Going back......to fun times.....

[SteelMonkey]

I appreciate the teams hard work on the game and in no way do I want to take away from that, or worse yet insult anyone. I'm not sure if this feedback will be helpful, hurtful, or just worthless, but here I go......

 

I've only got 975 hours or so, so I feel I am still a newb. I've run my own server a few times and had some good times up to A19. I upgraded to A20 and it was great to see the graphics improvements, the pipe weapons, etc. After about 40 hours on A20 though I just was not getting much fun out of the game as I have with A19. The loot seemed sporatic at best. The POI's were just not as fun, especially the old crack-a-book tower missing was a real downer. The gameplay seems more tedious and difficult. This was just no longer a game I could come home from work and fire up to crack some skulls and have some fun with. The map generator is great, but still is not able to be fine tuned to give a map to my liking like the old nitrogen and kinggen.

 

Eventually I had to go back to A19 to start having fun again. I don't really have ot have a game that's "easy", in fact I like nightmare setting, but these "upgrades" to game mechanics I am just not having fun with.

 

I'm sorry if this is insulting to the team or other players, and I don't want to make it sound like I am whining because I am not.

[RipClaw]

Don't worry about it. Do what you enjoy the most. Maybe try A21 when it is released and see if you enjoy it more. There are also some mods you might wanna try.

 

[ElCabong]

When I first started this game in alpha 7, I hated alpha 8 and wanted to go back. Various versions come and go and the one that I liked the most I really wish we could go back to was the mining game.

 

The ore was buried in large sand domes and you had be very careful as you were mining and shore up the ceiling or the whole thing would collapse on you.

 

I'm probably a minority opinion there. Lol

[Roland]

That’s interesting since, to me, A19 and A20 seem so similar in my recollection. There really were no controversial changes that angered anyone going from A19 to A20 that I can recall.  With the pipe weapons adding much needed variety to  early game loot and the awesome city tiles making such awesome urban areas it just seems like A20 would be the most preferred between the two. 
 

What exactly was so much more fun about A19?

Edited November 20, 2022 by Roland (see edit history)

[Laz Man]

Funny you mention the crack A book HQ?  What exactly do you miss about the old one?  If I had to guess, the old one probably was OP and had way too much loot in it.

[RipClaw]

10 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Funny you mention the crack A book HQ?  What exactly do you miss about the old one?  If I had to guess, the old one probably was OP and had way too much loot in it.

Or the new one has not enough loot for the number of zombies in there. No matter how you look at it. The loot to zombies ratio has gotten significantly worse.

If you are hunting for books I would loot the T2 and T3 Crack a Book POIs and the Crack a Book HQ only if you want to do a quick T5 quest.

 

[SteelMonkey]

I think the lack of loot in A20 is one thing. Its a scenario where you may not find the sniper rifle schem for many RL hours or days in game. Combined with only finding pipe weapons mostly and not the pump shotgun etc for long periods. Also the fact that you get swarmed alot more by large groups of zombies. I spent over 40 hours of real time to find the auger schematic, and never did find the sniper rifle or schematic in that period. That's the tedious part. Just seems like everything has to be worked harder for, which is more like my real life, and not as much fun.

14 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Funny you mention the crack A book HQ?  What exactly do you miss about the old one?  If I had to guess, the old one probably was OP and had way too much loot in it.

The nostalgia of the book HQ is what I like, combined with the plethora of books in one place. I may seem "OP" but to someone who gets off work and just wants to relax it's the one thing that I look forward to. Finding many books, but also the way it's laid out and the challenging parts like the fourth floor and roof. Just makes it alot more fun that the new design.

[SteelMonkey]

Also the farming mechanics seems good in A19, you place a seed, it grows to maturity, you harvest, it grows another......Simple, and really doesnt need any more "realism".

[meganoth]

23 hours ago, SteelMonkey said:

I think the lack of loot in A20 is one thing. Its a scenario where you may not find the sniper rifle schem for many RL hours or days in game. Combined with only finding pipe weapons mostly and not the pump shotgun etc for long periods. Also the fact that you get swarmed alot more by large groups of zombies. I spent over 40 hours of real time to find the auger schematic, and never did find the sniper rifle or schematic in that period. That's the tedious part. Just seems like everything has to be worked harder for, which is more like my real life, and not as much fun.

The nostalgia of the book HQ is what I like, combined with the plethora of books in one place. I may seem "OP" but to someone who gets off work and just wants to relax it's the one thing that I look forward to. Finding many books, but also the way it's laid out and the challenging parts like the fourth floor and roof. Just makes it alot more fun that the new design.

 

If the progression is too slow for your taste you could set 200% loot and maybe skip the first part of the game by giving you some xp (via console "giveselfxp"  command), a good gun and a stack of ammo from the creative menue. But the game isn't designed as a game you can play for 20 minutes before going to bed. I would suggest puzzle games or rogue-likes like "into the breach", "FTL", "Slay the Spire" for that.

 

10 hours ago, SteelMonkey said:

Also the farming mechanics seems good in A19, you place a seed, it grows to maturity, you harvest, it grows another......Simple, and really doesnt need any more "realism".

 

It was not done for realism but to make farming failable and less deterministic. In other words make more of a mini-game out of it. In my opinion plants that give back a seed should just stay in the earth instead of going into the backpack (reducing the grind by half), but I like the failure chance. 

