PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Sephiroth]

So, Everyone has problems with an imbalance when it comes to farming, yet it seems an imbalance with crafting that's been introduced into the game ever since A18 just goes by without notice.



I would like to see some actual reasoning behind these crafting changes aside from the obvious scapegoat of "Oh but I want T5 dungeons to be worthwhile". ... I take the time out to go find resources, set up a base, find the recipes, only to be DENIED the ability to craft anything quality 6 ... is completely imbalanced. I would like Quality 6 crafting returned to the game.

 

[faatal]

I know that melee weapons were doing grazing hits in A19 as well, so no surprises there. The zombies, on the other hand...holy crap! I've had it happen three separate times where I'm playing the door-in-face game (zombie beating on an unlocked door, wait for zombie to swing, open door, pound zombie in da face, close door again) and after about the third swing, I opened the door to take another shot and the zombie ducks under my swing and swipes my kneecaps!  I've observed zombie dogs surrounding me when I'm standing on an obstacle, as opposed to the swarm beneath you or as close as they can get to you. This looked suspiciously like strategy and pack hunting! Awesome if it is and keep an eye out if it's not planned behaviour!

Oh yeah! I used to only die in early game if I did something stupid. Feral sense at night did me right the f00k in! I was (imo) quietly raiding a building I'd cleared (one of the fast food joints) and started hearing a "couple" of zombies beating on things outside. I made the mistake of not planning a quick egress when I first heard them. By the time I realized that I had a problem, it was too late! It was almost like a screamer horde! 6+ dogs, 3 or 4 spiders, multiple ferals of various flavours, and they were at every door! Their pathing seems to have improved quite a bit!

Animals side stepping to space away from each other is in A19, you just don't see it unless multiple ones get around you.

Pathing is mostly the same, you just probably had them coming from different directions in the world, so they pathed differently.

 

[hiemfire]

Guilty as charged, ok, random chances as a post with a guarantee of at least the seed back and replanting.

Any better?

LOTL 1: 0  (60%) / 1 (25%)/ 2 (15%) / 3 (0%)

LOTL 2: 0 (45%) / 1 (30%) / 2 (15%) / 3 (5%)

LOTL 3: 0 (15%) / 1 (25%) / 2 (40%) / 3 (20%)

LOTL 4: 0 (5%) / 1 (20%) / 2 (30%) / 3 (45%)

LOTL 5: 0 (0%) / 1 (15%) / 2 (25%) / 3 (60%)

Are these in addition to base harvest amount or instead of base harvest amount.

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

Are these in addition to base harvest amount or instead of base harvest amount.

Good question. 

I would suggest in place of, that way you can still take a hit from each crop.

For example LOTL Rank 5; while guaranteeing you will never get 0 corn from harvesting a corn plant, may still roll you a 1 or 2 corn harvest, and not the guaranteed 3 we currently have. 

As for seeds, I don't know, to further nerf farming but not ruin things maybe not give any seeds back.

That way we can imagine the farmer has some skill but not all crops will yield the same, and bad rng rolls mean you have to make a choice between consuming the food or saving for more seeds.

5 corn plants may only give 5 corn in a very bad situation, and that would only be enough to plant 1 more corn after all five initial plants are gone. This to me would add a better farming approach.

 

[faatal]

Heyo, great update. Really enjoying it so far, since I couldn’t really play a19 when it came out due to inadequate hardware, which didn’t get fixed until a couple months ago. 

so something I’ve noticed, and can’t find any answer or info on it is this. 
Every time I move my mouse to look around or when I move my character, there’s this quick dimming effect taking place, it’s most noticeable when outside. When I stop moving, it brightens back up/ gose back to normal. 
so when I move my mouse really slowly in a slow scanning of my surroundings motion, that dimming effect becomes a flickering because of the raid switching between moving and stopping. It’s kinda annoying to see that constantly. 
man’s i don’t really no if that’s normal or something that can be fixed. I hope it can tho, but I haven’t figured it out, so hoping to see if anyone here has any insight to this. 
Ty

Sounds like the monitor. I bought a TN panel high refresh Gsync monitor a few months ago and in dark scenes the brighter pixels would dim as I moved the camera. No reasonable setting would remove it, so I returned it and bought a similar monitor with an IPS panel. No annoying dimming!

