PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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bloodmoth13 said:
Thats unfortunate, what if players had the option to place a limited number only in their land claim space? it would effectively be the same as limiting them to PoI and would give players access to more stuff. Not a high priority by any means but it could be a good compromise, im sure most players would only want one or two of them. Maybe put all the high poly models under the same craftable block selector.
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Something like that could work, but it also needs a logical explanation, and that takes work, adds scope and makes for strange rules the player has to understand. Why can I place unlimited blocks, stairs, wedges etc but I cant make a fort out of book cases for my bookcase fort?

 
MechanicalLens said:
Tiny "rant" here, but I've been looking over some reviews and videos of 7D2D in A18, and I find it ridiculous that so many people still believe that you HAVE to exploit the zombies' AI, sending them on an infinite loop, in order to survive a BM horde in A18, meanwhile claiming that my castle and tower bases are "fake" since they are "impossible to defend in A18". I'm not even upset that I've been accused of being a fraud over and over, I just find it sad that people assume the game is just like A17 since it no longer resembles A16. Rant over, carry on people. 😛
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The game is just too easy if you are willing to farm bullets and grenades. I cleared out my day 28 BM by midnight but I have 24 alive so a well placed grenade gets me over 10k xp.

 
MechanicalLens said:
True, true, it just grinds my gears whenever there's a post on reddit of a new player asking for tips on horde bases, and every so often there's just this flood of comments with people suggesting, "Super Cheesy AI Pathing Base, Day 7!" All I can do is do my part and try to spread some truth in the world. 😛 (ie options exist people!)

Also, I just want your (or anybody's opinion) on something. Most of us can agree that having an infinite loop or a killing corridor as a base is exploitative of the zombie AI and thus is a taboo subject, but what of a trench surrounding your compound with stairs leading up to an entrance, forcing the zombies down a corridor where I am at ground level firing at them, and still at risk to myself. Yes, trenches have been utilized in warfare since the Middle Ages, but would you regard this as being as cheesy as some other designs? (I personally disagree, but I want your take, just out of curiosity.)
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7x7, wood bars 4 high, lots of bullets, all my problems solved. I use spikes the first few bms and eventually stop messing with them because they are stealing my XP.

mr.devolver said:
This is a cool idea, but please don't make it so that the current workstations - campfire, forge, etc. will actually be the new top tier. Make them new low tier and as top tier make something new and much cooler, so that we have something new and cool to work towards! ;)
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Ummm It would be about impossible to make stuff lower tier, I mean its a campfire lol. The forge is made from super primitive materials too, so yeah those would be T1.

 
Khalagar said:
It's because it's EXTREMELY expensive to have a horde base that isn't just a cheesy maze trying to exploit the AI.  You'll end up eventually in a spiral death loop where you spend 6 days out of 7 trying to rebuild your castle to 80% of what it was last horde night, and recraft 40% of the ammo you used, then the next horde hits and sends you back to zero again.

It will wear you down really, really fast with a conventional castle past like day 42, if you even make it that far before you start noticing you are losing resources every blood moon and aren't able to actually recoop them all in the following week.

You'll often see new players post their concrete box castle with 40 bajillion spikes outside it, and shed a tear for their innocence. In reality, zombies will just tear through a single 1 block path of spikes and ignore the other 39 bajillion spikes almost entirely, then run right up and all cluster together and beat the ever loving feces out of a single section of the wall and break it down in 20 seconds and then flood into the base.

And that's the cheap option. If they actually spread out and attack the whole base, they will do thousands and thousands of cement worth of damage, and then even with maxed out mining perks and auger it will take you 5+ days of solid cement crafting to even rebuild and repair what you had.  And then you'll realize you used 4,000+ bullets in a single night and depleted your entire stockpile

It's not even a zero sum game, it's a straight up losing game. You'll eventually run out of nearby iron nodes so you have to go further and further for steel replenishment, and will spend more and more and more of your time mining stone for cement and won't have time for trying to mine lead, nitrate, and coal for bullets, let alone trying to figure out how you are going to replace the 4,000+ bullets you spent per horde night without any brass

Well, it also depending on what settings you play on. If you are playing on nomad with the default zombies per player you will probably make it way longer before you start noticing the resource drain increasing.

I play on the second highest difficulty with 32 zombies per player, and at that difficulty it's just not feasible to have a noob style "PoI converted into a fortress" and actually keep it standing long term without basically giving up entirely on ever being able to do quests or do *anything* else but try to rebuild the base and restock materials after the last horde smashed them.

