PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[JaxTeller718]

I can confirm this is the case, and it's why I still think stealth is a noob trap perk. I have zero points in stealth and will regularly clear the entire sleeper room by just crouching down outside it and picking them all off with an unsilenced rifle, or in many cases, literally pulling out a shotgun and just blowing their heads off from 30 feet away while their buddies sleep next to them.

You can still break a block to get a better angle into the room for more head shots and they zeds don't care, they only care if you step into the room or if you miss a shot and damage a block in the room, which seems to count as you being in the room with them, but it usually only applies to the floor and not the walls.

Stealth as a whole is always going to be a fairly awful skill because horde nights exist, which means your entire build is useless on the hardest night of the week. Especially in coop it's hard to compete with a dude who just holds Shift + W + M1 with a shotgun and clears the entire PoI before you have even crouch walked past the first floor

Yep, my friend picked a level 2 or 3 trap one for some unknowable reason, and got like 5 metal spike traps and a couple of land mines. Meanwhile I was like . . .  but the farm plots / mods / vehicle parts dude wtf

All of this is true.

Before I say this I want to express how great this alpha feels so I am not trying to be troll-y with my comment. But sometimes it feels like this is being balanced by three different teams. You have some areas that are quite easy, then some that are perfectly balanced. Then there are the times when things seem to be veering to please hardcore players. It feels very janky and un-coordinated in some areas and does not feel cohesive.

For example, upgrading blocks is a more efficient use of time to level xp then actually killing anything, to the point where going out to loot feels like a waste of time. POIs themselves are difficult at times early on, which is wonderful but the payoff just isn't there. If you get infected (which is very often almost every time you get hit) there are almost no stumps in the world and most times they give nothing back. With how often infection occurs this is terribly unbalanced at times.

Making a base at first seems like a waste too. Zombies can see you quite clearly in a base on day 1-3 so taking a poi is the best bet. To the point you feel pigeon holed to do it every time. 

Perks are a whole other topic. I'm forced to sink points into what i feel is a useless endeavor to get stations. I don't care for or want perks for batons/electric/turrets but i must sink them there for access to vehicles and benches. Why? its an attempt at a janky class system. And lets not talk about why anyone would want to take clubs or blunt weapons when bleed on knives is always a better bet. Even pipe batons are better than a club.

Not sure where i was going with that but everything just feels uneven.

 

[IzPrebuilt]

My description was not quite accurate. AIFeralSense in xml actually increases noise amount and seeing distance range values of a zombie. So if you make 10 noise, AIferalSense of 1.5 scales the noise by the number and adds it in, so it becomes 25 noise to that specific zombie. AIferalSense of 0 would add 0.

That's actually extremely helpful thank you!

 

[Vintorez]

Maybe pipe guns could be better suited as disposable emergency weapons rather than their own tier. Low durability and the inability to repair them would make them less viable to use all the time, but it's nice to have them early on when it can sometimes feel like you're smacking zombies with a wet noodle.

Also been thinking if it would be better to have two separate skill trees, one for combat and one for utility instead of having them bound together.

 

[taoshao]

您好，我希望您可以在将来的版本中尽可能地优化客户端。我们某些玩家的计算机不兼容，会崩溃。我希望服务器也能解决cg问题。服务器经常会崩溃，并希望修复它。谢谢。

Hello, I hope you can optimize the client as much as possible in future versions. Some of our players’ computers are not compatible and will crash. I hope that the server will also solve the cg problem. The server will often crash and hope to fix it. Thank you very much.

 

[bachgaman]

 Maybe if you compare them having a race directly next to each other down the road. 

If you want to take shortcuts, go cross country, over hills and bumpy stuff, between trees, rocks and alike...you will definitely reach your destination much faster with the motorcycle. 

...waaaiit a minute...what's happening here? Am I really telling bachgaman how to do things faster in this game?

You're trolling me right?  

I understand that a motorcycle is more maneuverable and passable, but usually I prefer a truck, as I often play in a group. The conversation was about speed

 

[DarlingCows]

Ok I’ve done this before where I log out right before day time after a horde night after I’ve finished my horde night early. But then I logged back in and the horde started again but I’m not at my base and I die. Can this be changed? 

 

[Khalagar]

lets not talk about why anyone would want to take clubs or blunt weapons when bleed on knives is always a better bet.

