Exquisite feedback from a charismatic player

[Boop]

Howdy,

 

I now consider my playthrough of A20 to be "complete", in the sense that I have done everything I wanted. I enjoyed the game a lot (I like survival, I like building, I like changing pants). I played alone for the entire time.

 

All in all, I had a blast with the early game survival and the mid game expansion. The first few blood moons were riveting and terrifying experiences; finding the cool PoI quests (like the secret lab up in the snowy hills) was amazing, and finally getting a crucible for my steel tech was deeply satisfying. I got seriously molested by the first two ferals that lunged at me during my second T1 quest, and I couldn't handle the bigger animals that kept charging me until well into the iron age. I got swarmed by an angry horde in exactly that one spot in lg_factory_02 where you have to walk out on a busted dead end catwalk to get to a duffel bag.

I stopped playing after doing most of the T5 quests and realizing that the beautiful and immersive helipad I had built for my gyrocopter was useless since I needed a tarmac strip instead, and that I wouldn't be able to use it for quickly pillaging rooftops in the wasteland areas. At this point I had already survived a week of BM (I set the timer to BM every night) and filled half a solar bank with T5+ cells for my automated defenses.

My wooden shack had grown rather organically into a classic fortress with ensconcing towers and imposing buttressed walls, just tall enough that I could gently spear anyone at the gates if I crouched. I had a net of electric fencing going this way and that, and blade turrets along all the walls. The towers were capped by turrets, first SMG turrets and shotguns, then pistol turrets and rifle turrets (I also tried my hand at modding towards the end) as I wanted a use for the boxes upon boxes of extra ammo I had gathered. I wet myself again, this time laughing, when I first modded a spear that could be combined with a stun baton and repulsor to absurdly yeet a poor zombie off into the sunset. I would like to think I created balanced items, but you never know. Either way, I had become the Grand Bowler, yeeting zombies into other zombies in gooey 7-10 splits. 

 

Some things stood out to me in this playthrough.

The skill system feels poorly structured. Some skills are very weak and fill only a temporary niche in early game (like tracking and lockpicking). I don't see a need to track large creatures as by the time I can kill them my boxes are overflowing with food already. These skills came across as traps more than anything else. I feel like a tree structure for each skill category would make far more sense, such as getting access to robotics only after unlocking advanced engineering T3 for instance, and having a bit more sync between the skills. I also found it odd that every governing attribute (str, int, agi etc) had the same function but for different weapons. It would seem more reasonable to bake those effects into the weapon skills, and have the attribute points instead increase what you would expect them to increase, id est STR increases carry capacity, fortitude reduces stamina drain from running/actions, AGI increases jump height, and so on. In my game, I considered intelligence and strength to be critical skill categories, while perception, agility, and fortitude were completely optional with no critical skills. Unlocking schematics through skills also seems strange, as it kinda reduces the need for scavenging, and some of the schematics they unlock really are critical for progress (crucible for instance). I'm happy that's going away in A21, and I'm hoping it is replaced with something that better aligns with an organic development of the gameplay experience instead of taking away from it.

 

Crafting. In many areas it makes a lot of sense, but in some places it feels downright wonky. The tiered system is terrible. Always being able to build everything in T5 feels wrong (I can build a T5 wooden club and then jump directly to build T5 steel?), and not being able to build T6 is even worse. What is the point of mastering a particular crafting skill if you can just find a better tier anyway? And having an extra mod slot on T6 just adds insult to injury. Either drop the crafting part entirely and just have us scavenge for new items, or make it so that investing in crafting this way actually leads to the best gear. I feel like I've wasted half of my invested points when I craft a T5 anything only to find a T6 version.

 

Building. Building a base is so much fun; the planning, the plotting, the ideas that may or may not work out. However, the current build system is too convoluted. It took me quite a while to figure out how to put things together in a nice way, and even now I keep running into obstacles. In particular, having to plan ahead if I want to give up the ceiling space or the floor space is annoying. There really needs to be decorative and functional items that can be placed inside the 1x1 cube grid. I want to hang a light from the ceiling without having to give up all the space on the floor above. Right now I can't do that unless I skip 99% of the build options available, add an extra unit of height to each level, and build everything using the basic cube. Also, I had to enable cheat mode and use the hammer of God just to get rid of a steel cube that I misplaced. That is not good at all. There has to be an option to undo/recover building blocks, otherwise building becomes such a hassle that it loses part of its appeal. I like to build large and over-designed structures - I'm afraid to use steel because a mistake will take a long time to undo without cheat mode.

Finally, when it comes to painting, is it possible to limit the available paints to only those that fit the material? It seems strange that I can paint my steel blocks into wood, and it takes away a little of the immersion.

