PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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faatal said:
If a corpse gets up and walks towards you, it is not dead. They can call them dead all they want and I will disagree. Now if they want to say magic is making a corpse move, sure whatever.
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Right. If they were dead they would be laying there like after you kill them. I'm thinking they have a super slow pulse, barely feel pain and the slow heart rate and breathing rate has caused them to start to appear decayed, but the virus supercharges them for that primal function of eating flesh, so it doesn't really matter what is going on with their body. They look dead, but are more like 28 days later zombies, infected and nobody knows wtf it is, but bullets and stuff can stop them, but they are hard to kill since they bleed slower and don't feel pain like we do.

 
faatal said:
If a corpse gets up and walks towards you, it is not dead. They can call them dead all they want and I will disagree. Now if they want to say magic is making a corpse move, sure whatever.
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It's called undead for a reason. It's supposed to be a corpse, a dead body, that's still walking somehow. "Infected" are just people that are sick and have gone crazy, which is why those die by other means such as bleeding.

 
Xtrakicking said:
It's called undead for a reason. It's supposed to be a corpse, a dead body, that's still walking somehow. "Infected" are just people that are sick and have gone crazy, which is why those die by other means such as bleeding.
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I can pretty much confirm that they are not undead, I've stomped on any ideas or hope of zombies coming out of graves about 100 times around here because its cheesy af and a cheap move. We don't have skeletons running around, those are undead, undead are animated through magic.

 
madmole said:
I can pretty much confirm that they are not undead, I've stomped on any ideas or hope of zombies coming out of graves about 100 times around here because its cheesy af and a cheap move. We don't have skeletons running around, those are undead, undead are animated through magic.
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Animated through magic, or a parasite, or some weird fungus, or some other external source of one sort or another. Point being is that 'Undead' are pretty well into the direction of supernatural as it breaks natural laws or requires things that do not presently exist on a scale macro enough to affect a human being..

Meanwhile something like infected ala Left 4 dead implies a living rational being driven to some level of insanity by brain chemistry changes- a basically purely scientific and plausible scenario.. We already have precedent in a myriad of medical cases of true insanity, animal like behaviors, unbounded hostility, and more from subtle changes in brain chemistry that can be caused from a number of sources- Heck, We take drugs to alter our brain chemistry too, and look at the effects some of those can have on the body or mind.. And in the case of infected, the biggest worry of the undead, decomposition, is not much of a factor.

 
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To me it seems to be a host situation. If a parasite could take over the brain function then couldn't someone be dead but still move. If something could enter a brain and send electrical signals to the muscles the same as a brain does (or is it the spinal cord. I have no idea) couldn't it make something dead move. It is like someone hijacked a vehicle and are now driving it to do what they want. Some one did it before with a frog leg I think. Gave it a little jolt and it moved. Now coordination would be a hell of a thing to do but the basics is there. Maybe eventually with decomposition the muscles and nerves would no longer work but that is another problem for another day.

 
madmole said:
Is it the spiffy new forums?

There is plenty more where that came from concerning them.
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No lie, new forums are much better visually.  It was a good change.

Xtrakicking said:
Wouldn't it be way easier to consider them dead and reserve the bleeding for bandits? Would solve many problems, including them being burnt but still walking, and them breathing underwater, and yadda yadda.
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If they were aiming for things that were easy they wouldn't be in game development :D.

 
Gamida said:
To me it seems to be a host situation. If a parasite could take over the brain function then couldn't someone be dead but still move. If something could enter a brain and send electrical signals to the muscles the same as a brain does (or is it the spinal cord. I have no idea) couldn't it make something dead move. It is like someone hijacked a vehicle and are now driving it to do what they want. Some one did it before with a frog leg I think. Gave it a little jolt and it moved. Now coordination would be a hell of a thing to do but the basics is there. Maybe eventually with decomposition the muscles and nerves would no longer work but that is another problem for another day.
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That seems plausible as well, but IMO you would need at least a slow heart beat and some oxygen for the muscles to continue to function for more than a short period. If you cook frog legs they often jump about in the skillet lol.

