hand it to you.

 

Also from almost everything we've seen stated, the 'find magazines appropriate for your skills' mechanic is a straight bonus. So specialising in clubs doesn't make you find less magazines for other weapons, it just gives you a chance to find bonus club magazines. If it works that way there's no need to get obsessive about who opens what container.

 

My only slight worry is that there was a mechanic mentioned briefly that 'the skills bonus stops working when you reach max crafting'. That wouldn't be needed if the skills influenced looting was a pure bonus, so possibly you do find less magazines of types you don't have perks in if you perk heavily into specific skills.

 

Even if the system works that way, a group should still be able to do fine by just looting freely and then sharing magazines. It does mean having one dedicated looter with max lucky looter could cause problems with mostly finding magazines that match the looter's other perks.

Thank you for the response.  I am unsure if I understood.  There will be a bonus but if a cool party loots freely then it won’t apply.  So if you are trained up in clubs and loot a container, you will have a higher chance to see club magazines and so i that am specced in bows won’t see bows magazines unless I loot personally.

 

With limited tier4/5 loot boxes in the game, this can become painful.

 

It’s not a penalty directly but it’s such that the benefit isn’t going to apply to everyone.   When a game is designed so that a benefit doesn’t apply regularly while in a party then it is as-if there was a penalty.

 

I disagree that it is too powerful for the loot bonus to apply to everyone from the party that is close to the looter.  With it being a proximity buff, like the INT buffs, then it should be ok I think.  Then I’m this way everyone can have fun and be rewarded for their spec choices.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Azuro44 said:

Well…then what’s the point of the bonus in coop?  basically it is as if it doesn’t exist or some complicated round-robin mechanic has to exist like in WOW raids or some such.

 

 

Thank you for the response.  I am unsure if I understood.  There will be a bonus but if a cool party loots freely then it won’t apply.  So if you are trained up in clubs and loot a container, you will have a higher chance to see club magazines and so i that am specced in bows won’t see bows magazines unless I loot personally.

 

Higher chance to see clubs magazines does not mean no bows magazines will be found.

 

And the effect is supposed to be small. Whether you act on it and adjust your looting may be situational (i.e. you'll do it if you need a specific magazine right now, you don't if everyone is well supplied with his magazines at the moment)

 

1 hour ago, Azuro44 said:

 

With limited tier4/5 loot boxes in the game, this can become painful.

 

It’s not a penalty directly but it’s such that the benefit isn’t going to apply to everyone.   When a game is designed so that a benefit doesn’t apply regularly while in a party then it is as-if there was a penalty.

 

I disagree that it is too powerful for the loot bonus to apply to everyone from the party that is close to the looter.  With it being a proximity buff, like the INT buffs, then it should be ok I think.  Then I’m this way everyone can have fun and be rewarded for their spec choices.

 

[Uncle Al]

It would be nice to get an official comment on how the weighting works, if somebody in the know has the time.

 

For simplification we'll assume only three crafting skills: clubs, knives and bows.

I go out and loot 30 magazines.

 

With no perks let's say I'll average:

10 club magazines

10 knife magazines

10 bow magazines 

 

With some perk points in clubs (only) does the expected average become more like:

 

A) 12 club magazines

     10 knife magazines

    10 bow magazines

 

OR

 

B) 12 club magazines

     9 knife magazines

     9 bow magazines

[jorbascrumps]

4 minutes ago, Uncle Al said:

It would be nice to get an official comment on how the weighting works, if somebody in the know has the time.

 

For simplification we'll assume only three crafting skills: clubs, knives and bows.

I go out and loot 30 magazines.

 

With no perks let's say I'll average:

10 club magazines

10 knife magazines

10 bow magazines 

 

With some perk points in clubs (only) does the expected average become more like:

 

A) 12 club magazines

     10 knife magazines

    10 bow magazines

 

OR

 

B) 12 club magazines

     9 knife magazines

     9 bow magazines

 

This would be a great clarification to make.

 

From the way it's been described as a "bonus" and won't negatively impact other drops leads me to believe it'll work like the first scenario. I feel like it would be easier to implement as well? At least from a loot balancing perspective.

[mstdv inc]

9 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

1. The Pack Mule perk, which becomes useless as soon as you fill in all mod slots with triple pockets.

A controversial statement.There are people who do not know about the existence of bags, and there are people who know about them, but never use them.I belong to the second group.It has always been easier for me to pump the mule at the beginning of the game and forget about the penalty for overloading.Even when playing with 25% experience, I did the same.Triple pockets are not available from the very beginning of the game and while I was trying to collect them all, I would have pumped the power for 5 and a mule many times already.Here the conversation is more about who prefers what style of play.Even if in some kind of survival I ignore the branch of power, I prefer to use steroids and use bags only if they are accidentally I find it.Bags are not convenient for me.

[BFT2020]

I thought it was mentioned before that POIs would have a bigger effect on the crafting magazines you are looking for.  If you need something for tools or workstations, Working Stiffs POIs (and crates) would be the best source while things like weapon crafting you would look towards Shotgun Messiah's.

 

So for those that want to limit their looting and just stick around building bases / mining, you don't have to loot all POIs, just the ones that will more than likely have the magazines you are looking for.

[Uncle Al]

29 minutes ago, BFT2020 said:

I thought it was mentioned before that POIs would have a bigger effect on the crafting magazines you are looking for.  If you need something for tools or workstations, Working Stiffs POIs (and crates) would be the best source while things like weapon crafting you would look towards Shotgun Messiah's.

