PC A17 is the easiest alpha for a long time (and the least fun)

[Gazz]

I'm not super happy with the XP distribution function but it's workable.

What I would have done is split evenly but toss in a small bonus for every extra player in the group.

 

[Ghostlight]

The xp distance is 100m by default.

Isnt it 500m?

Then you dont know me very well lol. I can think of all kinds of cool stuff to do late game. And I don't hurry to it either.

Actually I do. But you're not normal Kage (that's a compliment btw).

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What I would have done is split evenly but toss in a small bonus for every extra player in the group.

That sounds really good.

 

[Kage848]

I'm telling ya - you reach that same problem much much much faster than before... Shouldn't it be slower and slower as the game continues to develop and add more and more...That's all I'm saying. You're preaching to the choir about starting over...I do - do that. The problem is you got to do that even sooner..
And..ya..I love exploring the new POIs..but I don't 'need' to. That was my point.

It's good you did them first though - my problem is now i'm so OP that it's not scary when they fall from the ceiling. One-shotting ferals and two-shotting zombie bears. For science I stood and let an army zed beat on me for several seconds just to see what danger he actually posed. It took many seconds to get me nervous. Your health refils soo fast and I never get stunned. Get hit run back, your health is right back to 100% due to the perk. I've not even used hardly any bandages at all in this playthrough past that first slog. If it stays like this we will have to mod the hand damage for every entity. I think insane already does 200% more damage than default does. I don't maybe they changed that too though. Maybe it's just less now.

I think we need more end game. But what I see some asking for is everything we have now, just slow it all down. Less xp, slower mining, less loot and stuff like that. That's where I have a problem. I want my buddies doctor3d and jax to have long extended gameplay but not at the expense of slower progression that hurts players like me that play at a slower pace. Besides stretching out gameplay that's already there is easy and lazy.

I say more endgame content. Harder zombies at higher gamestage, raiders, irradiated zones with damage over time effects. Stuff like that.

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Isnt it 500m?


Actually I do. But you're not normal Kage (that's a compliment btw).

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That sounds really good.

Lol very true. And its 100m on default for sure. Someone asked me to raise it on my server but I said no. Forces groups to stay together and is the single best thing about the aloha in mp. Best mp addition ever, any alpha.

 

[sinda]

the feeling i get is a17 brings a much needed overhaul to the backend structural support to the base game, and everything around it is still being fleshed out (i hope).

i said this elsewhere

the stone axe repair is INFURIATING.... for half a day until i loot 2 nailguns, a hammer and 5 wrenches.
and that one sentence probably can be applied to almost everything i've seen so far.

there is so much potential in the longevity of looting with the changes to the schematic system being consumed in recipes; except you seem to loot almost anything you need, anywhere you go, before you really need to craft things.

i don't agree that mining should net equal xp to zombie killing, since you're doing it at no risk (and i do love to mine) but it should probably reward more than it does. building DOES come at a risk and should receive some love, but also not equal to zombie slaying.

more specified loot per location would be dreamy.

(edit to clarify- i AM enjoying myself tons. but there should be some changes to the base game that shouldn't rely on modding)

 

[Ornias]

Day 1 on my last restart spawned in sight of a shotgun messiah, and looted nine (9!) guns. 4 hunting rifles, 1 shotgun, 3 pistols and a sniper rifle. It actually made me lose interest for the rest of the day. I do find it weird that I can craft a bike at a found workbench at level 20, but cannot make my own bench until level 30.

 

[lord_ahriman]

Disclaimer: sorry bad english, isn't my first language.

A17 is a very good overhaul, but it still has some major flaws (imo). As Kage said, bones for example is a big problem. Adding gore blocks to the roads and killing animals won't get you enough (not to mention looting). On A16, despite being easier, I'd still need around 150 exploding bolts + 2 ~ 2.5k shotgun shells on high GS hordes. Ok, we don't have enough bones, so let's change it: electric fences + dart traps. We just need iron now, problem solved. Not at all. Hearing/sensing is way overpower now so underground mining is only possible below 40+ meters, which means we loose a big part of ore veins and we can't have mining entrances everywhere.

I really don't mind zombies digging, but at the current stage world will be a swiss cheese very fast and that's not fun at all because it means game over (and I agree to Jax, it can happen faster than A16). A good solution would be this overpower sensing/hearing only on horde nights so underground bases are not safe. I think it's pure BS I can't start mining 20 meter below underground (where we start find big ore veins) due to sensing/hearing. Adding to that, builders not getting enough xp is really annoying, but I wouldn't mind not levelling up faster if in exchange we get more materials, specially iron, coal, nitrate and lead (we need more stones, but I don't think a huge boost is necessary).

 

[Aerial]

I'm not super happy with the XP distribution function but it's workable.
What I would have done is split evenly but toss in a small bonus for every extra player in the group.

Alone, I get 700 XP for a normal zombie. In a 2-man group, I get 629 XP. Grouping up nearly doubles the rate of experience gain and is easier to accomplish since we can kill zombies more easily when working together. It's way unbalanced in its current state.

individual XP = [(zombie XP) / (number of players in group)] * 1.10 would be about right (which is what you were saying you'd prefer, I think)

 

[Kage848]

the feeling i get is a17 brings a much needed overhaul to the backend structural support to the base game, and everything around it is still being fleshed out (i hope).
i said this elsewhere

there is so much potential in the longevity of looting with the changes to the schematic system being consumed in recipes; except you seem to loot almost anything you need, anywhere you go, before you really need to craft things.

i don't agree that mining should net equal xp to zombie killing, since you're doing it at no risk (and i do love to mine) but it should probably reward more than it does. building DOES come at a risk and should receive some love, but also not equal to zombie slaying.

more specified loot per location would be dreamy.

