PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[madmole]

Are there no more working workstations in the wild? Yet to find one myself or see anyone else get one on streams

Nope, they completely bypass the natural progression that gives the player a feeling of accomplishment. WIthout needs and desires, the game is boring so I had them make them ALL broken. Now when you finally craft one or buy one you feel extremely rewarded instead of meh I'm already at late game tech because I found a trader with all the workstations intact on day 1. @%$# that.

 

[Stroichik]

The glass is half empty or half full. I used my seed, got a crop from it, so I'm happy. Having a 50% chance to get a free seed again? I'm super happy with that!

U used 5 crops to make a seed, and got 4 crops and 0 seed. U wasted 1 crop for nothing. how happy u are now?

 

[madmole]

Farming is useless now. Its easier to go hunt for grilled meat, than replanting 60 corn plots to get more or less usable supply of food. No point of wasting 3 skill points for LotL level 3 only to get 1 food from plant.

But hey, u can craft machinegun from pipe and glue on day 1. So its kinda obvious that u should go exterminate whatever is left of life in Navezgane to keep u from being hungry.

You aren't a farmer until you unlock rank 3 then you can sustain a large farm. Until then the intended use case is to plant free seeds you found, grow a crop and get free food, then if you are lucky you get a seed back on harvest and can replant it. I had one corn go like 5x in a row before the seed quit once, I was quite happy. So no don't craft seeds, go looting. Craft seeds when you hit rank 3 then it might pay off.

 

[Stroichik]

You aren't a farmer until you unlock rank 3 then you can sustain a large farm. Until then the intended use case is to plant free seeds you found, grow a crop and get free food, then if you are lucky you get a seed back on harvest and can replant it. I had one corn go like 5x in a row before the seed quit once, I was quite happy. So no don't craft seeds, go looting. Craft seeds when you hit rank 3 then it might pay off.

If i want to manually replant 60+ farming plots, i`ll go play Farming Sim, thank you. 

But since u scrapped Wellness system, i can just go jump from Radio Tower every night, to wake up in the morning feeling no hunger for entire day.

 

[madmole]

I have a question. We run A20 from the begining, and there is no Acid drop, you can only buy from trader till now  

Looted many houses, cars, poi-s, we are at  day 17 now, in A19 we looted acid first day. Is this a bug, or something changed?  

Acid is more rare, but most of it's recipes are pretty high end. Try the chemical piles.

 

[saltychipmunk]

Honestly the big thing with slow firing weapons like bows or shotguns for me is : can it kill a zombie in one hit?  If yes they feel amazing, if no they feel terrible.

Its kind of why i hate resident evil 8 village because the darn werewolves take like 10 bullets to the face.  So awful.

I also like the idea of tiered items other than just weapons and armor.  especially if you really space them out in the game stages 

Over all i am very happy that the many easy skips are being clamped down on.  7d2d in my opinion is at its best when you are struggling against the clock. Once you get to a sort of safe spot in progression things get stale fast. 

That is sort of true for most of the good pve focused survival games  and the great ones really do put in a bunch of effort to keep players on their toes. 

 

[Roland]

A bicycle at the end of the first day is fine, but why is there a mechanic skill then?

Are you talking about making enough money to purchase one that was available on the first day or are you talking about the Tier 1 Quest completion package? If the former, the bike isn't always available to be purchased and if the latter, I can only assume that you must be playing with a modified day length and not playing the default 60 minute daylength. The Tier 1 completion reward comes at the end of 10 Tier 1 quests completed and most people aren't going to speed run the game to the degree that they get all ten quests completed on day one,

Trader balancing is ongoing and there was definitely some adjustments for A20 and there will be more in the future--but probably not enough to counteract someone choosing to cram 10 quests in a day.  Maybe the solution is simply to have the trader state that there are no more jobs available after 2-3 have been done in a single day.

I do agree that too valuable loot is too commonly obtained too soon. It should still be possible but it should be very very rare-- at least in the Forest biome. If someone wants to venture into a tougher biome for a better chance at better loot that should be possible.

