PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
I know its been said a million times but try not to be too harsh on the new changes announced it's better to play first and get a grip on things and once you've completed a high day playthrough you can come to your own conclusion of what you liked what you didn't like and what could be better this is how constructive criticism is born.

 
@RolandYeah, seeing how they said several times that they don´t like people staying at home and the combo of water and magazines, i doubt that. Sure you can still play like before. But with disadvantages, unless TFP didn´t tell us everything on purpose about those changes and left out crucial information, that´s a given fact. And why would they hold back information that they know is gonna stop people from complaining?  So i don´t think there will be any surprise regarding that and there is no way that nothing at all changes for certain playstyles. Not gonna happen, there will be disadvantages, maybe for the whole group. That´s the point. I never said you can´t play like that at all.

@BFT2020 I know it isn´t a building/crafting or whatever simulator. Point is that a big part of the success is that you still can play it like one in MP. A lot of people would have never touched this game if it wasn´t for those playstyles beeing possible. I don´t think TFP realizes how many tbh.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
@RolandYeah, seeing how they said several times that they don´t like people staying at home and the combo of water and magazines, i doubt that. Sure you can still play like before. But with disadvantages, unless TFP didn´t tell us everything on purpose about those changes and left out crucial information, that´s a given fact. And why would they hold back information that they know is gonna stop people from complaining?  So i don´t think there will be any surprise regarding that and there is no way that nothing at all changes for certain playstyles. Not gonna happen, there will be disadvantages, maybe for the whole group. That´s the point. I never said you can´t play like that at all.


Every single time before every single update the people who felt like their playstyle was going to be dead were certain 100% that they could no longer build underground, or no longer play nomad, or no longer build basic pillbox style bases and that only exploitive bases would ever work. In every case this confidence that old playstyles were dead lasted....until others were seen to still be doing them. There is crucial information you are missing-- play experience. You're just not going to fully get it until you play it. I talk to people all the time who yell that the magazines are going to stop their perk progression and they should get to use points. After I remind them that the magazines only affect recipe learning they back off until just 10 minutes later when they seem to forget again that the magazines don't manage perks.  People are just going to have to play it to fully understand it.  My detractors will say that is super convenient. Well, maybe, but it is also true and when A21 releases there for sure will be an initial knee jerk reaction from some initial plays where people will say "Team play is dead!" but then other teams will be having success and actually playing more like a team than 5 guys playing parallel solo than ever before as they figure out the adjustments and pretty soon all these dreaded changes will become the new sacred cow that the devs better not touch for A22. This same scenario has just played out exactly the same too many times for me to not believe that it will be the same again with this issue.

 
@BFT2020 I know it isn´t a building/crafting or whatever simulator. Point is that a big part of the success is that you still can play it like one in MP. A lot of people would have never touched this game if it wasn´t for those playstyles beeing possible. I don´t think TFP realizes how many tbh.


Multiplayer is not going to be affected by the change much if at all. Builders are going to be able to ignore looting and be just fine when playing with allies. The entire motivation for reading magazines is different than all the other books you have experience with. I've already gone over this a ton of times so I'm going to spare you the explanation. I'll just say that I believe the magazines by their nature are going to enhance team play and push teams to greater cooperation and coordination and communication than ever before. The purpose of the magazines encourages specialization and teams supporting their members in their specializations.

Single player is going to make it so that a no looting run is very challenging and an extremely slow progression since you will be using primitive gear and building lower tier blocks for a lot longer. The thing is that I doubt there are many builders out there who build in the survival game instead of creative mode and who also detest looting to the point that they never want to do it. The change is going to force the single player who wants to build in survival to do more looting. There is no question. But if most people who play SP are at least tolerant of looting they are going to be fine.

Speed runners are going to be the ones that go out of their minds, imo. Power grinding to buy their way up the skill ladders at lightning speed and having what recipes they learn and when they learn them completely 100% under their control is now gone completely. You can power loot but that still gives no control over what magazines will be found or how quickly you will find them. Maybe in this playthrough you'll get to cement by the first horde night but in the next you might not get cement going until much later with no control over being able to speed it up.

 
@Roland I highly doubt that a magazine for a crafting skill can be more exciting than beeing able to step on mines or extra 50% sneak damage or getting a chance to one shot ores. It´s just a crafting skill. That is now kind of luck based. Please note the "kind of" before going all over me about how it works.
So you don't get excited anytime you find a schem to craft something that you don't already know? If so I find that.... strange. But you do you, because I love learning how to craft something new or better. As for the books, I'll feel equally excieted when I find one I haven't read before. It's all a matter of perspective and player. 

 
I just caught up on the last 3 or 4 pages...wow....TFP's better get A21 out soon before everyone goes completely bonkers lol. Some heated debates here.

