A21 Feedback, water and skill rework made it impossible to enjoy as a night-blind solo base builder

[Cattrina]

I am a night-blind solo base builder. I cannot see when it is night in the game, even tho my brightness and gamma is up. Which means I can only play this game (kill zombies, adventure, search for loot) during daylight. At nights I used to craft and decorate/build my base. Which means after A21 I spend now the entire night watching videos online. I can no longer enjoy this game when all that is taken from me. I am forced 99% of the time to look for magazines. The other bummer was to build a bucket and spend all my forged iron I found on it, only to learn I cannot use it to make drinking water. And why does the dew collector not fill up when it is raining?

 

I loved the old empty jars and cans. It made this game slightly more fun game. It no longer has the appeal for me, so I had to down vote this game on the Steam page.

These changes basically killed the game for me.

 

Also the seed 50% chance is ridiculous. I want to be able to craft, farm and gear up with my labor. Not wait until by chance, it is totally different genre of a game now.

It is no longer a survival-basebuilder game. It is now a looting-first person fighter game. And that makes me super sad and a bit angry. I am only glad I was able to play to be content on A20. Now I can just uninstall and forget this game.

Edited June 15, 2023 by Cattrina
Clean up (see edit history)

[Exxodous]

Or......you could continue to play A20.

[Cattrina]

sure, I just wanted to leave my feedback on this.

[theFlu]

2 hours ago, Cattrina said:

At nights I used to craft and decorate/build my base. Which means after A21 I spend now the entire night watching videos online.

I don't see that much having changed with that regard? Mats for building are the same, more blocks and decorative options were introduced. Your nights should still be the same as before.

 

Your days.. haven't really changed either. Want a thing A? Go do a quest for the trader. Want a thing B? Go do a quest for the trader. Want a thing ... you get the point. Now, instead of getting all your needs covered by the trader loop, you'll get all your book needs covered by the trader loop, while getting all your needs covered by the trader loop.

 

Does it feel slow? Yeh. Do I have any idea what I can craft? Nope, I haven't checked what books I read since the first few sets. I'll occasionally remember to check if I can improve something. Usually not. For both checking and being able.

 

The 50% seed chance was in A20 in this exact form. If you were content with that..?

[meganoth]

3 hours ago, Cattrina said:

I am a night-blind solo base builder. I cannot see when it is night in the game, even tho my brightness and gamma is up. Which means I can only play this game (kill zombies, adventure, search for loot) during daylight. At nights I used to craft and decorate/build my base. Which means after A21 I spend now the entire night watching videos online. I can no longer enjoy this game when all that is taken from me. I am forced 99% of the time to look for magazines. The other bummer was to build a bucket and spend all my forged iron I found on it, only to learn I cannot use it to make drinking water. And why does the dew collector not fill up when it is raining?

 

I loved the old empty jars and cans. It made this game slightly more fun game. It no longer has the appeal for me, so I had to down vote this game on the Steam page.

These changes basically killed the game for me.

 

Also the seed 50% chance is ridiculous. I want to be able to craft, farm and gear up with my labor. Not wait until by chance, it is totally different genre of a game now.

It is no longer a survival-basebuilder game. It is now a looting-first person fighter game. And that makes me super sad and a bit angry. I am only glad I was able to play to be content on A20. Now I can just uninstall and forget this game.

 

Many players can only fight and do quests in the daytime at first because running zombies are a big challenge at start. There are a few activities they can still do in the night, even without a workbench.

 

* Dig a mine shaft to ground level. When I do that I often light the path with torches which I setup in nooks. 

 

* Sort the findings of the day, cook the food that I can, cook the water.

 

* One trick I sometimes do is clear a (quest) POI from zombies in daylight but leave the loot, then hack away any accessways to the first floor and loot the building in the night. If you take a few torches with you and leave lights alone that are already installed you should be able to do that as well

 

* If you are a builder, making your (probably temporary) crafting base look nicer is another way to do something useful in the night. I usually need quite some time to create enough space for all the containers and workstations I want to place.

