How do you like A17 experimental NOW?

[Roland]

This is a follow up poll to the first one we did about 2 weeks ago. Since that time the developers have made some changes and also remained firm on other features that are new to A17. So what are your thoughts now? Have you changed your mind? If you were unsure before have you solidified your opinion on whether you like or dislike A17?

 

Please vote and discuss your journey of opinion about what has turned out to be the most controversial update in the history of the game.

 

 

 

A quick note: There is one difference between this poll and the last one. Instead of using the terms "garbage" and "perfection" for the most extreme feelings, I replaced them with "worst version yet" and "best version yet". Some people get hung up on concepts like perfection (because nothing is perfect) or garbage (because that is really insulting) but I think having the opinion that while not garbage or perfect this version either being the worst or best out of all the previous offerings might be more akin to how people really feel.

[Liesel Weppen]

I cant find a suitable answer, because the rwg is the most ultimative highest absolute bull♥♥♥♥ and i don't want to play after 1000 hours on nevazgne again.

So basically absolutely unplayable for me right now, because rng is the worst i ever saw. (both b199 and b233)

But in general it might be good. I can't vote for other the changes, because rng makes the whole game unplayable.

[DerValiser]

At the Pre-Stream it was one of the best Alpha I ever played since A8.

But meantine I have a bad feeling that the pimps are deleting everything good and making all other things worse, as you have done this in the last years.

 

Current example: Why you are reverting the RWG to the crappy A16. Okay, there were some floating buildings and the water problem. But EVERY ALpha had floating buildings. And most alpha had long streets going directly through endless oceans.

And see....here's what you get in b233 with A16 RWG. No Wonder. SHot taken an hour ago in the b233-Stream.

 

Same thing as with....idn....A12/13? Where you had this wonderful smooth terrainborders which you killed with the next alpha. Never saw such good borders again. Why? Where is the code? Why everything has been reverted and made much more worse?

 

So meantime I have a quite bad feeling, not only for the A17, but for the whole developement of the game.

It could have been brilliant. But the last patches gave me the impression, that you are reacting to whiners instead of "doing your stuff and plan". This is what you should follow. Same thing with the difficulty. If the AI is too difficult, they should play on nomad with 240 minutes. Not on insane with 50 minutes. Problem solved. But for my point of view the AI was much better and smarter in the Pre-stream-Version. I was really impressed. Seems that there were some bad changes in the last weeks.

[Doctor3D]

I went from "In general I'm ambivalent. I have mixed feelings or am still unsure" in the previous poll to "In general I like it. It has bad aspects but overall it is improved"

 

They have definitely moved it in a positive direction for me.

 

This Alpha has been the Alpha of things growing on me and finally accepting some changes I previously never really embraced.

 

To give you an example of what I mean - I never really cared much for the traders ever since they were introduced. Never really used them - I thought they made the game less interesting and it killed the survival mechanics so I just pretended they didn't exist.

 

Well, now of course the trader quests are there so right off the bat I used them to try that out. I enjoyed doing them so kept going back to the trader for more. But more importantly - the progression system they are currently testing is making me realize the utility in traders far more than ever before. The Traders are actually useful - they compliment your weakness in whatever skill-set you're currently behind on. I built a concrete base without an actual concrete mixer just with using the trader and questing alone. And I didn't feel that 'cheap' or like it was easy doing it - I used the quest system to loot and earn cash to build the base and that allowed me to put more points into combat and stealth who relies primarily on what he finds and doesn't make much which makes for a fun little character to play.

 

I remember on the previous poll - my primary concern with this Alpha was in balance. The game was a bit too tedious in the beginning and you were way too OP in the end. This was somewhat corrected as well with the progression (at least as far as I've got to play with it, it is) - you can't be a master of everything so soon and you have to make hard choices sometimes. You're just not as OP as fast as you were before.

 

Compound that with the new run settings - I love them. I was never a fan of always sprint- but I like the current 'run' setting for daytime zombies and nightmare for everything else. It makes looting much more challenging for much longer.

