Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[Roland]

6 hours ago, RipClaw said:

And I saw a video yesterday of someone running all over the place to find one glue instead of just crafting it. That's the problem when people only loot. They forget that crafting is part of the game.

 

And by the way, empty jars have never clogged up my inventory. What clogs my inventory are items that don't stack, but empty jars stack up to 125 of them, so they usually only occupy one slot.

 

Someone forgetting that they could just craft glue isn’t a problem associated with looting. It is simply a sign that the player is inexperienced. And Paradise got my point exactly. Containers have much more useful things in them now that empty jars no longer exist in the loot tables. My comment had nothing to do with inventory management and nothing to do with what some player may or may not remember about the game.  The alteration of the loot tables will affect all players— even non-looters because of what your buddies will be bringing home for you instead of one big stack of 125 bottles. 

[RipClaw]

18 minutes ago, ParadiseLostUK said:

Unless I'm mistaken I think Roland was referring to empty jars clogging up the loot table, not your inventory... rather than finding empty jars in every cupboard you may find something more useful.

I would have to look at the contents of the loot table but what I loot from kitchen cupboards far more than empty jars is rotten meat and bones. To know if this will be different in A21 you would have to take a look at the modified and rebalanced loot table.

 

[Roland]

3 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

but what I loot from kitchen cupboards

Wait….you loot?!?

 

I kid, I kid. The loot tables have been changed. There are still bones and rotten flesh to be sure but also potatoes, corn, various seeds, corn meal, murky water, magazines and more that isn’t coming mind. 

[RipClaw]

14 minutes ago, Roland said:

Someone forgetting that they could just craft glue isn’t a problem associated with looting. It is simply a sign that the player is inexperienced.

It shouldn't have been inexperience, since he's been playing the game since Alpha 16. I would see it as a bad habit.

 

[Melange]

25 minutes ago, RipClaw said:

It shouldn't have been inexperience, since he's been playing the game since Alpha 16. I would see it as a bad habit.

 

Or frenzy. We've all been there...too focused on the the glue to be able to stick another option...yeah, craft it. It's not like we have (mostly) a picture perfect view of our inventory. The game allows us to mess up. And we pay for it. 

I still miss stuff (opportunities) and have been involved for longer than A16.  This isn't a chess game, its a 'do what ya think is best at the time' game. Then go, "Oh well that wasn't what I wanted'. Lesson hopefully learned.

 

Keeps us awake - or imo it should 

Edited October 14, 2022 by Melange (see edit history)

[Jinx_DG]

8 hours ago, RipClaw said:

It shouldn't have been inexperience, since he's been playing the game since Alpha 16. I would see it as a bad habit.

 

And how many comments did that video get about that person should just craft the glue? It's been my experience that most vids (high sub count) for this game are created for content, not as an actual game playthrough. It's all about the views, engagement and edititng. Most feel building, crafting, mining, the menial tasks make for boring content, while a longtime player searching for one glue creates: suspense (will he find it so he can make that one item he desperately needs/wants? ), engagement (comment after comment about how it could be crafted ect.), which leads the algorithm to promote that vid for more views, more views = more subs which = more money. 

[meganoth]

11 hours ago, Jinx_DG said:

And how many comments did that video get about that person should just craft the glue? It's been my experience that most vids (high sub count) for this game are created for content, not as an actual game playthrough. It's all about the views, engagement and edititng. Most feel building, crafting, mining, the menial tasks make for boring content, while a longtime player searching for one glue creates: suspense (will he find it so he can make that one item he desperately needs/wants? ), engagement (comment after comment about how it could be crafted ect.), which leads the algorithm to promote that vid for more views, more views = more subs which = more money. 

 

By chance I saw a report yesterday on TV about ways to be successful on youtube, and one trick mentioned was to add mistakes, in this case mispronounced words, to generate discussion. Really. 🥴

 

Imagine all the deep philosophical discussion generated by saying "fooltime job" and searching for glue!! 😉

Edited October 15, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Jinx_DG]

11 hours ago, meganoth said:

Imagine all the deep philosophical discussion generated by saying "fooltime job" and searching for glue!!

