PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Black Hat]

Underwater POIs:

View attachment 11589

This could be a bug, But looks amazing!

Imagine having certain POIs where you have to move fast or the zeds can come and catch you, 

That sounds good for a trader quest, where you have to swim in a part of a base flooded and you have to activate a generator or something.

 

[Adam the Waster]

There is no situation where you are forced to break 15k blocks in the game. Shotguns breaching rounds can break blocks. C4 and dynamite are optoins.

Why? Because it is the top end of the whole power upgrade tree. Why bother with solar stuff? Gas is easy to mine, I rarely have to refill my generator in any game.

Maybe the solar Generators could be replaced with a "industrial Generator" where its bigger, Louder but has 3xs the power production!    

Underwater POIs:

View attachment 11589

This could be a bug, But looks amazing!

Imagine having certain POIs where you have to move fast or the zeds can come and catch you, 

That sounds good for a trader quest, where you have to swim in a part of a base flooded and you have to activate a generator or something.

That would be nice but if they are going to make Underwater areas they will have to make the water better, Take the fishery for example in Navezgane,  

 

[madmole]

Precisely. I suggest the rest of y'all, including myself, to invest deep into Strength early on (at a time when you don't need any points into your weapon of choice, farming, armor, etc.), get it over and done with, and then begin investing into your preferred tree. ie If you plan on investing into Perception, then simply get 3/4 or even 4/4 Sex Rex, along with a couple to a few points into both Mother Lode and Miner 69er, right off the rip, and then you can diverge from there. It's not like the game is forcing you to go shotguns/clubs/sledges because you're investing so heavily into said tree. What is the saying? See a need, fill a need.

Point being: To get 3/4 Sex Rex and 3 points into Mother Lode and Miner 69er, that will cost you a grant total of 13 points, assuming you don't find a cigar. Deduct 4 points, and that's 9 levels, which is totally achievable within the first in-game week. Minus a couple debatable perks like The Huntsman, Rule #1 Cardio, and perhaps Healing Factor for some, you don't need points into any other trees until after the first week, and some only when you begin to encounter ferals in POI's. You don't need 3/5 Javelin Master on day 2, for example.

So 9 points, 4 of which are free, by level 5 you can achieve awesome miner status. I don't understand why this seems so painful to people. You have the rest of the game to develop whatever skills you want, and can get cooking and heavy armor too if you choose, because you are already semi invested in STR.

 

[Jarod_Silverstar]

I imagine some overlap at all tiers, so there is a rare chance for something good but we haven't finalized any of that yet. My take on it is if I have nothing, a bicycle is good. Once I have that I'd be happy with a minibike, so on and so forth.

Agreed - there needs to be some overlap so it doesn't remove the chances of getting the better finds early on, but it does mean that you are more likely to find things at certain stages.

Add this to the crafting level increase for reading additional schematics on tools, guns and armor and I think it is a very workable idea to try out.

 

[MechanicalLens]

So 9 points, 4 of which are free, by level 5 you can achieve awesome miner status. I don't understand why this seems so painful to people. You have the rest of the game to develop whatever skills you want, and can get cooking and heavy armor too if you choose, because you are already semi invested in STR.

Exactly what I'm saying.  Once you reach mid-game or at least late early-game, yes, several points into Strength and their respective perks become expensive. By that point you may "need" points into farming, or armor, or weaponry, or vehicles, or workstations. Early on though, none of these requirements materialize; if you feel that you need these mining perks, literally just get them out of the way right off the rip. Sure, a point into x perk, y perk, or z perk might prove to be useful (some of which depend on individual circumstance), but they aren't required. Trust me, if you go down this route, you'll thank yourself later for doing so, because then you won't have to put farming or crafting better weapons/armor on the backburner because you are having stamina issues. The only sacrifice here is freedom; early game will be more linear this way, but so is loot progression now, so it's nothing new.

 

[Beatsteak89]

I have never been into mining a lot. Having stamina to break blocks is necessary for every player in a destructibe voxel game.

I just had to break down 5 poles on the roof of a fire department. They were 10k steel + 5k concrete. So each pole was 15k to break. Purple iron pickaxe fully modded, coffee, food... It took pretty long and the stamina waiting ain't the funnest gameplay.
 

I play fortitude-agility build and I'm not too thrilled about having to go into strength at all. But I guess it is inevitable...

