Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[FileMachete]

There are two different head shot damage perks, one under perception (ranged) the other under strength (melee).

[SickPuppy]

There's a perk in Strength tree for melee head damage, Skull Crusher.

 

Not sure if there's a console command in a17 to respec perks, but in a16 u can give self xp, new build is coming in next few days anyway and you've put in the effort to level up, have fun we won't tell,

 

giveselfxp 5000 (or any other number)

[danielspoa]

yeah skills aren't that clear but some have already changed in description

 

In the first build I too thought those perks would affect all weapons, as I also thought the increased power attack damage would affect blocks. You know the perk that increases power attack below the strength attribute? that one, it's only for entities.

 

Of course later knowing all the perks it started to make more sense, but a quick look early may be deceiving.

 

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On the topic of unbreakable bases, I have a mod in mind and I'm just waiting for the new release to see if any of the "balance" changes will be towards monsters. My idea is to make enemies more unique instead of just having different pools of hp. While working on these I realized how little damage cops do to blocks (it's reaaaaally low) and that their spits don't go through the bars. Currently I'm between two solutions for this: one is to make the spit go through it, it's realistic that most would reach you. My favourite solution however is to make those spits deal bonus damage to metal, sort of a corrosive substance.

[meganoth]

Are all the "Devs broke their promises" people ready to pounce on Saturday and then again on Tuesday...?

 

Before I decide about a career change, may I ask if we can use pitchforks or tar and feathers? Do insults give XP? Does daring adventurer perk give more choices on forum bans?

 

I said that exact thing a couple hundred pages back. Just doesn't seem "fluent" enough progression wise if you have to spend 6 points on a base stat just so you could buy 2 levels of a perk. I know they have to slow down progression somehow, but I think it would feel much better if, let's say, you leveled your strength by mining and running and such. Would feel more natural.

 

Lets also mention the downside. You see some zombies and instead of playing the game and using the most advantageous attack you are tempted to play the meta-game of using the attack that levels whatever you need at the moment.

 

PS: Since attributes give quite substantial bonuses as well I don't think of it as a waste to put points into them.

[The Gronk]

Lets also mention the downside. You see some zombies and instead of playing the game and using the most advantageous attack you are tempted to play the meta-game of using the attack that levels whatever you need at the moment.

 

PS: Since attributes give quite substantial bonuses as well I don't think of it as a waste to put points into them.

 

It does make it feel as though you're paying for a perk twice though.

 

If I wanted to get better at shotguns I'd shoot something with a shotgun until I got better. I'm not really getting the "meta-gaming" argument, I would call it "common sense".

[SittingDuck]

Are all the "Devs broke their promises" people ready to pounce on Saturday and then again on Tuesday...?

 

don´t worry i am buisy with playing the game... plz try not to interrupt my fun with updates ^^

[JaxTeller718]

It does make it feel as though you're paying for a perk twice though.

 

If I wanted to get better at shotguns I'd shoot something with a shotgun until I got better. I'm not really getting the "meta-gaming" argument, I would call it "common sense".

 

Not only that but it is being used to cover up a flaw in the weapons and tools system.

 

If the default is to go out and kill with a bow so that you can gain perks to put into shotguns and use it then I would say what wrong with shotguns that you do not use it right off the bat.

 

Every weapon group should be viable. If some feel the need to use a spiked club to gain the fastest points in bows then look at the entire system and pinpoint its flaws. It also makes little sense. Having weapon specific perks is fine, but the overall stats on the weapon should be dictated through use of that weapon. After that all the modifiers can be purchased.

 

Let's look at tools. All of us have to mercilessly chop trees. Our skills in cutting trees SHOULD be off the charts. We probably do it more than killing zeds yet going out to kill zeds is the best way to make constructing and mining better. That makes zero logical sense, both from a realistic point of view and even a gameplay one.

 

Why am i not the tree master when i have over 5000 wood in my box?

[archergod]

Hope the AI will be further improved so this tactic with slopes isn't possible anymore. Imagine if zombies jumped on metal railings and held on to them. Now that would be a nice surprise.

 

We need some new special infected .

 

actually I don't want it to improve, Zed are difficult on Horde night, only if you have guts to make that base work than only it benefits you. Saw Kage's video and his base didn't work like this.

[Zbruh_will]

I can't agree with you more on this, Jax. I really do dislike that they got away from using a skill to get better with said skill. Now it's like "hey, you wanna become more proficient busting up blocks? Just kill zombies and you will be the best miner around!" I have to say that even though the old skill system needed work, this new iteration is "meh" at best. By "meh" I mean super simplified and underwhelming when skills are achieved. With that being said, this is the first alpha that I have played to roughly day 11 and was bored to tears, hoping that modders like yourself make things much better.

[meganoth]

It does make it feel as though you're paying for a perk twice though.