But the real question is: Are content creators creating content for people to watch or are they creating content for the Youtube algorithm? It's a fine balance to maintain for them I'm sure, but as a player myself spotting the creators who have watched to many how to Youtube is doubled edged. 

[Quillbeatssword]

9 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

We sorta had that many alphas ago when we didn't have sleeper volume grouping.  Was cool the first couple of times but was very one dimensional and not very performant. 

 

Chances are very slim at this point that there will be major POI redesigns across the board apart from art updates.

Well. Sort of. Certain mods already make up for that in other ways. Other gameplay mechanics could also.

Instead of houses full of ambush zombies. Sitting and nonsensically waiting for you to enter a certain room even though you just shot off 30 rounds outside the front door

You'd just have houses full of potential zombie spawns. That could and would enter any fighting they hear. Now couple that with increased hearing/sight ranges for zombies. Then things like random wandering hordes.

I'm not saying you couldn't still spawn zombies in closets and on trusses but they wouldn't be completely oblivious to the outside world. So yeah. If you shoot a gun every zombie in any house on the street might come for you.

But if you're moving quietly and happen to get surprised and have to shoot it could get really bad. Really quick. With every zombie on the street now coming while you're corned inside of a house. 

Now Imagine that happening as a random horde of 5-60 zeds are close too. Now Imagine that at night..

There are plenty of ways to keep zombies dangerous and random WITHOUT turning it into a weird dungeon crawler 🙄

 

But like I said. I do also enjoy the suspense of exploring a new poi. Just not all the time. Sometimes I just wish it was more organic. 

That's why a toggle would be ideal.

 

Wouldn't be that hard. Just a toggle to replace all sleepers with static zombie spawns. You could even make those spawns have a 100% chance of occurring so then a poi with 14 sleepers would still jave 14 zombies in those 14 spots. They just wouldn't be oblivious. 

 

Imagine firing a gun in a city and waking that many pois at once. Can you imagine how crazy that could get and fast? 🤔

[bdubyah]

10 minutes ago, Quillbeatssword said:

If you shoot a gun every zombie in any house on the street might come for you.

 

10 minutes ago, Quillbeatssword said:

Imagine firing a gun in a city and waking that many pois at once. Can you imagine how crazy that could get and fast?

That's just not possible in the game currently. If you were in a city and every zombie sleeper within gunshot range spawned in, that's the max cap hit immediately. No zombies anywhere else. Not to mention the lag that would be caused by all them spawning at once. Which was probably the main reasons why they went the sleeper route. If they could easily have hundreds of zombies at once then you could have them spawning in buildings as part of the biome spawns and not need sleeper volumes at all. But that isn't feasible.

[beerfly]

On 10/14/2022 at 11:45 PM, SnowDog1942 said:

Let me know if u need help. Im skilled in various forms of penetration.

Here, have a Zurex ! 

 

Always be safe guys. 

[Roland]

3 hours ago, Quillbeatssword said:

Imagine firing a gun in a city and waking that many pois at once. Can you imagine how crazy that could get and fast?

No imagination needed. Just the memory of past alphas when the game was exactly as you mentioned. There is a reason the devs shifted away from that to sleeper volumes. It’s not like what you propose hasn’t already been tried. 
 

Since it already exists as a mod by your own admission then you already have your option. Sounds like a good setting best left as a mod where people will be more forgiving of the performance hits, the destroyed interiors of nearby POIs and all the empty boring POIs with free unguarded loot a few streets over once the max alive number is hit. 

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

I hear ya.  However, it's not as simple as you make it.  I'm sure with enough R&D and time anything is possible.  Even if there was a desire to redesign that system, we just don't have the time anymore.  

 

Game has to remain performant for up to 8 players minimum.  I know there are a ton of folks out there that have servers who try to accommodate more then that as well.

 

 

 

Okay, I will take a stab.  There was a recent NRE that would occur when using one of the ingame dev tools within the prefab error.