Your 3 options are basically

1. Build a maze or base that exploits the AI so you can kill them without them attacking your expensive concrete and undoing 10 minutes worth of work in 20 seconds

2. Get on a motorcycle and just drive away and not fight

3. Have a mobile fight on the road

I prefer option 3 personally. Drive out to an open section of the road, throw down two junk turrets (because their ammo is actually affordable to use en masse), fight in melee and use pipe bombs or the rare m60 burst to try and thin out the incoming horde. Pack up the turrets and throw out a Pocket Motorcycle™ when you start getting overwhelmed and move 100 yards down the road and repeat.
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Come on its not that bad. Do you just sit back and let them beat on your concrete? I agree very late game it starts to become a chore getting enough ammo, but I've usually got my base fully repaired by 8 am if not sooner. Grenades are your friend. Let 10-15 pile up in one spot, drop it, duck around the corner because radius damage is insane, and boom, 10k-15k xp. Repeat. I use my guns for vultures and when there are a few smaller clusters, but I have one vault door they all floor to because that is the only way to get to me and thy pretty much cluster there and eat grenade sandwiches all night.

 
Roland said:
My main complaint is with zombie behaviors that are unintended and not with how players choose to defend. 
 

If zombies are supposed to attack steep slope blocks but aren’t then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to leap a gap from a ledge but are just falling off that ledge then that should be fixed. 
If zombies are remaining stuck in a loop when it is intended that they will stop and go into destruction mode then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to be able to travel across the narrow edge of a wedge block but they are always falling then I want that fixed. 
 

Once the zombies are all behaving the way the devs say they should be behaving, I guarantee that people will stil find easy ways to defend and that is perfectly fine. The game supports these choices. The developers are not in a battle against player metas. They simply are working to get the enemies to behave correctly and this process will cause certain defenses to not be 100% any longer. 
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The most broken Zd AI behaviour right now is that you can make a floor out of upside down arrowslit blocks surrounding your base and you've got yourself an invisible forcefield. They just won't cross it. I'm sure it's a thing in a19 because nobody is talking about it though. Faatal, are you there? xD. I call HAX.

 
SnowDog1942 said:
Not a fan of the candy thing either.  I won't be using them so its not too big a deal to me besides wasted Dev time that could have been put towards something nice.   I've never used a vending machine anyway.. no change for me.  I know they said they are putting in candy to reduce food in vending machines.   A simpler and more believable way of reducing food in vending machines would have been to... you know.. reduce the food in vending machines ---- without adding magic candy.
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Guarantee you will use candy.

 
madmole said:
Making a proper container has useful function in easily identifying what resources are in what storage container.
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That reminds me... I think there should be a progression on container sizes.  The small storage chest, which is categorized as 'basic' and only requires wood, holds 72 items.  The storage box (crate), which is physically larger and requires both wood and nails to craft, also holds 72 items.  The bigger, more expensive container should hold more.  Or conversely, the small, cheap storage chest shouldn't hold so much.

madmole said:
I'd like to get at least one upgrade for the campfire and forge.
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Oh, really?  I think it's very common that players see these ovens (and more recently microwaves, coffee makers, grills, etc.) already in the world, and they naturally want to use them.  I assumed after all this time that you specifically didn't want working ovens, as part of the post-apocalyptic aesthetic.  But role players would (and already do, via mods) love that.  It could be a late game luxury if it required power.  But maybe you have something else in mind for an upgraded campfire, like a camp stove.

Edit: A more advanced T2/T3 campfire/forge would also look nicer and perform better than the weird combination of Stone Age and Industrial Age we see now, where players have rooms filled with banks of identical, primitive-looking forges running in parallel.

 
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madmole said:
Something like that could work, but it also needs a logical explanation, and that takes work, adds scope and makes for strange rules the player has to understand. Why can I place unlimited blocks, stairs, wedges etc but I cant make a fort out of book cases for my bookcase fort?
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Heh, not gonna lie, bookcase fort did cross my mind.

I think players would accept that certain items are limited per land claim, im not sure how generous you could be with them (10 blocks? 100 blocks?) if its  high enough players most likely wouldnt notice without going out of their way to break the rules, if its low enough then im sure players would accept certain decorative blocks having limitations.

 
Roland said:
My main complaint is with zombie behaviors that are unintended and not with how players choose to defend. 
 

If zombies are supposed to attack steep slope blocks but aren’t then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to leap a gap from a ledge but are just falling off that ledge then that should be fixed. 
If zombies are remaining stuck in a loop when it is intended that they will stop and go into destruction mode then I want that fixed. 
If zombies are supposed to be able to travel across the narrow edge of a wedge block but they are always falling then I want that fixed. 
 

Once the zombies are all behaving the way the devs say they should be behaving, I guarantee that people will stil find easy ways to defend and that is perfectly fine. The game supports these choices. The developers are not in a battle against player metas. They simply are working to get the enemies to behave correctly and this process will cause certain defenses to not be 100% any longer. 
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Yeah, I think most want that Roland.

