PC A18 - My first few hours (Pros and Cons)

[itsBorked]

Hey everyone, devs. Hope you're all having a blast with A18.

I hopped in tonight and spent roughly two and a half hours checking various things out. I played a small portion legitimately then I pulled out the cm/dm and cranked out some new objects to see how they work.

I've got a long post here mostly just taking note of what I've experienced and how I feel about it as I've been playing for a few major updates and always find myself coming back even if an update is not to my liking (cough A16 cough).

Anyway, here are some pros and cons. Take them with a grain of salt or criticize them as you wish, they're only my personal observations.

Pros:

• Loving the changes to existing POIs and the new POIs. Zombie spawns inside feel great and looting around them before killing them is just so satisfying. Great work here.
   
   
  
• Looting around sleepers is less of a nuisance as they no longer wake at a single jump or opened container; sneaking has purpose now.
   
   
  
• Very happy to see a cosmetic slot added to clothing so as to avoid wasting the single slot for modifications, thanks for that.
   
   
  
• Grenades are fantastic! The explosion effect is nice and the damage done is near perfect. My favorite function about the grenades is the ability to lay a trail of uncooked nades and blow one up causing a chain reaction, just awesome (I do miss that with gas barrels though).
   
   
  
• While I don't really like the Primitive Bow, I can understand the choice in it's existence. Sadly I've just simply replaced even crafting one as the Spear is a great alternative to it until the first skill point is put into Archery to allow for Wooden Bow crafting (see Spear damage info below).
   
   
  
• Spear damage is significantly higher than expected in many cases. Perhaps this is a choice in initial release to make users want to use it for decent testing purposes? Either way, thanks for the spear, it's quite versatile in battle.
   
   
  
• Reading books is now instantaneous instead of a minor animation. This small improvement has made the function so much more bearable when finding a library/bookstore and I cannot be happier.
   
   
  
• The desert has not only gotten more beautiful, it's now much more frightening to spend a night in. Coyotes howling and yapping, zombies and other unknown creatures shuffling in the sand. Great rejuvenation to the experience. (small video capturing this here: https://streamable.com/v0rk7 | 8K gen RWG desert spawn: )
  

Cons:

• Dysentery:
  Boiled water has a change to cause dysentery? Is this even possible in real life? Was the water even boiled correctly to be called "boiled water" if it's going to have a chance at causing it? I feel like this is just a little too much of an addition, but maybe I'm just being nit picky there. Bacon and eggs, in my most honest opinion, should be negligible to food poisoning chance. Adding an option to cure meats and other foods would be a great alternative to just outright eating canned foods only.
   
   
  
• Zombie spawns:
  What's up with this? There's next to nothing anywhere now. Yes, there's a few at times in the wild, but after clearing 7 or so in my immediate vicinity (multiple times in multiple areas) I was left to my lonesome with nothing coming at me. Was something adjusted here or am I just imagining things?
   
   
  
• Bears:
  The model is still a little strange, but it's getting better (not sure if it's changed all that much though honestly). The walking animation appears to stop working at random as he just simply slides across the terrain at times. He has a significant AI flaw in that you can easily rush him, jump on his back, and commence an onslaught of attacks without even being hit (see video link here: https://streamable.com/y2sdc). While I find it funny that I can jump on his back and hold on for dear life, I don't feel that it's intentional.
   
  Personal Suggestion:
  AI path correction for when player is standing in same vertical point.
   
   
  
• Primitive Bow: (I didn't attempt to use a Wooden Bow until it broke so I can't say for certain there)
  The damage makes sense, but I feel it could use a tiny bump higher just to make it even remotely worth using. Spending 10+ arrows seems moot when the spear can slay nearly all base enemies in roughly less than 5 to 10 hits. When the bow broke I was unaware due to a lack of audio and visual feedback. The bow was still pulling back as if it were fine and the sound on breakage was hardly audible.
   