 

Quests. T1-T3 were great. I liked those. T4 started to feel stressed, partially because of travel, as they were taking so long to finish. For early T5 I had to increase day length to maximum just to have a chance of finishing before night set in. I've gotten used to clearing all zombies and not leaving any stragglers, but I do feel it would be better if only the final room needed to be cleared, or perhaps a cap of 85% of all zombies in the building. I also believe there should be more quest variety than clear/fetch for T5. Killing a travelling horde would be fun, as would a crafting quest (hand in 5x turrets and 10x tuna sandwiches) or effect quest (turn on the local power plant - the street lights will function for a week). Either way, after doing the T5 quests a few times (and gearing up to max) they are no longer difficult to clear at speed, though I do miss a few zombies when I rush.

 

I would like a little more melee weapon variety. Sledgehammer is great, it does what you expect it to do and offers a tactical approach. It also feels good to go bonk and watch zombies take a quick time out. Machetes/clubs/batons all seem to do the same thing with club being wildly superior and also acting like a mini-sledgehammer on top of it. The default spear is not so useful. The availability of ranged weapons seem to make melee weapons redundant in mid to late game, which is a shame.

 

That is all. I think I put in some 80 - 100 hours or so into the game, and I'm looking forward to doing it again when A21 comes out. I'm gonna buy an extra copy for my friend so he can play it with me; he gets stressed easily so I'm going to enjoy listening to his screams when the horde starts to swarm.

 

[Boop]

Oh and one thing I forgot.

I felt that the gear progression was a bit twitchy. I would have liked to have a slower initial gear progress, staying longer on pipe tier, with iron being a more significant upgrade down the line. As it was, wood/stone and pipe went by very fast, landing in iron, and then staying on iron for a long time until finally hitting steel. This also needs an equivalent armor tiering, as I felt there wasn't much of armor options compared to the many sidegrades of weaponry.

[Laz Man]

Thanks for your impressions, did you start playing 7d2d with A20?

[meganoth]

Impressive first post. If you are interested in the views of a longtime player and forum reader:

 

The skill system already had a few experiments done to it in previous alphas (they are still available from steam by the way). In A17 we had a system were strength was actually increasing your strength aka melee damage while perception increased gun skill. Though the problem there was that you simply had to have all attributes to progress. Everyone needed perception for guns, everyone needed fortitude for hitpoints, ... And it was not working as intended and so was changed to the current system in A18.

 

The current skill system has a few disadvantages but two  big (IMHO) advantages:

 

First of all you have 5 "classes" that you can try out in different playthroughs and lots of multi-class options. At least it makes sense to view attributes as classes and even though you could play on to level 300 to get them all the game is balanced so that you are at maximum power after essentially maxing out one perk tree. For players who want a challenge it is the time to restart (though currently balance is not there yet, as you are faster at that point than the zombies. But the game isn't finished yet, A21 will probably be better in that regard). 

So this is great for multiplayer (up to 5 classes to complement each other) and replayability (5 classes to switch between)

 

The second advantage is one for the developers, they don't need to balance single perks perfectly, they only need to balance attributes with their connected perks to be somewhat balanced. Again I don't think they are there yet but the game isn't finished though relatively close to beta. Don't expect massive changes, especially not going back to a system that was marked as not working in Alpha17. But we can still hope for corrective measures to single perks that just don't make sense to perk into more than once, like the hunter perk. I fully agree on that. And as you can see the spear at least will be corrected in A21.

 

Strength was said to be the easy "class" for beginners and therefore is the best in both melee and guns. But since it also has mining/tools included it became the "class" used by most players and I think TFP noticed this per telemetry. I think they noticed this through telemetry and are doing corrective measures (Sexrex goes away). Hopefully they also correct the situation with mining/tools as well.

 

As you noticed getting schematics through perks is going away. But you seem to have missed that it also corrects crafting so you can't make a quality 5 club of tier 1 as soon as you can build a quality 5 of tier 0 (I call it quality to distinguish it from the 4 tiers of weapons available of each type). This is one of the biggest reasons why crafting was changed in A21 by the way.

 

I don't think weapon variety is too bad and it was also said that weapons are generally fit for release. If you had only one playthrough starting with strength and just tasted those other weapons you won't find them interesting. Especially when you modded a weapon so it had the strength of two or more classes. But start out with a different class and you might notice it feels different. For single player fighting AGI and INT especially feel very different and provide different challenges and opportunities.

 

 

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[zztong]

15 hours ago, Boop said:

For early T5 I had to increase day length to maximum just to have a chance of finishing before night set in.