Here's deal though. People know what you know how?

Not everybody knows what isn't fully working, or is just a placeholder still.

or even just a test mechanic.

 
Tin said:
Yeah, I think most want that Roland.

Here's deal though. People know what you know how?

Not everybody knows what isn't fully working, or is just a placeholder still.

or even just a test mechanic.
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I get that. But like I said, I don't care if someone exploits a glitch whether they know it is a glitch or they think its the way the game is supposed to work. It's their choice and if you think about it, if they ever want to experience that sort of gameplay they really need to take advantage of it while they can. Once the bug is fixed and the exploit doesn't work any longer they will either need to adapt or stop playing.

Those not in the know are going to perceive that the devs are in an arms race vs players and think that they are intentionally trying to stop them from playing a particular way. That's fine. It's their perception. My only point is that even after the devs have polished up the AI to their satisfaction there will still be ways to exploit it and people will have to choose to ignore those strategies if they believe it will make the game too easy or unfun or use them if they like them. But the devs will not be forever looking for player strategies and countering them.

Someone mentioned kill corridors being an exploit. I don't see the devs ever working to stop players from using kill corridors. A kill corridor is a legit strategy and if you find a corridor that works well you can choose to use that every single time until you get bored and want to try a new strategy. Just because you discover or even copy a strategy that works well doesn't make it a "cheese method". And it certainly doesn't qualify it for instant nerfing by the developers.

So why start allowing zombies to dig? Why let them swim? Why let vultures start attacking canopies? Why change the whole driving around at night dynamic?  and not just let players choose to sit underground, tread water, feel safe under canopies, and drive around all night without risk?  Again, it was never about preventing players from doing whatever they want. It was about implementing behaviors they want the enemies to have. Once they have the zombie enemies properly behaving in all the ways they want them to behave then whatever the player can do to survive those behaviors is fine-- subject, of course, to fixing any bugs.

 
madmole said:
Come on its not that bad. Do you just sit back and let them beat on your concrete? I agree very late game it starts to become a chore getting enough ammo, but I've usually got my base fully repaired by 8 am if not sooner. Grenades are your friend. Let 10-15 pile up in one spot, drop it, duck around the corner because radius damage is insane, and boom, 10k-15k xp. Repeat. I use my guns for vultures and when there are a few smaller clusters, but I have one vault door they all floor to because that is the only way to get to me and thy pretty much cluster there and eat grenade sandwiches all night.
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It's like nobody's ever heard of crowd control.  Pipe bombs are a one-PP spend and take no brass, no springs, basically just gunpowder. If you can four-hit when mining it's less than two swings per bomb and they make such nice gifts. This is without any motherlode perks at all, so 50/node, four hits is >12 each and you need nitrate and coal so two hits gets you pipe bomb mats with a little left over for the pipe iron. I like molotovs better, the no-repairs-while-burning takes management but the zeds make nice torch substitutes when the cops have blown out all the lights. I'm'a do a perc build next to get more out of those sweet stuns.

 
Roland said:
I get that. But like I said, I don't care if someone exploits a glitch whether they know it is a glitch or they think its the way the game is supposed to work. It's their choice and if you think about it, if they ever want to experience that sort of gameplay they really need to take advantage of it while they can. Once the bug is fixed and the exploit doesn't work any longer they will either need to adapt or stop playing.

Those not in the know are going to perceive that the devs are in an arms race vs players and think that they are intentionally trying to stop them from playing a particular way. That's fine. It's their perception. My only point is that even after the devs have polished up the AI to their satisfaction there will still be ways to exploit it and people will have to choose to ignore those strategies if they believe it will make the game too easy or unfun or use them if they like them. But the devs will not be forever looking for player strategies and countering them.

Someone mentioned kill corridors being an exploit. I don't see the devs ever working to stop players from using kill corridors. A kill corridor is a legit strategy and if you find a corridor that works well you can choose to use that every single time until you get bored and want to try a new strategy. Just because you discover or even copy a strategy that works well doesn't make it a "cheese method". And it certainly doesn't qualify it for instant nerfing by the developers.

So why start allowing zombies to dig? Why let them swim? Why let vultures start attacking canopies? Why change the whole driving around at night dynamic?  and not just let players choose to sit underground, tread water, feel safe under canopies, and drive around all night without risk?  Again, it was never about preventing players from doing whatever they want. It was about implementing behaviors they want the enemies to have. Once they have the zombie enemies properly behaving in all the ways they want them to behave then whatever the player can do to survive those behaviors is fine-- subject, of course, to fixing any bugs.
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 Heh, I'm just furthering the discussion, as it has been discussed over the years. But since those discussions have been wiped, might as well get it out of the way ;)

and better you type the book, then me 😛

 
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