 

Speaking of loot - that's still a big problem though. There's not much incentive to loot actual POIs once you're established. You can get far too much of what you need in just the areas outside and in dilapidated buildings. We need more legendary, rare loot that is exclusive to some dangerous POIs.

 

Anyway, I could go on for hours - it's improved for me.

[ThomasSurvives]

Max stamina degrade is still too fast, I made a game and literally no more than 5 minutes I am down to 80/100, that is insane.

[HungryZombie]

I cant find a suitable answer, because the rwg is the most ultimative highest absolute bull♥♥♥♥ and i don't want to play after 1000 hours on nevazgne again.

So basically absolutely unplayable for me right now, because rng is the worst i ever saw. (both b199 and b233)

But in general it might be good. I can't vote for other the changes, because rng makes the whole game unplayable.

 

That really sounds like the answer "In general I dislike it. It has good aspects but overall it is worse." to me.

[METALmurderer]

I'm in the middle on this. I must admit, I'm not entirely sure what the Pimps were going for in this new Alpha. At what point are we supposed to be endgame now? 50 hours of gameplay? 100? Not criticizing because I have several games 2-3 times that in previous alphas, just hoping to clarify the intent behind all the changes by adding all the level gates and then generally nerfing XP (though it is much better for the grind/craft playstyle than it was when Experimental first launched)

[Nighty]

Voted for option 2.

 

Didn't play the freshest e233 or whatever number it has, however played the other patches + reading all changelogs.

 

In general, prefered learn by doing leveling system, recipes insteed of having everything handed to us by perk system from previous poll aswell as wellness from eating (even tho that's so convinient to just put perks into fortitude and forget about real life stuff like eating well but... it added some touch, now just shove whatever down throat as long as it have any hunger restoraton stats) and in terms of leveling as is now, no level gates, that also means not taking down gates just to make every perk expensive while still getting 1 point per level, like maxing characters in games so after specializing firstly into something, taking everything else one by one.

 

Now for the things not mentioned in previous poll.

 

Zombies block damage and weak spot gps make us not want to build any defenses, especialy not reinforcing random pois which should be rather logical in survival games to start with some ruins insteed of building a castle. Wished for smarter AI and behemoth, by smarter AI meant zombies able to take down supports from towers and digging down to underground bases. Right now, zombies only go for doors (bcs weakest way in) or any opening (making a tower defense kill zone to which zombies willingly go... by avoiding every single trap arround the base), also the AI can be easly cheesed by weird mazes and ramp bases, they also bash blocks so hard, before A17 there were memes that zombies scratch with their fleshy hands reinforced concrete/stainless steel, now?, they hit those blocks like hulks, man, those aliens gave those zombies nice bodybuilding training before setting them free. If they kneel, on top of having radiculous block damage they also get a machine gun attack speed, watched a zombie once hit a block atleast 3 times per second. They stack inside eachother (don't remember that a thing in previous builds), they stack on top of eachother too... (wtf, if they can get inside eachother, how they manage to climb eachother aswell?). Insteed of behemoths we got every zombie doing absurdal damage of keep them away at all cost or this wall will vanish in few seconds, do that on high difficulties where player does much less dmg and zombies have tons of health. And no, whatever those so "pro" players say, the zombies are not challenging or fine, they are unaturaly strong and fast, like if tfp put in a bunch of chargers and tanks from l4d. Right now only seeing self building bridges to knock them off and building towers with maxed steel doors and reinforced concrete all arround... in 2-3 layers, bcs that much damage they can chew even when bombarding them all night with lvl 60+ character with tier 4 shotgun and all the possible for headshotting, shotgun messiah and perception perks (if not for those shotgun stuns and knocking them from the bridge...), not going to run arround base and fighting them in open or making ramp bases or even kill zones bcs that's too simple, zombies can be easly outsmarted or outrun/escaped from, want to resist the horde, a real non-gps non-hulksmash horde. (Also to add, yes, know that they changed time when irradiated, cops etc come so earlier hordes are much easier insteed of getting irradiated stuff right in first horde like in first experimental but their damage to blocks is still radiculous)