Clubs are OP AF lol, especially when you perk into them. Clubs get barbed wire and spikes mods as well, which makes them even more ridiculous. I ran a series of tests in A19 to test how each weapon did against an incremental number of irradiated wights, and clubs absolutely destroyed everything besides junk sledges. Junk sledge seem much weaker in A20 though with the new zombie dodge system, so club is very likely king of melee in all situations

You don't have to rely on slow DoT bleed systems when you can just kill the target instead in a couple of swings of your club

Sometimes it feels like this is being balanced by three different teams

I feel this way about the game design more so than the balance. It feels like there are several groups of developers working on different systems, but without a whole lot of inter group discussion to touch base.

One team will design a cool feature, but then it doesn't really interact  with the other systems, or does so in a janky way. You see it with things like the drone and pipe baton where they are really neat and someone put a ton of work into designing it and animating it etc, but then nobody checked with the team in charge of balancing the perks to make them actually interact with the perk system. Like how the pipe baton isn't even mentioned in the intellect ui and doesn't really scale with the stun baton perk line much at all. You end up with this really neat weapon that is well designed, but doesn't fit into the existing system and is basically pointless to invest in. Junk turret shells are another example where it is a neat idea, but nobody talked to the balance team to compare the cost of crafting them vs just using an unperked double barrel shotgun to notice that they cost way too much for something that fires as fast as a junk turret does, and do way less per shell than just crafting a real shotgun bullet does

Things like that will probably get polished before the game goes gold, I just chalk it up to the game being early access and still in development, which is a good thing imo.

Ok I’ve done this before where I log out right before day time after a horde night after I’ve finished my horde night early. But then I logged back in and the horde started again but I’m not at my base and I die. Can this be changed? 

if this is replicable then that sounds like a great way to make a crap load of EXP and loot bags lol. The last few hordes I've done have given me way way way more ammo and explosives back than I spent killing them, you could probably just relog a few times and gain like 20 levels and thousands of bullets in a night

 

[Star69]

It has been a thing ever since horde nights were introduced......if you logout after the horde ends on horde night and login again before 4am, horde night starts all over again. 

 

[faatal]

Blend tree the eating the player when they die anim. 

We already have a crawl anim, which is just as low to the ground and I don't want it if I don't want to be that low to the ground, which leaves blends that generally are going to look bad being different looping anims. Dedicated hunched over anims are what is needed to look good.

 

[MechanicalLens]

I've come across a POI in the city in RWG that is completely empty of zombies, loot, rubble... Every room is prime for living in. Is this an unfinished POI that somehow slipped through the cracks?

Varying sizes and window placements aside, every single room in this POI looks like this. Even the rooftop is empty.

It's these two buildings right here:

 

[faatal]

Hello, I have a question. Why is the car sound disappearing in the passenger seat? This problem is already 2 years old !!

Yes, it is years old, and just as low priority now as it was then.

 

[faatal]

You can still break a block to get a better angle into the room for more head shots and they zeds don't care, they only care if you step into the room or if you miss a shot and damage a block in the room, which seems to count as you being in the room with them, but it usually only applies to the floor and not the walls.

A20 does not work like that. You hit a sleeper in a volume and the rest go active. Active ones are still sleeping, but they can hear you, so a stealth player might keep killing them without aggro, while a non stealth player may wake them depending on weapon noise and distance.

 

[unholyjoe]

I've come across a POI in the city in RWG that is completely empty of zombies, loot, rubble... Every room is prime for living in. Is this an unfinished POI that somehow slipped through the cracks?



Varying sizes and window placements aside, every single room in this POI looks like this. Even the rooftop is empty.

It's these two buildings right here:

yeppers... the team build many empty shells and later will finish them... use them til they do and enjoy.

 

[Roland]

I've come across a POI in the city in RWG that is completely empty of zombies, loot, rubble... Every room is prime for living in. Is this an unfinished POI that somehow slipped through the cracks?

It was stated that the level design team will continue to updated and add POI's throughout all the 20.x updates as needed. These are known.

 

[MechanicalLens]

It was stated that the level design team will continue to updated and add POI's throughout all the 20.x updates as needed. These are known.

Oh I know, I was just wondering if these empty shells were supposed to be spawning or not.

 

[Firecat]

Oh I know, I was just wondering if these empty shells were supposed to be spawning or not.

I noticed these buildings, too! Good to know they are planning to finish them. In the meantime: Cool! Free base! XD I'm going curtain shopping!