 

[Stroichik]

Acid is more rare, but most of it's recipes are pretty high end. Try the chemical piles.

Wheels. Personally, never used acid for anything but wheels. And even bicycle needs acid, to make wheels. And wheels by themselves are more rare than acid, at least they were in A19.

But somehow, we can now make machineguns out of pipe and glue, without even machine parts or springs. Surprisingly sophisticated pipes in Navezgane these days.

 

[Khalagar]

I have a question. We run A20 from the begining, and there is no Acid drop, you can only buy from trader till now  

Looted many houses, cars, poi-s, we are at  day 17 now, in A19 we looted acid first day. Is this a bug, or something changed?  

Acid is super rare but I am getting tons now that I have the book that lets me wrench acid from cars

I played an agility build and found the bow to be completely useless so I had them buff the damage. 

Take that literally like 15 people who argued with me until they were blue in the face in A19 that the bow wasn't terribly under powered!

Now just make them make the Pipe Baton scale better with electrocute and have a t3 version of it and I can stop complaining about it!!

Fun fact for those curious, I checked and  the stun baton is indeed weaker than the pipe baton, so you literally downgrade to go the next item tier in the weapon line lol. Yes you gain a chance to stun the enemy and even surrounding enemies if you have all the mods and candy etc, but you also lose damage so you can't actually kill the enemy. Y'know what's better than spending 40 seconds ragdolling an enemy while they are elecrocuted? Just killing them with a pipe baton >_>

I need to record one of the videos of me playing a Benny Hill skit with a zombie while I chase it around whacking it with the 2 damage stun baton and keep it perma tazed but don't do enough damage to actually kill it. I legit fought a feral soldier for at least 50 seconds, with me just standing there whacking him while he ragdolled around on the floor like he was on ice

 

[madmole]

U used 5 crops to make a seed, and got 4 crops and 0 seed. U wasted 1 crop for nothing. how happy u are now?

I'm not dumb enough to do that lol, so I'm still happy. Don't start crafting seeds until you get living off the land rank 3.

Loot seeds, plant seeds, profit. I had 5 rows 5 long all full of stuff growing at one point with no perks.

 

[Stroichik]

Bow is nice silent killer. With perks it blasts heads almost always. Very good for stealth cleaning of POIs at night. Bow is awesome.

 

[Roland]

Wheels. Personally, never used acid for anything but wheels. And even bicycle needs acid, to make wheels. And wheels by themselves are more rare than acid, at least they were in A19.

But somehow, we can now make machineguns out of pipe and glue, without even machine parts or springs. Surprisingly sophisticated pipes in Navezgane these days.

If you only ever used acid for wheels then you should be fine. Bicycle can be chosen as a reward package after finishing the Tier 1 quests. So just save the acid for wheels for the better vehicles later in the game.

 

[BFT2020]

Are you talking about making enough money to purchase one that was available on the first day or are you talking about the Tier 1 Quest completion package? If the former, the bike isn't always available to be purchased and if the latter, I can only assume that you must be playing with a modified day length and not playing the default 60 minute daylength. The Tier 1 completion reward comes at the end of 10 Tier 1 quests completed and most people aren't going to speed run the game to the degree that they get all ten quests completed on day one,

Yep, I am playing a mostly agility build right now and I got my free bicycle I believe on Day 5.  If I go Int build, I will get it sooner as I can craft it myself sooner.

However, you can't balance the game when people speed-run it; especially when the game is not designed for that type of play in the first place.

 

[Khalagar]

They have a point though, the mechanic skill is useless. It seems the way to get my precious intellect tree buffed is to convince Madmole to do an intellect focused run. It feels bad man when you waste a bunch of perk points learning to craft a bike or forge etc then just find the recipe or one for sale or get one free from trader etc. Those skills need to offer way more than they do. Why would I waste so many points to spec into the vehicle perk line when the trader literally gave me 80% of a motorcyle as a quest reward day 9? Even if I rushed to try to craft it, I can't because you can't make steel without a crucible

And then even if you get the perk, they barely offer anything after you do your initial craft of the item compared to just finding a book /  buying the item.