 

The guns were fine in A15, the part assembling was annoying but it kind of naturaly gated getting the mid-top tier guns as gettig lucky was not enough, had to get lucky multiple times so there was no day 1 rambo. In A15 assembled first gun after like 50+ days just bcs didn't want to make a bad tier gun and fix/reasemble it again so normaly it would be like getting some basic gun after 2-3 weeks maybe with 25% loot and no respawns or baby packages from air. Then in A16 trader prices were lowered and they were literaly everywhere, could have like 5+ traders all arround in 1 km square area or something but still had to work for the dukes, get the first paycheck from wheels and other stuff, buy hop seeds and at the end cook some beer and sell it for profit. Now getting multiple guns per day.... on 25% loot, second day got tier 4 iron axe and bf got a sledge hammer, we had so many guns that we only could to scrap or sell them.... oh wait... in this world guns are worthless bcs logic and bcs they are in every soggy garbage bag. The weapon progression is pretty much over during first week, mods?, meh, they add customization and coolness..., but getting a shotgun right at the first day with like 20-30 shells? com'on, and we can also craft them like if we didn't have enough of them, how do we craft them, were we trained in some gun making factory... that specialized in making every weapon?, the recipes were more logical and also gated the late game from being right at day 1.

 

Exploration was killed, the new dungeon pois make zero sense and after a while we memorize their patern and hidden locations... but still, looting is cool... except there is no point. Guns were moved into day one + are craftable later so just smash some zombies. Recipes were a huge thing to find, seeing crack-a-book was somethign special, seeing any bookshelf meant there gonna be that desired recipe, oh, please be the crossbow! (except now the crossbow is garbage, yes, is..., well, more realistic bcs it takes forever to reload it and being slow as snail... but it killed any fun and reason to use it, just use composite bow insteed).

 

Exp is propably that gonna be polished in the end, but the fact that we are basicaly required to kill zombies to gain levels just turned it into first person shooter (yes, cutting trees, stones and whatever also gives exp but cutting 100 trees doesn't equal in resources and time spent to killing 10 zombies).

 

Spikes were dumbed, they deal abnormal damage but have only 3 stages and are gone, then there are slightly more resilient forged iron spikes, yay..., and that's all about spikes, they are anyway mostly worthless outside o putting them in key areas (like under the bridge for zombies to fall on) as zombies will literaly naigate thro traps to not get hit if possible, there can be a field of hunderets of spikes but they will just sacrifice few of their friends to make a straight, 1 block wide line thro them to their target.

 

Sewed-off shotgun was removed to make a mod, same about spiked club. Good job on removing content and making progression even thiner than it was.

 

Trader is so cheap now and getting money is so easy.

 

As for RWG complains, dunno, having sporadical flying pois or rock cubes sticking out of the ground was fine, having water splits by roads and some weird water holes and other water behaviors... cool...(even lived in one rock cube however horde zombies kept spawning inside the base even with land claim and 2 beds protecting it). The only thing that bothered us was that maps were split into huge main biomes, like navezgane so if landed in forest... prepare to live in forest. Also the burnt areas, they are everywhere.

 

Illness, never had one, bf had 2 times... somehow, propably getting hit too many times lol, but personaly, no infections, some "feeling something...." or whatever, but it never ended up in infection or other sickness. In previous builds would avoid getting hit at all cost, even avoid combat if not needed (now every zombie is a walking exp bag) and if would get infected anyway, would go and search all those tree stumps for honey, raid houses and search for pop & pills. Now the tree stumps were removed (why?!) and were replaced by harvestable block that have a high chance of getting honey... which never is needed and there are also rarely antibiotics and herbal ones... which also are not needed. Hope that no infection thing is a bug... or perhaps thats supposed to be rare and getting punished only if getting continuosuly hit, dunno...