Cranking up the brightness was the only way to reduce the dimming, which is unacceptable in nighttime scenes.

 

[Firecat]

As far as farming is concerned, all we can do is speculate about the extent of the effect the changes will have until we've had some practical experience with how the system performs in actual games. The one thing I can agree on though, is that I am LAZY and the idea of the seeds replanting themselves (with the assumption that you did it while harvesting) instead of having to manually replant them each time is something I liked. This could easily be reimplemented without changing the current system at all, just have a 50% chance the plants disappear instead of reverting to seedling form, which is exactly the same end result as getting a seed with 50% chance, but without the having to actually plant the seed step. This is a quality of life thing, though, not the end of the world, although it will become a rather MAJOR quality of life thing time wise for those of us who like to set up big farms and pretend we are farmers later on in the game, lol.

 

[Laz Man]

This isn't necessary because we have had it explained to us how it works and we do not like or agree with it. 

As I said, ideas may be played with, accepted, or rejected even in principle. Isn't this how games are designed anyway?

Its human nature for some people to react negatively to a change initially until giving it a try.  This is why it is always better to be open to trying new things.  At worse, you will confirm your fears, at best you will be pleasantly surprised.

 

[SpiderThatCantHide]

Where do we report bugs? I've already found a couple.

The major one is an infinite block issue. I built a wood frame for the starting quest and placed it down only to find that I still had the frame in my toolbelt. I can continue to place more frames down indefinitely. I can also pick up all of those blocks and scrap them for wood. Long story short, I can build one frame and turn it into an infinite number of additional wood blocks.

After enabling the creative menu I was able to confirm that the same issue exists for other frame blocks such as steel. For just 10 steel I can build one steel frame block which in turn can be placed down an infinite number of times. In other words, I can build an entire steel base out of one steel frame block.

Turn off creative. Lol. 

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

Its human nature for some people to react negatively to a change initially until giving it a try.  This is why it is always better to be open to trying new things.  At worse, you will confirm your fears, at best you will be pleasantly surprised.

I concede this point. However, that is in general, this is a specific facet of something I thoroughly enjoy in 7 days, and being a Mr Stormcloud about the changes without trying it not what I've done.

There have been plenty of changes that I have welcomed in spite of old methods, one being the eradication of zombie looting.

I saw a video with this modded back in recently and looked back fondly at it, but took that change away from what I liked for something much better - the drive to go out looting, and enjoy the hard work that the team has put into giving us our post apocalyptic world.

Some things like this farming malarky states up front exactly what I don't like, or disagree with (no need to repeat my objections here.)

 

[hiemfire]

Good question. 

I would suggest in place of, that way you can still take a hit from each crop.

K. If my head siming of the percentages is accurate the end result would be late game crop returns slightly less than A19 with replanting added. That doesn't really address the main reason they adjusted farming in the first place, the sheer amount of food that could be easily produced with negligible risk.

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

K. If my head siming of the percentages is accurate the end result would be late game crop returns slightly less than A19 with replanting added. That doesn't really address the main reason they adjusted farming in the first place, the sheer amount of food that could be easily produced with negligible risk.

Yeah but I told you I'm not good with maths. The numbers could be fiddled and tweaked to make it viable

 

[hiemfire]

Yeah but I told you I'm not good with maths. The numbers could be fiddled and tweaked to make it viable

It also would require a full redo of the perk line and introduce more variables for them to have to balance.

 

[BFT2020]

Great post. How did you handle the situation?

Did you ditch farming, or find a mod to reduce or even negate seeds?

One thing you brought up could actually be exploited so vanishing seeds can ironically vanish: meat.

Perhaps diminishing the food gains or increasing recipe costs for vegetable recipes would aid in balance, meat after all takes longer to digest and would in principle keep you fuller for longer. With fewer animals for meat sources, that may actually be a viable suggestion. What do you think?

I just got into learning how to mod the game so I am a bit late to the game.

I don’t have ideas right now because I am seeing how all the changes stack up.  Yes we lose seeds when we replant, but how many more are we getting through looting?

So many widgets make up the system that just focusing on one misses out how the others affect it.

