Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[Jost Amman]

12 minutes ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

The dangers to most water after any type of nuclear explosion is the particles of fallout/exposed matter that can be absorbed/suspended into the water.  Those particles will be held in the clouds for quite some time and also deposited into nearby water sources that are open to the air outside the blast radius.  Those can be filtered out using a clay earth filter.

Quote

How Do I Treat Radioactive Water?

If you are concerned about the levels of radioactivity in your water, then you will need to put a treatment plan into place. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer for removing radiation from the water. In many cases, a combination of treatment methods, including carbon filtration, ion-exchange water softening, and reverse osmosis, is most effective. Call the Certified Water Specialists at US Water Systems for assistance. High levels of radiation in water may not be treatable.

A bit more complicated than you're assuming... but, ok, for gaming purposes we could have a suspension of disbelief i guess.

[Matt115]

22 minutes ago, Red Eagle LXIX said:

The dangers to most water after any type of nuclear explosion is the particles of fallout/exposed matter that can be absorbed/suspended into the water.  Those particles will be held in the clouds for quite some time and also deposited into nearby water sources that are open to the air outside the blast radius.  Those can be filtered out using a clay earth filter.

 

Well i think doing things like this could be pretty fun. Maybe in next game?

[Jost Amman]

19 minutes ago, DEADFACE said:

I'd like to see a deadzone around the dew collector so that they cannot just be crammed into a cluster.

I would agree, but the way a dew collector works doesn't depend much on how much space there is around it (it's not a tree).

[meganoth]

2 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

A bit more complicated than you're assuming... but, ok, for gaming purposes we could have a suspension of disbelief i guess.

 

I think Red Eagle is not talking about radioactive water, but non-radioactive water contaminated with radioactive particles.

 

[BasicallyACat]

10 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Sure. My point was that on the one hand this change removes some logic and adds it somewhere else, though naturally there is a difference in importance between realism and ingame logic

 

But lets go a bit deeper here, you were saying it doesn't fit ingame logic. How?

I mean, we're gonna try it with an open mind, but at first glance it sounds like a game company overcooking something.  If I can carry stacks and stacks of other stuff but not bottles which would be everywhere, that breaks the game logic.  I can carry so much stone and clay that I can make a fort out of my pocket.  Why say that kind of stack-inventory system is fine for so many things but not bottles/jars?  Why can I make a gyrocopter but not a glass or clay jar?

 

Maybe the new system will make enough sense that it doesn't matter, maybe not.  This is the same game company that refuses to admit that the yucca smoothie should cool you down and not warm you up.  Game companies can do five things right and then just fumble the hell out of it.  Take Fallout 76 as a similar example: good IP, good core idea, bad execution based on dumb over-management.

 

I don't particularly hold out hope that TFP will take a note from fans, because most game companies don't take a note.

Edited July 26, 2022 by BasicallyACat (see edit history)

[Maharin]

So... theme for A21?
 

Spoiler

 

 

[Roland]

3 hours ago, BasicallyACat said:

This is the same game company that refuses to admit that the yucca smoothie should cool you down and not warm you up. 

 

They know but it is a joke. There is a lot of humor and silly stuff embedded in the game. Drinking an iced drink to help you survive in an icy biome is funny. This game was never meant to be a simulation.

 

3 hours ago, BasicallyACat said:

I don't particularly hold out hope that TFP will take a note from fans, because most game companies don't take a note.

 

"fans" are made up of many and divers groups and sub-groups of players according to the preferences they share. All companies listen to their fans and when they make a decision there will always be a group that can claim that the devs were following their feedback. You just need to get into the right group and stop assuming that your group is representative of all "fans".

[Neminsis]

11 hours ago, meganoth said:

I was talking about you who invests in "iron gut" and who should be glad he gets more out of it now.

No, you get exactly the same thing you do now, no need to worry about food or water.