Debating is good though. Get to see different side of things. For me, I feel no matter what the changes I will still play the game. Been playing since 2015 and

don't think there is much they will do to turn me completely off from it. Plus as long as they leave it modable like it is now, I think I and others will be fine.

I mean those of us who dabble into the modded versions.

 
Remember the arrow slits that zombies could not traverse at all? Many players loved it and simply made unbreakable bases on horde night. And complained that the obvious bug was fixed.


Actually, most people I ran into complain because fixing the zombie pathing over arrow slits was done at the expense of using them as arrow slits. You used to be able to reach in through the gap, which was immensely useful for base building to wire your base up. Put up your trip wires, electric fences, dart traps and even restock. After the change, you have to break them every time you need to access them. I can't overstate how bad this is now, making their use extremely frustrating every single time you need access.

In other words, the price for preventing "some" players from using them in "cheesy" ways, was to prevent EVERYONE from using them properly. This is probably the worst trade off the TFP has ever done, where legitimate players gets punished by TFP trying to prevent cheesy players. It's one of the "fixes" that TFP really should revert, as punishing all those of us who never use them to cheese, just to stop those who might cheese, is really an unacceptable trade.

While I think fixing the lack of pathing in this case was good, if it can't be done without punishing regular use, it really shouldn't be done :)

Now that you mention it, I have hated the zombie AI since A17. 

Please bring back the zombies that actually act like zombies instead of the conga line of structural engineers who magically detect and path to the weakest block.

It was far less predicable and exploitable when the zombies would just swarm in waves and start beating on random parts of your walls. Now all horde bases are basically identical because the zombies are too "smart" for their own good.


I think you bought the wrong game then... did you miss the part about "tower defense" elements? That's exactly how monsters behave in a TD game, so unless you want them to also change this game's sub-genre, I suggest you adapt your gameplay to it.


I'm with Grue on this. Alpha 17 change over to a new AI pathing while it has benefits in POI's etc (less swiss cheese POI's), when it comes to Blood Moon Horde it's far inferior. Not only are zombies omniscient, they don't act like zombies. There are no more tower defense elements of 7dtd as a result. You used to be better off making layered defenses as zombies would come in from a direction and break down the base walls trying to get closer to the player from that direction. Now they lemming their way to their death seeking the path of least resistance and just making a kill-entrance is sufficient as you know the zombies won't go anywhere else.

I think TFP should keep the omniscient pathing in POI's (the zombies lived there, so it makes sense they'd know where to go), but use a different AI for blood moon hordes, make it cheap computationally, waves of zombies storming the base, and maybe we can have a horde defense game as opposed to small squads of zombie commandos.

:)

 
It seems that way on paper but in reality I craft much more often in A21 than I ever did in A20 or A19. It does seem counter-intuitive but it is true. I still do occasionally find something better than what I can craft but it is nowhere nearly as often as it has been in the past.


And that's a good change. I think many of us have seen that over the years crafting has been de-focused, to the point of obsolesce for weapons/armour/tools.

However, this change likely has nothing to do with learn-by-looting, and more due to looting/buying/questing for gear the last few years was simply far superior, as you'd pretty much always have access to higher quality gear than you ever could craft. I'd definitely prefer if loot/quest/bought gear was much more rare, and inferior quality to what you can craft.

What I would like to see is Q6 gear crafting restored, and removed from loot/quest/trader ... want that top quality shotgun? Better skill into it, as you'll never get it from buying or looting it. That would flip the current situation where eventually you still are better off using a looted/quested/bought Q6 piece of gear as you can only craft Q5.

 
You used to be able to reach in through the gap, which was immensely useful for base building to wire your base up.
True, but you could also argue that being able to do that was a bit silly. You can reach through that tiny slit with a repair tool and materials to fix a fence post? Or pull an M60 out of a loot bag into your inventory? Meh.

I think TFP should keep the omniscient pathing in POI's (the zombies lived there, so it makes sense they'd know where to go), but use a different AI for blood moon hordes, make it cheap computationally, waves of zombies storming the base, and maybe we can have a horde defense game as opposed to small squads of zombie commandos.
Now this I agree with completely. I also believe faatal has mentioned wanting to maybe do something like that, but I think it was mentioned as more of a "If I have time" type wishlist item. But simplifying the AI during BMs would both help with performance, while allowing for more zombies and make you defend your whole base as controlling their pathing would really be possible. If they spawn on the north side of your base, they should come straight towards you and break anything that stops them till they get to you. This would make BMs much more fun and intense.

 
Speed runners are going to be the ones that go out of their minds, imo. Power grinding to buy their way up the skill ladders at lightning speed and having what recipes they learn and when they learn them completely 100% under their control is now gone completely. You can power loot but that still gives no control over what magazines will be found or how quickly you will find them. Maybe in this playthrough you'll get to cement by the first horde night but in the next you might not get cement going until much later with no control over being able to speed it up.