 

What? I love doing POIs at night. Leave the game's brightness setting at default and turn off all the lights in your house, turn off the secondary monitors, no torch, no helmet light, sneak. It's a lot of fun. You can get used to seeing the outlines of the Z's in the dark once your eyes adjust. I tend to play with a shorter day than most people to get more darkness.

 

I'm glad you had fun.

[meganoth]

48 minutes ago, zztong said:

 

What? I love doing POIs at night. Leave the game's brightness setting at default and turn off all the lights in your house, turn off the secondary monitors, no torch, no helmet light, sneak. It's a lot of fun. You can get used to seeing the outlines of the Z's in the dark once your eyes adjust. I tend to play with a shorter day than most people to get more darkness.

 

I'm glad you had fun.

 

Other ways to cope with it are to simply wait out the night hunkering in a corner and whimpering whenever there is an unusal noise 😉 or first trying to kill as much as possible in the day and then backtrack in the night for looting and wrenching the valuable stuff.

 

And if you are playing agility-stealth, the night is your friend anyway.

 

Edited January 31, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

16 hours ago, Boop said:

I would like a little more melee weapon variety. Sledgehammer is great, it does what you expect it to do and offers a tactical approach. It also feels good to go bonk and watch zombies take a quick time out. Machetes/clubs/batons all seem to do the same thing with club being wildly superior and also acting like a mini-sledgehammer on top of it. The default spear is not so useful. The availability of ranged weapons seem to make melee weapons redundant in mid to late game, which is a shame.

 

Clubs are easier to use, but not superior to machetes, especially someone that maxes out Deep cuts and uses one effectively.  You can kite an entire hoard and get bleed effects on all of the zombies, just to watch them die one by one as they bleed out trying to chase you down - clubs can't do that effectively (fire damage from burning shaft helps, but I find I get the bleeding effects a lot more than catching zombies on fire - especially when you max out deep cuts and can really stack those bleed DOTs).  Clubs are better at knocking down the zombies and best for armored survivors, but those that want to travel light, bleeding and slowing down those zombies can really make a difference.

 

Spears right now take patience to use, but they do need a buff - which they are getting with A21.  The issue with batons is the lack of a T3 version.  The stun baton can hold its own against the baseball bat and hunting knife, but being a T2 weapon (and the max you can get at this time), gets outmatch when compared to the Steel club (T3) and machete (T3).  However, if you are focusing on the baton, you should be pushing the Intelligence attribute and get turrets maxed out.  Two turrets operating at the same time with the baton makes clearing out POIs easy if you just keep planning ahead while exploring the area.  This might be why there isn't a T3 baton as it may make it too OP to have a more powerful melee weapon and two operating turrets at the same time.  There is unused code for a T3 plasma baton in the game files, but it looks like just a copy/paste of the T2 as the values look the same when you compare the two.

 

When ammo is plentiful, then melee weapons do quickly become second nature.  However, if you limit the ammo you are getting (and try to save it up really for horde nights), then melee weapons will still be useful at mid / late game.  I am on Day 70 and I can send several radiated zombies to you as reference how powerful a Q5 machete can be with someone perked out to use it.  Right now my kit consists of a Q5 machete, Q4 steel club, a Desert Vulture, and double barrel shotgun - and I always enter a new room / area of a POI with my machete ready, not any of the other gear.

44 minutes ago, meganoth said:

And if you are playing agility-stealth, the night is your friend anyway.

 

 

That is the typical way I play, agility stealth.  T5s I have a standard way of working on them - starting in the morning and clearing them out before nightfall, then loot / salvage from top to bottom and take out any zombies that become curious from the little noise I am making as I gather my haul and load it up.

 

Though T5's in the wasteland where Feral sense on......very interesting  😁

[Roland]

16 hours ago, Boop said:

Some things stood out to me in this playthrough.

The skill system feels poorly structured. Some skills are very weak and fill only a temporary niche in early game (like tracking and lockpicking). I don't see a need to track large creatures as by the time I can kill them my boxes are overflowing with food already. These skills came across as traps more than anything else. I feel like a tree structure for each skill category would make far more sense, such as getting access to robotics only after unlocking advanced engineering T3 for instance, and having a bit more sync between the skills. I also found it odd that every governing attribute (str, int, agi etc) had the same function but for different weapons. It would seem more reasonable to bake those effects into the weapon skills, and have the attribute points instead increase what you would expect them to increase, id est STR increases carry capacity, fortitude reduces stamina drain from running/actions, AGI increases jump height, and so on. In my game, I considered intelligence and strength to be critical skill categories, while perception, agility, and fortitude were completely optional with no critical skills. Unlocking schematics through skills also seems strange, as it kinda reduces the need for scavenging, and some of the schematics they unlock really are critical for progress (crucible for instance). I'm happy that's going away in A21, and I'm hoping it is replaced with something that better aligns with an organic development of the gameplay experience instead of taking away from it.

