PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[BFT2020]

Yeah, who I hire to play the strength build for me is nobody else's business!

Haha

I was too lazy to check my spelling, though I got it wrong in any case

personal vs personnel

When I typed it up, I said to myself that word didn't look right.  But that was the extent of my concern this morning on it 

Except players who actually want to play INT

Are we talking about players who want to play INT but convinced themselves that you cannot play as an INT player, or those of us that said, yes it is possible and actually play as an INT only player? 

 

[Demonoid74]

I like playing a Strength build because punching @%$# to death is always amazing in any game!

Fist build in Fallout 1 , 2 , Tactics , 3 , New Vegas , 76...and Elder Scrolls games...I just find it fun

BUT

I also agree that INT , should be a support stat for mods etc then it's own "build" and be an important secondary stat...because come on now , really smart people that are weak will be zombie food just as fast as really strong stupid people!

 

[meganoth]

...they're the Linux users of the player base.

important?  Sure.  But there's only six of them.

/Runs away 

Oh, look, another one who elected himself to speak for the majority

 

[Roland]

Oh, look, another one who elected himself to speak for the majority

Guppy's been doing that since 1971.

 

[Guppycur]

Oh, look, another one who elected himself to speak for the majority

Lemme know where I did that, thanks.

...no? 

 

[dcsobral]

One of these just requires investing perk points while leveling, the other requires rolling 652 twice on a pair of d1000 at GSy or higher, 652 twice on a pair of d2500 at GSx or lower...

That's just the repulsor mod, and it's not more difficult than, say, crafting 7.62mm AP when you go Perception and Penetrator skill. The AoE depends only on nerd tats, which are readily available from vending machines.

 

[EggsAisle]

INT stands apart from the other perk trees, no doubt about it. I wouldn't call it a weak tree overall, but I would call it extremely uneven. The trader/quest perks in particular are absurdly strong. The earlier poster talking about having motorcycles and auto-shotguns and chainsaws in 10 days? Yeah, that's INT. It lets you break the normal progression over your knee. It was gloriously fun for a playthrough or two, but after a little experience/optimizing, it started to feel like cheating to me. 

At the same time, a lot of the crafting perks (Physician, Grease Monkey, etc.) wound up in INT. In the pre-blueprint days, these were obligatory if you wanted to advance the crafting game. Blueprints made them into shortcut perks, which are extremely useful in the short term and extremely useless in the medium to long term. The devs know this and have been adding functions to them ever since in an effort to make them worthwhile, and I've actually been pretty impressed at their progress so far. They still feel pretty rough and prone to "essential or useless" design, but as the rest of the game takes shape and is refined, they're slowly getting pushed away from both extremes into more situational ground. Which is a much healthier space, IMO.

The INT weapons are interesting. On their own, in a straight fight, they're pretty mediocre. That's not really controversial. The disagreement is over whether this disadvantage is outweighed by its other advantages, namely being able to deploy them to fight independently (turrets) or crowd control (baton). Personally, I think the junk sledge is great, the turret is finicky but adequate, and the baton is the same except with a hideously overdone electrocution visual and sound effect. I really, really can't stand it. I don't care if they give batons better than sledgehammer DPS, I'm never using one again until/unless they tone down the obnoxiousness by like 75%. 

So we wind up with a tree that consists of wildly overpowered perks (trade and quests), half-cooked leftover perks (crafting), and whatever INT weapons are to you. I don't think the solution is just beefing up some numbers or percentages; fixing INT really involves refining traders, questing, crafting, and other larger systems. Once those are smoothed out, I think INT will start to feel less clunky.

 

[Treb]

I like playing a Strength build because punching @%$# to death is always amazing in any game!

Fist build in Fallout 1 , 2 , Tactics , 3 , New Vegas , 76...and Elder Scrolls games...I just find it fun

BUT

I also agree that INT , should be a support stat for mods etc then it's own "build" and be an important secondary stat...because come on now , really smart people that are weak will be zombie food just as fast as really strong stupid people!

Punching things to death is fortitude in this game. 

 

[Blake_]

...they're the Linux users of the player base.

important?  Sure.  But there's only six of them.

/Runs away 

Seven. Kinyajuu has Linux for sure. 

 

[Guppycur]

Seven. Kinyajuu has Linux for sure. 

He and alloc we're 2 of the 6.

 

[Callum123456789]

The new city tiles districts are looking phenomenal great job pimps 

 

[Khalagar]

This argument is a good example of the Great Intellect Divide. Here are the two sides of this divide:

• Jawoodle perks up early in weapons, and has level 5 in his weapons of choice as his ultimate goal. He hates Intellect.
  
• I never perk up in weapons until I'm pretty much done with every other skill I might possible want. I love Intellect.
  

I mean, I barely put points into weapons early game too, I almost always rush Miner 69 and the Quest Trader perk. Usually getting 5 strength is priority because it gives sex rex, miner 69, motherlode, Pummel Pete, Shotgun perk, cooking etc, which are all top tier. As others said,  not playing strength is hard mode lol. I'll usually get a point or two of the better quest reward while working on strength, then switch from strength to Int after I get strength to 5 since that gets *most* of the bang for buck from strength

I don't even think Int is all *that bad*, I think people are misunderstanding me. It's not really that it's bad, it's more that it's wonky and inconsistent, and there's literally no reason for it. People keep saying "But it's support!" except it's not any more support than Strength is, and "But it's asymmetrical!" to which the reply is "Why is that better?" especially when you say "It's asymmetrical, so use a shotgun and club to fill in Ints weak spots!" which is just . . . a bad argument

My point still stands, "What of value would be lost by int having a tier 0 ranged weapon, a tier 3 stun baton?"