 

[Syrex]

Day 32: (difficulty 3/5, 2 hour days, loot (started at 50, then tried 75, parked at 100), 50% xp)

Dislike: 1) the Over use of invisible triggered zombie wakeup.. kinda negates all my agility point spending - i like to play stealth. Am doing tier 3 quests, again (moved locations so new trader), and a good portion of the quests with previous trader and with this trader involve "triggered" swarms - not a fan, but to each their own. 2) Acid is a little too rare (day 32 and only found 3). 3) to me, the hitbox for direwolves head seems "off" or smaller than the graphic, alot of my shots (gun and crossbow) go thru the head but hardly ever register a damaging hit. That's it so far...

now...

LikeS: far too many to list, however my top few would be 1) RWG, heck yes (i do however dislike that the paint on the streets actually take up a block-space and can't place anything directly overtop of it, but thats a minor meh) 2) love the builders-love we received, Blocks-O-Plenty (maybe paint/textures next?!?! i know i'm pushing my luck lol) 3) the ChaLLenge.. I have a few hours invested overall in this game and in my play thrus i die maybe twice each go.... A20 I've died 12 times thus far (triggered swarms x3, an explosion in a farm poi (still baffled by this one) x1, Direwolves x7 <<-- LOL, andddd a Bear x1.. need that meat!

I'm on the fence with the farming.. its good for what it is, but I cant see this as being "the" answer to whatever TFP is after. Something about it just feels off.. LotL 3 was a must to a "sustaining" farm - and thats expensive considering where points should go early on. This Alpha, I find myself hunting more (dont always go as planned hence the deaths lol). Still alot I havent seen yet sooooo, I'm looking forward to the next x-amount of hours. <<end update>>

 

[Aldranon]

My overall feelings on the game is that A20 is a fantastic improvement over A19!

Vehicles:

-With the extra seats mod, the 4x4 is a good MP vehicle IMO.  You can save gas over 4 motorcycles.

-Getting the bicycle after the first set of quests was a wonderful thing, a big plus in fun!

Experience:

-Setting 300% exp is not really an advantage if you think about it, but its great for testing things out.

You're gaining exp faster but but have less time to collect the things you might need for a faster Game Stage increase.

The zombies keep up with your levels and so might use more mats to stay alive.

As A20 is more dangerous (in cities and POI's), this is a big deal.

POI's

-The new POI's are wonderful and exciting!

-However, there are predicable ambush areas that 80% of the time are in fact active ambush sites.  Maybe reduce the percent a bit as "Jump Scares" only work when your not ready for them.

-Maybe have at least 20% of the zombies out in the open, so finesse player builds can partially increase their chances.

-"Big Mama" POI is weak for a tier 4 POI.  The two groups that are dangerous are out in the open and are killed off quickly.

-The same quests are offered repeatedly, hopefully this can be changed.

 

[Aldranon]

``

I'm on the fence with the farming.. its good for what it is, but I cant see this as being "the" answer to whatever TFP is after. Something about it just feels off.. LotL 3 was a must to a "sustaining" farm - and thats expensive considering where points should go early on. This Alpha, I find myself hunting more (dont always go as planned hence the deaths lol). Still alot I havent seen yet sooooo, I'm looking forward to the next x-amount of hours. <<end update>>

I think farming is now a mid game thing for SP and can be early game for MP.  (MP is the new easy mod IMO).

On SP playing A20: You better be a real Lone Wolf: "Swift, Silent, Deadly".  Force Recon must have played A20  

SP, a focus on every little sound is potential life and death:  Do you hear the sound wolves make?  Do you hear when there are vultures spawning in?  Do you know what to do when 3+ vultures are attacking you in a vehicle?   Do you know when to stop using a melee weapon and immediately bring out the big guns (High rate of fire, good damage) and do you have a backup "big gun" when the first one wasn't enough?

Edit: and you always need to be looking around.  A 6 pack of dogs or a bear you didnt see are killers.  3+ vultures might not kill you, but you will have an infection at the very least if you don't move/act quickly. 

 

[Roland]

Dislike: 1) the Over use of invisible triggered zombie wakeup.. kinda negates all my agility point spending - i like to play stealth.

Stealth has been changed for A20 and will require some adaptation. There are no longer any auto trigger zombie wakeup areas. When you enter a volume there is going to be a check vs your stealth for each zombie to see if it wakes up. If you fail the check one or more zombie will wake up. If those zombies are in a position to see you then they will attack but if they don't see you then you can still enjoy stealth gameplay that you spent your points on. A zombie that wakes up doesn't automatically negate your stealth. It all depends on how you react.

We do need feedback on the system but you should know that the system is not automatic guaranteed aggro as soon as you pass an invisible line like some areas were in A19. Maybe you could give us a seed and the location of the POI where it seemed the zombies aggroed automatically.