PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[beHypE]

Of course it does matter whether I have 5 minutes or 5000 hours in game.

On an individual scale because I wouldn't ever recommend a game that I have played only 5 hours to my friends and family. The fact that I've played the game thoroughly both showed my friends that the game is indeed a deep and rich experience, and the fact I have all that knowledge about the game was the reason I could speak up for it as well as I did.

On a larger scale because while most of us aren't influencers, we are a good enough metric to show that the game is indeed playable for hundreds of hours on end. Do you think Minecraft would have had the success it has if the game got stale after 10 hours ? No, the sales rely on the reputation the game made for itself that you can do and build endless things. None of those hours spent made the company any more money than if people played 5 minutes and left, but the overall success is quite largely affected by the perceived longetivity of the gameplay.

Serious question, why are we adding demolishers and bandits since those are most likely a 5% feature ? Is it only marketing, to show "the game has bandits" so that people buy the game ? Because if not, something's fishy about the logic of not adding stuff that concerns a minority.

 

[MechanicalLens]

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[Guppys Fur]

this is awesome your finally reskinning/updating zombies.. When are we going to see limbless zombies, children,teenage zombies and more wildlife zombies.. we need more more more more more!!

Answer: Allready in, Never, Never, On their way.

And i disagree with the last sentence with reasons Mr. Mole allready gave.

PS: Can you please delete the Pics out of your quote or mark them as spoilers?

Thanks Mate.

 

[Damocles]

Of course it does matter whether I have 5 minutes or 5000 hours in game.

On an individual scale because I wouldn't ever recommend a game that I have played only 5 hours to my friends and family. The fact that I've played the game thoroughly both showed my friends that the game is indeed a deep and rich experience, and the fact I have all that knowledge about the game was the reason I could speak up for it as well as I did.

On a larger scale because while most of us aren't influencers, we are a good enough metric to show that the game is indeed playable for hundreds of hours on end. Do you think Minecraft would have had the success it has if the game got stale after 10 hours ? No, the sales rely on the reputation the game made for itself that you can do and build endless things. None of those hours spent made the company any more money than if people played 5 minutes and left, but the overall success is quite largely affected by the perceived longetivity of the gameplay.

Serious question, why are we adding demolishers and bandits since those are most likely a 5% feature ? Is it only marketing, to show "the game has bandits" so that people buy the game ? Because if not, something's fishy about the logic of not adding stuff that concerns a minority.

There are some smaller games, that already offer good entertainment, even if they are only played a few hours. having some novel idea, presentation, mechanic or story.

Not every good game must offer hundreds of hours of gameplay to leave a lasting impression.

 

[MechanicalLens]

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[Matt115]

this is awesome your finally reskinning/updating zombies.. When are we going to see limbless zombies, children,teenage zombies and more wildlife zombies.. we need more more more more more!!

I suport this idea, it should be zombies in scap armor, iron armor aka bandits , maybe wild zombie teen could be cool like in rags or in plant fiber clothes - fast and harder to hit becouse is smaller ,  children  zombie in school will be looking  logicalXD or swat zombies in cities or near police cars , but it should be more dead bodys too : hanging survivor, shoted scientists in lab, killed soldier, old skeleton on desert or in caves 

 

[Deadalready]

You said it yourself. The problem is not the magazine capacity. That would only be a hack that we _could_ do 5 minutes before going gold.

Until the gun mechanics/animations are polished up this is not even a topic.

I've read this post multiple times and I don't understand the reply.

I read this as:

• The magazine capacity is NOT a problem
  
• It's too hard to polish up the gun mechanics so it's not going to be changed
  
• It's easy to change magazine sizes but we're not going to do it until we polish up gun mechanics? Or we could do it and it'd be easy, but simply won't.
  

My belief is all of it needs improving especially magazine capacity. A bandaid fix would be to up the capacity until the more difficult mechanics are fixed.

 

[meganoth]

I've read this post multiple times and I don't understand the reply.

I read this as:

• The magazine capacity is NOT a problem
  
• It's too hard to polish up the gun mechanics so it's not going to be changed
  
• It's easy to change magazine sizes but we're not going to do it until we polish up gun mechanics? Or we could do it and it'd be easy, but simply won't.
  

My belief is all of it needs improving especially magazine capacity. A bandaid fix would be to up the capacity until the more difficult mechanics are fixed.

If you simply increase magazine size on the sniper rifle it just becomes an M60 with a different texture. The objective is to get guns into the game that are very distinct in handling and usage.

 

[beHypE]

The problem is there's no way to make all guns really effective. The machine guns are the best guns in the game, because they cover absolutely every situation you'll ever find yourself into when playing against zombies. One zombie, multiple zombies, close, far, running, walking, it has it all covered. You can even attach a scope to it and have a perfect sniper...