I agree that speed runners will be the most impacted.  How ever, I don't agree they will have no control over it.  I predict, once players know which loot containers have the best chances for which types of magazines, specific POIs will be targeted to improve their progression in said areas.

I don't want to go into more detail as figuring that stuff out is half the fun imo.

 
Single player is going to make it so that a no looting run is very challenging and an extremely slow progression since you will be using primitive gear and building lower tier blocks for a lot longer. The thing is that I doubt there are many builders out there who build in the survival game instead of creative mode and who also detest looting to the point that they never want to do it. The change is going to force the single player who wants to build in survival to do more looting. There is no question. But if most people who play SP are at least tolerant of looting they are going to be fine.
The problem with single player builders is not that they won't loot, but that they spend much more time building than perhaps the average player does.

For example, I have been working on my current base for two in-game weeks straight. I just bounced between my crafting base, the mines, and the horde base. During these two weeks I got some levels by building and of course some time went by. This has of course also increased the gamestage.

The question is simply how much time we have to spend looting so that the gear is still adequate to the gamestage. With the system in place, can we even afford not to loot for longer periods of time?

 
So you don't get excited anytime you find a schem to craft something that you don't already know? If so I find that.... strange. But you do you, because I love learning how to craft something new or better. As for the books, I'll feel equally excieted when I find one I haven't read before. It's all a matter of perspective and player. 


Yes and No.  Finding a crafting recipe for something you need and can craft is a nice surprise.   However, alot of the time in A20, said craftable will be a low quality if you're not perked into it.

The new magazine crafting system in A21 adds value to all parts since now all players have the potential to craft higher quality crafts despite their perk point allocations as long as they keep improving their crafting skills.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Actually, most people I ran into complain because fixing the zombie pathing over arrow slits was done at the expense of using them as arrow slits. You used to be able to reach in through the gap, which was immensely useful for base building to wire your base up. Put up your trip wires, electric fences, dart traps and even restock. After the change, you have to break them every time you need to access them. I can't overstate how bad this is now, making their use extremely frustrating every single time you need access.

In other words, the price for preventing "some" players from using them in "cheesy" ways, was to prevent EVERYONE from using them properly. This is probably the worst trade off the TFP has ever done, where legitimate players gets punished by TFP trying to prevent cheesy players. It's one of the "fixes" that TFP really should revert, as punishing all those of us who never use them to cheese, just to stop those who might cheese, is really an unacceptable trade.

While I think fixing the lack of pathing in this case was good, if it can't be done without punishing regular use, it really shouldn't be done :)


I would agree with you if players had zero alternatives for repairing electrical traps (and other similar functions) conveniently but there are tons.  Yes, it's unfortunate that the convenience was lost with this shape but this really is just another example of players getting too attached to something.

A common misconception by some people is that the developers waste hours upon hours looking for ways to ruin player's fun, when in actuality it's just an objective change based on priority and severity of the reported bug.

The Arrowslit block issue is a great example of a low priority issue that was reported many alphas ago but wasn't fixed until not long ago because a dev finally had time to work on it.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
A common misconception by some people is that the developers waste hours upon hours looking for ways to ruin player's fun, when in actuality it's just an objective change based on priority and severity of the reported bug.

The Arrowslit block issue is a great example of a low priority issue that was reported many alphas ago but wasn't fixed until not long ago because a dev finally had time to work on it.
But it's also an example of how a quick fix broke something else. Wouldn't it have been possible to allow the zombies to walk over the arrow slits but at the same time retain the function to reach through the arrow slits?
 

 
And that's a good change. I think many of us have seen that over the years crafting has been de-focused, to the point of obsolesce for weapons/armour/tools.

However, this change likely has nothing to do with learn-by-looting, and more due to looting/buying/questing for gear the last few years was simply far superior, as you'd pretty much always have access to higher quality gear than you ever could craft. I'd definitely prefer if loot/quest/bought gear was much more rare, and inferior quality to what you can craft.

What I would like to see is Q6 gear crafting restored, and removed from loot/quest/trader ... want that top quality shotgun? Better skill into it, as you'll never get it from buying or looting it. That would flip the current situation where eventually you still are better off using a looted/quested/bought Q6 piece of gear as you can only craft Q5.


I definitely agree crafting has been greatly diminished in importance over the years.  The new magazine reading system in A21 will certainly boost it back in the opposite direction.

I doubt it will ever be boosted to the point where crafting is hands down the best path to the best equipment.  Apart from bloodmoon gameplay, the core gameplay loop is definitely through questing/looting POIs.