 

* Farming can be done in a garden, or on top of a POI. As I always use a POI as (first or permanent) crafting base I often have to clear away the roof of that POI to make a level platform for my farm plots. Placing torches in your case would make this possible for you as well. Workstations and farm plots can later be moved to somewhere else, so even if this place is only temporary you can start immediately with a farm without having to craft the plots again in your new location

 

PS: If I had a severe case of night blindness I might actually choose to turn on creative mode to give me night vision googles (or a helmet light mod) without feeling I had cheated myself to them.

 

Edited June 15, 2023 by meganoth (see edit history)

[Roin]

It seems no one thought about this, if youre nightblind and u have nothing to Do in night...

 

Just change the Setting so u have 24 Hours a Day daylight and no night

[RipClaw]

5 hours ago, Roin said:

Just change the Setting so u have 24 Hours a Day daylight and no night

This is not possible without modding. You can only set the night as short as possible. Default is from 10 pm to 4 am.

 

[Roin]

Sure u have to edit the XML files for that but that is easy. 

 

I dont know whats the exact file on SP but if u have a MP Server Just open serverconfig xml

 

There u can edit it and make it 24 or 23 as you wish.

 

But someone can tell u for Sure whats the file for SP

[RipClaw]

37 minutes ago, Roin said:

But someone can tell u for Sure whats the file for SP

It is Config\XUi_Menu\windows.xml. There exists already a mod that could be adapted to A21.

 

And I am not the OP. I just wanted to point out that there is no setting for 23h/24h daylight in Vanilla.

 

[wyr3d]

On 6/15/2023 at 1:02 PM, Cattrina said:

I am a night-blind solo base builder.

Does this even apply to the game though? Regardless of one's ability to see in the dark (I am light sensitive so I can see very well in the dark, but daylight hurts my eyes so I have to wear tinted reactive lenses) it has no impact on the game. I can't see @%$# when it's dark either - hell even during the day when it's stormy it's often pitch black indoors...

...so use a light source.

One spawns with torch which is kinda awkward to hold, but one can also bash zeds with it - but hey, afix one to the wall and it's no longer an issue.  Headlamps and weapon lights are an option once available either by looting, or crafting (both of which I have obtained through POIs in A21 playthroughs - literally the POIs I spawned next to)  I really do not see a problem. Nothing is stopping you from crafting, and/or  decorating/building build my base. Incidentally, the daylight in-game doesn't bother my eyes either. Coz y'know, it's a game.
 

 

On 6/15/2023 at 1:02 PM, Cattrina said:

I am forced 99% of the time to look for magazines.

Given then I can't walk down the street without mailboxes figuratively spewing their magazine contents out at me, I really doubt this is the case. Sure, if one is in the wilderness (and one does start off in the wilderness, albeit close to a POI) there are less magazines to find, but they are still pretty abundant - to the point of "in-your-face"

In Alpha 21 you do not look for magazines, in Alpha 21 magazines look for you.

 

On 6/15/2023 at 1:02 PM, Cattrina said:

The other bummer was to build a bucket and spend all my forged iron I found on it, only to learn I cannot use it to make drinking water. And why does the dew collector not fill up when it is raining?

It's unfortunate that you wasted some iron to build a bucket, but given that item appears to have no purpose in this experiemental version of A21, it's entirely likely it will be removed or repurposed in a future build in any case. As for the Dew Collector, this is probably down to game mechanics. They are designed to slowly fill up over time, not to take consideration of weather conditions. Speaking of which, there is probably a bug here as the whole "raining every day" thing can not be intentional.

That said, with the implementation of the Dew Collector as a "thing" it is only so much time before a mod author (maybe even me) develops a barrel based "rain collector" using the same system, but specifying it only activate (however at a greater rate) only during storms. IAH I do not think there is a water shortage in A21, but we do like to tinker.
 