  Personal Suggestion:
  Small increase in damage and slight increase in accuracy, arrow drop is understandable. Broken bows need a breaking animation or to be unusable upon breakage. Broken tools of all types need a much more noticeable sound on breakage and perhaps even a broken inventory icon. (I don't want to be that guy, but look at how ARK does broken tools and consider a similar UI adjustment accordingly)
   
   
  
• Bone Knife:
  I understand wanting to make this a less easily crafted item, but honestly.. 5 bones to make 1 shiv? Come on now..
   
  Personal Suggestion:
  1 Bone + 1 Stone requirement (the idea being that a stone is used to break and shape the bone into a sharpened state). Also, Bone Knife Level X breaks in X hits, regardless of contact and obviously not repairable. Level 2 and so on, 1-2 extra hits per.
  
  Example:
  (hit numbers reflect no importance, merely a variable for explanation)
  Level 1 = 3 hits
• Level 2 = 5 hits
• Level 3 = 7 hits
• Level 4 = 9 hits
• Level 5 = 12-15 hits

[*]Berserk Mode:

I know this is a big topic right now all over the forum, but this truly does ruin the gameplay quite a bit. At first experience it feels more like the zombie has suddenly turned a speedhack on and off repeatedly. This is disorienting and while not only confusing it is also unfriendly to users who may be over the 150 ping range (myself included as I live in Japan currently while hosting a server in the West US for friends in America). The functionality of this mode allows for a cheap shot by the zombies that doesn't feel fair in the slightest to the player, especially with how unforgiving a blow can be in this game.

Now, I don't see a complete loss in this idea, but currently it needs polishing before I'd deem it worthy of being left in the game at this point in time. Scavenger mode is simply not a proper solution to this issue, so please look beyond that when approaching my mention of the issue here.

Personal Suggestion:

Have Berserk mode actually last a range of seconds with some sort of visual feedback (glowing eyes, audio cue, anger animation, etc.) rather than ticking on and off at random mid fight.

-OR-

Like everyone else seems to be saying, add a proper console variable in startup to allow for Berserk to be on or off. Binary only, there is no exception here as it currently does not play well regardless of the ping issue stated before. If there are some significant changes expected for this "mode" in the future then that's great. Otherwise, it's just not a good experience fighting speedhack switching zombies in singleplayer or multiplayer.

 

[Khulkhuum]

Might have had a good dose of luck, as i didn't get Dysentery nor Food Poisoning and already past day 7. I did mostly drink Bottled Water (which has 3%) and ate Charred Meat, Grilled Meat and Bacon with Eggs (all of these have some Food Poisoning/Dysentery). I remember playing in A17 and eating Yucca Fruit which had like 1% chance for food poisoning. I did eat quite a lot of them, but i got sick every other day.

Zombie spawns were adjusted, as far as i know. My theory is that due to Zs being a bit harder, the fighting being a bit different and progression being readjusted (to some extent) you will have less of them early on. Surely you won't be having groups of zombies appear every time you go out of your base (which i'm glad personally), but i presume there will be more Zs around as GameStage rises.

Bears, dunno about them. Seen one at a distance, but considering i couldn't kill a boar without dying, i'm pretty sure it's out of my league.

Primitive Bow seems a bit underpowered. Not gonna shift to spears any time soon (perhaps in another playthrough), but i feel it's less of a dominant weapon now. Also had the same issue with arrows not being loaded when switching weapons, even though i had it loaded before, as well as the broken status. Needed a couple times to repair my bow mid fight.

I have been using the Bone Shiv for quite a while and been repairing it constantly (using bones i think). It does not disappear, but has to be repaired before using (the message pops up just like when trying to use a broken weapon).

Rage mode could be worked on more. My personal opinion on it is that it's more of a placeholder for the moment and will be tweaked/enhanced further in the upcoming updates. It is a great idea, but just needs more polish. I find it interesting when enemies get into rage, especially from Bleeding debuff i give using the knives.

 

[Dadpool12a]

Cons:

[*]Dysentery:

Boiled water has a change to cause dysentery? Is this even possible in real life? Was the water even boiled correctly to be called "boiled water" if it's going to have a chance at causing it? I feel like this is just a little too much of an addition, but maybe I'm just being nit picky there. Bacon and eggs, in my most honest opinion, should be negligible to food poisoning chance. Adding an option to cure meats and other foods would be a great alternative to just outright eating canned foods only.