 

Crafting. In many areas it makes a lot of sense, but in some places it feels downright wonky. The tiered system is terrible. Always being able to build everything in T5 feels wrong (I can build a T5 wooden club and then jump directly to build T5 steel?), and not being able to build T6 is even worse. What is the point of mastering a particular crafting skill if you can just find a better tier anyway? And having an extra mod slot on T6 just adds insult to injury. Either drop the crafting part entirely and just have us scavenge for new items, or make it so that investing in crafting this way actually leads to the best gear. I feel like I've wasted half of my invested points when I craft a T5 anything only to find a T6 version.

 

Some of these concerns will be solved or at least made less by the A21 changes. Hopefully, they will be to your liking.

 

16 hours ago, Boop said:

Building. Building a base is so much fun; the planning, the plotting, the ideas that may or may not work out. However, the current build system is too convoluted. It took me quite a while to figure out how to put things together in a nice way, and even now I keep running into obstacles. In particular, having to plan ahead if I want to give up the ceiling space or the floor space is annoying. There really needs to be decorative and functional items that can be placed inside the 1x1 cube grid. I want to hang a light from the ceiling without having to give up all the space on the floor above. Right now I can't do that unless I skip 99% of the build options available, add an extra unit of height to each level, and build everything using the basic cube. Also, I had to enable cheat mode and use the hammer of God just to get rid of a steel cube that I misplaced. That is not good at all. There has to be an option to undo/recover building blocks, otherwise building becomes such a hassle that it loses part of its appeal. I like to build large and over-designed structures - I'm afraid to use steel because a mistake will take a long time to undo without cheat mode.

Finally, when it comes to painting, is it possible to limit the available paints to only those that fit the material? It seems strange that I can paint my steel blocks into wood, and it takes away a little of the immersion.

 

Building thus far has been designed largely to accommodate the level designers of POIs. If they want to steer a player a certain way rather than let them easily break through a wall then they will make the wall steel even if it is a wooden building and then they will paint it wooden to match. It's a dirty trick but one they employ shamelessly in order to make the exploration of their POIs balanced and yet still maintain the "everything is destructible" feature of the game. 

 

17 hours ago, Boop said:

Quests. T1-T3 were great. I liked those. T4 started to feel stressed, partially because of travel, as they were taking so long to finish. For early T5 I had to increase day length to maximum just to have a chance of finishing before night set in. I've gotten used to clearing all zombies and not leaving any stragglers, but I do feel it would be better if only the final room needed to be cleared, or perhaps a cap of 85% of all zombies in the building. I also believe there should be more quest variety than clear/fetch for T5. Killing a travelling horde would be fun, as would a crafting quest (hand in 5x turrets and 10x tuna sandwiches) or effect quest (turn on the local power plant - the street lights will function for a week). Either way, after doing the T5 quests a few times (and gearing up to max) they are no longer difficult to clear at speed, though I do miss a few zombies when I rush.

 

I'm the opposite. I love getting caught out at night and having to quickly jury-rig a place of safety so much that I usually play 40 minute days. I think it is perfectly fine for T5 quests to require the player to explore into the night and don't see that as a flaw at all. Different strokes for different folks.

 

17 hours ago, Boop said:

I would like a little more melee weapon variety. Sledgehammer is great, it does what you expect it to do and offers a tactical approach. It also feels good to go bonk and watch zombies take a quick time out. Machetes/clubs/batons all seem to do the same thing with club being wildly superior and also acting like a mini-sledgehammer on top of it. The default spear is not so useful. The availability of ranged weapons seem to make melee weapons redundant in mid to late game, which is a shame.

 

There is an improvement in this area for A21.

 

16 hours ago, Boop said:

I felt that the gear progression was a bit twitchy. I would have liked to have a slower initial gear progress, staying longer on pipe tier, with iron being a more significant upgrade down the line. As it was, wood/stone and pipe went by very fast, landing in iron, and then staying on iron for a long time until finally hitting steel. This also needs an equivalent armor tiering, as I felt there wasn't much of armor options compared to the many sidegrades of weaponry.

 

A21 definitely swings the way you are wanting as far as time spent in each era. Armor options should also improve like you are hoping but not until A22. 

[Boop]

13 hours ago, Laz Man said:

Thanks for your impressions, did you start playing 7d2d with A20?

Yes, this was my first experience with the game.

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

The skill system already had a few experiments done to it in previous alphas (they are still available from steam by the way). In A17 we had a system were strength was actually increasing your strength aka melee damage while perception increased gun skill. Though the problem there was that you simply had to have all attributes to progress. Everyone needed perception for guns, everyone needed fortitude for hitpoints, ... And it was not working as intended and so was changed to the current system in A18.

