Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Erik Louden]

A17 231 - all I can say is WOW. Great job FPs!

[monkeyboy275]

You guys oversee that mining tools ARE weapons right now with the best example beeing the axe. And i think its good like that just hard to balance. On the last patch you could mine with powers and also spam them in combat with no perks at all witch was both extremely powerful. Now it uses so much stamina that its completely useless for mining (what is fine if intended) and you really have to think about when you want to use a heavy in combat. Sledge even costs you felt about 3/4 of your stamina without perks.

 

But i also like the idea of heavys being an option for smashing blocks fast without getting much resources

 

And here is a thing about armor again since nobody seemed to notice

 

Another thing i noticed is how broken armor is right now. I tested the speed by setting a startpoint, run for 5 ingame minutes and mark the end point with different armor (accidently all with perfect fitting mod)

Without armor you get nearly twice as far as with a full heavy armor set witch is fine i think but i would still like a way (perk, more mods..) to get a bit faster again. With a full set of light armor you are only slightly faster, about 3-4 blocks further then with heavy.

With abit more testing i also found out that most of the slow comes from the chestpiece. So right now to get an optimal armor/movementspeed ratio the best thing is wearing a full set of heavy armor without the chestpiece. That gives you all the armor rating from 4 heavy items and only slows you a bit while as soon as you wear the chestpiece you feel like rooted.

[Sarsante]

and I thought you would make A17 harder than A16, big mistake.

 

It's pretty disapointing be back to day 1 forge

[JanoGames]

are the skyscrappers enabled on randomgen or still disabled?

[wiggleslap]

Twill be a straw man argument to be sure.

 

@Roland, is that an actual sketch of you for your avatar? If so, how did you get it done?

[Viperel]

New report>

Friend updated and was testing things and gave himself max level (300 levels), not enough skill points to fully unlock every single skill point. I don't know if that's intended or not.

 

Thats the point

"players will probably want to specialize in one or two attributes and get the best perks in those attributes and late game there will be less god tier characters who have every perk unlocked"

[stallionsden]

are the skyscrappers enabled on randomgen or still disabled?

 

You can enable em yourself lol in rwgmixer

[Gazz]

Most players will never reach lvl 300.

[faatal]

I know i know, not the right topic but i think it will be ignored in the bug-reports, cause of some mods like allocs server fixes :x....

 

 

 

 

@Faatal, this error (on bottom) was present in alpha 16 on the dedicated server build. i fixed it by disabling the speakerblock (in a16).

 

 

Now in a17 it is still present but completly random, after a certain time of running the server without a restart.

 

What i figured out:

if the errors appears after x time, i can reproduce it by placing some electric-blocks like a turret, switch,...

only a server-restart fixed it for 1 or 2 hours. The error is gone for a while, after a reboot, so it is hard to reproduce.

 

OnHoldingUpdate has a lot of code in it, so without a line number I can't tell what was null. I tested a trigger and speaker with no errors, so will have to see it this happens to someone running in the editor.

[DaVegaNL]

Roland is one of my favourite ass-hats. And I have plenty of those to choose from

 

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Dude. He is joking. You are on a forum for a game about zombies. Maybe lighten up a bit?

 

What happened to your avatar man? I liked it!

[Gazz]

You guys oversee that mining tools ARE weapons right now with the best example beeing the axe. And i think its good like that just hard to balance. On the last patch you could mine with powers and also spam them in combat with no perks at all witch was both extremely powerful. Now it uses so much stamina that its completely useless for mining (what is fine if intended) and you really have to think about when you want to use a heavy in combat. Sledge even costs you felt about 3/4 of your stamina without perks.

With just Sexosaurus 4 you would be able to swing a tool like for mining all day long.

If it cost any less stamina would not exist in the game any more.

[DaVegaNL]

Isn't it a consolation that rocks are ... rock solid? No weasly tactic helps, their AI is 100% unexploitable. Rocks ignore funnels, spiked stairways, they even ignore the player! Rock does not crawl up to you, you have to crawl up to the rock.

 

Now wait for my ode to hay...

 

Lol, I like the way you talk!

 

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and I thought you would make A17 harder than A16, big mistake.

 

It's pretty disapointing be back to day 1 forge

 

Yeah I haven't played the new release yet, but that's my thought as well. Makes the game easier I think.

[UMA_Zebra]

Glad they keep tweaking the skills to help reduce the grind of specializing.

[TSBX]

"Lowered volume on auger/chainsaw prefab"

prefab? typo?

 

Prefab is a term in the Unity engine for content that goes into the game. Someone can probably explain better but it's late.

[Colin248]

You can enable em yourself lol in rwgmixer

 

got a link to the forum post explaining how or you got the lines? i imagine they are the tier 6/5 dungeons?

[LordoftheMoo]

Was the change from 5 perk points to 4 in the starter quest intentional? I assume it was as it made it out of QA but figured I'd ask and confirm.

[JaxTeller718]

With just Sexosaurus 4 you would be able to swing a tool like for mining all day long.

If it cost any less stamina would not exist in the game any more.

 

And THAT would probably make more than half of this audience cheer.