 

I suspect it was caused by a recent commit due to the nature of the NRE mentioned in the unity error log.

 

I wrote up a ticket and passed it along to our QA lead asap as it was slowing down several teammates work.

 

Shawn comes to the rescue the very next day and fixes the bug almost immediately.  Rejoice!!!!

 

 

 

Que in the questions from the forum:

 

What's movie-guy Shawns real name?

 

When will the movie be released? How many alphas are planned for it?

 

Does the real Shawn look similar to movie-guy Shawn?

 

What other dev tools are in the prefab error?

 

 

😉

 

Edited October 18, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Syphon583]

2 hours ago, Cr0wst0rm said:

Glad to see some work done there, are you planning to make them behave just like any player would do? (Basebuilding, driving vehicles, etc?) I think that is what most of the players expect, it would be kind of stress feeling you get in rust, only difference that you can stop anytime you can, unlike online...

 

14 minutes ago, jorbascrumps said:

 

I wouldn't expect any of that. From what we've heard the goal is basically "zombies with guns". No shade intended for the devs, any implementation will be welcomed with open arms.

Additionally, IIRC, the introduction of bandits is just a first iteration. Yes, as jorbascrumps said, they will be very basic at first. They won't drive, they won't build, they won't loot. They'll spawn like zombies and attack you like zombies, some with melee, some with ranged weapons. While they won't build, they will probably spawn in POIs (given faatals recent comments).

 

In the future, it's likely that their behavior will be enhanced. However I don't recall that any specific details have been shared. Maybe they'll drive? Maybe they'll build basic structures? Maybe they'll target your loot? These are just guesses, but I don't expect that bandits will be entities that exist persistently in the world with goals independent from the players actions. They'll spawn randomly as players roam the world.

[bdubyah]

Pretty sure they've said before they won't do any of that. I don't know why anyone would expect them to. If having a follower be an animal or person was too complicated, I don't see how having AI drive would be any more possible. If they navigate smartly, can advance/retreat, and take cover I would be happy. Anything else is just a bonus.

[bdubyah]

Gonna be disappointing if they slip again. Would've thought getting them in now would be a good idea as it'd give a whole alpha for feedback on the basics. Guess there's always next year. Lol.

[Cr0wst0rm]

31 minutes ago, Syphon583 said:

 

Additionally, IIRC, the introduction of bandits is just a first iteration. Yes, as jorbascrumps said, they will be very basic at first. They won't drive, they won't build, they won't loot. They'll spawn like zombies and attack you like zombies, some with melee, some with ranged weapons. While they won't build, they will probably spawn in POIs (given faatals recent comments).

 

In the future, it's likely that their behavior will be enhanced. However I don't recall that any specific details have been shared. Maybe they'll drive? Maybe they'll build basic structures? Maybe they'll target your loot? These are just guesses, but I don't expect that bandits will be entities that exist persistently in the world with goals independent from the players actions. They'll spawn randomly as players roam the world.

I mean the roaming functionality would eat up performance, but at some point it still should be possible without streaming chunks away from player, it would just require some sort of prediction....

 

[meganoth]

26 minutes ago, bdubyah said:

Gonna be disappointing if they slip again. Would've thought getting them in now would be a good idea as it'd give a whole alpha for feedback on the basics. Guess there's always next year. Lol.

 

I agree. I would rate the importance of having bandits in A21 above releasing before christmas.

 

[Kalex]

23 minutes ago, Howlune said:

Huh. I wouldn't suppose theres a way to see a full list of under the hood changes done on certain patches for the modding community to look more into at least? For the past year its felt like a constant investigation with only a few clues found so far.

For example, before A19.3 we could have 50 players on one server. Before A20.4, we could have 40 players on a server without major issue, now it can barely support 30. I would like to better find what happened to cause those things... I know this is not priority in the game's development, but theres many of us that would love to try our own hand through mods.

It was never designed for more than the recommended 8 players.