[*]Zombie spawns:

What's up with this? There's next to nothing anywhere now. Yes, there's a few at times in the wild, but after clearing 7 or so in my immediate vicinity (multiple times in multiple areas) I was left to my lonesome with nothing coming at me. Was something adjusted here or am I just imagining things?

[*]Bone Knife:

I understand wanting to make this a less easily crafted item, but honestly.. 5 bones to make 1 shiv? Come on now..

Dysentery - I think what the TFP are trying to get at is the chance that you did not boil the water long enough to kill all the bacteria. The small chance of dysentery with food and water is their way of not adding spoiling to the game. It also incentives making purified water and teas. I could go either way this this, but kind of like the change.

Zobmie spawns - I agree, I would like the spawn chance in cities/towns increased. I also think adding a "screaming" feature to roaming zombies that had a chance to bring more zombies to you would be nice way to fix this and keep performance good.

Bone Knife - the only way I can begin to justify the need for 5 bones is to say it simulates you finding the right size bone to make a bone shiv.

 

[Orclover]

I got hit with dysentary once finally last night after about 6 hours of total play through since patch release. It sucked. Used up all of my remaining meat and quite a few jars of boiled water to get back to where I was, even a canned good on top of that. Roughly ~5 minutes of time just eating and drinking to get rid of the effects and then was left with just 2 canned goods left. Seems they are pushing people into a play choice of NOTHING but canned food and drinks or wasting a few points on iron gut for long term toons.

Agreed, primitive bow is basically useless. Just skip it if you can. Honestly it would be better if they upped its damage to almost the other bow and then just made it break around 10-20 shots.

 

[Ghostlight]

Not enough Bones!! Again

Bones -> Glue -> Duct Tape

Duct Tape is needed in vast amounts in A18 which I don't like. A huge amount of crafting recipes use it, Repair Kits use it, and now EVERYTHING uses Repair Kits, even your basic tools which wear out constantly. I feel the need for Duct Tape far surpasses the amount of Bones you can find to make it with.

 

[Darthjake]

And don't even think about getting infected now without a ready source of antibiotics. Honey only knocks off 5% so if you don't have it on hand right then, you can start a deadly scavenger hunt for honey/antibiotics.

 

[Khulkhuum]

You know there are perks that lower Food Poisoning and Dysentery chances? Just sayin...

 

[Orclover]

Not enough Bones!! Again
Bones -> Glue -> Duct Tape

Duct Tape is needed in vast amounts in A18 which I don't like. A huge amount of crafting recipes use it, Repair Kits use it, and now EVERYTHING uses Repair Kits, even your basic tools which wear out constantly. I feel the need for Duct Tape far surpasses the amount of Bones you can find to make it with.

Bodies of all types, bull skulls in the desert, body bags at the hospital and army camps. There are a LOT of bones out there bro. I'm still trying to get my jar supply up to keep up with it, need to make a forge for jars but i'm not happy with a base location yet.

 

[Ghostlight]

I'm making Repair Kits etc for 4 people. I am well aware of the various Bone sources. Still not enough.

 

[wolffblood]

Not enough Bones!! Again
Bones -> Glue -> Duct Tape

Duct Tape is needed in vast amounts in A18 which I don't like. A huge amount of crafting recipes use it, Repair Kits use it, and now EVERYTHING uses Repair Kits, even your basic tools which wear out constantly. I feel the need for Duct Tape far surpasses the amount of Bones you can find to make it with.

