Been playing it that way for years man - we sometimes get some FPS drops on blood moon because the game spawns in some massive hordes, but it's so much fun when there's 2 dozen of us (or even more) all in the same base, that we all worked on, all pitch in on, and all built together. Every bullet, brick, and bomb was all something we made so when we defended it, it felt like we're defending our one big collective home, and people depend on each other in that situation. It's fun. Plus everyone I play it with are neighbors of mine, we're all part of a almost 3,000 person Discord server for gamers in our little part of the Pacific Northwest, so we get along great and know how to not make a Discord channel with 30 people in it sound like 'audio soup' lolHonestly im kinda baffled at people coming out of the woodwork with 10+ people to a base. I don't even know what you'd do with more than 4-6 people in a base haha. I'd have figured for larger groups you'd end up with multiple mid to large sized bases rather than 1 based crammed full of people like sardines. For a variety of reasons. Storage space, crafting space, farm space, POI coverage, creating safe travel routes, multiple trader coverage, etc.
And dew collectors definitely work for 4-6 people bases. But these 10+ people megabases, I dunno if the game is even designed for them. Heck I dunno if a blood moon could scale properly to threaten 10+ people without destroying the server lol.
A note for people and potable water though: Boiling water was not as common as you think. Not only did people often not do it bag in ye olden times but even if they knew they often simply didn't have enough fuel to burn to do so because the average person is super wealthy today compared to people at most times and history. Often all they could do is strain water through cloth. Also, quite frankly, people didnt used to know what germs were. So if the water looked fine they usually just assumed it was fine. It would only be noticeably contaminated stuff you'd consider cleaning. ALOT of people died or got sick in ye olden ages due to bad water. But we assume people knew better and did things closer to what we do today.
PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary
- Thread starter Roland
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jorbascrumps
New member
I stopped reading after this. The game is not balanced for that number of players. No wonder you're having issues.
When we move into a town, it looks like a wave of locusts washed over it and picked it clean afterward lol we loot everything we see.
I am seeing other people on this thread though mentioning they're not finding crafting books as a reasonable enough rate. I don't think it scales whether it's 1 person or 100 persons in a single game (maybe?) that might be influencing the way the loot table works or something - I honestly have no idea, I just know it seems off and wonky in the spawn rate of magazines, and I think it's partly because the primary people doing the looting spec themselves out with stuff that makes them better at what they're doing - i.e. sneaky, or powerful or capable of using a weapon better etc. The crafting magazines are for crafters - who stay at base usually and do what their job is - to build.
So the bonus to finding the magazines that crafters need in order to build better tools and weapons doesn't exist unless the builders quit working on the base and go loot stuff themselves. Thus the 'flow' of these magazines ends up coming in at rates that are disproportionate to their need. We *need* forging magazines, but the only way to find more of them is A. I leave base and go look more, neglecting my construction and organization of inventory or B. Someone 'wastes' magazines, by reading a bunch of them and then increases the likelihood they'll find them. This sucks because someone is using magazines, to learn skills they won't ever apply to anything, and eats up the supply of mags we'd need early game to find them. So if it's a smaller group these balances seem fine, I guess. One or two or maybe three players, it's no problem. But parties can be size 8. Servers can hold somewhere around 32 players before becoming unstable. And lots of people like to play this with two opposing factions that fight sometimes, as well. There's a lot of servers where the larger multiplayer experience is just a big bowl of spaghetti now.
As I said before - it's a great update for solo players and small groups, but for people who play this with friends, or on servers where factions exist, etc. it's super confusing now and the rates at which stuff we need drops is askew for everyone. The people who don't need magazines end up getting perks and bonuses and boosts for magazines that they don't need, and the people who do need them have no way of boosting their rate of getting them unless they essentially neglect their job and go scavenge as well, which leaves the base (again this is a base that stores, protects, and gives enough adequate room for crafting for a dozen or more people) in complete disarray, no one can ever find anything, the scavengers coming back in have to stop and put stuff away because we can't 'afford' to have enough folks stationed there to keep an eye on crafting, building, upgrading, and sorting out the inflow of raw materials, or the outflow of refined ones (like guns, ammunition, armor, and other equipment/supplies that the scavengers/looters would use)
We've drastically cut down on the size of the home base team, but out of need for more magazines to build things like bellows or other items in those tool trees, we spend too much time looking for those books and because the looted radius is already 1/4 of the map at this point, we're having to travel a crazy amount of distance to find unlooted stuff.
There's literally dozens of servers that have more than 20 people online at any given time, and have been for years and years, dude. The built in server player cap is 32. So I'll say the game *was* balanced for that number of players before A21, and it worked fine. None of us had issues or complaints.
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Ralathar44
New member
Ok, I'm going to draw a very VERY clear line in this conversation right now to prevent some of the stupid back and forth.