[Howlune]

5 minutes ago, Kalex said:

It was never designed for more than the recommended 8 players.

I was expecting this reply. My point is understanding what could have caused that cut off, so myself and others I know can make an honest effort to improve how we enjoy this game. We fully realize its not the priority of the devs, we want to better know how to fix it ourselves.

[Roland]

7 minutes ago, Kalex said:

It was never designed for more than the recommended 8 players.

 

He knows. Regardless, he would like to be able to have the game be able to do what it used to be able to do. It will be a something to find out once A21 hits whether the large server woes of A20 were an isolated downturn for those builds or whether it will continue. Personally, I hope the game can once again handle large communities as it can't hurt the wider appeal of the game.

 

4 minutes ago, Howlune said:

I was expecting this reply

 

I winced on your behalf....

[NukemDed]

and the date is....?

[Jost Amman]

2 minutes ago, NukemDed said:

and the date is....?

TBD! 

[Blake_]

I'm rooting for Christmas experimental, no bandits, yes new perk rework (obviously) and the rest of confirmed features from the OP. Maybe some RWG surprises. No more. That's a Kurzweil level prediction right there. 

[Annihilatorza]

Having watched the forums for months now I am really worried that A21 is going to be a giant miss step in the wrong direction with the following two things.

 

Learn by Looting and the removal of water jars.

 

First one I will tackle is water.

 

This is a bit of an odd change since water is not the hard to clean in the real world. Removal of the Jars makes no sense, it's like removing the bullet casing since we only shoot the tip of bullet. 

 

To make water a bit more of a challenge we could do the following.

Change Murky water to dirty water.

If you drink from a flowing stream/river you have a 30% chance of dysentery.

Drink from a standing pond of water 70% chance of dysentery.

Drink from an ocean you lose water or to keep it simple you drink from dirty water 50% chance of dysentery.

 

To clean water you need to collect in your Jar/Bucket/Tin - Dew Collector will only give 2-3 jars a day of clean water

Once Collected you could filter it using a charcoal filter - so to make it Charcoal/sand/rocks/Cloth and Plastic for the Bottle.

Water takes 1 hour to filter in game time +-

2 jars of dirty water will give 1 of clean water

Or just boil it and give you boiled water

2 jars of dirty water will give 1 of boiled water

If you Filter it and boil it gives you Purified water, which gives you all the current bonuses.

So, if you filter it and boil it, it's a 4 to 1 ratio

 

So you need to work for your water,

No magical Jars

Water is more effort to get and clean

The Water filter has to be replaced/repaired as it will decay with use

With effort you get a good reward, but with little effort you can survive but effort is still spent

You have to loot to get the materials

 

That just my take on water, sorry been long winded.

 

Learn by Looting 

 

No easy way to say this it screws over builders

 

I have played with and play with plenty of people who love to mine/build and garden and have 0 interest in killing zombies.

I hear you say that other players can bring back magazines for them but then you are messing them around as well since we have limited inventory space.

 

Not everyone wants to fight zombies or spend all our time looting, it feels like we are being forced into looting and at the expense of building and mining, by the sounds of it, why would I spend my time building a unique building now as I get 0 xp for doing so, same with mining for the materials I need. Easier just to take over a POI and went it goes down to a horde move to the next one.

 

I feel a connection with building the base, I want to defend it and the XP I get is a small reward for doing so, now I have to spend all my time looting books for the skills I need instead of just mining and building and hoping the RNG Gods don't screw me over.

 

With our group we always had ppl that just chose to mine and build, then others love to kill zombies and loot so that's what they did and other played a mix of the two.

Now everyone has to go killing and looting if they want to do anything, they have already said they won't be moving to A21 due the skill changes.

 

This change limits our play styles a lot and IMO it's not a good change.

 

The current system is excellent and is easy to understand, really does not need be ripped apart like this.

 

I just started a new world with a friend who never played the game before, and he picked it up within 10 mins. 

 

Just my two cents.

Edited October 19, 2022 by Annihilatorza
Words missing (see edit history)