Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[unholyjoe]

52 minutes ago, Roland said:

 

I'd get you a jar to collect your tears but there aren't any anymore.

just send him a filter for the dew collector he will have to make.

[Roland]

17 hours ago, Beelzebubs Ghost said:

Other than 'Because the Devs don't want it,' is there any serious reasoning behind not having that which the developers don't seem interested in entertaining; on which some players are; in my opinion, vehemently, unreasonably, and almost pathologically against, a hybrid system?

 

I'm not sure why "Because the devs don't want it" isn't good enough for you. Why does it even matter if some players are against your hybrid system? Other players don't have any control over how the game is programmed and designed. The only people who do have control are the devs and the fact that they don't want it is the beginning and the end of why the game doesn't and wont have any kind of dedicated LBD or hybrid LBD system.

 

I've already given you the official stance of TFP that there won't be LBD. Its time to move on and stop beating this dead horse. Your LBD/Learn by reading hybrid system would make a great mod. Put your energy into getting to know a modder who can help you realize it. But trying to drum up support among players in this or any other forum for such a system is futile and off topic for A21. Even if you got all of us on board it wouldn't matter because......the devs don't want it.

 

The current system that has been implemented for A21 is not going to go through any changes or edits until after players get their hands on it during A21. If there needs to be some balance adjustments they will happen after people try the changes out for themselves.

[RipClaw]

9 hours ago, Mister Forgash said:

I'm not saying the concern isn't valid. But until we're experiencing it, I feel like it's a little early to be calling out doom and gloom.

It is better if concerns are raised early. It is always more difficult to change something afterwards instead of considering it from the beginning.

It's not a bad thing to remind the developers that looting is not everyone's favorite activity even if it is one of the core mechanics.

9 hours ago, Mister Forgash said:

We all know Madmole likes to build, I can't imagine he's going to punish the builders that much..

But he also likes looting. The question is always what he prefers at the moment.

 

I also don't think it's about punishing builders. It is a disadvantage for builders that arises because a part of the progress that is currently accessible via the perks has been shifted to looting.
 

Edited September 5, 2022 by RipClaw (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

7 hours ago, mstdv inc said:

It is already difficult to imagine how you will complete tier 4/5 quests and fight off 10-15 radiation zombies, how you will fight off the horde and how in the future you will confront bandits with melee weapons.

Depending on the difficulty setting and POI, it is not a problem to complete T4/T5 quests with melee weapons only. You need some space to move around and you need to know the timing of your weapon. Then it actually works.
 

As for the horde, you have to have the right horde base. If you create a bottleneck then you have to deal with only 2-3 zombies at the same time. Or you can use electric traps to kill most of the zombies and only deal with the rest that are left.  You can play an entire game without firearms. You just have to know how.
 

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, RipClaw said:

I also don't think it's about punishing builders. It is a disadvantage for builders that arises because a part of the progress that is currently accessible via the perks has been shifted to looting.

I have the perfect solution! They just need to add a small % chance that while mining you'll find a magazine!  

 

10 hours ago, Khalagar said:

13 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

I just can't understand why some people ask for so many changes that would make the game unrecognizable: they basically want a different game!

 

Yeah man that's crazy, like imagine if the devs were overhauling stuff drastically by doing something major like completely revamping the crafting system to use magazines. That's probably too much work though and would change 7 Days to Die to a completely different game entirely from A20! </s>

Yeah, imagine the devs actually making decisions for their own game instead of players... crazy! Am I right?  /s

 

Anyway, I trust TFP will do everything in their power to keep this kind of balancing into mind and avoid these kinds of pitfalls.

Edited September 5, 2022 by Jost Amman (see edit history)

[Jost Amman]

1 hour ago, Vedui said:

 

If there is ONE feature which I am indescribably grateful for (XML configs edges ahead though!), it is that TFP have taken the amazing decision to give us access to which version we want, allowing us to easily play and enjoy even old versions. I can't think of any other game developer who's been so respectful of the player's desire to enjoy their game, their version of choice, and made this so easy.

 

Thank you TFP!

Hey Vedui, I really appreciate your videos, you explain everything in a clear, thorough and ordered way. However, I don't like YouTube as a company and I don't want to use my account to subscribe there. Is there any chance that in the future you'll open a Rumble or Locals account? Thanks!  

[RipClaw]

1 hour ago, Jost Amman said:

I have the perfect solution! They just need to add a small % chance that while mining you'll find a magazine!  

