Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[archergod]

That is simple. I would make guns drop at 10% the rate they do now and/or only in the better loot containers, but not my call.

 

I think gun founds are good ratio, you can be snowed with gun on day one, but how many gun safe you find ? and how many can you break in day one with stone axe. It take ages to break them,

[Skykemn]

Ok so regarding the new system , i must say i love it the whole guns , no difference between tiers , that is great , but i do feel like some people are right in some regards , i would really like to see more mods and mod quality like the weapons from 1 to 6 or 1 to 3 something like that .

 

For example you have a tempered blade lvl 1 that gives +25 block damage and a lvl 3 that gives +75 block damage so there feels like you progress and you also interact with the mods more often and earlyer in the game .

 

Right now as cool as the ideea is and really i love it , but waiting for hours and hours to find 1 mod or a mod schematic that you can't really make until lvl 60 looking at a level 5 gun or tool with 4 mod slots and nothing to put in them is not good .

[archergod]

Meh. After almost 4000 hours on this game (since A13) I'm actually feeling pretty bored with it all of a sudden.

 

They've eliminated any desire to try.

 

If you know your building efforts will fail, then where is the motivation to try.

If you know you'll be killed by a horde of vultures that emerge from nowhere, then again, why try.

If we start accepting death as inevitable, then we've all lost something.

 

I've lost a reason to play.

 

I set Zombies to Always Walk in order to be able to defend my base, but in so doing I lost any challenge associated with building. I might as well set my storage boxes and forges in an open field now, coz Always Walk is zero challenge to defend a base.

 

A survival game needs to be survivable.

Difficult, Yes, most definitely, but survivable if care is taken.

 

But a game that defeats all your efforts has defeated its own purpose for being.

 

I can't get invested in a game if it rips apart any sense of progress.

 

Well, I don't know why you lose interest, I die 10 times in 7 days game, mainly because I was stupid. On other hand my brother is on day 12 on his first run to game and he never dies. he is 100times smarter than me. So with your frustration I can assume there is chanllenge for you not to die and survive. And it is very much in game. This game become easier than before if you play your cards right.

[meganoth]

I set Zombies to Always Walk in order to be able to defend my base, but in so doing I lost any challenge associated with building. I might as well set my storage boxes and forges in an open field now, coz Always Walk is zero challenge to defend a base.

 

Did you already try turning difficulty to a lower setting?

[Guppycur]

I think the loot issue needs to be properly identified, and I don't think gun parts is it.

 

I also don't see why it's not possible to mod gun parts back in. You can either go the old-fashioned route and use recipes, or you can use the mod system itself and replace mods with gun parts.

 

It's not rocket science. It's just another way of thinking.

 

People are so focused on making a complaint, they're not seeing the potential.

 

And I still maintain that the majority of players are enjoying it which is why they're not here complaining.

 

Guns without bullets are pretty useless. And bullets are hard to find. And when you do find them, you're still facing radiated cops that game stage 30.

[meganoth]

Ok so regarding the new system , i must say i love it the whole guns , no difference between tiers , that is great , but i do feel like some people are right in some regards , i would really like to see more mods and mod quality like the weapons from 1 to 6 or 1 to 3 something like that .

...

 

TFP announced that the mods in the game were just the first they could finish and more will come.

[Skykemn]

TFP announced that the mods in the game were just the first they could finish and more will come.

I understand that more mods will come , but mod quality should still be a thing , even if they add more mods but don't put some kind of system to make them accesible early for you to interact with the system that there will still be a problem

[Kosmic Kerman]

could a dev please explain how the generator fule burn is calculated

Im trying to cut the burn rate by half but on this line

"OutputPerFuel" value="11250"

if I double that it seems the burn rate is so slow a full tank will last forever

I dont know how that number is related to anything and I just cant figure out the correct setting to get that 50% reduction in consumption

 

If 2x is too much, try 1.5x. If that’s too much try 1.25.

[Hemfive]

...

 

If you know your building efforts will fail, then where is the motivation to try.

...

 

Like other players I found an easy way to build my base safe from this new AI.

And when you fill find it too, you will notice that it is simpler than before.

[Laz Man]

It it not an oversight, since we intentionally removed it. I hated it and I don't think any of us are wanting to bring it back.

 

I agree that it was probably not the most realistic to find parts just lying around however it gave scavengers something to look forward to.