There is a helluva difference between 20 people on a server and 20 people in a single base. 20 people on a server is quite viable. 20 people in a single base or small area the game is likely not built for and prolly never will be. And while I'm glad yall have enjoyed the game during some prior updates where things happened to work how yall wanted for that style of play, so long as the game is designed around much smaller sets of people it's always eventually going to diverge and that's not anyone being malicious or bad or mean or etc. That would just be the devs doing their jobs because the needs and designs necessary to serve those needs difference between group sizes. As you're pointing out here in this very thread. And unfortunately the majority population and core design is always gonna win out on this.
I'm sure TFP will try to be flexible if they can, but there is a good chance they just cannot while still properly serving their core audience.
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Totally agree, TFP need to continue this way, it's by far one of the best update.
(You forgot to mention the horrible eating sound tho haha)
Again - it was never a problem. Even in the barebones early versions of it when I still played this game on an old office hand-me-down machine, we were able to host a dedicated server and play that way just fine it was never an issue.
I'll also point out: how do you respond to all these other people in here who play solo or in a duo that are also saying the magazine drop rates are creating bottlenecks and preventing them from doing one thing while having an overabundance in ability to build something else? It's not *just* groups, it's such a complex way of managing a crafting system that relies so heavily on one item being available to make a bunch of others. It makes no sense to see people having 60+ magazines of one type that allows them to build augers on day 14 (way too early for an auger, but not too early for a workbench) but can't build the auger, because they *also* can't build workbenches since only a handful of those magazines have arrived.
I'm not telling you that we're seeing technical problems. It's a *drop rate* problem, whether we were all in separate bases and areas or not, for the volume of players on the server that we have, we're still seeing weird drop rates of magazines. Not only that - but because of again the VOLUME whether they're in a base in one end or not, we've cleared roughly 25% of the loot on the map already, and we're still 2-3 weeks away from loot respawn. That works out later in the game when people have to travel further to get to it so it isn't consumed as quickly, but the point is there are only so many magazines on the map - whereas before you could have 20-30 people on a single server spread out OR in one spot, it didn't matter, we could all progress at a rate and time that we needed to. Under the new system - whether we're across on opposite ends of the map or right next to each other, the drop rates for magazines are wonky, and the sheer ratio of 'lootable spots' vs 'magazine drops' just doesn't compensate for that off-balanced rate drop.
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Roland
Moderator
It’s all random. The perk boost is not a guarantee. You and your wife are flush with Forge Ahead mags this playthrough but could experience a famine of them next playthrough. It is different every time I play. Sometimes it’s parts I can’t find and sometimes it’s magazines and other times I have plenty of everything.
@Archer and his group could restart and have a gush of all the right magazines that new game. As expected, there have been people wondering if the perk boost is bugged and others claiming it is too powerful.
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Ralathar44
New member
I'd say this has always been the case even in the Learn By Doing days. The only difference is the thing you blame. In Learn by doing it was the sheer grind required to level each thing up that was the bottleneck, which is why people spam crafted things for hours and hours. In the following heavily gated attribute system it was the gating of needing huge amounts of an attribute to do something. In the following more lightly gated system they relaxed it into that we just got out of it was recipes from crackabooks as well as attribute specific key perks like sexy rexy and flurry of blows and miner69er and etc gating specific things progressing quickly behind specific attributes. And now that they made that gating softer still with magazines we'll blame drop rates and the magazines.
Also part of the picture, beakers/calipers/crucibles/acid/etc that just wouldn't drop. Same story, different day. But objectively and realistically the game progresses like 10 times faster today than it used to. The only time its ever been faster is when you could basically skip all RNG for all core elements via "I have exp so I magically know how to fight even though all ive done is build!" (or vice vera) and they got a ton of complaints about that so they fixed it. Much to your chagrin. Personally I could play either way. I don't have a "side" per se.
The magazines that allow you to build Augurs are the Harvesting tool magazines and it takes 60 to max it out. Harvesting tools are pretty important for everyone and you have 30 people on your server. Seeing 60+ of those, in context, actually only makes sense. Especially since Miner69 increases how many of them show up and alot of people always get miner69er. 100 Harvesting magazines spread between even 10 people is only just barely maxing stone axes and shovels and barely starting iron tools. This "gotcha" argument is unfortunately very very weak if not directly counterproductive to your intended arguments.
Lockpicking and Advanced Engineering however were not so popular ever since people took the gating out and alot of people consider them wasted skill points. I'm wagering far less people took Advanced engineering and took less points on average than people did Miner 69er. And that goes triple for lockpicking. Both are now very valuable, but alot of people think they can get away without taking them because you can get magazine drops without them and thy basically optimize themselves into a corner lol.
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jorbascrumps
New member
There's a difference between the developers allowing you to do something vs them designing for it. That the developers allow you to play with so many people is a blessing and you should be appreciative. But officially, TFP only designs and balances their game around a small number of players. You are playing outside of their design parameters and are surprised it's not working out well for you. Just because you were able to play with that volume of players and it "worked fine" does not mean that it was in fact fine when compared with the intended design of the game.