@meganoth has suggested a mod that allows you to craft gold and silver into magazine bundles. That is pretty much the same.

 

 

[Vedui]

3 hours ago, Jost Amman said:

Hey Vedui, I really appreciate your videos, you explain everything in a clear, thorough and ordered way. However, I don't like YouTube as a company and I don't want to use my account to subscribe there. Is there any chance that in the future you'll open a Rumble or Locals account? Thanks!  

 

Thank you! I try my best!

 

Anything is possible! Had not heard of those two platforms but they seem interesting technically. A big problem is still that many of these pop up, run for a couple / few years and fold, due to the huge expenses of managing video channels (for "free"). I had used a couple in the past and they all folded, which was a waste of effort sadly   But who know what the future brings?

 

That said, you don't need to subscribe to view, though you do get the ads. Follow my twitter and you always get notifs of my new videos.

 

Oh... and apologies for continuing the non-dev diary stuff, this comment can be deleted as fluff (didn't want people to think I was rude and not reply!) I'll send Jost a PM

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, RipClaw said:

@meganoth has suggested a mod that allows you to craft gold and silver into magazine bundles. That is pretty much the same.

 

 

 

As an afterthought, a more realistic idea would be that a specific trader or one of the vending machines (or in the future a wandering trader?) does not want dukes but has an offer to trade magazines for diamonds/gold/silver. Because he thinks that is the only currency that has value.

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[meganoth]

17 hours ago, RipClaw said:

And that's why casinos collect so much money from people who like to take a risk.

 

I like how you put a negative spin on games of chance 😉. But the reaility is that outside Vegas, Atlantic City and loot boxes there is a world of games of chance that does not involve money. I have played card games and board games involving chance and risk-taking all my life. And in my country card and board games are still very popular.

 

Even on the computer games like Slay the Spire and Monster Train are very popular and provide decisions between safe and risky route in spades (pun intended).

 

17 hours ago, RipClaw said:

 

Even if you can't predict it 100%, you have experience. If the base barely withstood the last horde, it will most likely barely withstand the next one.

In addition, you have experience when it comes to looting. If you know how many magazines you find per day on average, you can estimate what your chances are of finding the magazines you need in time.

 

 

I have often experienced totally different horde nights with basically the same horde base. Without that I would think that horde nights would be boring for me now.

 

Recently one of my groups had horde night day 56 and our horde base was nearly overrun so that we thought we maybe should even build a new one. But we forgot about that idea and didn't even upgrade, just remembered to repair stuff at the last day before the next horde. Now on day 63 horde night came and the zombies did break through in an unexpected place and could get to a door that was considered a secondary defense line. But we had such a good firing position for that door that the horde night went through easy-peasy and with minimal damage.

 

Naturally that does happen more seldom if you make a minimalist horde base that has exactly one spot where the zombies can run at. But I like to reuse existing POIs and let the layout of the POI influence the design of my horde base. And since the POI is normally larger than needed I have the space to add multiple positions from where to fight with different weapons like a sniper gun or explosives, or multiple access ways for the zombies with a different trap setup. Depending on what positions we then use, where zombies break through or demolishers explode or simply from what direction the horde comes most of the night the horde night often plays out differently.

 

 

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[meganoth]

17 hours ago, RipClaw said:

Hopefully, by the time the first demolishers show up, I'll have upgraded my base to steel and not just concrete.

 

If you have a melee base then yes, you absolutely need steel at specific places but not everywhere. If not, just concrete works even with demos and you can always double or triple it in places that need more protection.

 

And if some defense position only holds for x hours you can create two of those for x*2 hours or 3 of them for x*3 hours ... . With the amount of concrete a miner can produce redundancy is simple to do.

 

17 hours ago, RipClaw said:

 

I took the demolisher and the base, that is not even upgraded to concrete, as an extreme example because players who like to build but don't like to loot are afraid that this is exactly what will happen if the balancing is tailored to players who loot 7 days a week. If you look at the comments under the Youtube video, you can see that very clearly.

 

 

I don't think that previous balancing done by TFP was ever for min-maxers, because 1) we know that Madmole and Co. are not min-max players themselves and because 2) in all alphas there were min-maxers that boasted that they were bored to death because they had already the best stuff by some early day, which means they can't have been the role model for the balancing.

 

So I don't expect this to happen. It doesn't hurt to mention it, but it shouldn't be our expectation and the basis for the discussions of what this change will bring.