Yes, that was the impression I got. It makes a lot of sense to avoid critical functions everyone will need. I was thinking useful but not critical effects could be a way to differentiate into "classes" as you put it. STR giving carry capacity or decreased reduction of speed in heavy armor , fortitude giving increased efficiency for food/resilience against weather and exertion, AGI giving increased jump height or movement speed in light armor, perception giving markers for stash items/improved range for weapons/improved chance of finding higher quality/more items in containers, and so on. All of these feel like nice perks to have, but they aren't things I would specifically build towards. I can see the point with the things you listed though; having critical modifiers in the attributes would make them mandatory for a successful build. I didn't try harder difficulties, but I assume they get fiendishly hard and require an optimized build.

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

First of all you have 5 "classes" that you can try out in different playthroughs and lots of multi-class options. At least it makes sense to view attributes as classes and even though you could play on to level 300 to get them all the game is balanced so that you are at maximum power after essentially maxing out one perk tree. For players who want a challenge it is the time to restart (though currently balance is not there yet, as you are faster at that point than the zombies. But the game isn't finished yet, A21 will probably be better in that regard). 

So this is great for multiplayer (up to 5 classes to complement each other) and replayability (5 classes to switch between)

Unfortunately I only have the single player experience. I felt that strength and intelligence were kinda mandatory. I had no one else to collect schematics or resources (and I did not know how to reliably get schematics) so I focused on that.

But following your argument here, I would then suggest instead that attributes go higher, maybe up to 15 points, offfering even better effects and deeper specializations in multiplayer scenarios (and adding new skills that require high attributes). This would enhance the class definitions and create more synergy possibilities between them. That would work well to give a proper class feeling.

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

As you noticed getting schematics through perks is going away. But you seem to have missed that it also corrects crafting so you can't make a quality 5 club of tier 1 as soon as you can build a quality 5 of tier 0 (I call it quality to distinguish it from the 4 tiers of weapons available of each type). This is one of the biggest reasons why crafting was changed in A21 by the way.

Yes, that is wonderful news. Does it also apply to the Q6 situation, or will it still be the case that the best item qualities are found randomly rather than crafted?

6 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

I don't think weapon variety is too bad and it was also said that weapons are generally fit for release. If you had only one playthrough starting with strength and just tasted those other weapons you won't find them interesting. Especially when you modded a weapon so it had the strength of two or more classes. But start out with a different class and you might notice it feels different. For single player fighting AGI and INT especially feel very different and provide different challenges and opportunities.

I'm not sure I could ever drop INT; being able to slap down a junk turret is just too valuable when I run around like a headless chicken screeching in fear. That thing takes care of business while I go change my pants, and the double setup is a godsend on BMs too when the damn auto-turrets are trying to steal half of my hard-earned xp.

I guess what I want in weapons is a bit more differentiation. For machetes I would like to *see* when something is bleeding, much like I can see when something is shocked or burning. I would like to *see* the range of a melee weapon to understand how they differ. I concede that my experience is limited here, but when I tried to experience all the weapons all I could reliably see was that the club did the most damage, and the secondary attack always knocked zombies down (which was fantastic for my heavy armor tight spaces approach). The machete seemed to not do much at all, and didn't seem to stagger zombies as well either. I am not saying that it's a bad weapon, I'm saying that I couldn't *see* anything good come out of it. Perhaps I needed to skirmish more and slice everyone, but I did not quite grasp the purpose of that as it was easier and more efficient to just bonk stuff on the noggin for me. The baton was pretty fun, and the shock was definitely noticeable, but it happened pretty rarely, and it took between 2x and 3x as many hits to kill something as when I used the club. That playstyle was too slow for me, as my concern was mostly getting swarmed if I didn't kill fast enough.

Having put a little more thought into it, perhaps what I am asking for is simply something a bit more visual and clear. I like the effects of burning, shocking, and bleeding, and I would very much like to have a clear visual cue of what is actually going on when I bonk stuff.

 

It might also be worth pointing out that I didn't use a modded weapon until I had done everything I felt I could with the original weapons, as I wanted to complete the intended experience before making my own. I will also add that if you haven't set the ragdoll force on your repulsor to 1500 yet, you haven't experience the best of 7D2D . Combine it with that pitiful dog sound on hit and you will laugh pretty hard.

4 hours ago, zztong said:

 

What? I love doing POIs at night. Leave the game's brightness setting at default and turn off all the lights in your house, turn off the secondary monitors, no torch, no helmet light, sneak. It's a lot of fun. You can get used to seeing the outlines of the Z's in the dark once your eyes adjust. I tend to play with a shorter day than most people to get more darkness.