If the goal of these changes were actually to make early game more of a challenge they wouldn't have left that and the gaping hole of being able to farm the traders for dukes to buy drinks with. If it were about curbing 'infinite' water than it wouldn't introduce a mechanic that literally produces infinite water, albeit at the cost of space and resources both virtual and actual.  The more you build, the more you lag.
 

 

11 hours ago, meganoth said:

In that way it is similar to farming now.

Except that the map is covered with harvestable plants and more meat than you can ever use, but water will be no longer harvestable.

 

 

11 hours ago, meganoth said:

You'll have to explain that.

That some pois were designed specifically to be used as bases, even horde bases has been mentioned many times in passing over the years. Not sure what there is to explain there.

 

 

12 hours ago, meganoth said:

Exactly. It is not worth going against the feature if eradicating it makes the game worse.

And I'm saying that removing harvestable water in order to justify the need for a dew collector makes the game worse and limits replayability. 

Also, using the example of wanting to remove nerd poling but ultimately giving up on it isn't the winning argument that you might think given that it's the biggest example of dumb ideas that have been contemplated regarding this game.

 

 

12 hours ago, meganoth said:

I disagree that limiting the stack size would have the same effect, not even if you limit it to 1.

Yes, it would. Early game that one inventory slot is going to come at the risk of encumbrance. and it would still be murky water once filled anyway. You could no longer craft 1000 jars and never have to worry about water again, and there would still be plenty of motivation to build the dew collector. Which, let's face it, is the real reason any of these changes are occurring, to make the player need the dew collector. 
 

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, BasicallyACat said:

I mean, we're gonna try it with an open mind, but at first glance it sounds like a game company overcooking something.  If I can carry stacks and stacks of other stuff but not bottles which would be everywhere, that breaks the game logic.  I can carry so much stone and clay that I can make a fort out of my pocket.  Why say that kind of stack-inventory system is fine for so many things but not bottles/jars?  Why can I make a gyrocopter but not a glass or clay jar?

 

I don't see ingame logic violated here: You can carry all bottles/jars that are in the game.

 

A lot of stuff is not in the game that we would expect to be everywhere: empty gas cans, sugar, apples and oranges, metal containers, cleaning chemicals, scissors, AA batteries, toilet paper, ..., that list is nearly endless. The game concentrates on the "important" stuff and leaves out anything else that it can get away with. This game is not a simulation, if you can't use AA batteries meaningfully then they are not in the game.

 

The important part of water bottles for the survivor is the water not the container. The same is with gasoline. Did you notice that there are no empty gas cans in the game? I'm sure you have filled up the tank of your minibike dozens of times, but did that ever leave an empty can behind?

 

It didn't, because the can is not important, the game leaves the details in what container you have transported the gasoline to your imagination.

 

3 hours ago, BasicallyACat said:

 

Maybe the new system will make enough sense that it doesn't matter, maybe not.  This is the same game company that refuses to admit that the yucca smoothie should cool you down and not warm you up.  Game companies can do five things right and then just fumble the hell out of it.  Take Fallout 76 as a similar example: good IP, good core idea, bad execution based on dumb over-management.

 

Fully agree on Fallout 76.

 

3 hours ago, BasicallyACat said:

 

I don't particularly hold out hope that TFP will take a note from fans, because most game companies don't take a note.

 

[Laz Man]

33 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

No, you get exactly the same thing you do now, no need to worry about food or water.

If the goal of these changes were actually to make early game more of a challenge they wouldn't have left that and the gaping hole of being able to farm the traders for dukes to buy drinks with. If it were about curbing 'infinite' water than it wouldn't introduce a mechanic that literally produces infinite water, albeit at the cost of space and resources both virtual and actual.  The more you build, the more you lag.
 

 

Except that the map is covered with harvestable plants and more meat than you can ever use, but water will be no longer harvestable.

 

 

That some pois were designed specifically to be used as bases, even horde bases has been mentioned many times in passing over the years. Not sure what there is to explain there.

 

 

And I'm saying that removing harvestable water in order to justify the need for a dew collector makes the game worse and limits replayability. 