 

Ah, also forgot to mention zombies barely ever drop those bags and if they drop them, there's propably nothing interesting inside. Not to mention that looting after horde nights and gettings tons of those bones is over, the bags vanish in like 1 or 2 game hours?, gore blocks expried extremely slowly so there was always time to loot them later, they also proides bones for glue, not that glue is hard to get now, butchering those vultures and ocasional animals is enough but... yeah.

 

 

Spent almost 2 hours writing this wall...

[OnlyMeiya]

Game has MANY positive directions it is going right now, for a person that is probably been perceived as someone that does nothing but complain about pvp balance and this may come as a shock but I love the variety the devs have done in this patch.

 

My main problems are the challenges being placed by "Taking things away" that I should already have,

 

There is this thing called perceptible and hidden affordance.

 

Players that only know the "Obvious" thing to do, and others that know the special tricks that you can do to get around certain obstacles much more easily or efficiently, or at a much earlier stage.

 

(Such as instead of wacking trees for wood early game with a stone axe, scrap wooden chairs! )

 

Horde destroys your base? No problem, go swim ontop of a lake and fire at them from the surface since zed don't swim.

 

 

But each patch, we lose more, and larger handicaps keep getting placed upon us.

[Roland]

Spent almost 2 hours writing this wall...

 

Then my poll is already a success

[Nighty]

Then my poll is already a success

 

If say so, tho those are mostly complains Roland..., however to add some sugar to that pile of salt, will just mention quests here, they are great addition, however the trader low prices kinda make it a superior money earning machine. The quests also have a chance to include some sick stuff early game like getting iron/steel stuff or good weapons not to mention we already get alot by searching a poi that possibly we searched before and now we restarted for extra loot. If that could be toned down, would be great. (Unless bf was just going full into trader perks and that's why it turned into a rain of money hmm)

[cricket504]

There are positives. Love the new POI's. Love the new detail in the visuals. The perk system still needs tweaks but it can work. RWG is right now circling the toilet bowl. ITs been killed and buggy hardly describes it between hovering POI and trees, roads that are a joke and many other bugs. I run a dedicated server and I'm struggling to get a map that's not so buggy its unplayable. Getting either trees floating in the air or when you hit them you get ground (acting like dirt) even though when done you get a tree seed. The loss of loot, the bones/duct tape economy and stamina punishment, building/mining nerf rip out much of the non-zombie killing fun. Yes, I'd count myself as casual who has over 1,000 hrs in the game but looking to find a place in a game heading to cater to the hard core even though I love to zombie hunt. I very much agree with the wall above. I thought the mods were out there to give the hard core guys there hard core, but give the less hard core a vanilla game that could be moded.

[LuckyStar]

It's heading in the right direction.

 

 

TFP are showing they are listening to feedback from the community.

 

What's more, and I think this is more prevalent than some are acknowledging,

 

we're getting a real-time look at how games are developed.

I'm loving this "peek behind the curtain" stage.

 

I don't understand why more folks aren't enamored by this? It's really cool.

[KuRushie]

Personally I can't play it. TFPs has taken out too many good things and "dummed" it down far too much. I would have thought you would have learnt from the overwhelming negative reviews fallout 4 had on release. I am back to playing A16 medieval MOD and A16 WOTW MOD because A17 just does not do it for me at all.

[Guppycur]

I would have liked it more if streamers didn't get it first?

 

 

...day 2, died once to stupidity.

[LuckyStar]

I would have liked it more if streamers didn't get it first?

 

 

That really bugs you?

 

See to me that was a smart marketing strategy.

Give the players a sneak peek and support Streamers who are essentially advertising the product for free.

 

I guess I was looking at it from a business perspective and maybe not the consumer's.

[Which is a terrible and all too common mistake in business.]

[Guppycur]

That really bugs you?

 

See to me that was a smart marketing strategy.

Give the players a sneak peek and support Streamers who are essentially advertising the product for free.

 

I guess I was looking at it from a business perspective and maybe not the consumer's.