 

Edited November 22, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[SteelMonkey]

I am also playing with repairing the old prefabs and just using them in the newer maps. This would bring back the older book high rises I suppose. I have yet to make a map through the RWG, but I suppose I can place prefabs manually and make a map that is "perfect" to what I want.

[Star69]

Maybe slightly off topic but what I really miss from A19 are are the shamway and gun factories. There is something about those 2 pois that I really miss. Yes there’s some nostalgia for the old book tower but those factories were huge and had the type of loot that really helped you out and I don’t think they were overpowered like the book tower either. Don’t get me wrong, I love the variety of the new pois and the redoing of older pois, I just miss the old factories.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Star69 said:

Maybe slightly off topic but what I really miss from A19 are are the shamway and gun factories. There is something about those 2 pois that I really miss. Yes there’s some nostalgia for the old book tower but those factories were huge and had the type of loot that really helped you out and I don’t think they were overpowered like the book tower either. Don’t get me wrong, I love the variety of the new pois and the redoing of older pois, I just miss the old factories.

 

This is when I search for factory buildings in the PREGEN10k map of A20:

 

 <decoration type="model" name="factory_lg_02" position="-393,39,-2563" rotation="2" />
  <decoration type="model" name="factory_03" position="-1170,24,-2337" rotation="1" />
  <decoration type="model" name="oldwest_coal_factory" position="-3767,30,-1181" rotation="1" />
  <decoration type="model" name="oldwest_coal_factory" position="3822,32,-1727" rotation="3" />
  <decoration type="model" name="factory_lg_01" position="-2470,44,2190" rotation="3" />

 

lg_01 is shamways, lg_02 is shotgun messiah factory

 

PREGEN8K even has two shotgun messiahs and a shamways. only PREGEN6K has no shamways

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[pApA^LeGBa]

On 11/20/2022 at 11:21 PM, Laz Man said:

Funny you mention the crack A book HQ?  What exactly do you miss about the old one?  If I had to guess, the old one probably was OP and had way too much loot in it.

 

It had more books. And yeah i know balance and all that. But having a crack a book skyscraper with nearly no books is kinda weird. If you don´t want a place with too many books, why even have a crack a book skyscraper in the game? Also there is way smaller bookstores that have more books wich makes it even weirder.

 

Besides books, i´d say you now get even more loot and iirc there is more to salvage now.

 

 

Edited November 23, 2022 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Star69]

On 11/23/2022 at 9:05 AM, meganoth said:

 

This is when I search for factory buildings in the PREGEN10k map of A20:

 

 <decoration type="model" name="factory_lg_02" position="-393,39,-2563" rotation="2" />
  <decoration type="model" name="factory_03" position="-1170,24,-2337" rotation="1" />
  <decoration type="model" name="oldwest_coal_factory" position="-3767,30,-1181" rotation="1" />
  <decoration type="model" name="oldwest_coal_factory" position="3822,32,-1727" rotation="3" />
  <decoration type="model" name="factory_lg_01" position="-2470,44,2190" rotation="3" />

 

lg_01 is shamways, lg_02 is shotgun messiah factory

 

PREGEN8K even has two shotgun messiahs and a shamways. only PREGEN6K has no shamways

 

Man either I’ve been really unlucky and haven’t gotten them to spawn or the factories were updated beyond recognition.  I’ll have to try to track them down in A20 to see what they look like. Fantastic pois. Great idea to look at Pregen8k.

[meganoth]

12 minutes ago, Star69 said:

Man either I’ve been really unlucky and haven’t gotten them to spawn or the factories were updated beyond recognition.  I’ll have to try to track them down in A20 to see what they look like. Fantastic pois. Great idea to look at Pregen8k.

 

I assume you know you can do the same search in your generated world and make sure whether they are there at all or not (just search for the string "factory" in the textfile "prefabs.xml" inside your generated world's directory). If you take care to not look at the position numbers you would still have the fun challenge to search for them.

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Star69]

4 minutes ago, meganoth said:

 

I assume you know you can do the same search in your generated world and make sure whether they are there at all or not (just search for the string "factory" in the textfile "prefabs.xml" inside your generated world's directory). If you take care to not look at the position numbers you would still have the fun challenge to search for them.

 

Actually, no I didn’t so thank you for that.

[Roland]

On 11/23/2022 at 3:38 PM, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

It had more books. And yeah i know balance and all that. But having a crack a book skyscraper with nearly no books is kinda weird. If you don´t want a place with too many books, why even have a crack a book skyscraper in the game? Also there is way smaller bookstores that have more books wich makes it even weirder.

 

Besides books, i´d say you now get even more loot and iirc there is more to salvage now.

 

 

 

Most likely the skyscraper is the corporate office building for the Crack-a-Book chain. I'd guess that even in real life the corporate office building of Barnes & Noble has fewer books to sell than a much smaller Barnes & Noble book store.

 

Then, of course, there's Amazon which is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside...

[Aldranon]

I do like the new farming very much as IMO, it simulates a semi-radiated environment where some seed would become sterile or germinate but subsequently die.

 

For a post apocalypse, (Zombie or Mutated Rabies variant) game, this is all the fun and little of the tedium that realistic survival would be in an apocalyptic world.