Also, using the example of wanting to remove nerd poling but ultimately giving up on it isn't the winning argument that you might think given that it's the biggest example of dumb ideas that have been contemplated regarding this game.

 

 

Yes, it would. Early game that one inventory slot is going to come at the risk of encumbrance. and it would still be murky water once filled anyway. You could no longer craft 1000 jars and never have to worry about water again, and there would still be plenty of motivation to build the dew collector. Which, let's face it, is the real reason any of these changes are occurring, to make the player need the dew collector. 
 

 

You still have your A20 lens on.  If you can't imagine what it will be like in A21 even after both Rolland and Schwanz outlined all of the details for you, I don't think any more words will change your mind.  Your just going to have to try it for yourself once experimental is out.

 

Also, from a level design perspective, we don't build POIs to contain just enough space for x number of workstations, chest, and / or farm plots.  The game is fully destructible and allows players to use their creativity to modify POIs however they see fit.  Players have been spending hundreds of hours having fun retrofitting POIs to match their needs.  Those same players will continue to have fun figuring out where to put their new dew collectors as well.

 

Edited July 27, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[Matt115]

27 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

They know but it is a joke. There is a lot of humor and silly stuff embedded in the game. Drinking an iced drink to help you survive in an icy biome is funny. This game was never meant to be a simulation.

 

 

"fans" are made up of many and divers groups and sub-groups of players according to the preferences they share. All companies listen to their fans and when they make a decision there will always be a group that can claim that the devs were following their feedback. You just need to get into the right group and stop assuming that your group is representative of all "fans".

You give me inspiration : 

"what if 7DTD was simlilar to project zomboid" :

Someone : There should be shorter barel in this gun because in XXXX army decided to change standar!

Roland: You know in this universe army used money a little bit diffrent so barrel is correct

 

 

23 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't see ingame logic violated here: You can carry all bottles/jars that are in the game.

 

A lot of stuff is not in the game that we would expect to be everywhere: empty gas cans, sugar, apples and oranges, metal containers, cleaning chemicals, scissors, AA batteries, toilet paper, ..., that list is nearly endless. The game concentrates on the "important" stuff and leaves out anything else that it can get away with. This game is not a simulation, if you can't use AA batteries meaningfully then they are not in the game.

 

The important part of water bottles for the survivor is the water not the container. The same is with gasoline. Did you notice that there are no empty gas cans in the game? I'm sure you have filled up the tank of your minibike dozens of times, but did that ever leave an empty can behind?

 

It didn't, because the can is not important, the game leaves the details in what container you have transported the gasoline to your imagination.

 

 

Fully agree on Fallout 76.

 

 

THIS IS IMPORTANT STUFF! Honestly - you should spend more time near newsstand 🤪

1.   water bottles could be imporant if bottles were glass. Why? this kinda sound stupid but...  it have so much uses except being container - you can put few of them near door - if someone open door it will be loud so you will wake up. a lot of zombie are barefoot right? glass on floor and they will bleeed .

 

2. about fuel cans you are totaly right. nobody "miss " them. i think only game which using fuel cans with option to reused few times is call to arms ostfront

3. F76 is better now after updates - medicore but much better that was before. But still - i think F can't have good mmo games. RTS? No problem. something like arma? yes. but mmo is sigh that not every universe suit well for such game

[EggsAisle]

I choose to believe that prior to game start, a mischievous trickster god makes a deal with the player character wherein they will be given extradimensional pockets with which to carry enough construction materials to build a city block from scratch, or enough weapons and outfit a small army. In short, you are the ultimate portable container. In exchange, any and all portable empty vessels such as bottles, jars, cans, etc.- "lesser" containers- are forbidden and must be sacrificed immediately. 

 

About the un-craftable water filter that must be found/awarded/bought: for those who have tried it, is this component a common bottleneck? I dislike the idea of gating basic things like this behind RNG. I wouldn't mind as much if it was a reasonably common (and reasonably expensive) item at traders, but I'm not sure what to expect.