It wouldn't be so bad if the whole skill tree wasn't designed around having to pick your weapon depending on your specialization. Let's face it, perception is just terrible for every-day gameplay. Snipers are a no-no for POI looting, explosives are useful on horde nights only and the spear is... well, quite quickly not that useful. 

Int is not that much different. Stun batons are terrible, and while 2 junks turrets definitely do work, it's so situational to use them. You need decent space and a "choke point", if you fall into a trap it's super tough to deploy them quickly, if zombies cross the deployment point, you have to run in circles to bring them back into line of sight... I mean, on day 23 (2 hour days) I very often just kill zombies with my unspecced AK47 as a pure int build, because... well, it gets the job done with so much less of a hassle.

I hope A19 fixes most of those issues with the new weapons. But I doubt snipers will ever be useful outside of very niche situations, for the game doesn't offer long-range threats on a regular basis.

 

[MechanicalLens]

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[Aldranon]

If you simply increase magazine size on the sniper rifle it just becomes an M60 with a different texture.

Well, it becomes a holy terror is what would happen if you were a perked out sniper build!  (Using A18 perks, don't know what A19 brings).

That it would be THE OP build, tells me that it will never happen.  

 

[meganoth]

It is true that machine guns are the swiss army knife of the 7D2D repertoire. Shotguns come in a close second, but are, obviously, only effective at short range. Of course, what shouldn't be the objective is making every weapon as effective as the machine guns, since they would just turn into machine guns, just with different skins, as what's been mentioned before. What matters is making every other specialized weapon "good enough" (with the current system we have at least), and for some of them (marksman rifle, magnum; perhaps the T3 sniper rifle and the desert vulture will solve this issue though), they just don't cut it in most situations. Whatever is done though, there will always be issues; a rifle, no matter how you class it in a perk system, will never be able to handle 64 or even 32 max alive hordes without assistance, for example.

(Even madmole admits this; I recall in one of his videos he said, and I quote, "I don't care what build you're going for, it's always good to have a fully automatic weapon on you.")

Agreed. I could see the sniper rifle holding up if its headshot did get some bonus similar to AGI/stealth and/or it did get a crippling chance bonus to any limb.

I would even make automatic guns have the disadvantage that their headshots do less bonus damage than every other weapon in the game, lets say only 125%. Their DPS and versatility would still be unparalleled but, well, their achilles heel of using lots of ammo could not be avoided in any situation.

 

[MechanicalLens]

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[beHypE]

I feel like the Magnum/Deagle can really be balanced to be good. With a bigger magazine through mods and if you make each bullet really effective, it would be a high skill floor / high reward type of gun. Not forgiving if you miss your shots but powerful if you know how to aim.

Snipers are just tough to balance because their intrinsic strengths aren't of much use in this game.

Maybe the solution is to add downfalls to machine guns, like overheating, reducing damage, reducing precision or something. Cause they quite frankly have no drawbacks unless you're short on gunpowder (which, let's face it, is a pretty easy thing to fix, just mine lol).

 

[meganoth]

You gotcha. Currently, the magnum is awful (opening that can of worms again), but instead of making it as effective as machine guns (which would just mean turning them into machine guns), it just has to be effective. Heck, even in games like Call of Duty, which guns do most people use? Fully automatic weapons.

Well, if we look at the magnum's "image" as the gun Clint Eastwood uses to throw bad guys 10 meters through a room I would increase the magnums stopping power. I.e. the magnum should push back and even ragdoll enemies more than any other gun. The sledgehammer of guns so to speak. Wait, didn't even Sledge Hammer use a magnum? There you go.

 

[Laz Man]

You gotcha. Currently, the magnum is awful (opening that can of worms again), but instead of making it as effective as machine guns (which would just mean turning them into machine guns), it just has to be effective. Heck, even in games like Call of Duty, which guns do most people use? Fully automatic weapons.

I think the main gripe over heard about magnums is the spinning of the chamber after reload as it adds time to the reload and is not practical.

Although the devs could remove it, I think it's part of the tongue in cheek humor that the devs have for the game so I really dont mind it so much.

Will see how it feels now that it is no longer the top tier pistol (e.g. desert vulture)

 

[MechanicalLens]

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[MechanicalLens]

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[A Nice Cup of Tea]

We've done a little bit of loot cleanup like removing harvest items from loot. There is no point in finding 3 coal in chemical loot when you can get 1000's in seconds mining.

Another blow struck against us poor scavengers by the tyrannical pro-mining lobby!

Well it won't work. You'll have to press those mining tools into my cold dead hands.

 

[MechanicalLens]

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