Having a crappy blow pipe that worked similar to a crappy bow where you could craft ammo for it yourself without relying on bullets would give int an early game option for mediocre damage in return for less scare ammo type, and int just having a tier 3 stun baton type weapon would just give it a more interesting late game, since late game is just "Use a club + shotgun + junk sledges"

 

[Kalex]

...they're the Linux users of the player base.

important?  Sure.  But there's only six of them.

/Runs away 

OK, where's the other five of you? We need to go hunt down Guppycur.

 

[Roland]

Lemme know where I did that, thanks.

...no? 

You spoke for 6 Linux users. Since the actual number is 9 you were clearly speaking for the majority of them.

 

[Roland]

"But it's asymmetrical!" to which the reply is "Why is that better?" especially when you say "It's asymmetrical, so use a shotgun and club to fill in Ints weak spots!" which is just . . . a bad argument

Asymmetrical is better because when you replay the game you get a different experience than you did the last time. Giving intelligence all the equivalent tiers of all the weapon types will result in playing the game the same way that you play other builds by leveling up and progressing through those tiers. It is the same path but you are just exchanging the same tiers of weapons with others of the same tier and the game ends up feeling very samey.

It's fine if asymmetrical design doesn't appeal to you. But for those who enjoy playing through the game with a big difference in experience and with different challenges, the way it is right now is great. You have every right to push for equivalency between intelligence weaponry and strength weaponry but it is not a bad argument for us to push for keeping the current design. 

We don't see it as picking up a shotgun to fill in the intelligence weak spot, by the way. We see it as having the freedom to use any tier 3 weapon of our choosing in tandem with our robots which gives us a lot of versatility.

My point still stands, "What of value would be lost by int having a tier 0 ranged weapon, a tier 3 stun baton?"

It would be pointless to have a tier 0 ranged weapon. Who would perk into it without  corresponding T1, T2, and T3 weapons to make spending the points really worthwhile? And if we are just going to add a crappy blowgun to say that intelligence has its own tier 0 weapon but we won't add a perk branch for it, then why not use a bow, or a pipe pistol, or pipe shotgun, or pipe rifle anyway? 

If there is no perk line for the ranged weapon then any existing weapon will do. If you add a perk line then it is pointless to stop at tier 0. Players will demand corresponding higher tiers of the same weapon--er-- just like you are demanding a tier 3 for the stun baton.

And then once again, we are back to a ranged weapon that will be easily and cheaply perked to max since it resides in the intelligence branch being used in tandem with robot sidekicks. What then? The strength people will want to be able to have "strength mechs" to go with their shotguns and then every branch eventually ends up the same.

I'm not against a tier 3 cattle prod thing, per se, as it would be the end of it as the last piece of the baton line. But a tier 0 ranged weapon would not stop at only that. It would just be the beginning of the can of worms and your line I quoted is proof. If you can't be happy without adding a T3 baton, I know you won't be satisfied with just a tier 0 ranged weapon...

 

[Blake_]

You spoke for 6 Linux users. Since the actual number is 9 you were clearly speaking for the majority of them.

I looked for Steam Statistics. As of September 2021 (Last month) these are the percentages of players using the various Linux-based OS (for the whole of Steam)

Spoiler

  
Linux                                       1.05%

Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS 64 bit      0.16%

"Manjaro Linux" 64 bit           0.14%

"Arch Linux" 64 bit                0.12%

Ubuntu 21.04 64 bit             0.07%

Linux Mint 20.2 64 bit          0.06%







Steam has around 120 million players worldwide (2020). So it's probably 10 Linux users playing 7dtd. 11 on sundays.

 

[Roland]

6 is still a majority of those numbers.

 

[Blake_]

@faatal in the last dev stream there were talks about an option for death penalty intensity. I've always found the game to be too lenient on that front, and yet the extreme opposite would be buggy due to bleeding and 100% infection after death having a guaranteed death-loop chance. 

Are there plans for such an option? Something like:

Mild : Like now.

Tough : Same xp penalty. Maintain pre-death debuffs and hunger/water meters (but eliminate bleeding and reduce infection by X amount to avoid death loops)

Extreme : 80% xp penalty+ reduce food and water by a further 10% under the pre-death status + maintain debuffs (without bleed and reduce a bit infection to avoid death loops for a bit).

And/or others, like:

Permadeath : Delete savegame on death (In-game rewards allow for extra lives with the mentioned Extreme penalty maybe?)

Permadeath+: Delete savegame on death period  (lol, there's actually quite the demand for that).

 

[Luke17]

Permadeath is awesome, makes you play the game in a different way. But I feel its very easy to play self regulated Permadeath without the neeed for a built in option?

 

[Aldranon]

That is strictly a personel choice.

My last several playthroughs in Alpha19 (break until Alpha20 comes out to give me a chance to play games I neglected, like BattleTech) I did builds where my focus was either on Perception, Agility, or Intelligence.  And yes, I only play SP.

Sure I could go Strength; and sure, it would allow me to do speed runs through POIs and make me OP to anything the hordes can throw at me....but where is the enjoyment in making the game easier for me?  I want to fight off wandering hordes with nothing but my knife; I want to have to take my time to clear out a POI using caution and cleverness, not just walk through it like a tank (or run though it).

Well done, you're a true gamer in the best sense of the word.

I do that sometimes, but the temptation is always there to go down the "Dark side"... or more accurately, the OP side. 

Permadeath is awesome, makes you play the game in a different way. But I feel its very easy to play self regulated Permadeath without the neeed for a built in option?

I allow myself one fall from a gyrocopter, if I do it again (90% of my deaths) the game is done.  I don't use gyrocopters until late game (obviously) by then I'm a bit bored with my invincible setup anyways.