[Fanatical_Meat]

22 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

You still have your A20 lens on.  If you can't imagine what it will be like in A21 even after both Rolland and Schwanz outlined all of the details for you, I don't think any more words will change your mind.  Your just going to have to try it for yourself once experimental is out.

 

Also, from a level design perspective, we don't build POIs to contain just enough space for x number of workstations, chest, and / or farm plots.  The game is fully destructible and allows players to use their creativity to modify POIs however they see fit.  Players have been spending hundreds of hours having fun retrofitting POIs to match their needs.  Those same players will continue to have fun figuring out where to put their new dew collectors as well.

 

No!
Because without tens of thousands of empty glass jars and a similar amount of empty cans I just can’t play this game anymore all the fun has been removed from collecting empty jars & cans.

#sarcasm

God people are so dramatic about a dumb game they spent a few dollars on.

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

[Matt115]

9 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

 

You still have your A20 lens on.  If you can't imagine what it will be like in A21 even after both Rolland and Schwanz outlined all of the details for you, I don't think any more words will change your mind.  Your just going to have to try it for yourself once experimental is out.

 

Also, from a level design perspective, we don't build POIs to contain just enough space for x number of workstations, chest, and / or farm plots.  The game is fully destructible and allows players to use their creativity to modify POIs however they see fit.  Players have been spending hundreds of hours having fun retrofitting POIs to match their needs.  Those same players will continue to have fun figuring out where to put their new dew collectors as well.

 

about first part of your post -   yes we have A20 lens and...  another games experience. we don't have to try. you can after just decribtion if something will be good or not. I'm not streamer, eport player etc.  just i have some experience. Yep maybe i'm not person who can make a 20 minutes video how change something 5% will totaly change a game. But... Honestly - we ( so member of this forum) have diffrent  teste that you guys, So even if will get new update - still we will have this same opinion about some solutions.

 

about second part of your post. Good luck with making POI's

 

Btw. hm i think i some poi's  "enough space" is important so for things like that. But not in gameplay meaning but from aestetic point of view - military workshop need a lot of workplace, warehouse need ton of places for crates ( well... i have big warehouse near my house... well i see it from my window XD). 

 

For me : well base just have to be practical. That's why i love soo much Metal Gear Survive.  there is no need to make this a home - this is just safehouse to survive another day

 

4 minutes ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

No!
Because without tens of thousands of empty glass jars and a similar amount of empty cans I just can’t play this game anymore all the fun has been removed from collecting empty jars & cans.

#sarcasm

God people are so dramatic about a dumb game they spent a few dollars on.

You know that project zomboid is cheap too? And yeah for some people even small changes can be annoying - just this depends on game - in cod change of granades will be annoying , for TOTAL WAR fans change of  UI or lack of direct artilery control

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

No, you get exactly the same thing you do now, no need to worry about food or water.

 

I'm talking about the difference between no Iron Gut and perking into Iron Gut.

 

A20: You perk into iron gut and you get some advantages out of it, but I would suspect that nobody notices that the chance for dysentery is reduced by 1%. Because nobody ever has the need to drink murky water. When was the last time you drank murky water (without a purifier mod) and risked dysentery?

 

A21: You perk into iron gut. According to people who already played it they sometimes had to drink murky water in the first days. Here the chance for dysentery is actually a realistic chance and while the decrease from 5% to 4% isn't big, it is another small reason to get Iron Gut now.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

 

If the goal of these changes were actually to make early game more of a challenge they wouldn't have left that and the gaping hole of being able to farm the traders for dukes to buy drinks with.

 

I don't know how many drinks are left to buy at the trader, it is possible they reduced it. Even if not, I heard that the cost of stuff in the vending machines is now equal to the trader food and water prices. If you buy food and water from there you will have no money to buy anything else.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

 

If it were about curbing 'infinite' water than it wouldn't introduce a mechanic that literally produces infinite water, albeit at the cost of space and resources both virtual and actual.  The more you build, the more you lag.