 
Xtrakicking said:
None of that changes if the knife has the bleeding bonus added to bandits. It would actually make the Agility build more interesting, if you're looking for a set of weapons that's better against human NPCs rather than zombies (and also make the game more immersive).

"Should I go with the Strength build to fight zombies better? Or should I go with agility and cause bleeding damage to those pesky bandits?"

I still don't see the problem.
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What you described there is a major change.  Knife is a melee weapon, bandits are full speed humans melee would be less useful on (especially if there are gun/bow wielding enemies in the encounter), and knife would function completely differently on zombies without the bleed and actually be pretty weak with no zombie compensation with zombies being the primary enemy in the game.  So it'd completely change how you play knife and be a significant nerf if it got nothing in return for that change.  I personally already find the agility build quite interesting and effective, I can place a bleed on an entire wandering horde at the same time and kill them potentially faster than any other weapon at earlier levels too.  Knife is good for many targets with it's quick swing speed and low stamina use, Machete is better for tough individual targets with it's higher per damage hit and increased stagger.

Archery and max stealth with cloth armor allows you to dominate POIs with careful methodical stealth gameplay and later on with mods you can even upgrade to leather or military with almost no movement penalty at all.  Though cloth is always still quieter.

I already find the agility build very interesting and powerful, I'm sorry you don't find it interesting it but that doesn't mean it should be changed just because you personally don't like it.  That being said, if they decide to redesign it I'll roll with the redesign and give feedback.  I'm fortunate in that I'm an adaptable player who likes a wide variety of things so changes and individual game mechanics are not much of a concern for me.  Which is why Learn by Doing > current skill system was a non-issue for me.  But I DID want to offer a little pushback on the idea of changing it from the perspective you offered here.  I feel like you can argue your position much better than you did here.

 
Ralathar44 said:
I'm fortunate in that I'm an ADAPTABLE (emphasis mine - QB) player who likes a wide variety of things so changes and individual game mechanics are not much of a concern for me.  Which is why Learn by Doing > current skill system was a non-issue for me.
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(As well as open minded enough to let TFP define their story, gameplay, and contents any way they wish.)

💙

 
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Yeah, the zombies probably have rabies or something, which reminds me... I am apparently immune to mad cow disease. 

So when there is a mad cow scare and no one is buying it, I am all over it for cheap steaks and very high quality meat.  Allow me to use this forum as my person twitter and talk about myself constantly now...

Actually, hmmm... something about the game... actually the game is pretty good now. 

I do often think the zombie damage is too high vs blocks, and I kinda miss frantically repairing boarded windows while trying to survive in a crappy wood base during a horde.  It is not really a big deal though, and I am not sure how you would fix it. 

I did think that it would be cool if zombies did reduced damage and a large number of zombies in 1 spot would trigger a zombie event, kinda like vehicle events that have been talked about. 

Like you see an area and it is highlighted and it shows you have X number of seconds to repair or kill the zombies or the entire wall is coming down. 

It could be fun, but would probably be a lot of work to stop people from exploiting it, and it would have to account for player blocks in the area and height. 

Still, it was something to write about while I am waiting for the next updating, in preparation for throwing so many stone spears that I crash my game. 

 
Quantum Blue said:
(As well as open minded enough to let TFP define their story, gameplay, and contents any way they wish.)

💙
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I mean yeah, I'm a player and I have the right to give feedback on their thing but it's TFP's game and their baby.  Despite all the kevitching in the 7DTD community we're all still here so they're obviously doing something right 😝.

Most of what I'll actively give feedback on is objective balance considerations like when the Junk Turret came out and people were like "it's so OP" and I played a full intellect build and reported the areas it was lacking both balance wise and experimentally completely with youtube videos.  And TFP resolved the issues by making changes like increased ammo stack size, increased magazine size, adding an ammo bonus to Turret Syndrome levels, etc.  So turrets went from "free extra damage for other specs" while being mediocre and extremely high maintenance for intellect spec to "free extra damage for other specs" while being a viable spec in and of itself for intellect with it's own strengths and weaknesses.  I'm excited for the new Drone and Junk Sledge :).  which I assume will share the "two active turret" limit so it'll be interesting to put the combinations through their paces, see how they do, stress test them, do some dedicated performance/dps tests, and then give feedback based on all of that.