[Which is a terrible and all too common mistake in business.]

 

Naw, was just trying to start crap.

[Merida]

I invested 1100 hours into this game so far. I started in A8. Most of my hours were in A11 which I enjoyed immensely. After the introduction of the (bugged) minibike in A12, my gaming hours began to drop with each successive alpha's. There are a lot good things in this current A17. I like most of the cosmetics additions and added poi's.

 

But as far as skills, vehicles and electric stuff goes. I not too in favor of those. Way too much time wasted trying to get these things sorted out and always ending in a no win situation with the public. Call me old fashion, but I wished they would just have kept the A11 flavor and refined it graphicly and optimized.

 

In the end, It's the Pimps vision of what their game should be. We're just here for a ride. It's up to you if you want to step in the train.

[Sisyphus]

I was enjoying it immensely up until the latest alpha (b231). I find the current implementation of specialization too stringent. Because the gating on specialization is tuned so early in the trees, I feel like I'm being locked out of basic skills in each tree to an extent I find ponderous and dreary. Hopefully later alphas will re-tune this a bit. For the time being, it was actually inhibitory to the level where I've stopped playing.

 

Some side notes would be:

 

1. The rewards for the airdrops haven't seemed useful in the alphas so far - for the most part, they are canned goods, and since POI's are already full of canned goods, they aren't compelling. What I would want, med kits and antibiotics, don't seem to be very common.

 

2. Rabbits are still super frustrating to attempt to kill

 

3. The world looks beautiful

[crackpot texas]

I think the new version is definitely an improvement. But here are some things that I would like to see changed.

 

1. Loot, we need more of it and different types. Half of the night stands, refrigerators, lockers, etc... are "opened" already and the other half only about 70 percent of them have loot. When the pimps added the "already looted" night stands etc... you took away a lot of loot from us.

 

2. I would love to see the traders pay a little more for the loot that you sell. I've put 4 points into "better barter" perk and still it's no where near what it was back then. albeit, back then it may have been a little too much, but how about a middle ground between then and now. It seems the only way to save up dukes is by doing trader quests(see no. 3).

 

3. Trader quests need balancing. The "fetch", "clear" quests give out very little dukes compared to "buried treasure" (please don't nerf it) quests. I've tested the tier 1,2 and 3 and it's not much different. It takes a whole day to complete one of these quests. Also the perk that grants you extra dukes for completing quests needs a buff. You only get about 10 percent more dukes and it's a tier 4 perk.

 

I haven't had that much time to play in this version, so far this is what I would like to see changed. Like I said I think this is an improvement from the last version and I'm enjoying it. I loved looting and selling stuff that I found to the trader, it was a big part of my game. I hope you guys make this happen.

[zombie4hire]

I am overall enjoying A17 quite a bit and have few complaints about it. Each time I restart I am trying a new way to build (though a lot stays the same as it needs to to kill zombies and not die) This time I am trying the better barter and the quality 6 items with full mods are really nice. And cheap overall. They might be a bit much as I am not very high level now.

 

I like the direction of the game too.

[LuckyStar]

Naw, was just trying to start crap.

 

[FileMachete]

I didn't cast a vote since I haven't made it past day 24? in any of the exp's so far.

 

1) ok. truly -not- intending to be a jerk w this one. The time between A16.4 & A17exp. I didn't know what to expect, but I did expect more. And yes, the whole expectations lead to premeditated resentments, bit gnawed at me for a while.

 

Reason I even bring it up is due to my perception that A17 is quite 'rough' so far. Again, expectations. Honestly been suprised by how many basic mechanics are changing quite significantly between builds.

 

2) In b208 I'd made it to a point around day 19 where grinding for materials had just started to feel 'ok'. Material gathering in the first week is just far to frustrating for me to consider it balanced or 'fun'.

 

3) Early Base Building. faatal is working on the AI, so that alone could significantly change early bases. And I haven't made a test world to try all kinds of things, so some of this is likely on me. What I'm hoping for later on is the possibility of an early base where I can do some melee'ing. Personally I don't like standing on top of a tower just shooting down. And I really don't like the 'new' giant field of spikes 'solution'.