 

If you are talking about the dew collectors, they will produce infinite water only after you find enough filters, a rare loot drop. Like food, ammo and any other resource in the game it is only limited in the beginning.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

Except that the map is covered with harvestable plants and more meat than you can ever use, but water will be no longer harvestable.

 

Yes, I don't think that is well balanced. But TFP has said that they have reduced wild animals. A good first step, but don't expect that it will ever be balanced for experienced players, vanilla is intentionally balanced for new players.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

That some pois were designed specifically to be used as bases, even horde bases has been mentioned many times in passing over the years. Not sure what there is to explain there.

 

Any source for this? Do you remember who said this? I am reading this forum since A15 and I don't remember anyone from TFP ever saying that pois were designed as bases. I forget a lot of things, but if it was mentioned many times I should have noticed it by now.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

And I'm saying that removing harvestable water in order to justify the need for a dew collector makes the game worse and limits replayability. 

 

How does it limit replayability?

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

Also, using the example of wanting to remove nerd poling but ultimately giving up on it isn't the winning argument that you might think given that it's the biggest example of dumb ideas that have been contemplated regarding this game.

 

They didn't want to remove nerd poling, but they wanted to limit its use case to building if possible and remove the capability to get easily out of danger or reach treasure chests with it.

 

What is so dumb (in the context of A15 where nerdpoling out of danger was done by almost everyone and nerdpoling for treasure by probably half of all players) about that intent ?

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

Yes, it would. Early game that one inventory slot is going to come at the risk of encumbrance. and it would still be murky water once filled anyway.

 

At level 1 you easily have 5 free unencumbered inventory slots when you go out looting. And 5 bottles of water give you 100 water which should last a whole day, right? Getting 5 glass jars with murky water and cooking them is trivial. Then, whenever you are in danger of reaching encumbrance you can just drink one of the bottles.

 

At a minimum you also would need to restrict water cooking to need a pot and restrict the availability of a pot in early game. Then there would at least be a chance that people without a forge would have only murky water in their bags.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

 

 

You could no longer craft 1000 jars and never have to worry about water again, and there would still be plenty of motivation to build the dew collector. Which, let's face it, is the real reason any of these changes are occurring, to make the player need the dew collector. 
 

 

There are a few potential reasons for this change and I don't know which one was the initial or most important one. While I'm curious about it I don't think it is really important.

 

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

[Neminsis]

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

If you can't imagine what it will be like in A21

That's the problem, I can imagine what it'll be like. I've specifically said that these changes will not really affect the majority of players significantly, but that it will affect a lot of edge cases in profound ways. 

 

 

1 hour ago, Laz Man said:

Players have been spending hundreds of hours having fun retrofitting POIs to match their needs.  Those same players will continue to have fun figuring out where to put their new dew collectors as well.

There's a difference between fitting 1m square farm plots and 3x3 dew collectors. If they were also 1m square this also wouldn't be an issue.

[Neminsis]

23 minutes ago, meganoth said:

When was the last time you drank murky water (without a purifier mod) and risked dysentery?

How about every single run through since a17? I've been drinking the murk and eating the sandwiches and throwing away jars all along, This isn't going to force me to change my playstyle at all up until late game when I need heavy production or when I play on extremely limiting settings.

 

 

31 minutes ago, meganoth said:

If you buy food and water from there you will have no money to buy anything else.

Why would I want to buy anything else? Everything else in the game is harvestable.

 

 

34 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Like food, ammo and any other resource in the game it is only limited in the beginning.

That's kind of the point though, even if you had infinite water in the beginning it still doesn't come into practical effect until late game anyway. Limiting the stack size on jars would've covered the start of the game while still allowing the player to harvest more later when it's more necessary.

 

 

38 minutes ago, meganoth said:

Any source for this?

You can try asking Laz if any pois are designed to be used as bases, and horde bases, or you could just look over the pois in the editor and count how many have ramps built in

 

 

40 minutes ago, meganoth said:

How does it limit replayability?