 

I'm glad you had fun.

I did try that in the early game but I ran out of pants.

 

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

 

Other ways to cope with it are to simply wait out the night hunkering in a corner and whimpering whenever there is an unusal noise 😉 or first trying to kill as much as possible in the day and then backtrack in the night for looting and wrenching the valuable stuff.

 

And if you are playing agility-stealth, the night is your friend anyway.

 

Holy moly, I didn't even consider how the agility skills might affect that.

[BFT2020]

11 minutes ago, Boop said:

Unfortunately I only have the single player experience. I felt that strength and intelligence were kinda mandatory. I had no one else to collect schematics or resources (and I did not know how to reliably get schematics) so I focused on that.

 

They are not mandatory at all.  Currently on Day 70 with an upcoming blood moon horde, the only points outside of the agility tree I have spent so far are level one perks in the other attributes.  There are challenges you face (like only one level of Sexy Rex in A20), but nothing that can be overcome with experience.  I play a modded game where I removed recipe unlocks from perks so it is still possible to unlock everything from finding them in loot or at the traders.  The only issue I have had so far is I am on Day 70 and still haven't found the workbench schematic.  I been lucky to find 2 benches in trader inventory, but those are costly to purchase rather than building one myself.

18 minutes ago, Boop said:

Holy moly, I didn't even consider how the agility skills might affect that.

 

Agility is so misunderstood  🙂

[Boop]

2 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

Clubs are easier to use, but not superior to machetes, especially someone that maxes out Deep cuts and uses one effectively.  You can kite an entire hoard and get bleed effects on all of the zombies, just to watch them die one by one as they bleed out trying to chase you down - clubs can't do that effectively (fire damage from burning shaft helps, but I find I get the bleeding effects a lot more than catching zombies on fire - especially when you max out deep cuts and can really stack those bleed DOTs).  Clubs are better at knocking down the zombies and best for armored survivors, but those that want to travel light, bleeding and slowing down those zombies can really make a difference.

Maybe not, but they certainly *appear* superior. They have excellent upfront damage for a low stamina cost, they have the most mods available, and they are the closest to a sledgehammer in terms of room clearing speed. They also work well out of the box. Perhaps bleeding is more of an expert weapon, I didn't get any visual cues on how it was helping me. On a related note, is there a T3 sword? I never found one or a schematic for it as far as I know.

2 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

Spears right now take patience to use, but they do need a buff - which they are getting with A21.  The issue with batons is the lack of a T3 version.  The stun baton can hold its own against the baseball bat and hunting knife, but being a T2 weapon (and the max you can get at this time), gets outmatch when compared to the Steel club (T3) and machete (T3).  However, if you are focusing on the baton, you should be pushing the Intelligence attribute and get turrets maxed out.  Two turrets operating at the same time with the baton makes clearing out POIs easy if you just keep planning ahead while exploring the area.  This might be why there isn't a T3 baton as it may make it too OP to have a more powerful melee weapon and two operating turrets at the same time.  There is unused code for a T3 plasma baton in the game files, but it looks like just a copy/paste of the T2 as the values look the same when you compare the two.

That is also more of an expert approach. I didn't know when to plan ahead or when to set up a turret. I just ran into a room, if red dots popped up on the radar I ran out again and slapped down a turret on the entrance doorway. That worked great together with a club.

2 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

That is the typical way I play, agility stealth.  T5s I have a standard way of working on them - starting in the morning and clearing them out before nightfall, then loot / salvage from top to bottom and take out any zombies that become curious from the little noise I am making as I gather my haul and load it up.

 

Though T5's in the wasteland where Feral sense on......very interesting  😁

I went the other way, I wanted to be as loud as possible so I could activate all zombies around and get them to walk into my turret zone.

As an aside, turrets really benefit from a lot of points into mining, as getting enough iron was my primary concern there. I think I went through around 9000 iron or so every BM with two turrets out.

2 hours ago, Roland said:

Some of these concerns will be solved or at least made less by the A21 changes. Hopefully, they will be to your liking.

I'm sure they will be. Generally the mechanics I have seen in the game are fantastic. I get the notion that a lot of thought has gone into making interesting systems, especially early to mid game. Mostly what's missing to me is QoL features, such as journal entries on how things work and what different things mean (still don't know what weapon handling does for instance), and small things like being able to craft using resources in nearby containers. I also want to be able to make terrifying sounds in multiplayer so I can scare the crap out of my friends when appropriate.