As a solo/ small group co-op player, I hope they do not balance the game around your expectations as it would ruin the game for me.
Where does it 'officially' say that?
Also: We've played 'outside of their design paramaters' and never were surprised about it for almost 10 years.
They haven't been making their game as intended for 10 years?
The way this reads it almost sounds like you're replying to someone else, you're making all sorts of points that I don't see how it applies to what I've said at all.
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Ralathar44
New member
I answered your question. Directly. That's how it applies. I suppose if you don't have a good answer to it then attempting to ignore it completely is as good of a way to concede the point as any. No I will not argue further about this. Its in black in white quoted above. However if this is your approach, then the significant amount of sympathy I actually did feel for your position is gone. I've got no respect for people who try to play mind games in well meaning discussions. Consider that conversation resolved and tabled.
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xbonedragonx
New member
100% agree with this. Regardless of anything all you salty people think, and especially you @Roland, I've played for the past 7 years, and I've experienced so much time gating because you keep changing it to suit such a specific playstyle. Books, attributes, now books again? I'm staying alpha 20, screw this. Beware, Their emperor has no clothes.
Lady Sakuyama
New member
played A21 for 16 hours now. love it. the progression feels nice now. please tell me this is the last time the skills will be reworked? its perfect now.
Thank you for all the detail. It seems you have been getting lots of magazines, probably the amount that would be expected at that time. So not a bug.
You say you can't build at the base because tools or items are missing. Which tools or items would that be exactly?
If it is the cement mixer: Can't you work with cobblestone and upgrade later?
Is it something else? You mentioned the bellows somewhere else but that can't be it as it is optional and can be substituted easily by building a second forge.
Also I read your discussions with some posters and I noticed that you said that some of the scavengers would need to read magazines so they would find more of those same magazines. But that does not help at all, that was a false rumour. And to make sure I just looked at the XML and there is nothing that would increase loot change for magazines by reading those magazines. You need to put one or two points into the associated **perk** to get the boost to find more of those specific magazines.
For example if you want to stay in the base and still have one looter find more "Forge Ahead" books tell him to just put one measly perk point into Lockpicking (and/or Advanced Engineering) and he will get that boost as well. Which perk is applicable is always listed in the description of the magazine. I mean lockpicking is even beneficial for a looter and it helps with finding "forge ahead" books just like Advanced Engineering, I don't think you would need much convincing there.
Also, since you asked: Yes, the game officially supports 1 to 8 players, anything else is neither guaranteed nor balanced by TFP. No idea where it is written exactly, but that topic already came up a few times and this was always the official answer. It means that servers working with more players is not by design but because the game is flexible enough to work with more than 8 players. But especially balance can be wonky because nobody at TFP is testing those situation.
Usually server operators adapt through modding, server scripts and adjusting options. For example I have heard that many server operators reset chunks from time to time so unlooted buildings and unwrenched cars resurface in already looted areas. And TFP also added a config option (default off) so chunks can auto-reset if not visited for a while.
It may be different now but no loot differences were detectable between biomes for horde night loot bags. It was still useful to build a horde base in the Wasteland to farm the night spawns for exp though.
Roland
Moderator
Whoa…Especially me? I’m not even salty….lol. I’ve enjoyed playing all the iterations and have been able to let each one go as each new one was developed.
Even if vanilla becomes so restrictive that it completely limits everyone to one single dev-approved play style, they have made sure to make the game moddable so that all players can still play the way they want to.
But here’s the thing. Reports of dead and destroyed game play styles are always greatly exaggerated during the first weeks of experimental.
Ralathar44
New member
Gotta love when people lash out completely emotionally. But IIRC one of the devs said it before: People don't go off the rails about things they don't care about. Even some of the more aggressive less savory posters are here at the end of the day because they like the game. Even if their way of showing it is terribad lol.
Slingblade2040
Active member
No they are seen as exaggerated by certain folks on the team on folks who hold power here because they don't like bad feedback only positivity and no criticism.
the pimps can't bother bringing back learn by doing and making it into a hybrid with the attribute system like alot of mods have done which alot of people like and instead went with their own ridiculous learn by looting hybrid system which is terrible.
Even madmoles ridiculous explanation for the water changes and not wanting people to be OP by end of week 1 by crafting 500 duty tape yet people can easily ride out on a bike and rng loot vehicles in the wasteland and boom OP gear. Even without going out to the wasteland getting tier iron tools and weapons isnt a big deal by day 8.
This alpha so far feels like the last 2 years were spent making the game look pretty with little in the way of fun gameplay mechanics. The time wasted on the dumb water and learn by looting could have gone into bandits or idk maybe adding in the story about the Duke to make the game fun.
Huge thanks to the modders who keep this game alive and entertaining and fix up bugs and issues when they show up in mods.
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