By reducing the number of playable scenarios. Consider a desert only map with low loot settings and no loot respawn. That's doable presently precisely because you can harvest water if you can find it. Removing the ability to harvest will cause that playthrough to be entirely up to RNG whether you last a week.

 

 

48 minutes ago, meganoth said:

What is so dumb (in the context of A15 where nerdpoling out of danger was done by almost everyone and nerdpoling for treasure by probably half of all players) about that intent ?

Would you be surprised to find out that all of those techniques are still available to the player? It was dumb exactly because it was a pointless solution to something that wasn't a problem in the first place. POI redesign had a much greater effect on restricting access to cheese. 

 

 

59 minutes ago, meganoth said:

At level 1 you easily have 5 free unencumbered inventory slots when you go out looting.

5 slots of empty jars when you go looting? Yeah, people aren't going to do that. At most they'd make a specific trip just to gather water and they're unlikely to even do that if they're getting enough murky water from looting.

 

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

At a minimum you also would need to restrict water cooking to need a pot and restrict the availability of a pot in early game.

I agree that cooking pots are a bit too easy to come by early game, but if you limit how much water can be cooked per fire you'll just get campfire spam end game when you can just make cooking pots anyway.

 

 

1 hour ago, meganoth said:

There are a few potential reasons for this change and I don't know which one was the initial or most important one. While I'm curious about it I don't think it is really important.

I think that the reasoning behind the change is important because it gives clues as to the depth of thought that went into this and what's likely to come about during the test branch.

 

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

There's a difference between fitting 1m square farm plots and 3x3 dew collectors. If they were also 1m square this also wouldn't be an issue.

 

And why is that an issue?

[POCKET951]

2 hours ago, meganoth said:

don't know how many drinks are left to buy at the trader, it is possible they reduced it. Even if not, I heard that the cost of stuff in the vending machines is now equal to the trader food and water prices. If you buy food and water from there you will have no money to buy anything else.

I mean if it was A20 I wouldn't have money for extra but I assume I will no longer be able to purchase tier2 or 3 weapons from the trader on day 4. So all that extra capital I will have on day 4 In alpha 21 will be used elsewhere. That's 6k+dukes for me to repurpose and spend and that should cover drinks. What ever surplus I have will probably go towards magazines and that filter if a trader has it.

 

 

As soon as I get A21 experimental I will be going pure int untill I get daring adventurer. I might grab value points in sexy t rex/motherload and miner 69er though, other wise it will be guns blazing to maximize trader efficiency 

[Neminsis]

6 minutes ago, Laz Man said:

And why is that an issue?

Because bigger things don't fit into smaller spaces?

At end game scale, end game being anything after day 100 let's say, you need 6 dew collectors to provide enough water for glue, cooking and drinks. That's 54 sq meters of space used up and now instead of having a nice small efficient base I have to deal with sprawl if I want to play past 60 hours.

Yeah, I get it, it's just a tetris mini game for free! Bonus right?

 

[Roland]

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

I've been drinking the murk and eating the sandwiches and throwing away jars all along, This isn't going to force me to change my playstyle at all up until late game when I need heavy production or when I play on extremely limiting settings.

 

This hasn't really come up yet but you should know that while vitamins and the purifier mod will protect you from contracting dysintery, they don't protect you from the -5 hp hit you take from every gulp of murky water. It isn't a huge deal to supplement your murky water diet with first aid items to bring your health back up after hydrating yourself on the murk but it is a difference between A21 and A20 that could affect the playstyle you describe. In A20 murky water doesn't affect your character's health at all but in A21 it does and vitamins and purifiers don't mitigate that.

 

4 hours ago, Neminsis said:

And I'm saying that removing harvestable water in order to justify the need for a dew collector...

 

That's not how it went down. Your speculation is wrong. Also, water is still harvestable in A21 so that premise is also wrong.