 

Not to me. Putting points into perception gives me an advantage using any ranged weapon (for people caring about "realism", this would be learning how to breath out correctly before aiming). I may deliberately up the attribute fast if I want or expect to use a lot of different ranged weapons.

 

Putting points into the bow perk on the other hand makes me a bow specialist (knows how to handle the bow better). But I still benefit from the perk point in perception.

 

It is similar to having a bow perk tree with 15 steps and the damage goes up more every third step. But here other ranged weapons profit too.

 

If I wanted to get better at shotguns I'd shoot something with a shotgun until I got better. I'm not really getting the "meta-gaming" argument, I would call it "common sense".

 

I'm not disregarding your "realism" argument, learning by doing is more realistic for most physical skills. I'm talking about a game-play disadvantage of learning-by-doing", that it pushes the player to act because of the XP reward and not to act like he is a person in a specific situation.

[fallenbox]

The game as it is now feels like a ♥♥♥♥ty fallout 3 reiteration without the good features, whatever you want to do is translated in "farm zombies and Level up". The skills sets itself are nothing special, just some numbers steroids, leading this to get bored within the first days, i personally found 0 involvement in doing stuff in the game. I started a17 at day 1 and now i'm on day 121 and everything in between felt static as hell talking about game design, it's a long time since my last time on a16 but i remember it was definitely more "free" under a lots of aspects.

[The Gronk]

I'm not disregarding your "realism" argument, learning by doing is more realistic for most physical skills. I'm talking about a game-play disadvantage of learning-by-doing", that it pushes the player to act because of the XP reward and not to act like he is a person in a specific situation.

 

That's not a disadvantage, that's a mechanic.

 

Replace the words "XP reward" with "training". If the zombie apocalypse hit you can be damn sure I'm going to try and pick off a few easy ones to get some training in with my preferred weapon before I run into trouble, this is _exactly_ what I would do.

[Aerial]

I'm not disregarding your "realism" argument, learning by doing is more realistic for most physical skills. I'm talking about a game-play disadvantage of learning-by-doing", that it pushes the player to act because of the XP reward and not to act like he is a person in a specific situation.

 

That's not really true, though, I don't think. Learning by doing pushes the player to do the activities that build the skills the player wants to use. Why spend time on melee skills if you don't use a melee playstyle (or vice versa for ranged)? But if the player wants to use a specific set of skills, they have to invest the time in doing those skills and not others.

 

I'd love to see the attribute trees all be based on learning by doing, with specific perk trees unlocked with points. Then those trees would need to be skilled up by doing as well. I'm okay with being able to buy perks as a way to add flavor to a specific tree of skills, but having it be the primary means of gaining skills is dull. (It's dull in MMOs and RPGs, too, but those are often saved by huge skill trees and class specialization that shifts the game toward skill "builds" and the variety thereof. 7DTD is nowhere near the complexity needed for that.)

[meganoth]

That's not a disadvantage, that's a mechanic.

 

Replace the words "XP reward" with "training". If the zombie apocalypse hit you can be damn sure I'm going to try and pick off a few easy ones to get some training in with my preferred weapon before I run into trouble, this is _exactly_ what I would do.

 

Well, we are back at the realism argument, which is not what I'm arguing about. If I were I would say most people train with dummies not in a real combat situation.

 

Yes, you could call it a mechanic. But is TFP interested in having a mechanic that lets the player look at a "xp" sign and act according to it or do they want the player look at a house, some trees, a dangerous enemy and think about ways to get rid of that enemy?

 

In other words is their goal to add immersion or is their goal to make a graphically advanced cookie clicker where poeple play the game as if optimizing a spreadsheet?

 

The latter is very successfull, sure. World of Warcraft made a fortune with this, but the designers (and even some of the players) probably would have prefered if the players role-play and really read quest texts and immersive themselves in the story of such a quest. Instead 90% of players in WoW saw quests just as xp and loot providers. And as a way to get some artifical numbers up.

 

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That's not really true, though, I don't think. Learning by doing pushes the player to do the activities that build the skills the player wants to use.

 

?. If the player wants to use that skill why should he need a further incentive? He already WANTS to use that skill. By your own words

[Aerial]

?. If the player wants to use that skill why should he need a further incentive? He already WANTS to use that skill. By your own words

 

Primarily because it incentivises the player to push through the inevitable difficult spots in their skill progression, which ultimately leads to more satisfying game achievements.

 

No skill or XP balancing will ever be perfect, so there will inevitably be times when it's just easier to use a different strategy or skill set to advance. If switching to the most efficient strategy is always free, then the game starts to feel hollow because the achievements are cheap. If the player must instead choose between becoming really, really good at one skill set or splitting time and effort to become pretty decent at several, they have different meaningful choices to make in how they approach those uncomfortably difficult spots in their progression.