--This may sound stupid, but something as simple as a retractable fire-escape ladder would be a big qol thing for me.

--I've figured out how to mimic one by hanging the ladder from a frame so the ladder breaks when frame is pulled up, but it feels a bit cheesy, like the maze bases.

 

4) Wood Bars. Frickin -love- those things. Also like all the new Quarter blocks, but...

**** -Please- return the Flagstone/Cobblestone 1/4 Block that fits into the -corner-; the one in-game is centered on the _side_

 

5) Really like that an early game Dog/Wolf isn't an automatic death sentence. Though they could be a bit tougher, imo. As is a Boar is much more dangerous. Sure, irl, a 300 pound wild boar is truly life threatening, more than a mid-sized dog, but the boars in game look like maybe 50-70 pounds?

 

6) Like the ramp up on the wandering horde sizes.

 

7) New game options for zombie speeds is great!

 

8) Stealth System. Reducing our ability to hear when crouched is very counterintuitive. No idea if it can be changed, or if there's interest to do so. Displaying both Light & Sound as one value results in the meter not being very useful when z's can not have any line of sight to you; in a mine, inside a closed room, and you have a helmet light or torches.

 

9) Land Claim Blocks. I don't play MP/PvP so no idea if there was an exploit that pushed the changes to LCBs. For SP it's a real pita so far, heh. Follow the advice and claim a POI as first base. I just took over the large Gas station in the East in Nav map. LCB area isn't large enough to cover it. Not a huge deal, I hope; there are a few areas where it looks like a z can spawn.

Biggest catch-22 is that w only 1 LCB allowed to be active at a time, I'll have to fully move out of my current 'base' prior to clearing and moving into another POI, if I should choose to do so.

-- What I would greatly prefer would be if 'active LCBs' were restricted to something like;

-- a) Player can not have more than 5 Active LCBs <-- arbitrary number

-- b) A players LCBs can not be within 1 km of each other. <-- add a warning prior to placement if within 1 click?

-- c) add a 'Large Land Claim Block' to support large base builds.

?? no idea what the MP/PvP impacts/exploits were/are, so maybe the above wouldn't work or just make things worse. If so I'd really appreciate someone detailing the issues for me, just for my peace of mind

 

10) The most recent improvements to frame rates and the added vibrancy to forest biome, yay! Very much appreciated!!

 

So that's where I'm at. Please keep in mind that the above is almost exclusively impressions from only the first week or two in-game. I've only made it to a minibike once. Concrete Mixer twice. And all in Nav map, no RWG seeds.

 

Edit: I'm not mentioning Stamina, it's mechanic or the bar. I've said my piece in other posts on this.

[Teknosis]

I enjoyed RWG more when dessert was in the South and Snow was in the North and everything in between was Forest. The patchwork xml biomes are just bizzare and horribly breaks immersion for me. I know random world gen should be random but it should also make sense and currently the quilt of random biomes don't

 

I love, Love the weapon changes and reduction to simple tires of quality. It does seem that the higher quality items should also do at least slightly more damage but that is a very minor issue to me.

 

Changes to attributes and perks are great. I actually care about all of them now and it forces choice which is a good thing. There should be meaning to what we choose and this actually makes those choices meaningful.

 

The zombie changes I also think are good but I haven't gotten far enough in to really have an opinion on them. They do seem to be more leathal to begin with but that might be lack of armor and endurance perks, also a good thing IMO

 

Making every POI dungeon makes RWG much better to play. You aren't looting any house is worthless instead of finding specific ones

 

Visual changes are also improved and appreciated.

 

Overall best yet I think although I do wish RWG Biomes made more sense or we're less patchwork

[vedrit]

None of these are applicable as I've not played in a while. Reading through the patch notes, it looks like some of my bigger concerns might have been addressed, but unfortunately I'm going on vacation and so won't be able to play for a while