 

You guys have to set a limit on how much you're going to sacrifice to the voices. They are never going to be happy, and will gladly take inch by inch. I know its a tough thing, but you removed player level gating and STILL there are rumblings. At a certain point you just gotta tell people to suck it up and move on. You guys have given SO much to them already.

 

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Was the change from 5 perk points to 4 in the starter quest intentional? I assume it was as it made it out of QA but figured I'd ask and confirm.

 

No player level gating, so assume so. I mean there HAS to be a trade off otherwise they may as well just yank ANY kind of challenge out of the new perk system. If thats even possible at this point.

[Roland]

Was the change from 5 perk points to 4 in the starter quest intentional? I assume it was as it made it out of QA but figured I'd ask and confirm.

 

Intended. balancing continues.

[Kam R.]

A17 .. B231 .. Note from update page .. ( •Trader Rekt is nicer than usual ) .. THAT is a good thing, not a bug.

 

I'd say it was a pleasure reading your post... BUT IT WOULD BE A LIE! >:]

[DaVegaNL]

And THAT would probably make more than half of this audience cheer.

 

You guys have to set a limit on how much you're going to sacrifice to the voices. They are never going to be happy, and will gladly take inch by inch. I know its a tough thing, but you removed player level gating and STILL there are rumblings. At a certain point you just gotta tell people to suck it up and move on. You guys have given SO much to them already.

 

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No player level gating, so assume so. I mean there HAS to be a trade off otherwise they may as well just yank ANY kind of challenge out of the new perk system. If thats even possible at this point.

 

Hi Jax, don't you think that the removal of the level gating has shifted the standard difficulty of the game very much towards unmodded A16.4? Honestly wondering.

[Roland]

and I thought you would make A17 harder than A16, big mistake.

 

It's pretty disapointing be back to day 1 forge

 

But at what opportunity cost? I have other things to advance that are more important to me than a Day 1 forge. Just because you can spend all your initial points for Day 1 forge doesn't mean that's the only way to play it.

[Roland]

@Roland, is that an actual sketch of you for your avatar? If so, how did you get it done?

 

Prisma. It's an app on my iphone.

[JaxTeller718]

Hi Jax, don't you think that the removal of the level gating has shifted the standard difficulty of the game very much towards unmodded A16.4? Honestly wondering.

 

Yes I absolutely do. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? If you ask JUST me I think its a shift in the wrong direction. Compare the first Exp release of this Alpha to this one. A VERy different beast altogether. Did adjustments need to be made? Sure they did, but removing it completely isn't the answer. I think there's a way to keep portions of player gating in without it feeling so punishing, but it seems the go to answer here is always tell people to accept it or yank it out. Never an in-between.

 

And while I like being able to choose our own destiny when we want it I also thought we were going to see some sort of return to reward by DOING along with gating removed. THAT would have been much better. But removing the gating while keeping in the 100 percent get better by spending points system feels unrewarding to me.

 

TLDR to your question: A17 at this stage right now is MUCH easier than 16.4 unmodded.

[Gazz]

And THAT would probably make more than half of this audience cheer.

 

You guys have to set a limit on how much you're going to sacrifice to the voices. They are never going to be happy, and will gladly take inch by inch. I know its a tough thing, but you removed player level gating and STILL there are rumblings. At a certain point you just gotta tell people to suck it up and move on. You guys have given SO much to them already.

Well, the last week or so all weapons / tools / block damage / stamina got completely rebalanced and stats are no longer all over the place.

 

The "Sexosaurus 4" is an arbitrary point that I aimed at as a "mining target".

You could get by with 2 or 3 and some buffs if harvesting is all you're after.

 

Now if you spec into melee, Sexosaurus 5 is still beneficial because you will also be using stamina for armor and movement and the perk also affects power attacks.

 

This is just a small part of the considerations that go into balancing.

[Roland]

Yes I absolutely do. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? If you ask JUST me I think its a shift in the wrong direction. Compare the first Exp release of this Alpha to this one. A VERy different beast altogether. Did adjustments need to be made? Sure they did, but removing it completely isn't the answer. I think there's a way to keep portions of player gating in without it feeling so punishing, but it seems the go to answer here is always tell people to accept it or yank it out. Never an in-between.

 

And while I like being able to choose our own destiny when we want it I also thought we were going to see some sort of return to reward by DOING along with gating removed. THAT would have been much better. But removing the gating while keeping in the 100 percent get better by spending points system feels unrewarding to me.

 

TLDR to your question: A17 at this stage right now is MUCH easier than 16.4 unmodded.

 

They yanked the attribute gating. As far as perks they may still decide to level gate certain perks and now they can fine tune surgically do that but still allow specializing and more freedom of moving up one attribute tree vs spreading points evenly around. That freedom is worth it in my opinion especially since we have folks like you who can ramp up the difficulty.

 

I disagree that A17 is unilaterally less difficult than A16. I think that early game is still more difficult and A16 because of the better pathing and the denser POI's as well as the closer attention to food and water there still is. Now the proliferation of mods, perks, and attribute buffs definitely make the mid and late game much easier than A16 as well as the ease of gaming the AI.

 

So it is a mixture but I really believe that the freedom granted by the point economy instead of the rigid level gates is worth the trade off and once they get our feedback and do some adjustments to certain perks it should be the best of both versions.