(edit to clarify- i AM enjoying myself tons. but there should be some changes to the base game that shouldn't rely on modding)

I get the risk idea, as far as mining vs looting. But it's not about risk, it's about real life time investmeant. My time means more to me than any risk a zombie can provide. I'm annoyed when i need to mine and I'm being punished progression wise because of it. And let's face it, xp is king in alpha 17.

 

[Kalarro]

You are machine lol. Well cant wait to see 5.
And no, I dont think the fun pimps will give us builders enough love xp wise. I was saying this in my stream yesterday. I hear tales of the pimps nerfing zombie xp by 30% and I kinda freaked out lol. Someone said, mining is getting a buff. I said it wont be much lol. If you spend 24 hours killing, exploring and looting and end up with, say 10k xp then you should get 10k xp for 24 hours of mining and building. Just example numbers btw.

I love the builder perk idea. Get on it Joel

Theres a post from Joel saying they will nerf zombi xp a bit, and that the buff for builders will be double of what it is now.

I think that is a good ammount, and will leave killing zombies still above building, since now its much more than double.

 

[sinda]

I get the risk idea, as far as mining vs looting. But it's not about risk, it's about real life time investmeant. My time means more to me than any risk a zombie can provide. I'm annoyed when i need to mine and I'm being punished progression wise because of it. And let's face it, xp is king in alpha 17.

yes, can agree there also. same coin, different sides

 

[Exxodous]

I'm not sure I feel this is the "easiest" Alpha. I think normal gameplay isn't too bad (5 deaths in 7 days however) but horde night....DANG.

I'll preface that I play 120 min days which is a mistake game stage wise (Level 25), but I don't feel I can get a base built on default. So I spent 4 days building my horde base, that's a lot of trees and boulders btw. And yes I cheesed the AI by building stairs but we were actively defending and repairing, probably went through 500 9mm, 100 shotgun and 100 steel arrows. They run up the stairs, fall down and repeat. I upgraded every block to max scrap iron (2000 hp?) and put out 200 spikes and the base got wrecked. Not by the zombies beating on it but by cops exploding. We (wife and I) probably had a dozen cops or more and countless green ferrels. We did manage to survive but only because the horde stopped at midnight.

I guess my point is this. Horde night might advance just a little quickly. I'm sure if I wasn't an experienced player, my game stage would probably have been lower. But my experience also told me that if I didn't take advantage of the AI where I could there is no way the base would have survived. Had the blood moon actually went to 4 am my stairs would have been gone and they would have started on my structure. Now I'm not complaining about that, as I like that they will take out your supports. However the structure I built has no chance on day 14 and I won't have concrete by then.

My wish is the game stage advanced a little slower so I could learn what works and what doesn't as I progress through horde nights. If I were a new player the learning curve doesn't seem to match gamestage advancement. I may have to remove cop explosion damage for a while so I can continue testing base designs as I was unable to kill a single one before he blew up.

Overall I'm really enjoying this Alpha and look forward to any balancing that may come.

 

[SittingDuck]

2- It´s not not the gun but the mod... mods are the high level good stuff and we are still looking for a lot of mods ^^

3-At level 100 food should not be a Problem. And if you want the challange, dont farm, don´t level the food stuff perks... done... feeding will be realy hard

 

[Reth]

I can't imagine being Roland. Reading this forums would be the most confusing thing ever. This thread is a great example. OMG this game is too easy now! It's so easy, I had to turn the difficulty down! OMG!

Early game becomes exceptionally boring once you know what TFP wants you to do first in this particular alpha. Figuring that out was the challenge indeed, because their priorities for players seem to shift over time.

The first few days you can't do much but run around and loot every single pile of trash and nest you see while killing every zombie you see. Once you make your first iron reinforced club and figure out how to do a head strike with a special attack, zombies, dogs and vultures become a non-issue. The only issue is to stand still and wait till your stamina regenerates. That one is hard indeed because I can't recall other games where standing in one place was an important game mechanic, so it took me a while to get used to it.

Base building is no more challenging that it was in A16. It's just different. Instead of your regular base consisting of strong walls, deadly traps and a killing field you have to build an inane contraption that exploits AIs desire to follow the path of least resistance. A17 base building is hard till you accept that normal bases don't work anymore, then it becomes easy.

PoIs can be very challenging till your stop trying to follow the obvious path in and pull all the sleepers out first. That's where guns come in and you'll have plenty before long. PoIs are hard if you rush in and start swinging like you used to do. PoIs are easy one you figure out that rushing in is not a viable approach.

Food can be challenging if you try to loot it all, as you did in A16. It becomes a non-issue once you find out just how much meat animals (including dogs) drop and how many eggs you can loot from nests. Different? Yes. Difficult? No. More exciting and challenging? Hardly.

TL;DR - the only challenge is to figure out the right sequence of things to do. Before you do that - it's challenging. After - it's boring.

 

[Ghostlight]

2- It´s not not the gun but the mod... mods are the high level good stuff and we are still looking for a lot of mods ^^

I have more mods than I can use, as I said in OP, even modding up several "duplicate" guns just to make them a little different.