 

 

Edited September 5, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[RipClaw]

59 minutes ago, meganoth said:

If you have a melee base then yes, you absolutely need steel at specific places but not everywhere. If not, just concrete works even with demos and you can always double or triple it in places that need more protection.

 

And if some defense position only holds for x hours you can create two of those for x*2 hours or 3 of them for x*3 hours ... . With the amount of concrete a miner can produce redundancy is simple to do.

My current base uses electric fences and I use explosive crossbow bolts. This is a surprisingly effective combination. Before the zombies arrive at my fighting position they have to break through 3 layers of steel bars.

 

I built my fighting position based on a video from Guns, Nerds and Steel (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXVOyrHUeKE ). I can highly recommend it as it is very compact but also has several redundancies built in.

 

Let's see what I build for a base in A21.

 

[mstdv inc]

9 hours ago, RipClaw said:

Depending on the difficulty setting and POI, it is not a problem to complete T4/T5 quests with melee weapons only. You need some space to move around and you need to know the timing of your weapon. Then it actually works.
 

As for the horde, you have to have the right horde. If you create a bottleneck then you have to deal with only 2-3 zombies at the same time. Or you can use electric traps to kill most of the zombies and only deal with the rest that are left. You can play an entire game without firearms. You just have to know how.
 

I didn't write that it was impossible.I wrote that for developers, melee weapons are not as full-fledged as firearms, so we don't have all those perks that the person above wrote about.Correct me if I'm wrong.

Edited September 5, 2022 by mstdv inc (see edit history)

[Trankitas]

Is there an ETA on A21?

[beerfly]

33 minutes ago, Trankitas said:

Is there an ETA on A21?

Lets just say that The Pimps are working on it

[unholyjoe]

1 hour ago, Trankitas said:

Is there an ETA on A21?

there is no "Extra-Terrestrials-Arriving" in a21.

[beerfly]

43 minutes ago, unholyjoe said:

there is no "Extra-Terrestrials-Arriving" in a21.

Aliens in A22 confirmed ! 

 

[Fanatical_Meat]

Extra Terrestrial Aliens could be fun, small grey dudes with funky guns.

ET horde during the day 

[meganoth]

4 hours ago, mstdv inc said:

I didn't write that it was impossible.I wrote that for developers, melee weapons are not as full-fledged as firearms, so we don't have all those perks that the person above wrote about.Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

Well, we certainly have dodge. Not as a perk, but accessible through the "adsw" keys, especially "s". Heavy armor has a big dodge malus.

 

Now sometimes it doesn't work because of network lag or slow PC, granted. But when it works it works very well

 

[beerfly]

1 hour ago, Fanatical_Meat said:

Extra Terrestrial Aliens could be fun, small grey dudes with funky guns.

ET horde during the day 

Joe send me a small video of what we are gonna have in A22 btw, gonna be banned probably, but... : 

Spoiler

 

 

[Jost Amman]

3 hours ago, Blake_ said:

@faatal,  I've got two gentle yet compeling questions to ask:

 

1-Can you tell us some news about bandits?

2-What are you working on at the moment? 

1 - Bandits were on vacation in August

2 - Recovering from getting back at work after a long vacation 

 

@TheDroneGuy or @schwanz9000: will we get any console command in A21 (or earlier) to control (spawn/kill/teleport) the drone?

I see some people having problems with the drone getting stuck, lost and so on... and they could really use some lifeline to solve the issue.

[Trankitas]

I'm so f'ing anxious, I can't take it anymore. I know A21 will probably be (if Bandits actually come with it) the best Alpha ever but I'm having trouble taking the long wait, if only a caritative soul could show us something to calm us down a little bit...

[unholyjoe]

3 minutes ago, Trankitas said:

I'm so f'ing anxious, I can't take it anymore. I know A21 will probably be (if Bandits actually come with it) the best Alpha ever but I'm having trouble taking the long wait, if only a caritative soul could show us something to calm us down a little bit...

then hrs later you'd be begging again.... have some coffee and relax or go mining in the back yard... you never know what you may find.

 

[Trankitas]

8 minutes ago, unholyjoe said:

then hrs later you'd be begging again.... have some coffee and relax or go mining in the back yard... you never know what you may find.

 

[Laz Man]

It's no so bad yet...haven't seen any dave Chappelle memes yet...😅

Edited September 6, 2022 by Laz Man (see edit history)