 

2 hours ago, Roland said:

Building thus far has been designed largely to accommodate the level designers of POIs. If they want to steer a player a certain way rather than let them easily break through a wall then they will make the wall steel even if it is a wooden building and then they will paint it wooden to match. It's a dirty trick but one they employ shamelessly in order to make the exploration of their POIs balanced and yet still maintain the "everything is destructible" feature of the game. 

Ahh so the building system is not the intended final design yet?

2 hours ago, Roland said:

I'm the opposite. I love getting caught out at night and having to quickly jury-rig a place of safety so much that I usually play 40 minute days. I think it is perfectly fine for T5 quests to require the player to explore into the night and don't see that as a flaw at all. Different strokes for different folks.

I tried that. My front wall broke down at the same time as my back wall and I got double whammied

2 hours ago, Roland said:

A21 definitely swings the way you are wanting as far as time spent in each era. Armor options should also improve like you are hoping but not until A22. 

Wonderful!

[Ramethzer0]

9 hours ago, zztong said:

 

What? I love doing POIs at night. Leave the game's brightness setting at default and turn off all the lights in your house, turn off the secondary monitors, no torch, no helmet light, sneak. It's a lot of fun. You can get used to seeing the outlines of the Z's in the dark once your eyes adjust. I tend to play with a shorter day than most people to get more darkness.

 

I'm glad you had fun.

This sounds terrifying and I want to try it now.

[Laz Man]

8 hours ago, Roland said:

Building thus far has been designed largely to accommodate the level designers of POIs. If they want to steer a player a certain way rather than let them easily break through a wall then they will make the wall steel even if it is a wooden building and then they will paint it wooden to match. It's a dirty trick but one they employ shamelessly in order to make the exploration of their POIs balanced and yet still maintain the "everything is destructible" feature of the game. 

 

Small correction, maybe in the past you might run across something like steel painted as wood, but not anymore.  There are a few legacy POIs still out there though but they should get updated eventually.

 

There are some exceptions to the rule though.  For example, a brick building can be painted with a brick texture on the outside and a drywall texture on the inside.

 

Players however can paint stuff however they want though. 😎

[Ttocs]

For T5 quest i usually like to start them during the night so i clear out the easier floors of the POI during night time and it goes into daytime as i progress up onto the higher/harder floors. 

 

Unless its wasteland where i start day because nights there can be hell if you attract too much attention, then damage stairs/pathways up so the wasteland hordes cant get to me once it changes to night. 

[Roland]

6 hours ago, Laz Man said:

 

Small correction, maybe in the past you might run across something like steel painted as wood, but not anymore.  There are a few legacy POIs still out there though but they should get updated eventually.

 

There are some exceptions to the rule though.  For example, a brick building can be painted with a brick texture on the outside and a drywall texture on the inside.

 

Players however can paint stuff however they want though. 😎

 

Okay then! I've never liked to "follow the light trail" and instead been happy to break through walls and doors and go my own way and I could swear there were faux wood walls in the interior of buildings that were actually concrete or steel making me follow the designated path. But maybe that was before. I will be tapping those interior walls to see if they really are what they look like.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Roland (see edit history)

[Old Crow]

15 hours ago, Roland said:

There is an improvement in this area for A21.

 

 

Oh? More melee weapon improvements in addition to the spear? I'm eagerly awaiting stun baton buffs.

[Boop]

4 hours ago, Roland said:

Okay then! I've never liked to "follow the light trail" and instead been happy to break through walls and doors and go my own way and I could swear there were faux wood walls in the interior of buildings that were actually concrete or steel making me follow the designated path. But maybe that was before. I will be tapping those interior walls to see if they really are what they look like.

It is fun to make your own path. That seems more practical outside of quests though, in case you miss a zombie or three by skipping something. I hammer away regardless to get past ledges and other no-no areas where I definitely did not want to get caught by a horde. It's scary how quickly things can go bad if you get caught in an uncomfortable situation.

[zztong]

12 hours ago, Ramethzer0 said:

This sounds terrifying and I want to try it now.

 

Take it slow, pay attention to your stealth meter (you want single digits) and I suggest using a bow with sneak attack.

 

Folks say this is an "Agility" build, but I've always played a "jack of all trades" build that doesn't skimp on the sneak and ambush. That is to say, I level up AGL, STA, and STR together. I skimp on INT and lag on PER.

[Laz Man]

4 hours ago, Boop said:

It is fun to make your own path. That seems more practical outside of quests though, in case you miss a zombie or three by skipping something. I hammer away regardless to get past ledges and other no-no areas where I definitely did not want to get caught by a horde. It's scary how quickly things can go bad if you get caught in an uncomfortable situation.