On 6/15/2023 at 1:02 PM, Cattrina said:

I loved the old empty jars and cans.

Regarding jars, and cans - I expect there are already mods available that reintroduce them into A21 - I will probably make one myself at some point just coz I do not like the idea of eating cans and jars, although I will not return the previous functionality, they will just cosmetic and scrappable if I develop one. 
 

On 6/15/2023 at 1:02 PM, Cattrina said:

Also the seed 50% chance is ridiculous. I want to be able to craft, farm and gear up with my labor. Not wait until by chance, it is totally different genre of a game now.

It is no longer a survival-basebuilder game. It is now a looting-first person fighter game. And that makes me super sad and a bit angry. I am only glad I was able to play to be content on A20. Now I can just uninstall and forget this game.

The seed thing has previously been addressed, but yeah. This was the deal in Alpha 20 too. But hey, put points into Living on the Land and you can double, and triple the harvest. You wanted stuff to do at night, you can craft your own seeds. Plant vast fields of crops, and live of vegetables. Or yeah, just kill the little animals and eat them instead, it's easier.

[Greymantle]

They are slowly taking away freedoms from us to play how we want. Nothing we can do but wait for mods to fix and or hope we get a mod. I have no idea how hard it will be this time to code this version.

[sovapid]

This is not been the case for me and I have the same to do at night as I did before.

 

Have only gone up to day 7 twice in A21.

[Kosmic Kerman]

On 6/15/2023 at 8:02 AM, Cattrina said:

I am a night-blind solo base builder. I cannot see when it is night in the game, even tho my brightness and gamma is up. Which means I can only play this game (kill zombies, adventure, search for loot) during daylight. At nights I used to craft and decorate/build my base. Which means after A21 I spend now the entire night watching videos online. I can no longer enjoy this game when all that is taken from me. I am forced 99% of the time to look for magazines. The other bummer was to build a bucket and spend all my forged iron I found on it, only to learn I cannot use it to make drinking water. And why does the dew collector not fill up when it is raining?

 

I loved the old empty jars and cans. It made this game slightly more fun game. It no longer has the appeal for me, so I had to down vote this game on the Steam page.

These changes basically killed the game for me.

 

Also the seed 50% chance is ridiculous. I want to be able to craft, farm and gear up with my labor. Not wait until by chance, it is totally different genre of a game now.

It is no longer a survival-basebuilder game. It is now a looting-first person fighter game. And that makes me super sad and a bit angry. I am only glad I was able to play to be content on A20. Now I can just uninstall and forget this game.

 

If you are unable to see at night I would recommend using the creative menu and grabbing a helmet light mod and a padded helmet. No reason to suffer until you find one.  And if what you enjoy is building, you can also use the creative mode to spawn in blocks or spawn in better tools. 

[Cattrina]

3 hours ago, Kosmic Kerman said:

 

If you are unable to see at night I would recommend using the creative menu and grabbing a helmet light mod and a padded helmet. No reason to suffer until you find one.  And if what you enjoy is building, you can also use the creative mode to spawn in blocks or spawn in better tools. 

 

Thank you. I just am afraid using the creative. I've had many games spoiled by unlimited powers. I am an active modder in few games and beginning doing that made the actual game impossible. XD

[Kosmic Kerman]

3 minutes ago, Cattrina said:

 

Thank you. I just am afraid using the creative. I've had many games spoiled by unlimited powers. I am an active modder in few games and beginning doing that made the actual game impossible. XD

That is the danger of unlocking the creative menu or god mode. Another alternative would be to create a modlet that changes your starting equipment. I don't know exactly what type of play you are looking for but you could start with a miner's helmet, iron tools, and whatever workstations you feel you need.  If you were to poke around the mod section I'm sure you could find a mod that used different starting equipment and use that as a template to create your own. Or you could wait for mods that will inevitably come that revert crafting skills to perks.

