A17 Feedback from 40 hours gameplay

[Railas]

Hi Guys,

 

Thanks for the 250 hours of fun I had with your game so far. I made notes throughout the 40 hours of gameplay in alpha17:

 

• charred meat and grilled meat have identical stats --> this might not be intended

• pacing of vehicles --> The bike is accessible quite late. It would be great if you could move it to an earlier point in the game like lvl 10. I never used the bike since I got the minibike so shortly after. The only vehicle I used for longer was the motorcycle.

• agility is not that useful except for stamina, nearly all skills here suck. Fortitude is similar with at least a few useful skills. correction: after a bit of testing I realised that the attribute just does not fit my playstyle)

• the dmg numbers on weapons seem to be wrong --> melee is much stronger than indicated -> Better dmg indication would be great like current dmg, normal swing, heavy swing, current head dmg multiplier ect.

• the new player experience is super frustrating. It is nearly impossible to survive the 7day horde when you are just learning the game. Also since every building seems to be a POI with traps and hidden zombies, I expect new players to die like flies. Even more than before.

• using a wrench to harvest tires is a bit odd

• The process to acquire resources has become slower. It can be frustrating at times, especially when you need to spend a whole day shoveling. Could you increase resource gain a bit, especially for soils? I spent nearly all my points in harvesting-related skills and it still feels slow.

• Body and loot bag despawn is frustrating, expecially on horde night. You just killed a bunch of zombies and the loot bags and animal bodies dissappear in front of you. This makes the player feel cheated.

• Is there extra fall damage on traps? Damage indication of traps would be great

• dead animal hitbox does sometimes not trigger

• You could make the vultures act as spotter that alarms zombies?

• Early in the game you only gain significant XP by killing zombies. Maybe the XP gain could be tweaked a bit. Also the XP for the different zombies should be differentiated. Currently, a zombie bear gives as much XP as a hawaian.

• the weapon mod „solvent“ has no thumbnail

• I got framerate issues with a GTX980M on mid settings and lowered resolution. I got between 60 and 20 frames.

• I found the schematics for "modgunmeleeradremover". This is not craftable

• It would be good to change the description of some perks since most perks describe combat benefits but tool/ressource benefits do also apply. For example "sexual tyrannosaurus" or „faster swings“. Both perks also apply to tool usage, not only to melee. Heavy hitter only mentions entity dmg. I guess block dmg is left out?

• trap kills dont earn XP (should give you less XP than regular kills)

• wearing armor gets you killed. You die by running out of stamina and getting ganged. The encumberance and speed reduction is way too high. Especially in early game stages where you have to walk everywhere. maybe a perk could reduce this? However I would rather spend my points on other skills.

• When I was getting off the motorbike, I was sometimes seeing a "falling down" animation and took some damage.

• The sinkholes in streets of desert cities cause frustration by getting your vehicle stuck, Maybe reduce the numer or introduce ramps.

• Sledgehammer lvl 5 has only one slot for modifications, correction: The second Sledge Hammer I crafted had two slots. The third one had 5 slots. Yey, a gamble! I had the same issue with nearly all other craftable weapons and tools. Sometimes there were even more slots that there should have been.

• mircrojumps are super loud (few centimeters elevation difference)

• one perk says "you find better loot" - What does this mean? just higher quality? or more mods? It is the mods that I care about most starting from mid-game.

• light causes the detection-meter to go up. Does the light make you more detectable for zombies that do not see you? (behind a wall)

• More basic traps would be amazing- what about spear traps or ballista-like traps? Or a swinging tree-trunk to send some zombies flying?

• Bricks are too expensive to use and inferior to reinforced flagstone

• You gain experience when you craft something in a crafting station while having the station open. You dont get anything if the item is crafted while not having the station open. Maybe reduce zombie XP and make station-crafting-XP universal?

• The bow feels very weak and far inferior to the club

• The description of the iron club says it would deal more damage than the wooden club. However, the damage numbers are identical.

• The motorbike despawned two times. One time the console popped up and showed red error messages. Unfortunately I forgot to make a screenshot.

 

 

 

Thanks for reading all this.

 

Railas

[stupid]

• When I was getting off the motorbike, I was sometimes seeing a "falling down" animation and took some damage.

 

Pretty good list you got here.

This motorbike thing always gets me. If you're not careful the bike will keep rolling and can run you over.

[OzHawkeye]

Good feedback Railas,

 

Just a couple of things, relating to XP, I can point out:

 

1. Traps have never given XP - in an MP game, who anyway would get the XP?

2. A similar issue applies to crafting stations.

3. XP for zombies is being tweaked in the next build.

[Jamey]

1. Traps have never given XP - in an MP game, who anyway would get the XP?

We now have shared XP. Traps could just share XP with all players within that radius.