 

[MisutoM]

Yeah there is no way you can exclusively use firearms IMO, there just isn't enough ammo.

I have to hard disagree on this. I'm "only" 36 hours into my world, but I'm absolutely drowning in ammo on warrior difficulty with feral sense on and x64 zombie blood moons, 100% loot. I have not completed the lucky looter series, so all this is on default loot bag drop rates.

Around day 20 on stream, I thought we had too much so I joking left my melee at home and just started spraying and praying my way through tier 5 POIs for fun. That just made things worse. Zombie loot bags are guaranteed to drop ammo in the first slot now, and each bag has ~50 shotgun shells, ~70 .762, or ~90 9mm. I played alpha 19 for 1000 hours, I had to craft ammo a lot, and never once did I need to make a second ammo chest. In alpha 20, I already need a second chest and literally can't shoot it away faster than I get it. 

I think the problem (for me) is entirely coming from the loot bags. Ammo piles seem to have way less than they did in previous alphas, and I don't know about traders because I've never needed to buy or craft any. Hard example from the stream: On my day 28 horde I used ~40 pipe bombs and finished the horde around 12:30. From the loot bags, with no loot candy, I got ~450 .762, 600 9mm, and ~300 shotgun shells. 

Another hard example, day 34 I started dishong tower with 600 9mm and ~200 shotgun shells. I finished the POI using nothing but my smg and pumpyboy and left with nearly 1000 9mm, ~400ish shotguns, and a few stacks of .762. This is almost entirely from the yellow bags as the loot piles were fair amounts of ammo; a few bullets and/or crafting parts for ammo.

I'm not good at FPS and I miss shots a ton as Gazz and other viewers can attest too, I'm not some MLG no scope pro - I am just mediocre with guns, but I'm literally drowning in ammo despite only using guns this alpha. This isn't meant to be a brag post. Am I really the only person having this problem in game this alpha? 

 

[meganoth]

This isn't necessary because we have had it explained to us how it works and we do not like or agree with it. 

As I said, ideas may be played with, accepted, or rejected even in principle. Isn't this how games are designed anyway?

If TFP had known that they won't like learning-by-doing for their game, why did they implement it ? Simple answer, to play-test it.

If games were simply designed by mulling over ideas in your head and knowing they will work or not, experiments like the A16 and A17 RPG systems would have not been necessary.

 

[bladewalker27]

I've just finished the Day 14 Horde and I'll chime in on my thoughts to the farm changes.

I have no problem making it harder to get started, my only gripe is replanting every time. I never minded it before the change,

but now I absolutely dislike having to replant and I've lost several seeds already making it feel less than useful.

As for food in general? I have nearly 5 stacks of meat sitting in a box at the moment just from killing wolves/bears at night.

I haven't seen but maybe one boar and 3 dear so far.

I did buy the harvest perk for 20% more meat/bones and iron gut 1.

I've been killing the occasional chicken using the animal tracking 1 perk.

I think if they want to make food take more work, then the farming changes are not the way to go, to me at least.

As for the solution? I have no idea, I just really dislike planting seeds over and over, probably my favorite change to farming

back in Alpha 17? I think.

 

[meganoth]

I have to hard disagree on this. I'm "only" 36 hours into my world, but I'm absolutely drowning in ammo on warrior difficulty with feral sense on and x64 zombie blood moons, 100% loot. I have not completed the lucky looter series, so all this is on default loot bag drop rates.

Around day 20 on stream, I thought we had too much so I joking left my melee at home and just started spraying and praying my way through tier 5 POIs for fun. That just made things worse. Zombie loot bags are guaranteed to drop ammo in the first slot now, and each bag has ~50 shotgun shells, ~70 .762, or ~90 9mm. I played alpha 19 for 1000 hours, I had to craft ammo a lot, and never once did I need to make a second ammo chest. In alpha 20, I already need a second chest and literally can't shoot it away faster than I get it. 

I think the problem (for me) is entirely coming from the loot bags. Ammo piles seem to have way less than they did in previous alphas, and I don't know about traders because I've never needed to buy or craft any. Hard example from the stream: On my day 28 horde I used ~40 pipe bombs and finished the horde around 12:30. From the loot bags, with no loot candy, I got ~450 .762, 600 9mm, and ~300 shotgun shells. 