While talking about perks you must have, do I still need to go full INT to get decent solar stuff?

bro, first of all a 15k hp block is one of the highest you will ever face. 

second, you don't even have miner69 and you're only using an iron pickaxe. you're kidding right?

that's like breaking the big iron chest with a stoneaxe. ofc this is gonna take forever. you're far from the gamestage to tackle things like that. when you got a T6 steelaxe, miner69 5/5 and tyrannosaurus 4/4 then you can hit for a very long time before running low on stamina even without any buffs. I'm level 51 right now in my world. I know what I'm talking about. It would never occur to me to make a post about this just to complain while I'm not even using the approriate tools and perks. Makes you look like a fool with that second sentence.

edit: forgot to mention you might be missing the ergonomic grip mod as well

 

[Phoenixshade35]

So far I am loving this experimental, my playthrough has been super lucky so far for my channel, i found a grace farm and the book for super corn by day 5, haha.

Other than luck I am enjoying how the looting is tied to gamestage, taking lucky looter aside from looting speed almost seems not needed now, but nice to have.

The combat i feel has more realism and difficulty wrapped into a rotting bow, the zombies not flinching from guns and having melee being smoother (at least i think so) is a nice treat to be sure.

The stumble and fall the zombies do when breaking out of closets or busting the bottom block to break in is fantastic

I have not gotten to try any of the new guns yet but the blunderbuss has shockingly become awesome, i definitely am loving it in a new light (i still wish it had a flintlock pistol as a counterpart with shared ammo lol)

All in all this has been the best alpha update yet, even my computer runs it smoother than the past ones, hurrah to you guys and gals

 

[Laz Man]

Whiners are going to whine. It isn't too fast, they are just eating one can of miso that doesn't do much and then complaining. Try telling me you have to eat too often eating gumbo stew. Like fill up and you don't need to eat for a very long time.

You bring up a good point madmole.  My brother made me a tuna gravy toast yesterday and was surprised the food replenishment was 90.  I can see how much you unlocking those, the hunger issue goes away pretty quickly.

I like how as a player there is an urgency to make better foods or reach the whining stage...Sounds like what most people would do in an actual apocalypse LOL....

"What do you mean i can't go to the grocery store on the corner and get all the food I need?"

 

[Jay_ombie]

Maybe the solar Generators could be replaced with a "industrial Generator" where its bigger, Louder but has 3xs the power production!    

That would be nice but if they are going to make Underwater areas they will have to make the water better, Take the fishery for example in Navezgane,  

Oh god they really need to sort the water out, even simple water behaviour like in other voxel games would be better than what we have right now in 7D.

Looks lovely yeah but touch it and its a rough broken lump of ka ka.

 

[Jarod_Silverstar]

Yes.

Food is a non issue in single player. There might be bugs in MP, which I'm assuming you are referring to?

We did find broken iron gut perks and red tea doesn't work, so that will help those who are struggling (not me in the slightest but I mostly play SP).

I have thought for some time that you would have to have two separate game balance setups. One for single player where loot is reduced but you can get more skill points to round a jack-of-all-trades character. Then a multiplayer setup where there is more loot like food and ammo to deal with the higher numbers but skill points are more limited so as to encourage player to specialize in certain tasks to work better as a team.

Trying to find one set of values to balance both is a fool-hardy task.

so is b157 pretty stable or is there another build 'coming soon' which will address loot levels etc.?  thank you.

I would think 'coming soon'. But don't expect too much in the way of changes to loot levels. Right now they are focused on fixing things not working as intended. Probably won't see any major loot level changes until A19.1

 

[hiddenyak]

Why does the sniper rifle now show a huge smoke animation over the crosshair when firing with scope? It's so jarring and distracting. Is there a way I can manually remove this?

 

[Bhaaltazar]

So 9 points, 4 of which are free, by level 5 you can achieve awesome miner status. I don't understand why this seems so painful to people. You have the rest of the game to develop whatever skills you want, and can get cooking and heavy armor too if you choose, because you are already semi invested in STR.

Thze problem with current system is you have skills under trees that makes no sense. Players are complaining because if you like to mine you have to go STR , and always play that way. What does cooking have to do with STR - you stir the stew quicker?  

Just make a "general" tree where you have the basic skills everyone is using - like cooking, Living of the land, mining, hunter perks, leaky guts... it would make much more sense and players would have many more options to play around with combat/supplement skills. Personally I always end up with STR since I like to build and therefore I need mining - so since I go deep in STR I never feel the need to use any other tree - other than just to "make me play a different way". STR is totally OP with Sledge and shotgun perks, mining, Trex... no other tree comes close to STR.

Just separate weapons perks from General skills. Make the leveling system less dull - you made a great game, just fix the whole leveling system, which is usually one of biggest parts of good games.