 

Even as a veteran, game can get you, especially during the early game.  I still remember looting a narrow closet to only be sandwiched by 2 zeds from behind.  I think they were biome / district spawns. (Feral sense on)

[Boop]

16 hours ago, Old Crow said:

 

Oh? More melee weapon improvements in addition to the spear? I'm eagerly awaiting stun baton buffs.

If the screenshots from the A21 diary are correct, it looks like Pipe Baton and Stun Baton will go into the robotics crafting tree together with sledge, turret, and drone. There's no T3 baton present in the screenshot.

[BFT2020]

13 hours ago, Boop said:

If the screenshots from the A21 diary are correct, it looks like Pipe Baton and Stun Baton will go into the robotics crafting tree together with sledge, turret, and drone. There's no T3 baton present in the screenshot.

 

But that is just crafting.  How effective they will be depends on any changes they make to the batons themselves along with changes to the perk associated to them via the Intelligence attribute.  They may end of tying both perks (baton and turrets) into the same one, or they may keep them separate like they are today.  It's going to be interesting to see how the perks flesh out with all the recipes removed.  Which based on the information provided so far (very little other than changes being made), these changes are something they are keeping close to the vest and we will find out after A21 drops.

[Boop]

7 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

But that is just crafting.  How effective they will be depends on any changes they make to the batons themselves along with changes to the perk associated to them via the Intelligence attribute.  They may end of tying both perks (baton and turrets) into the same one, or they may keep them separate like they are today.  It's going to be interesting to see how the perks flesh out with all the recipes removed.  Which based on the information provided so far (very little other than changes being made), these changes are something they are keeping close to the vest and we will find out after A21 drops.

No but it certainly suggests a limit on any buffing as the stun baton is necessarily limited by its tier. Any considerable boost to batons would need to introduce a T3 baton to keep the progression steady. I'd say the skill progression suggested by that screenshot implicates that the stun baton will become more of a turret support weapon than a stand-alone melee weapon.

 

As an aside, I see that you are mentioned in the acknowledgements for the 3/4 Izayo .45 ACP weapon pack. Did you help make those weapons balanced? You seem to enjoy a rough ride, so if you find them appropriate for a difficult playthrough I will install that mod for my next run. I would like to have a few more SMG options and the UMP is a classic. I am curious about the agility oriented playstyle after this thread.

[BFT2020]

3 hours ago, Boop said:

No but it certainly suggests a limit on any buffing as the stun baton is necessarily limited by its tier. Any considerable boost to batons would need to introduce a T3 baton to keep the progression steady. I'd say the skill progression suggested by that screenshot implicates that the stun baton will become more of a turret support weapon than a stand-alone melee weapon.

 

The thing is though, the Intelligence tree can be pretty OP with 2 junk turrets that the player can deploy along with their own weapons.  The reason we might not have the T3 baton at this point is striking a balance between more melee for the Int builds vs overpowering it.

 

The axe was in the same situation.  It was a powerful melee weapon so people were taking that to save a spot on their toolbelt (cuts wood and cuts zombies, why bring a different melee weapon).

3 hours ago, Boop said:

As an aside, I see that you are mentioned in the acknowledgements for the 3/4 Izayo .45 ACP weapon pack. Did you help make those weapons balanced? You seem to enjoy a rough ride, so if you find them appropriate for a difficult playthrough I will install that mod for my next run. I would like to have a few more SMG options and the UMP is a classic. I am curious about the agility oriented playstyle after this thread.

 

No, I just helped the mod creator with some coding issues and assisted in tracking down issues.  I have installed those mods, but only to assist with troubleshooting issues.  @Izayo would be a better person to ask about balancing.

[Izayo]

9 hours ago, BFT2020 said:

 

The thing is though, the Intelligence tree can be pretty OP with 2 junk turrets that the player can deploy along with their own weapons.  The reason we might not have the T3 baton at this point is striking a balance between more melee for the Int builds vs overpowering it.

 

The axe was in the same situation.  It was a powerful melee weapon so people were taking that to save a spot on their toolbelt (cuts wood and cuts zombies, why bring a different melee weapon).

 

No, I just helped the mod creator with some coding issues and assisted in tracking down issues.  I have installed those mods, but only to assist with troubleshooting issues.  @Izayo would be a better person to ask about balancing.

what is not balance ? feel free to suggest in my threads.  

[Boop]

2 hours ago, Izayo said:

what is not balance ? feel free to suggest in my threads.  

Hi Izayo,

 

It was not an assertion, but a question. I am going to start a new run, and I was wondering if the .45 ACP weapon pack is equivalent in power to the existing vanilla weapons. I would like to add mods, and yours look great, but I also want to maintain the same challenge curve as it is.

Would you say that your .45 ACP pack contains weapons superior to the vanilla weapons?