I can understand why most things got changed to repair kits since the kits are now forged iron (normal staple) when it didn't need that before. So it's a subtle change of needing the same stuff as before, other than the duct tape being odd, while making kits easier to make for the old items that needed it but was a pain to make. Really I think they should add another way to craft glue that doesn't require bones, maybe one that includes animal fat and cloth? Should be easy enough to add it in yourself or have someone do it for you, or increase the amount of bones dropping in the XMLs, or reduce the amount of bones needed to craft glue. **I understand the answer to anything should not be "change the XMLs", but sadly there's only so much that can be done. This can just be an easy way to change something like this to make your game experience less stressful on you **

As for the other things, I'm loving this patch even with the rough patches. Though yeah, a few cons. The xp gains for the "classes" are way broken (based on the classes that the devs are trying to pick in general, the hunter/looter, builder/gatherer, miner). It's not really even viable nor rewarding to go looting through buildings. The lack of xp, the increase of needing more to kill zombies (seems to me it's easier to be infected, bleed, and get stunned now). This may seem to stem from the fact that all melee I've used so far (other than spear) actually has shorter range than zombies even though I should have more reach (arm length + weapon length vs zombie arm length). I don't know how many times I've swung, didn't hit even though the crosshair was on the zombie the whole time, then I'm getting hit and many times get stunned, bleed, and infection all at once, is a bit frustrating. There's just no reward for the massive increase of risk. I used to love being the hunter/looter while my friend only wants to worry about building/gathering, but now I don't want to do it, lol. Not to mention he's almost double my lvl (and i'm some over 10x zombie kills than him and 95% were outside the shared range) because building xp is ungodly now compared to how much longer it takes to kill zombies and the half xp kills now give. It's like they went to the opposite extreme. **I'll probably dig into the XMLs myself to up the xp from kills slightly to line up with building/crafting**

 

[itsBorked]

**Dysentery Issues**
**Zombie spawns**

**Bears**

**Primitive Bow**

**Bone Shiv**

**Rage mode**

All good tag points. As far as bears go, be sure to check that video I posted. I honestly couldn't believe I was able to simply jump on their back and sit there. The first time I did I just stood there for 5 minutes in amazement. He'll take a few steps here and there because he's still aware of you, but he'll never try to run out from under you in haste to re-align his attack which is just goofy.

Bone shivs seem silly to be repairable. Having made bone shivs as a child in a ditch out behind my grandparent's house I learned very quickly that they become brittle and break into shards very easily. They're not at all capable of being repaired beyond maybe one or two times with tape or something and at that they're still terrible to use due to splintering and shard splitting. Bones, first and foremost, should be a temporary or survival craft at best. Having the ability to repair them just reinforces players not advancing to a knife or machete due to repair tool usage annoyance.

I'm not a fan of Rage Mode purely for the bugginess in operation it causes. I do see a great potential for it to be used as a game changing experience when fighting zombies once polished as we've both agreed on. Right now it just does not belong in A18 though. It's been a great test, but it should really be put on a back burner for full stable implementation.

Dysentery - I think what the TFP are trying to get at is the chance that you did not boil the water long enough to kill all the bacteria. The small chance of dysentery with food and water is their way of not adding spoiling to the game. It also incentives making purified water and teas. I could go either way this this, but kind of like the change.
Zobmie spawns - I agree, I would like the spawn chance in cities/towns increased. I also think adding a "screaming" feature to roaming zombies that had a chance to bring more zombies to you would be nice way to fix this and keep performance good.

Bone Knife - the only way I can begin to justify the need for 5 bones is to say it simulates you finding the right size bone to make a bone shiv.

I kind of feel like if that were the case with dysentery that maybe we should be given the possibility of water bottles breaking into broken glass in the campfire, or simply coming out as "Off-Boiled Water" or something. Perhaps that's a little too specific for cooked outcomes though.

I guess I can see that with the bones, though I just simply don't feel it's necessary. The amount of bones available is decent for 1 to 2 people in a group, but beyond that I see a serious shortage as mentioned by Ghostlight below.

Bones -> Glue -> Duct Tape

I totally agree. Bones are a very high demand resource use as you get involved with more people in a group. This was just starting to become a problem for the crew with me on our A17 server when we started approaching day 30 or so.

You know there are perks that lower Food Poisoning and Dysentery chances? Just sayin...

I guess that'd be a good perk to use, haha. Didn't honestly put any thought into it since I typically go hard on all the more valuable skills early on. Might need to work that into my early use for this patch. Thanks.

**Wall of Text**

I'm not too worried about adjusting values as is now. I'm happy to continue playing with things as they are. It's just important, I feel, that I put out my opinions on this in hopes that maybe a dev sees the input and goes "huh" rather than being pummeled with "I HATE THESE UPDATES!" continuously with no proper biased - albeit somewhat critical - feedback.