 

So for those that want to limit their looting and just stick around building bases / mining, you don't have to loot all POIs, just the ones that will more than likely have the magazines you are looking for.

 

That's actually one of the things I like most about the change, as it inherently balances up traders a bit. Now 'do I go run tier 1 quests and loot mostly houses and get quest rewards while hopefully finding a cooking pot, or ignore quests and turn over hardware stores and gas stations hoping for forge ahead magazines to make a forge?' is a meaningful choice on day one.  I love meaningful choices with no clear optimal answer.

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, mstdv inc said:

A controversial statement.There are people who do not know about the existence of bags, and there are people who know about them, but never use them.I belong to the second group.It has always been easier for me to pump the mule at the beginning of the game and forget about the penalty for overloading.Even when playing with 25% experience, I did the same.Triple pockets are not available from the very beginning of the game and while I was trying to collect them all, I would have pumped the power for 5 and a mule many times already.Here the conversation is more about who prefers what style of play.Even if in some kind of survival I ignore the branch of power, I prefer to use steroids and use bags only if they are accidentally I find it.Bags are not convenient for me.

The point I was refuting was not about "play style". @Uncle Al was saying that there are currently no skills/perks that become totally redundant late game.

I was arguing that Pack Mule becomes totally redundant IF (and only IF) you choose to use all triple pocket mods in your gear. There's no implication about what's better, more efficient or smarter. It's just a simple statement about the effect of using full pocket mods vs. using the perk, which IMO proves that PM can become totally redundant (again) late game.

 

10 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

Pack mule still has some value as it allows you to use additional armour mods instead of having to use up a slot in each piece of gear with a pocket mod.

When you're late game, and have all Q6 armor, there's plenty of space for mods.

You may have a point only with Heavy Armor, but with lighter armor you don't need as many mods to compensate noise/stamina.

 

10 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

Well insulated allows you to wear a college jacket for a speed buff instead of a duster/puffer jacket in inhospitable climates.

That's your choice IF you choose speed, but that doesn't refute my point that Well Insulated can get totally redundant IF you choose the best clothing.

On top of that, you can also find enough space to put insulation mods in your gear.

 

But again, this is just an exercise in game logic... and it's frankly pointless.

We need to wait and see how they'll balance out the perk system vs. all the changes they're introducing into A21.

 

Edited August 15, 2022 by Jost Amman (see edit history)

[mstdv inc]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

The point I was refuting was not about "play style". @Uncle Al was saying that there are currently no skills/perks that become totally redundant late game.

I was arguing that Pack Mule becomes totally redundant IF (and only IF) you choose to use all triple pocket mods in your gear. There's no implication about what's better, more efficient or smarter. It's just a simple statement about the effect of using full pocket mods vs. using the perk, which IMO proves that PM can become totally redundant (again) late game.

 

It turns out I had difficulties with translation.I understood you.

[Javabean867]

3 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

 12 club magazines

     10 knife magazines

    10 bow magazines

 

OR

 

B) 12 club magazines

     9 knife magazines

     9 bow magazines

Probably C) 11 club, 10, 9.  From what @Roland has stated in his play throughs the difference is barely noticeable.  So you'll probably chalk it up to rng.  I believe they are looking into making it a little more noticeable though.

[Roland]

18 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

searching every mailbox you see

 

You ain't kidding and I largely ignored those from A6-A20. Now, when I see a house I run to it intending to hit the mailbox first thing with a smile of anticipation on my face. That smile changes to a scowl if it turns out to be one of those sucky houses without a mailbox...

 

Oh, A21 mailboxes! How beautiful your profiles are as I look down a yet to be explored street and see you there in a line, your little red flags bidding me to come and read your contents!

[Roland]

8 hours ago, Uncle Al said:

It would be nice to get an official comment on how the weighting works, if somebody in the know has the time.

 

 

These sorts of details are best left to discovering when it is released to experimental as it is still in a state of flux. The weighting feels different now than it did when I first described it and it will probably change again before you get it. The general idea is that you won't be stuck unable to find what you've perked into and thus feeling like it was a waste of points to perk into what you did. It also means you don't have to wait to spend points until you've amassed a bunch of magazines to see which you have the most of and then do that. But as for the exact formula, you will have to wait until you taste the secret sauce before you get its recipe.

 

[Laran Mithras]

With the upcoming water changes, making water more scarce and murky water so valuable...

 

Will there be any changes to the recipe for paint? Or will paint become the new ultra-luxury no one would want to afford?

[Melange]

3 minutes ago, Laran Mithras said:

With the upcoming water changes, making water more scarce and murky water so valuable...

 

Will there be any changes to the recipe for paint? Or will paint become the new ultra-luxury no one would want to afford?

Good question. As it is now, we can remove the dyes from scavenged clothing and then scrap it to get 15 paint per unit of dye. I hope that doesn't change. But using the precious murky water to make paint does seem like its going to be a difficult choice. I could see the paint recipe needing a bottle of oil instead of water...I seem to gather a lot of oil and rarely use it.

[unholyjoe]

recipe is still as it was/is. (currently)!

 

i prefer the choice to be in your face... "do you want to paint or do you want or need to drink that one and only jar of water?"

 

but anything can change at any point.

 

as for the question of choice... i prefer to survive and that painted wall will not fill my belly.

Edited August 16, 2022 by unholyjoe (see edit history)