Another hard example, day 34 I started dishong tower with 600 9mm and ~200 shotgun shells. I finished the POI using nothing but my smg and pumpyboy and left with nearly 1000 9mm, ~400ish shotguns, and a few stacks of .762. This is almost entirely from the yellow bags as the loot piles were fair amounts of ammo; a few bullets and/or crafting parts for ammo.

I'm not good at FPS and I miss shots a ton as Gazz and other viewers can attest too, I'm not some MLG no scope pro - I am just mediocre with guns, but I'm literally drowning in ammo despite only using guns this alpha. This isn't meant to be a brag post. Am I really the only person having this problem in game this alpha? 

I just went out of 9mm ammo today, luckily I had resources to craft ~35 bullets. Day 18, with feral sense on. Haven't seen many yellow bags.

 

[MisutoM]

I just went out of 9mm ammo today, luckily I had resources to craft ~35 bullets. Day 18, with feral sense on. Haven't seen many yellow bags.

So is my game bugged somehow? My vods are there from streamer weekend up to yesterday for people who want to check, but I'm pretty sure loot bags are roughly 1 in 10 to 1 in 20. I probably got at least 10 (likely more) in Dishong. After a solo horde night there's so many bags to pick up that I need to make a dump chest trip at least once before I can pick it all up and that's for hordes ending before 1 am, imagine how much loot there would be when the horde starts lasting until 4 am. I'm not using any mods, never used any in previous alphas, and I wiped my data as recommended before starting the stream weekend. 

I guess it could be some freakish lightning striking 100 times level of variance and this level of loot droppage isn't normal, but by day 36 it was so consistent that it was a joke for my chat about how regularly zombies were overfilling my ammo; heck, I literally started using normal shotgun shells to open closets and broken doors because I need to get rid of it faster. I'll keep streaming and can hopefully get to 70 so madmole considers it a real play through (lol). I'll check back in and update my previous post if things change, but for now I'll just keep only using guns until I get down to just 1 ammo chest.

 

[POCKET951]

I don't entirely understand this notion of farming being nerfed overall. With max LoTL your yield of 10 fruits would be 60-failed seeds

So if you go 50/50 you recraft 5 seeds and that cost 25.

You net 35 in A20, where you would have yielded 30 in A19. After midgame farming will be far more sustainable and easy and trivial

Even if you failed 6/10 you'd break even with a19, and sometimes you will get lucky and only have to replant 3 or 4 so you could have even more insane yield

LoTL 2 is such a worthless and low value point though that it makes going from LoTL 1 to 3 a 6 point investment untill midgame when you have already filled out more stuff you want. Grabbing endurance just for LoTL3 feels @%$#ty

Skill points early on feel far to valuable to make LotL 3 appealing. Late game sure no problem but by then farming is already trivial and food will be easy.

Sure the early  to midgame portion of farming was rebalanced appropriately. But those who fully invest in farming will reap far greater returns in A20

Also I'm not entirely sure how tedious lategame farming will be vs A19. Using a chainsaw could be an inconvenience because i could accidentally reclaim seeds when harvesting.  In a20 I can just take a chain saw and run up and down my fields  and not worry about wierd annoying ass hit boxes. 

 Chain saw go brrrrrr for lategame farming now

Also. How crazy is it that a chainsaw is the best tool for farming most plants

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

If TFP had known that they won't like learning-by-doing for their game, why did they implement it ? Simple answer, to play-test it.

If games were simply designed by mulling over ideas in your head and knowing they will work or not, experiments like the A16 and A17 RPG systems would have not been necessary.

I didn't say or mean every idea is the same, or even suggest it's only 'in their heads,' I meant that certain ideas may be floated and rejected without the need to put everything into active development, even for the purposes of play testing.

Those ideas rejected without such development are rejected on the basis of principle and theory, which was my point.

The notion of replanting isn't the end of the world, but the notion of disappearing seeds in on top of replanting, complemented with a good chance to find them in loot, but a good chance not to find them from the parent plant, is what I am objecting too.

This is my rejection on principle and theory, given we have been given a pretty clear explanation of what this seed disappearance is. 

My friends don't farm, won't farm, and yet need no seed seduction to go looting.