Same story with construction exp, when they redid that it was terribad and base builders got screwed.  We tested, we gave feedback, and they fixed it to where construction projects are actually worth your time exp-wise now but kill exp is still valuable, so there is a nice balance atm.

 
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Ralathar44 said:
but that doesn't mean it should be changed just because you personally don't like it.
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I see this sentence come up in many arguments, and it's such an absurd statement every single time. I'm not saying they should change the game to fit my needs and demands above everyone else's, I'm giving feedback on something I think it's a problem. If they decide to change it, great. If they don't want to change anything, cool, but then these things will remain as problems for the people that dwell on immersion. You're not one of those people, and that's great, because it's not a problem to you then, but that doesn't mean it's not a problem to many others that try to offer ideas to maybe see it fixed, especially now that it's still a possibility, since the game is still in alpha.

You can't possibly know how such a change would affect development because bandits aren't even in the game yet, and there's no way to know how players with different builds will play against them beyond assumptions. For all we know, knives might just be the best meele against them, especially with the bleeding effect, since you can stay away from the line of fire while that takes care of them.

This is just another assumption, anyways. The ones to determine if it's worth changing are the devs. Heck, they might even change how combat works again when bandits show up! There's no way for us to know what such a change implies, and for what it's worth right now, I don't see it far fetched.

 
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faatal said:
I've played agility a lot recently. The bleeding mechanic is fun and makes knives different from other weapons. Fun game play beats logic, which is why you can carry tons, jump a meter, build instantly, resurrect yourself, drive a vehicle underwater, fly a gyrocopter without lessons, span a day in 1 hour...
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I agree with most of it... but have you seen streamers the first time they try to fly a gyrocopter? Or second, third? 🤣

Besides, driving vehicles underwater is no fun. They get bogged down. Now, flying a gyrocopter underwater, that's freaking awesome!

 
Adam the Waster said:
just go outside and Eat the frog. no need to cook it!
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You could probably learn by doing that.

pregnable said:
I do often think the zombie damage is too high vs blocks, and I kinda miss frantically repairing boarded windows while trying to survive in a crappy wood base during a horde.  It is not really a big deal though, and I am not sure how you would fix it. 
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Turn down the setting AI block damage.

 
Xtrakicking said:
You can't possibly know how such a change would affect development because bandits aren't even in the game yet, and there's no way to know how players with different builds will play against them beyond assumptions. For all we know, knives might just be the best meele against them, especially with the bleeding effect, since you can stay away from the line of fire while that takes care of them.
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Look I don't need the exact implementation of bandits to know that they are humans using human weapons.  Unless something really weird happens they'll move faster than zombies by default and will have ranged weapons.  It'd be super weird for us to be a walking Rambo arsenal and no bandits to have bows/guns.  This means that melee WILL be far less effective vs them than vs zombies unless the game cheats heavily in our favor by not allowing them to have ranged weapons, balancing their ranged damage pitifully low, making their melee hits not apply effects to us (stun/bleed/knockdown), etc.

Even if they were all glass cannons with melee then using melee against them would be ill advised unless their damage vs you is pitiful, which it wouldn't be on warrior+ difficulty levels.  To get an approximation of the difference turn zombies on to "always sprint" for both day and night on whatever difficulty you play on (at least Nomad though).  The primary method of survival in 7DTD isn't killing things, it's avoiding damage and avoiding putting yourself in risky situations.  When you cannot control your engagements, melee becomes a risky situation.  This is the case until you get higher levels of regen + armor, which trivializes basically all incoming damage on Nomad and lower and eliminates basically all risk from melee.  End game regen + armor a bit OP at lower difficulty levels where zombie damage is low, especially since you can heal large chunks of health while being beaten to death.  It's more well balanced for higher difficulties though.

 
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