[Krougal]

Good list, although some of these things are just plain bugs, some already fixed even.

 

Agility perkline sucks? Are you kidding? The stealth perks are excellent. Granted if stealth isn't your thing then yeah, I guess they suck.

 

We now have shared XP. Traps could just share XP with all players within that radius.

 

Then the server would need to keep track of who the trap belongs to.

Honestly, do you really deserve the XP if the trap kills the zed?

Yes, it sucks when you've been attacking a zed repeatedly and the trap gets the kill (which is when XP is given) but I'm sure the trap feels why should the player get the XP from the killshot when it did most of the work too. Traps don't have feelings you say? You're probably right.

Barbed wire is better than spikes anyway. Doesn't steal your XP.

[LuckyStar]

Excellent post!

 

This wasn't a dig at TFP or Whining or any of that nonsense we've seen lately.

This was honest feedback and VERY useful for TFP I would wager.

 

Thanks for taking the time to make this Railas.

[Kalarro]

Good list, although some of these things are just plain bugs, some already fixed even.

 

Agility perkline sucks? Are you kidding? The stealth perks are excellent. Granted if stealth isn't your thing then yeah, I guess they suck.

 

 

 

Then the server would need to keep track of who the trap belongs to.

Honestly, do you really deserve the XP if the trap kills the zed?

Yes, it sucks when you've been attacking a zed repeatedly and the trap gets the kill (which is when XP is given) but I'm sure the trap feels why should the player get the XP from the killshot when it did most of the work too. Traps don't have feelings you say? You're probably right.

Barbed wire is better than spikes anyway. Doesn't steal your XP.

 

This is an old topic, not a17 related, but I disagree. As a builder, I built the trap, I get the xp (I dont care about mp, talking about sp).

Or this is what I said before a17. In a17 I dont care, getting xp is often bad instead of good. At least for builders. And yes, this is sad.

[OzHawkeye]

This is an old topic, not a17 related, but I disagree. As a builder, I built the trap, I get the xp (I dont care about mp, talking about sp).

Or this is what I said before a17. In a17 I dont care, getting xp is often bad instead of good. At least for builders. And yes, this is sad.

 

XP from traps, in whatever system it used, would need to work for MP as well as SP. It would be easy to make such a system for SP, but more or less impossible to make one (that couldn't be massively exploited) for MP - given that, I very much doubt you'll ever see Traps award XP.

[Gazz]

This is an old topic, not a17 related, but I disagree. As a builder, I built the trap, I get the xp

Yes, and that's the intention.

The building / upgrading XP just isn't balanced, yet.

[OzHawkeye]

Yes, and that's the intention.

The building / upgrading XP just isn't balanced, yet.

 

I assume Gazz, you're saying here, the builder will be better rewarded for building the trap, not that they'll be awarded XP from each Zombie it happens to kill, right?

[Gazz]

Yeah. Your effort consists of building/upgrading/repairing a system of fortifications/traps and usually acquiring the resources for that, too.

 

Would you (as a potential builder type player) not want to get XP for that?

 

If you wanted to get awarded for killing zombies you could just go kill zombies, right?

[OzHawkeye]

Yeah. Your effort consists of building/upgrading/repairing a system of fortifications/traps and usually acquiring the resources for that, too.

 

Would you (as a potential builder type player) not want to get XP for that?

 

If you wanted to get awarded for killing zombies you could just go kill zombies, right?

 

Agreed totally.

 

Not only do I think the traps should not award XP for a kill, but I reckon if you try to implement such a system, it'll be game'd to all buggery within days of being release.

 

But yeah, building it should reward XP commensurate with the time and materials put into it.

[Gazz]

Sure. I am working on getting block damage / tool progression hammered into shape because with all new perks and mods nothing fits any more.

Case in point: Right now an auger harvests wood faster than any axe...

Everything's crazy. That's why this is still experimental. =)

 

With a complex game there is an order to balancing. You start with one system, then expand layer by layer.

If you try to balance 3 different systems at once or in a willy nilly order you end up with this. Guaranteed.

If that sounds slow and laborious that's because it is.

 

I realise that this may be inconvenient to some players but... tough.

[Kalarro]

Yeah. Your effort consists of building/upgrading/repairing a system of fortifications/traps and usually acquiring the resources for that, too.

 

Would you (as a potential builder type player) not want to get XP for that?

 

If you wanted to get awarded for killing zombies you could just go kill zombies, right?