Oh boy, 20% faster crafting time on the forge, whoo! You know what crafts 100% faster? Building a second forge / campfire / etc. Might as well just take the perk, craft 10 forges or your 1 motorcycle or w/e and  drink a respec potion and put points elsewhere

 

[madmole]

They have a point though, the mechanic skill is useless. It seems the way to get my precious intellect tree buffed is to convince Madmole to do an intellect focused run. It feels bad man when you waste a bunch of perk points learning to craft a bike or forge etc then just find the recipe or one for sale or get one free from trader etc. Those skills need to offer way more than they do.

Oh boy, 20% faster crafting time on the forge, whoo! You know what crafts 100% faster? Building a second forge / campfire / etc

I agree that intellect needs a bit more yet, but that is the nature of unlock perks.

 

[meganoth]

If you only ever used acid for wheels then you should be fine. Bicycle can be chosen as a reward package after finishing the Tier 1 quests. So just save the acid for wheels for the better vehicles later in the game.

Which begs the question how the INT player gets the acid? (Oh God, I'm sounding like Khalgar now )

 

[Khalagar]

Which begs the question how the INT player gets the acid? (Oh God, I'm sounding like Khalgar now )

I must become the bastion of defending the int tree or get banned from the forum for it one, it is destiny!

I actually did struggle hard to get acid last night, then found that book where wrenching cars down gives acid and now have a lot of it. If only the salvager perk was in the int tree with the rest of the crafting and vehicle perks  instead of randomly in perception, I would take it in a heartbeat.

 

[bachgaman]

Are you talking about making enough money to purchase one that was available on the first day or are you talking about the Tier 1 Quest completion package? If the former, the bike isn't always available to be purchased and if the latter, I can only assume that you must be playing with a modified day length and not playing the default 60 minute daylength. The Tier 1 completion reward comes at the end of 10 Tier 1 quests completed and most people aren't going to speed run the game to the degree that they get all ten quests completed on day one,

Trader balancing is ongoing and there was definitely some adjustments for A20 and there will be more in the future--but probably not enough to counteract someone choosing to cram 10 quests in a day.  Maybe the solution is simply to have the trader state that there are no more jobs available after 2-3 have been done in a single day.

I do agree that too valuable loot is too commonly obtained too soon. It should still be possible but it should be very very rare-- at least in the Forest biome. If someone wants to venture into a tougher biome for a better chance at better loot that should be possible.

I'm afraid to answer you, but I'll answer. The second one. We played as three. All three received bicycles. I'm not sure about 10, but one of us, the one who managed to pass the last quest before the trader closed, received a bicycle at the end of the first day. I'll check it from the screenshots, maybe I'm confusing it and it was the end of day 2. It's not that important. The length of the day is standard. I agree that in the group quest are completing faster, but it is easy to perform 3-4 tasks a day alone, so you will get a bike on day 3 in solo game. I'm not saying it's a disbalance, strangely enough. You pulled this phrase out of context as always, where I asked about the purpose of the "mechanic" skill, not about the balance of the appearance of a fast bike.

 

[BFT2020]

Which begs the question how the INT player gets the acid? (Oh God, I'm sounding like Khalgar now )

Same way all you deadhead people do 

 

[Roland]

If i want to manually replant 60+ farming plots, i`ll go play Farming Sim, thank you. 

But since u scrapped Wellness system, i can just go jump from Radio Tower every night, to wake up in the morning feeling no hunger for entire day.

The first line proves my point that people who don't like to replant don't like farming as a feature. FYI, manual replanting isn't the linchpin that turns farming in this game into a farming sim.....by a long shot.

As to your point about dying to erase debuffs and regain food, water, and health.... I am with you 10000% and I've been voicing my opinion that at the least there needs to be an option to turn on persistent status after respawn for those who don't want death in a survival game to be the cure-all for everything we are trying to survive against. Does ANYONE really care about the XP delay to the next level?  I get that it can't be the default setting because new players would get into a death spiral they could not recover from. An option, though, would be nice.

My top three options wishlist:

Zombie Spawn Slider

Persistent Status After Respawn

HUD visibility