[Cattrina]

This is one of the last sandbox games I do not mod. When I begin making mods for a game the playing of the game becomes kinda moot. And I like this game well enough to just play it. But thank you everyone, it was so good to feel listened to

[wyr3d]

Since I was about to start updating my mods to A21 anyway, I started with Not Just Any Place a mod that changes the Intro of the game, replacing the iniitial questline, and starting equipment. That said, it was a simple matter to dumb it down to a simple version that just does as Kosmic Kermit suggested, and adds a helmet light mod to the initial loadout, just for you. :P

https://www.mediafire.com/file/hvpm6782e42omjj/Wyr3d+-+Special+Cattrina+Mod.zip/file
 

 

[ElCabong]

I don't understand your problem at night. I do things at night. I have to be careful and usually only partially loot at poi. The parts that I can see.

 

Perhaps you need to turn up the gamma on your game or monitor?

[Balthazod]

There is a MOD to replace the jar system its a ill thought out idea it is only a problem at the start the A21 is dull as dish water.

[Cattrina]

15 hours ago, wyr3d said:

Since I was about to start updating my mods to A21 anyway, I started with Not Just Any Place a mod that changes the Intro of the game, replacing the iniitial questline, and starting equipment. That said, it was a simple matter to dumb it down to a simple version that just does as Kosmic Kermit suggested, and adds a helmet light mod to the initial loadout, just for you. 😛

https://www.mediafire.com/file/hvpm6782e42omjj/Wyr3d+-+Special+Cattrina+Mod.zip/file
 

 

 

Aww, how thought full, thank you!

 

8 hours ago, ElCabong said:

I don't understand your problem at night. I do things at night. I have to be careful and usually only partially loot at poi. The parts that I can see.

 

Perhaps you need to turn up the gamma on your game or monitor?

 

Gamma and brightness of the game are already maxed. I won't be playing with my monitor settings, as I do need to do other things with this monitor, like reading this forum XD   Everyone's eyes are different, but usually people with nyctalopia have slow pupil response time to flickering lights (on off), which in my case means I cannot have both in the same environment switching back and forth. A gun nozzle flare would instantly flood my eyes for seven seconds.

 

And yes, all this was mostly an issue at the beginning of the game, when I had nothing to do during the nights before I had any crafting materials, workbenches or skills.

Luckily I got a miner's helmet attachment as a quest reward, so it is a lot easier to loot when you can actually see there is a box that can be looted. Relying only on the mouse hover text does not always work, cause I tend to somehow miss parts of the scenery and it is way slower that way. It is basically the same as if you used your hands to feel every item in the room.

Edited June 17, 2023 by Cattrina (see edit history)

[Roland]

So….you didn’t uninstall then?

[Cattrina]

Why would I uninstall the game? I've had it since the beginning. As said, this post was just to put my feedback somewhere. About how the changes made the beginning of the game really boring for me. It may be a deterrent to some new players who have similar issues with the darkness inside the game houses. You cannot hold a torch on your left hand, so no going inside until you can find the miner's lamp or can make one. At home I can set up a campfire, but looting houses is hard even on daytime because of the darkening effect. If it starts to suddenly rain... there goes my visuals. XD

 

In the A20 I could just grind at home and become better skilled (stamina. strength) until I can kill a Z with one hit. Hitting again on a target that moves (or you move cause you are running) hitting them again is hard when you cannot see. It is literally flailing about in the darkness and hoping to hit something.

 

Which forces my early game into running around town during the daytime and looting cars and mailboxes in hopes to advance. This is why it took me 24 ingame days to get a workbench. And unless I did not get the miner's lamp as a reward I still would not have it I am sure.

 

And yes, in case you are wondering, blood moon means barricading myself inside my home and hoping the Zs won't break through my walls before the morning. XD

Edited June 18, 2023 by Cattrina (see edit history)