[Venger7Days]

Hope the AI will be further improved so this tactic with slopes isn't possible anymore. Imagine if zombies jumped on metal railings and held on to them. Now that would be a nice surprise.

 

We need some new special infected .

 

I think trying to improve the AI endlessly isn't really feasible as people will always find ways to exploit it. It probably would also quickly start to feel un-zombielike if they became too smart.

 

I made a few suggestions for new infected >here<.

[jdizzy2010]

So am I playing a new build today or getting drunk or.... both???? Lol

[Thecolours]

I'm seeing people freak out about farming zombies as the only viable way to level up. Dont forget Madmole and Fataal told us they're readjusting all the xp gains to be more balanced. I'm positive once A17 goes stable zombie farming will not be viable.

[SickPuppy]

Ppl freak out over the smallest of things around here, don't even realize we're lucky to have a game like 7dtd. I paid $9 on sale few yrs ago, felt guilty ever since.

[Genosis]

I'm seeing people freak out about farming zombies as the only viable way to level up. Dont forget Madmole and Fataal told us they're readjusting all the xp gains to be more balanced. I'm positive once A17 goes stable zombie farming will not be viable.

 

Someone did say they were going to balance it a bit; I think the point is not to make it no longer viable, just not the only sensible way to level up.

 

I'd like to be able to balance my day out with looting POI's, settling in for the evening by doing some crafting/farming/building and keep a decent stream of exp going. As it is now, you gain much more of an advantage just slaying anything and everything to get the levels, leaving crafting/building for later which is unbalanced. I leveled up twice from a single wandering horde, but did not level up once in a day of fortifying and building.

 

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Ppl freak out over the smallest of things around here, don't even realize we're lucky to have a game like 7dtd. I paid $9 on sale few yrs ago, felt guilty ever since.

 

Agreed; I have nearly 1200 hours in, and we bought the 40$ (CDN) two-pack of 7 Days, off-sale, and I still consider it a massive value. We could have spent that 40$ going to a movie (splitting a popcorn, of course) and enjoyed only 2 hours. The value is off the scale, even when you compare many AAA titles that give you 30-50 hours of single player gameplay for 59.99 with marginal replay value.

[Boidster]

Ppl freak out over the smallest of things around here, don't even realize we're lucky to have a game like 7dtd. I paid $9 on sale few yrs ago, felt guilty ever since.

 

I paid full-price on console, full-price on Steam (5 days before a sale, idiot) and still I think I've gotten the better end of the bargain. I'd pay full-price again on console, if they bring it up to A17 (stable). Just 'cause comfy couch.

 

I don't see how "skill up by doing" doesn't devolve to "spam crafting" again. How do I level up enough to craft "good quality" items besides...making lower-quality items? Or making whatever other doodad will level up Intelligence? Maybe sitting and pondering a zombie from a distance slowly starts adding intelligence XP?

 

IMO the current skill tree mechanism is alright, but it could use a little balance, which they've already said they're doing. Don't forget you absolutely can level up your strength by chopping trees, it just takes longer (and it is immeasurably safer than taking on a zombie, or one would hope). Punch dead corn plants for the real easy XP...

 

So here's a random and flame-worthy thought: what if the game just gave you XP for surviving, on a logarithmic scale. Punch your grass, chop your trees, crack your rocks, forge your tools, build a base, kill some zombies, whatever. You earn a steady (and steadily increasing rate) of XP just for surviving. Maybe a little bonus for surviving blood moon. You die, your rate of XP gain gets reset to day 1 rates.

 

Upside: play however you want, you will make progress as long as you survive

Downside: at the same game settings, everybody will pretty much be at the same level (assuming no deaths) at Day 7, 14, etc.

 

The many, many other downsides to this idea I leave as homework for the reader.

[Dagoberis]

Any word on when that balance and performance update will hit? Was hoping before the weekend. Great work guys.

[TomBodet]

 

So here's a random and flame-worthy thought: what if the game just gave you XP for surviving, on a logarithmic scale. Punch your grass, chop your trees, crack your rocks, forge your tools, build a base, kill some zombies, whatever. You earn a steady (and steadily increasing rate) of XP just for surviving. Maybe a little bonus for surviving blood moon. You die, your rate of XP gain gets reset to day 1 rates.

 

Props for thinking of another way but no. At least the way things feel right now, I always feel like I'm behind on everything. Can't gather enough to both build a base and something to survive BM, always behind on finding something to make life easier whether it's hunting for food, a good find on a tool, a trader in the area, etc... A setback that starts your progression ability back to 1 when the rest of the game is at 14 would just turn into hating IMO.

 

I'd like to see what they come up with to balance out the XP gains for doing other than Z hunting. The random horde pathing that seems to send it right through my living room every damn time will take care of that.

[tuxre]

Any word on when that balance and performance update will hit? Was hoping before the weekend. Great work guys.

 

bump

[Devrix]

New build today? :-D