 

Hopefully the new wpn/armor modding system can be as fun and not just for endgame.

[TomBodet]

I'm not sure guns are a problem loot wise - I'm on day 22, and yes have a few guns, but i'm not drowning in them, it was also a good way to earn some money from the trader, though just enough to get a few needed items, I'm not rich from it. The guns i've been looting are low quality as well, and also ammo is becomming the problem as I still can't craft it, so looting is needed to keep getting ammo for horde nights. Also as oil isn't found too often, so repair kits to keep these low quality guns maintained is also something I want, so I'm looting for oil etc. Plus the chance to find a good quality one so I don't need to keep repairing.

 

There seems to be a big variance due to the RNG hating on you. First released build I had a dozen pistols before day 10, plenty of repair kits and was good on food because there was a boar or deer everywhere. Second build I nearly starved and managed to find a shotgun for horde night. I did manage to find a ridiculous number of acid bottles....maybe it was trying to tell me something.

 

But yeah it's like if you get in a bad groove with the way the numbers fall it takes forever to get out of it.

[Pegasus]

It it not an oversight, since we intentionally removed it. I hated it and I don't think any of us are wanting to bring it back.

 

Thank god. I hate hate hate hate those gun parts in A16. Hate them. Although, I do kinda miss the free iron scrap ... because that's what i did with them. Find ... scrap. Find ... cuss ... scrap.

 

I do however very much miss experience for upgrading blocks. Can live without it ... but really miss it.

[Pegasus]

The new POIs are amazing, especially in Navezgane, I have a habit of going to Diersvill and taking over houses there. I just ran the Cleaner thingy and wiped all my saves, then started a new Creative game to finally explore and try out all of the new shiny things while we are still in experimental. Started by building my own big fancy modern house just outside of town near the West bridge, filled it's garage with one of each vehicle, then promptly ate the bridge on my first test drive of the jeep while trying to cross it...

 

I know this has come up before, remember Faatal saying that leveling them with the road is complicated somehow, but, aw. I am afraid of destroying every bridge when I try to cross it. I sincerely hope a solution to this arises, eventually. At first I had my garage one block high, level with the floor of house, but of course the same prob came up, I destroyed the driveway ramp going back into it(love the new garage door btw). My solution was to lower the garage floor to ground level, then use plate for the driveway and garage floor. It worked, no destroy, but the garage door didn't go down all the way and looked really nope. So then I dug up a block worth of dirt and put down concrete, that worked, but I get that funny gap between the dirt and block, still best solution so far, and if it bothers me too much I can border it with plates to cover that gap nicely.

 

Anyway, some notes on building/structures:

 

- The aforementioned jeep eating bridge problem.

- A 3x garage door and a nice new 5x garage door... and then a 4x drawbridge... are you trolling us?

- Why no able to flip doors or at least have a Left and Right version of each? Double doors become a nope, is there not a way to just mirror them instead of having a second set of geometry and texture?

- Diersvill houses are SO amazing, but then the sidewalk. Ugh, not only looks like crap and does not do the houses justice, but also acts funny if you try to build on top of it. I tried placing picket fence and it fell and broke itself. I solved by placing posts behind for it to anchor to, but that ended up distorting the sidewalk all irregularly, somehow making it look even worse. Had same problem when tried to place plates over sidewalk, which I was seriously about to do for the entirety of Diersvill. I miss the old sidewalk with a curb. Fancy houses like this would have a nice curb up in their hood. Where'd that go?

 

Bridges, doors, and sidewalks, oh my.

 

Yeah it's nit-picky, still gonna(continue to) play the F outta A17 regardless, and imagine most will resolve by A18, Beta, or Gold at least. Would however be nice to at least resolve bridges by stable release or peeps gonna be eatin up their bridges once they finally get their 4x4, will be an extreme moment of happy/sad. I'm glad I discovered it in creative, if I'da worked that hard in an actual game I'd be super annoyed. Maybe I will start a creative, fix all that manually, then save it and start my Nav games from then on with that save.

 

One last thing about bridges, and I honestly do not know if this was a bug or on purpose. One game I started in burnt biome, then when I crossed bridge near the Hotel it collapsed behind me as I ran across it, the entire thing. Thought maybe it was supposed to, for dramatic effect, and it was. But it left the river all janky and wonk-watered, with a plane of iron piles on it's bed, so maybe not.