 

[Trunks_Budo]

*Performs a "right over your head" gesture*, WOOSH. It felt like MM selected one part of my whole discussion to reply to, and ignored the rest. Run and Gun should be accessible to everyone, period. It's way too overpowered and enables a non-tower defense style of play, every character should have access to it. Everything else works just fine; With a cigar I can have +1 to strength, then put 2 points into miner 69er and motherlode. Bam, level 3 steel tools are accessible now, even level 3 iron tools to get me started. But how long before you guys remove that +1 strength from the cigar while "rebalancing" everything, like you removed the +3 strength from the steroid, essentially forcing us to waste points into strength when we dont prefer to use any of the weapons it governs? I can have +1 point in living off the land, there, 2 crops per harvest, viable. Don't rebalance that. But Run and Gun is gated behind a purist build. NOBODY who specs in agility uses stealth, it is the machete and pistol tree with run and gun and parkour, nothing more. It's a waste to have Run and Gun be so heavily gated. The kid gloves are coming off: Rebalance attributes big time, your leveling system's failing and everybody's saying it. Stop being deluded, essentially. Get your head out of your "this is my game my rules" butt. You are BIASED. My frustration and all the common sense in the world won't help me get through to this @%$*#!ing beer drinking pleb. Stop acting like leveling and skills and perks belongs the way it is in the current iteration. Stop defending a failure. You're like a dad who says his son was justified in kicking his dog. Take responsibility for this design flaw.

 

[MechanicalLens]

I've put together a brief presentation concerning the recent discussion surrounding stamina. Check it out if you like.

 

[Trunks_Budo]

Go ahead and ban me from the forum for 3 days, but SOMEBODY had to tell you, MM, that you are trying to force a really terrible leveling system down our unjustifiably loyal throats. So @%$*#! the unjustifiable loyalty on my end. Use your BRAIN. We've offered SOLUTIONS. Stop letting your pride cast aside our criticisms and ADMIT that leveling SUCKS in its current iteration.

 

[madmole]

Oh god they really need to sort the water out, even simple water behaviour like in other voxel games would be better than what we have right now in 7D.

Looks lovely yeah but touch it and its a rough broken lump of ka ka.

It might go on the A20 roadmap.

 

[Phoenixshade35]

Go ahead and ban me from the forum for 3 days, but SOMEBODY had to tell you, MM, that you are trying to force a really terrible leveling system down our unjustifiably loyal throats. So @%$*#! the unjustifiable loyalty on my end. Use your BRAIN. We've offered SOLUTIONS. 

What terrible leveling system?  I'm finding it the same as always if not better cause it is a bit slower

 

[Trunks_Budo]

What terrible leveling system?  I'm finding it the same as always if not better cause it is a bit slower

Go back to page 494 and 495 for what was discussed yesterday, for what madmole essentially entirely missed the point of with his apparent lack of ability to admit the system's flawed and in need of rework.

 

[Guppys Fur]

It might go on the A20 roadmap.

Mr. Mole

i guess "might" is a dangerous word, but damn it would be awesome.

Proper water would open up lots of new gameplay like underwarter bases and prefabs.

 

[Trunks_Budo]

"Honestly, I would be satisfied if these following perks did not have attributes gating my investment into them: Run and Gun, Miner 69er, Motherlode, Living off the Land, The Huntsman, and Master Chef. Parkour is an exclusively awesome thing in agility, leave it there, leave it gated. But those other skills I listed are too universally useful to gate for single-players, and should be accessible to all players regardless of specialization. Boom, I'm satisfied if this is the case. Leave attribute gates, but make key things more accessible etc. That's just my opinion. I feel it could be a win for both single players and multiplayers, because two characters in different attributes could still mine together, hunt together, tend to gardens, cook while traveling and camping out, etc; And that form of cooperation is what makes an in-game server community or township feel more real. It is possible to have TOO MUCH privatization involved. There should be a Survival Basics attribute, with no gates, just useful perks. That's my ultimate solution, and that's the note I'm ending on I think. I hope the devs entertain the possibility, I know it sucks when somebody criticizes your baby. I speak all of this from a place of love for your baby, devs. Just so you know. I love it."

Then there were plenty of people who came forth and agreed, yeah, leveling is janky right now. <deleted>. There is no error with progression, progression is fine. But what you ACTUALLY unlock WHILE progressing is broke as hell. You basically have to take a 15 point detour to get RUN AND GUN, if you're specialized in anything but agility? For real? Yeah that's clearly fine. It's not like 15 levels is an entire week or two of grinding kills away, or anything. No matter which specialization you choose, you're just always getting screwed. That's what this current iteration offers. Nothing more.

What terrible leveling system?  I'm finding it the same as always if not better cause it is a bit slower