However, that doesn't mean crafting can't bring something unique and rewarding to the table that looting / questing cannot.  At least that is what I would try to add in if there was time and if I had a say in the matter....😄

If not, probably would be something I would personally mod in myself post gold...😎

But it's also an example of how a quick fix broke something else. Wouldn't it have been possible to allow the zombies to walk over the arrow slits but at the same time retain the function to reach through the arrow slits?
 


I'm not a programmer so I wouldn't be able to speak to how easy or hard that would be.  I think it has something to do with how collision meshes work but not 100% sure.

 
And that's a good change. I think many of us have seen that over the years crafting has been de-focused, to the point of obsolesce for weapons/armour/tools.

However, this change likely has nothing to do with learn-by-looting, and more due to looting/buying/questing for gear the last few years was simply far superior, as you'd pretty much always have access to higher quality gear than you ever could craft. I'd definitely prefer if loot/quest/bought gear was much more rare, and inferior quality to what you can craft.

What I would like to see is Q6 gear crafting restored, and removed from loot/quest/trader ... want that top quality shotgun? Better skill into it, as you'll never get it from buying or looting it. That would flip the current situation where eventually you still are better off using a looted/quested/bought Q6 piece of gear as you can only craft Q5.
I completely agree, they have it reversed. The crafted items should be superior to loot because it requires a lot more effort/resources to craft something vs ninja-looting skyscrapers.

For what it is worth, I have a small mod that adds the +1 crafting back on the nerdy glasses, but only when you are also under the influence of the Nerd Tots.

 
So you don't get excited anytime you find a schem to craft something that you don't already know? If so I find that.... strange. But you do you, because I love learning how to craft something new or better. As for the books, I'll feel equally excieted when I find one I haven't read before. It's all a matter of perspective and player. 


In A20? Yes. But in A21 when i know from start on that there will be a point where i can craft, let´s say the SMG5, it will just be "ah finally". You know will get there and after getting to know how the new systems works in terms of progression speed you will even know when you will be able to.

@Roland You are so far besides my point it´s not even funny anymore. Do you even read? Or do you just see that someone isn´t fully happy about the change and give out slightly altered standard replies?

I never said the playstyle is dead. Repeat: I never said the playstyle is dead. Again?

What i said: You will get disadvantages. Again: Those playstyles will get disadvantages. They will NOT be impossible. Got that?

And for the experiene it yourself part. That is usually true. But as said, from the description alone it is 100% clear that you have the disadvantage of progressing slower than the looters. Unless TFP didn´t tell us all, wich would be odd considering they exactly know what this change is going to do to certain playstyles and they wanted people to go bonkers in the forums about it until A21 releases.

Mix that up with water changes and it might (carefull here, i said might and didn´t claim it will be like that 100%) be a huge disadvantage for groups who have different roles and people who never go looting because they simply don´t like it and would never have played the game in the first place if it wasn´t possible to play without looting at all. Yes, looters can provide them for stay at home players. But there is limited inventory space and encumberance that also come into play here. That´s 2-4 more spots beeing used i guess. Another disadvantage.

The builders/miners/farmers/cooks/crafters will be slower in progression (again, unless TFP didn´t tell us everything, wich would be downright stupid imo) that is a fact looking at the information we are given. This does effect the whole group. And if water is somewhat rare in loot and looting will just fulfill the needs of one person looting, then certain roles aren´t viable anymore at all, but we got no information on that, so that part is just speculating. But i am pretty sure we won´t find enough water to sustain the need for glue if only 3 out of 5 people go looting.

Propably said already, but the filter for the dew collector beeing a rare loot drop is absolutly disgusting. Another try to force us to do things we don´t like. Using traders. Those are OP. You could get an additional challenge when not using them, but if one now doesn´t want to rely on looting all the water (even someone who goes looting, limited inventory and encumberance are a thing) you propabl need to rely on the trader if you can´t get it to drop in loot. And for beeing able to buy it, you need to use the trader for more than just buying it. And i can already see playtroughs where you need to do quests because you can´t get it in loot and in the inventory and need now to rely on it as a quest reward.

That filter might (again, might, carefull here) also play into the whole other situation with the other roles. We usually do need a LOT of duct tape. If that filter isn´t dropping on all 3 occasions, looting is the only way to sustain enough glue, especially seeing that the recipe got adjusted. No clue how, but it´s either less bones or more murky water. Seeing how bones usually weren´t a problem at all, my bet is on more water. But we will see about that. Point is, that it might become a problem to get enough glue unless all of us go looting. (again might, carefull)

Make that filter a craftable item.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
IMO, making the best things (and some "gate items") craftable, would make every play through progression feel same-ish much more than having those items as rare loot.

The Fun Pimps did the right choice there. Also, it doesn't make much sense that you can craft military grade weapons with a ragtag workbench in your backyard. Most of the time you can't nowadays, even with all the available stuff you can buy. Are we talking about common sense here, or what?

I am talking in general, expressing my opinion on the topic.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top