I know for a fact the team does not care if players want to use blocks in creative ways to cheat but that they do care that each block functions as intended and that entities in the world can path properly over all blocks in the game. The devs themselves often use blocks creatively when building POIs and they certainly don't want any block they may use become a potential spot where zombies get stuck and foiled in their movement.
Ok, I can conceed this as a possible point. My question here then if the primary consideration is pathing over arrowslit blocks where that would make an issue for the POI developers, is there a POI(or multiple) or in development where the use of arrowslits are used and it was causing a pathing problem? I have 2000 hours in the PC game and perhaps another 1500 on the console and granted, I just might me missing something, but so far I don't recall seeing arrowslits used in any way that would be a pathable block where this would cause zombies an issue. I will say if I am wrong and missed such an instance, will admit my mistake(ie, I would really love to know such a POI if it exists)
As long as a block is working properly as intended they are perfectly happy to allow players to exploit those blocks.
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They make sure the blocks work as intended for placement, functionality, and pathing. Beyond that it is player choice.
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They have an intended purpose and functionality in mind for blocks and it is their call to enforce those things.
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If the devs feel that the intended function of the arrow slits is to shoot at enemies under cover and that is it then they are certainly within their rights to do that.
And here is the rub. They no longer work as ARROW Slits. They provide absolutely zero protection from cop spit(just like bars) as if they were an empty window now. I don't know how they were before, but at least now, you and the enemies that have ranged attacks can "shoot" through the visual model as if it were bars or even an empty wall. There zero collision.
@dcsobral has displayed this in a video on the A20 dev thread.
Why should they support magical properties just because you want to use magic. I've visited structures that have arrow slits and it most definitely is in the realm of magic thinking any sort interaction could be done through those slits other than shooting arrows or bullets. You could never pull a bag of loot through them or reach through them and have leverage enough to repair traps etc. It would simply be an impossibility.
Ok, ill give you this point, but then make the electricity not so finicky to connect at it's max distance of 14.5 blocks so one could have the same distance but not be limited by the "red line" distance which is quite a bit shorter than the max connection distance. I would be FINE if I could still make my connections with no magic blocks at 14.5 blocks. This part is the big issue here in that in a point release a major change was made to how electricity works due to changing how the block works. I know some people who have had issues with wires just randomly sometimes moving off to zero/zero(via a bug). So the solution for the players is to rewire them, but since they now can't wire through steel iron slits, they have to destroy and rewire their bases in a different way and perhaps abandon the base entirely depending on their base design. Now, this is easy to do if you are willing to "cheat" and use DM mod and the block destruction gun and CM a few resources back, but that might not be an option for people playing on a server.
Now you say that your new task is to figure out magical properties of some other block upon which to base your strategies until that block possibly gets fixed in the future. All I can say is that there is a good chance that may happen. You are playing a game that is actively being developed and the only constant is change. Searching out strategies that are based upon wonky or weird magical properties of blocks is an incredibly sandy foundation and you are almost certainly going to be setting yourself up for disappointment as the devs continue to polish and make multiple passes over the blocks and find where they are not within the intended function of their creation.
All of this is really to say that its frustrating for such a major change in a point release. I don't expect a reversion(meaning while I can certainly hope for one, I am not holding my breath for it), but I still want to make my voice heard in any event because, well I'm frustrated at such a huge change to how electricity works to fix a pathing issue for a block that I just don't believe any POI designers are/will using as a pathable block.
What bugged me most was not so much that the properties of the arrow slits were changed but the bad timing.
The best time for this change would be the release of A20 EXP since everyone started a new world at this point anyway. However, the change was made with a small update at a time when players had already built their bases.
I already had arrow slits in my base to protect my dart traps when the update was released. Fortunately, I had access at the back to refill the darts. Otherwise, I would have had to remove several steel blocks to access the dart traps.
Pretty much this. This IS a huge change to the game mechanics around how electricity works vs how it used to work.
I have built a number of bases to use EXACTLY 14 blocks and now there is no possible way to repair them if they break out totally without breaking out steel blocks and replace them with "something". I have used vault hatches before, but they are a bit harder since the hatch model of the outline is freaking HUGE. Not a game breaker as there are some ways, but just more annoying.