I agree completely with the arm reach. It does feel like something has changed with how far zombies reach and how far players reach. I have been quite disappointed that nothing I do seems to work in regards to avoiding a random cheap shot on me while approaching for a quick bonk on the noggin. I do feel a major increase in player damage needs to be looked at if the zombies are going to have this many advantages though.

Ah well, these are all things to be expected, but unfortunate as many huge changes all at once cause a lot of balance issues that weren't previously as big a hindrance on overall gameplay prior.

 

[Orclover]

I'm making Repair Kits etc for 4 people. I am well aware of the various Bone sources. Still not enough.

Wow: "well see there's yer problem lady"

Man I hope they are stripping every bone in the field for you.

All good tag points. As far as bears go, be sure to check that video I posted. I honestly couldn't believe I was able to simply jump on their back and sit there. The first time I did I just stood there for 5 minutes in amazement. He'll take a few steps here and there because he's still aware of you, but he'll never try to run out from under you in haste to re-align his attack which is just goofy.

Honestly if you can jump on to the back of a bear and stay there, it should be "Your Bear" after that. Stick a saddle on him.

 

[grieferbastard]

Dysentery I dislike because it's functionally designed to make me spend points in iron gut early on, and as a solo player there's just not enough skill points to go around, not even close, unless you're plotting it out ahead of time and even then you're usually shy several critical skills. You've got to either decide that you're just going to get slaughtered your first couple horde nights and go wander out in the desert to die and respawn and eat the XP penalty but at least you're able to craft useful tools and a bike to get around OR you're able to kill stuff well enough to survive a horde night or two but you're not able to craft anything and have to just hope RNG scavenging is good to you. Neither is an actually 'fun' experience or good gaming experience.

Zombie rage I don't mind. Zombies who just always walk are 0 threat to kill. You can get around by day with a stone axe and just kill whatever you encounter. There are no more 'safe' engagements. Get and wear armor.

I carry a primitive bow 24x7 and use it to draw zombies to me in POIs, awaken sleepers ahead of time, etc. I also use it to hunt animals. I've not used a higher level bow yet. It's the same issue as why the crossbow got moved up from a starter weapon; you get a good, zombie killing bow and again you're all but eliminating engagement risk.

I've had 0 issues with zombie spawn density aside from feeling that towns need even more, but again it's rare for me not to see 2 or 3 at any give time. I'm playing Nav, solo with stock settings (aside from having turned XP gain up to 125% and 24 cycle to 90 minutes) so I don't know what is going on that some people are not finding zombies.

 

[Xtrakicking]

And don't even think about getting infected now without a ready source of antibiotics. Honey only knocks off 5% so if you don't have it on hand right then, you can start a deadly scavenger hunt for honey/antibiotics.

I think this is a great change. Infection was an absolute joke in previous alphas; people didn't even know you could actually die from it. Now it finally makes sense. Infections are one of the biggest concerns if you're out there in the wild, especially with rotting corpses that want to eat you.

 

[Psychodabble]

I definitely agree there should be visual feedback when zeds go rage mode.

 

[Ghostlight]

I think their eyes change colour.

 

[humprey]

Dysentery = Golden rod tea

Bone= you can find bone anywhere on roads

 

[Khulkhuum]

I wonder when someone will make a modlet introducing a Super Saiyan transformation sound when zombie enrages It'll be hard to dye their hair yellow though hehe.

Definitely need more bones. Been wandering around and gathering everything i could find and still i could do something like 40 glue on the 8th day. Not to mention i sometimes use up bones to repair the Shiv.

Heh, wouldn't mind if zombie corpses created accumulated gore blocks. Similar to what was before, but multiple corpses would contribute to a single block (up to 10 perhaps) and later on it could be harvested for bones and potassium. It would still be rough on HN with the piles rising up, but on the other hand, perhaps it would be an interesting mechanic to take into consideration? Imagine the need to alter your defenses, so that Zs won't climb the pile of corpses and get to you.