 

Drawbridge ... Yes!!! I love the concept of drawbridge. I hate the actual drawbridge with a passion. WHY WHY WHY is it four blocks wide? WHY??? it doesn't fit ANYWHERE ... everything is off center.

 

Please, by all that is holy ... make the drawbridge three wide. or five wide. Or some other version of odd ... even does not work. Even makes people with OCD insane. Please fix this. It's not cosmetic ... it's evil.

[JaxTeller718]

I think the new weapon modifier system provides a good way for modders to make a better weapon crafting system. I think you could make a gun frame as the base weapon like the baseball bat in my Salvaged Weapons Mod, then make barrels, stocks etc as item modifiers and use the item modifier assembly. Force the base weapon frame to a quality that allows enough spaces to complete the weapon.

The final effectiveness of the gun would be the additive of the frame plus all the attributes of the modifiers. I think it would be a better system this way.

 

That takes us back to the "we'll rely on modders to expand upon the idea" argument I had in another thread. Its awesome for us to have this system yes. It will spark some great ideas and mods, but how fair is it to the average player that that is the answer to all of their issues.

 

If the system needs to rely on modders to make it great or expand on it (and it may not it IS still experimental so i have no idea where it will all end up) then the system is fundamentally flawed.

 

The system you are describing could have still been implemented and had with quality remaining as is. Add the mod slots on TOP of the parts and on top of the stats to a level 349 bat lets say. Imagine the possible unique combos if they had done THAT.

[GARGEAN]

Honestly, I must admit that I don't like A17. Yes, graphics are better, new surrounding and POIs is cool, but almost anything else is worse for me.

HUD is less useful. I am getting less info and it's less obvious than in A16. Like with food, weapons ect.

Food and water system is worse. Too much exhausting and no safe zone, so you is always gimped. And there is no point in finding/crafting cool tier food cuz there is no wellness.

Wellness. I liked it. It was neat and fun and pushed me into farming and crafting.

Farming. It is much more causal and much less interesting now. No replanting, no fertilizing, and no E collection is pretty dumb for me.

Leveling. Itself it is not somewhat bad except too high level gating, but total loss of "level by usage" is bad for me. I liked to grind for those mining, construction, weapons perks. Now it's gone.

Weapons. Mods are good, even great, but old system with 600 level value and different weapon parts needed for craft were much more interesting for me than mods. They were pushing to scavenge, lvl weaponry crafting skills and make best gun possible. Now it's gone.

Zombie looting. I don't care about loot honestly, it was mostly useless anyway, but I hate that change with no gore piles and no ability to chop corpses. Bodies dissapearing in thin air are bad for me.

 

In whole... Well, development is good. Good that game wasn't abandoned after all those years in alpha. But THAT development saddens me greatly. In bigger portion of changes this doesn't even looks like stagnation for me. It looks like downgrade. Yeah, I know that many people like and enjoy this update. And it saddens me even more cuz lowers chances of reverse. And this means that I will play A17 that I enjoy significantly less than A16, or I will stick to A16 and will miss many other desired changes.

[Guppycur]

If the system needs to rely on modders to make it great or expand on it (and it may not it IS still experimental so i have no idea where it will all end up) then the system is fundamentally flawed.

 

You do know "make it great" is subjective, right? Some's "great" is other's "crappy". Just look at any thread in General to see that. =)

 

For whatever reason, tfp decided the current system IS "great". Do I agree? Obviously not, but I'm not crazy enough to assume other people don't think it's great. So yeh, modding IS your only recourse, and luckily, a few devs took their time to make it so that you CAN mod.

 

...they didn't have to. I'm pretty sure moddability was a post-release dlc add-on. But they did it anyway. <shrug>

[sillls]

Quick feedback:

 

(A17 b199 exp.) (windows dedi server) (default mode; default settings except days of 90 min.)

 

- the first week was a bit linear; we didnt have much choices, stuff to do

 

after starting with bows; we ended fightning with "compound bows" mostly.

 

- we didnt die during the first 7 days but we did 2x each during the first horde (day 7).

 

we were not prepared at all for some new attacks mode from them. it was quite fast. thanks the horde was "small"

 

- once we got level 20+iron tools (a bit past Day 8), we were able to progress quicker; have more fun all around

 

- by day 10 we had at least 750 feathers "in stock". Nests are now too easy to spot. Vultures are also giving tons of feathers.