 

So why do weapons kills grant xp? I got the xp killing the zombies of the POI to get that weapon.

 

Sorry, but I already got that response on a16 when talking about this same topic, and it's still as bad as it was then.

 

I didn't want to bring up this topic now tho, was just answering a post. I dont mind about trap xp now as I did in a16 bc I do avoid getting xp now sometimes, which is a related but much more important problem. OFC, not always, but the best way to do it is to focus on key levels like 20 for forges, and then try to not lvl much until next horde night. Then after horde night, level until next key level. I hate that bc I like progression, but I also like to be efficient, so it's not a cool feeling.

[Halz]

Hi!

The TO has a lot of good points. I personally have a lvl 105 char in a17 right now and i want to pick only the points, that i dont share and explain why. Here the list:

 

1) • agility is useless except for stamina, nearly all skills here suck. Fortitude is similar with at least a few useful skills.

 

2) • the new player experience is super frustrating. It is nearly impossible to survive the 7day horde when you are just learning the game. Also since every building seems to be a POI with traps and hidden zombies, I expect new players to die like flies. Even more than before.

 

3) • The process to acquire resources has become slower. It can be frustrating at times, especially when you need to spend a whole day shoveling. Could you increase resource gain a bit, especially for soils? I spent nearly all my points in harvesting-related skills and it still feels slow.

 

4) • light causes the detection-meter to go up. Does the light make you more detectable for zombies that do not see you? (behind a wall)

 

5) • The bow feels very weak and far inferior to the club

Railas

 

1) Some Agility and Fortitude Abilities are awesome and imo too good. Natural Healing 5 makes healing consumables almost useless. And the sneaking skills from agility are all awesome. Or take parcours. There are a lot of good perks that are really, really strong, some of them in my opinion too strong.

 

2) The higher your Character is, the easier the game will be. I think a17 is far to easy lategame. Even Basebuilding ist still fine if you funnel the zombies.

 

3) Harvesting is fine as it is. Later on you get massive ressources. The only thing that they could make easier is mining. Please use different designs for the ores. Gravel, iron, coal... they almost look the same and you cant really mine, because the gravel will collapse really fast. So you are forced to dig down a big hole from the surface down to bedrock. Make mining more like minecraft please.

 

4) Weapon attached lights dont affect your detection range. You can light up the whole planet and no zombie will care. This should be tweaked.

 

5) There are more issues with weapons imo. Firearms are too easy to get and to weak. It makes no sense to use the crossbow over the normal compound bow. Almost the same damage, but far lower rate of fire.

 

 

And i would like to add a point, that i really hate:

- Some plants are really hard to harvest. Coffee as example. I hit multiple times a seed if i try to farm the crops

- What happend to infections? i never got an infection even though i was hit and infected multiple times. But i was never forced to take antibiotics

 

Things i would like to see:

- 2 and 4 blocks wide doors, like slide doors

- combined draw bridges, that activate together

 

Beside that: I really love a17. Good job TFP!

[crazywildfire]

Just wanted to say agree with the others great post. However I'm not going to go into much about it because I agree some stuff needs work but that is already known and is being worked on so until I see the stable version it is kinda hard to say one way or the other. I will say though that this game in my opinion has never been or at least in a long time been friendly with new players. It is definitely a learning game, the first time you don't know what to do really and will have trial in error after error but you learn from it and the next time you get more comfortable. Granted a bunch of it and I'm not saying everything or everyone but a lot don't ever check the journal and that gives some good tips.

[Laz Man]

This is a good list of observations. Regarding difficulty (SP) , instead of lowering it, I turned off running and the game felt right!!! Ferals and animals still run so there was still some good challenge. Considering the new AI and the amount of zeds the game throws out at you, this felt like a good sweet spot for me. (Just under lvl 20 and game stage 30ish)

 

I actually survived the 1st 7day horde and it wasnt too easy doing so. I used a series of raised platforms with stairs, spikes, mix of ranged and melee to win. It felt very rewarding.

[LuckyStar]

Yes, and that's the intention.

The building / upgrading XP just isn't balanced, yet.

 

So you're saying it's coming?

 

 

[Railas]

Thanks for all the replies and oppinions.

You convinced me that Agility is actually good, it just does not fit my playstyle.

 

Regarding the XP from traps, this would be a source of motivation for me. However, I also see that this may cause balance/exploit issues. Getting XP for crafting the trap sounds okay. An option to switch XP from trap kills on and off would be an amazing solution. However, this might require a lot more work from TFP. Getting XP from trap kills in your vicinity might be easier to implement rather than tracking who build which trap.