 

1 hour ago, Neminsis said:

By reducing the number of playable scenarios. Consider a desert only map with low loot settings and no loot respawn. That's doable presently precisely because you can harvest water if you can find it. Removing the ability to harvest will cause that playthrough to be entirely up to RNG whether you last a week.

 

Incorrect. Harvesting water is not removed in A21. You can drink as much water as you wish from a water source. You just can't fill up bottles to make infinitely renewable pure water from day one. So staying hydrated is no problem as long as you use murky water and supplement your health loss with first aid items. But characterizing water as not harvestable is inaccurate. You can harvest it from any stream, gutter, sewer, lake, pool, or water treatment plant you find. You just can't store it and transport it in empty jars that are returned to you to do it all again. Once you have dew collectors built you can also harvest water from those on a predictable schedule. I doubt any playable scenarios have been reduced. Some will be more challenging but that should be good news to anyone who is a veteran of this game. More challenge scenarios are always a good and welcome thing.

 

 

[BasicallyACat]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

"fans" are made up of many and divers groups and sub-groups of players according to the preferences they share. All companies listen to their fans and when they make a decision there will always be a group that can claim that the devs were following their feedback. You just need to get into the right group and stop assuming that your group is representative of all "fans".

I'm not saying I'm in the majority about the water containers.  I'm not saying I'm right that the upcoming change won't work.  I'm guessing for now.  No big deal.

 

But I am saying that game companies don't take a note most of the time, even if there is fan consensus about a problem, and even if the game is pretty good.  This happens in gaming all of the time, and part of the lack of pressure on game companies is that people just fanboy, they don't pressure the companies.  If TFP wants to be different like that, they can.  Will they?

It's not always 17 different opinions about what the right choice is.  And with 10 years of water jars, maybe just leave it alone?  Waters jars ain't where the game is imperfect.

 

There are mods that make the game better, 90% of people would agree, and TFP hasn't take those simple changes and fixes into account.  A graphic that shows you whether you've read a given schematic should have been incorporated into the game ages ago.  The game doesn't have visually and behaviorially varied zombies to the degree that it easily could.  The game doesn't have an option to turn off the starter quest.  The game doesn't have settings for roaming hordes or other extended settings.  The game doesn't have balanced sound effects.  The game doesn't show what POI goes with a quest in the first screen with quest selection, so instead you have to back out if you want to pick a different quest POI.  The game has corpses stay too long such that it affects performance.

 

You can't tell me that fans are actually split on these things.  Not everything is a fan debate.  My claim is just that even good game companies with good games still trip over their dicks sometimes.  That's not always about a variety of tastes.  I don't know why you'd feel the need to defend TFP or anybody like that.

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

[Laz Man]

11 minutes ago, Neminsis said:

Because bigger things don't fit into smaller spaces?

At end game scale, end game being anything after day 100 let's say, you need 6 dew collectors to provide enough water for glue, cooking and drinks. That's 54 sq meters of space used up and now instead of having a nice small efficient base I have to deal with sprawl if I want to play past 60 hours.

Yeah, I get it, it's just a tetris mini game for free! Bonus right?

 

 

Exactly!  I am sure you enjoyed creating the efficient base design you are currently using.  I am confident you will find a way to make them fit.  Consider it a new survival challenge.

 

Considering they are automatic resource generating workstations that require no external input once placed down, they surely are worth their value in voxel space.

Edited July 27, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)

[BasicallyACat]

22 minutes ago, Roland said:

You just can't store it and transport it in empty jars that are returned to you to do it all again.

Seems pointless to me.  At early levels it takes time to go refill jars, it takes wood to purify the water, and you don't have a forge yet to create tons of jars.  If the game has enough time pressure in general, it doesn't matter if fresh water pressure goes away at some point if it's replaced by other things. Societies generally create a surplus of basic needs so that the people can do other things.  The game doesn't have to be broken if the players evolve past water and food scarcity.  Make it about something else, like getting better tech for the increasing blood moons, or a campaign mode or whatever.