 

besides, we had over 200 arrows each.

 

- reaching Day 13 night, food was never a problem. We had plenty of meat. Over 300 in stock.

 

- So far guns are last recourse stuff; we simply have no bullets, neither ways to made them.

 

During Days 12-13, we past level 30...up to level 32 (Day 13 evening)

 

- Day 13 late evening, we were surprised by a mini-horde with 1 vomiting cop and a "green radiation zombie" (always running) and a feral (white). we died, lost a backpack when they (zombies) died over our spikes.

 

we had no way to distance them "running" and they were simply eating our defenses like paper.

 

our defenses are to be redone for Day 14 night, although we still have lot of spikes all around

 

my guess is that we need to adapt even more. spend more time fortifying a base, than wandering around (exploring, hunting...).

 

What type of spikes are you using?

[GARGEAN]

It it not an oversight, since we intentionally removed it. I hated it and I don't think any of us are wanting to bring it back.

 

How about returning gun parts system with same 600 lvling, but making all guns to be spawned complete (and very rare). Then there will be no drowning in parts and somewhat lazy man will just look for better ones, but some people will be able to disassemple and recraft guns to better ones.

[Guppycur]

How about returning gun parts system with same 600 lvling, but making all guns to be spawned complete (and very rare). Then there will be no drowning in parts and somewhat lazy man will just look for better ones, but some people will be able to disassemple and recraft guns to better ones.

 

Or, make guns scrapable into "gun parts" and then those can be used to repair guns? (Thanks Aureleus!)

[JaxTeller718]

You do know "make it great" is subjective, right? Some's "great" is other's "crappy". Just look at any thread in General to see that. =)

 

For whatever reason, tfp decided the current system IS "great". Do I agree? Obviously not, but I'm not crazy enough to assume other people don't think it's great. So yeh, modding IS your only recourse, and luckily, a few devs took their time to make it so that you CAN mod.

 

...they didn't have to. I'm pretty sure moddability was a post-release dlc add-on. But they did it anyway. <shrug>

 

Then surely you understand that people in the random gen thread have every right to be upset because great is indeed subjective.

 

Ill admit defeat here Gup. It's impossible to debate you because you actually argue both sides at once. Are you running for Governor of Texas by any chance? I get the feeling you would have a natural gift at politics

[ktr]

Gun parts - personally, I don't miss them at all. I hated having crates full of gun parts and toilet guns (pistols) that could only be used as scrap or to maintain/increase the durability of another gun. While I did like the fact that you could increase part quality in the workbench, I loathed sitting there clicking two parts in, getting one part out, rinse and repeat for like ten minutes. By week 3-4, I was scrapping the majority of the parts I ran across.

 

I haven't gotten too much into the mod system yet, but I have played around a little bit with it in creative and so far I like it better. Modding a gun to different specs opens up more versatility in weapons, I think and makes finding/buying guns that have enough space for mods p. exciting.

 

I would maybe like to see some different types of ammo available like we have for the shotgun. (Base rounds, armor piercing, etc). Damage should depend on the bullet, not necessarily the quality of the gun IMO.

[JaxTeller718]

Or, make guns scrapable into "gun parts" and then those can be used to repair guns? (Thanks Aureleus!)

 

Thats how we handled it in Ravenhearst a year ago when we tested removing gun parts in 3.0. People generally liked it.

[Armstrrong]

Or we can just forget about awful gun parts system.

[argeos]

What type of spikes are you using?

 

Wood and metal ones (more wood ones laying around than metal, so far)

[2ndRecon]

It it not an oversight, since we intentionally removed it. I hated it and I don't think any of us are wanting to bring it back.

 

That, and you eat up brazillions of item-IDs / block-IDs with stuff that's more of a novelty. It never really affected the end-game because you could inevitably find high quality complete guns at the higher Scavenging levels in the earlier alpha's anyway.

 

I do hope someone figures out how to Mod a .50cal on the Jeep so the shotgun rider can shoot.

 

 

Most folks I talk to prefer the "find complete usable weapons" (which is more realistic anyway) and then allow CRAFTING of game-changing Mods / Enhancements to the existing weapon.

 

I don't see a difference between "OMG OMG I found a 594 barrel for my sniper" vs. "OMG OMG OMG I found a fire-rate-spring for my AK"