 

If I can never make jars nor buckets that help me get water from the lake that is right there, but I can make machine parts and electronics and a truck, that's dumb. 

 

Maybe the change to water will work to make the gameplay more interesting, resulting in a net-positive, and maybe it won't work.  But I don't get the reflexive defending, though. 

 

It's not odd to expect SOME gameworld logic.  Some of that makes the gameworld have appropriate flavor.  If you could make a stick, and you could make a knife, but you couldn't sharpen the stick to make a spear, or if you could make a stone axe and a stone shovel and a stone arrow but not a stone spear, you could only find a spear, that would be stupid.  If you couldn't start a fire, only find a fire, that would be stupid.  The same could be fairly said about things like buckets, jars, glass bottles, etc.

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

[Roland]

9 minutes ago, BasicallyACat said:

A graphic that shows you whether you've read a given schematic should have been incorporated into the game ages ago. 

 

It was....almost immediately after the schematics were introduced because players gave feedback at the time that it was needed. I never buy a book or schematic that I already have because of the closed book/open book icon that exists right on the image of the book or schematic you wish to get. I have no problem selling duplicate books and schematics because I can see at a glance the graphic that tells me I read it. 

 

12 minutes ago, BasicallyACat said:

The game doesn't have visually and behaviorially varied zombies to the degree that it easily could.

 

Really.....and what pray tell is that degree and how easy is it to do exactly?

 

14 minutes ago, BasicallyACat said:

The game doesn't have an option to turn off the starter quest

 

Yes it does and always has. You open the player interface and flip to the quest tab (Exclamation Mark) and make sure the tutorial quest is selected as the active quest (it should be) and then you.......CANCEL IT. The icon looks like a crossed out exclamation mark inside a circle. You can turn off every quest in the game by canceling it.

 

17 minutes ago, BasicallyACat said:

The game doesn't have settings for roaming hordes or other extended settings.

 

Yes it does. And it does for other extended settings as well. The xml files are the deepest and most versatile extended settings options that exist. It might take a bit of getting used to but you can easily adjust recipes, loot settings, zombie settings, and more with much greater depth and detail than what appears in the options menu.

 

21 minutes ago, BasicallyACat said:

The game doesn't have balanced sound effects.  The game doesn't show what POI goes with a quest in the first screen with quest selection, so instead you have to back out if you want to pick a different quest POI.  The game has corpses stay too long such that it affects performance.

 

I'll grant that these aren't perfect but the game also isn't finished yet. A21 greatly improves the POI description with the quest description. I've read plans to add a decomposing effect to corpses so that they can be despawned faster without just having them pop out of existence. If your beef is that it is taking too long to do these things and they should have been done long ago, I can't argue with your opinion or preferences about development timelines. Others are fine continuing to follow development for as long as it takes.

 

26 minutes ago, BasicallyACat said:

You can't tell me that fans are actually split on these things. 

 

Which things? The ones that are already in game that you apparently weren't aware of or the things that are still pending....? 

 

I don't think fans are split on all things. We have been discussing one change regarding the removal of empty jars upon which it seems fans are split. Some are excited to try the change and others think there are bigger fish to fry and wonder why time was wasted on making the change. Some think it sounds terrible and others think it sounds like fun. Some already know they won't be able to suspend disbelief while others have already let it go.

 

29 minutes ago, BasicallyACat said:

My claim is just that even good game companies with good games still trip over their dicks sometimes.  That's not always about a variety of tastes.  I don't know why you'd feel the need to defend TFP or anybody like that.

 

Well sure anyone can make a mistake. I'm not saying TFP can't make a mistake. I haven't personally agreed with every design choice although that doesn't prove their choice was a mistake-- only that I wouldn't do things that way if I had final development say. I'm not sure why you think I'm defending TFP about being infallible. I'm not. I'm simply describing the change, my own personal experience with it, and dispelling incorrect assumptions that some people are making (such as the idea that a graphic to show whether a book or schematic has been read is long overdue...)