PC A20 - Leveling is now pointless

[pApA^LeGBa]

I remember the "Forge ahead" book. You had to find it to make a forge. No other way. It could take weeks to find it if unlucky. And what a nice surprise it was if you found it in the first few days.

Overall i don´t think people are unhappy with the changes in A20. There is a few whining threads, but if you break those topics down, it´s only a few making a lot of noise. See farming on the steam forums. It´s an endless thread, but only a few that really cry loud.

Player numbers definitly speak for A20. The game had the all time high for peak and average players since A20 released. And not just by a little, it´s a huge increase. 

 

[BFT2020]

Don’t forget the Minibike for Dummies book.

 

[saoron666]

I highly suspect based on this comment that your GF has no idea about game development, which is a completely different discipline that other types of software development. Its also clear that you dont realize this is an alpha. If you have an issue playing an alpha stage game in development you are in the wrong place. This game would be terrible if they just kept adding new features and never adjusting balance...wtf

Idk what your comment has to do with anything I’ve said ..: and it’s been alpha for past 10+years btw fyi…

the game was perfectly fine on alpha 19

why keep messing with it ?!

Just focus on your alpha 21/new features/ new skills/ etc…

not just same poi with different names and same loots/mobs 

 

[BFT2020]

Idk what your comment has to do with anything I’ve said ..: and it’s been alpha for past 10+years btw fyi…

the game was perfectly fine on alpha 19

why keep messing with it ?!

Just focus on your alpha 21/new features/ new skills/ etc…

not just same poi with different names and same loots/mobs 

8 years in Alpha, not 10+

 

[saoron666]

You may not know this but I have about 20 buddies who are senior software programmers, level designers, and play testers for a little old game known as 7 Days to Die. So listen up. 
 

with all due respect to your gf, my buddies told me that the code for land generation was completely overhauled and there is no old code from Alpha 1 that anyone is twitching around with as far as how the world generates and interacts with objects and entities. 
 

Also my buddies did some complex calculations probably using internal data your gf doesn’t have access to and they came up with 8 years in development rather than 10 years. Weird.

While your gf was chuckling about the QA guy, I asked my buddies what is meant by the term “stable” within the context of early access and they said that it means it is simply good enough to play without undue fatal crashing occurring on a wide scale basis. As long as game corrupting crashes are marginal so that the majority of players can test and report, the game is considered stable for their purposes. 
 

Your gf probably doesn’t deal with early access for public testing of her indev software so “stable” might mean to her something completely different.
 

My buddies and your gf probably have different standards of quality that they feel satisfy “good enough”.  My buddies say that if a software company is willing to spend the time and money to polish and improve quality rather than just add more mediocrity in additional forms and models, the customers will appreciate it. We hit 70K + concurrent players this weekend which indicates a record breaking group of customers that are willing to play the current version in the manner it was delivered. 
 

Maybe your gf has some perspectives relevant to her industry but for the context of this game in Steam early access and still being an alpha product— my buddies really seem to understand what is going on with 7 Days to Die.

@Roland Yes you are right my gf does have higher standards. Her field is in online security, banking , financials … so they can’t afford mediocrity… «  basic issues » ..

Your so called buddies, say that stable means a product without any crashes…but when your turret or car disappears and you have no choice to EXIT the game and come

back , for me it’s considered as bad as a crash!

since you need to restart ..

 when you rewrite a part of a code or entire code you would expect a pre existing functionality or features to be TESTED FIRST and WORKING.

but right I guess it does come down to standards and her standards are different lol

20 senior soft dev, prog…etc and while driving you hit invisible things and your car flips over or just go underground and come back out…go figure

 

[Krougal]

I remember the "Forge ahead" book. You had to find it to make a forge. No other way. It could take weeks to find it if unlucky. And what a nice surprise it was if you found it in the first few days.

Overall i don´t think people are unhappy with the changes in A20. There is a few whining threads, but if you break those topics down, it´s only a few making a lot of noise. See farming on the steam forums. It´s an endless thread, but only a few that really cry loud.

Player numbers definitly speak for A20. The game had the all time high for peak and average players since A20 released. And not just by a little, it´s a huge increase. 

Don’t forget the Minibike for Dummies book.

Yeah, those did suck, and then there were the calipers. Oh and the blood-draw kit, which you couldn't find and then suddenly every nurse dropped 1 and you had 20. And the beaker. There were also less items overall, certainly less books. Once you found crack a book you were set though. I feel like bookshelves now give far more paper, not to mention I get the same schematics over and over. The off-road light I can use for TP, the other vehicle mods forget it. The trigger mods (and honestly, does anyone use them FFS?) I will find over and over but god-forbid I can get a rad-remover.

 

[Roland]

Your so called buddies

Yeah, they’re fake. I just felt by referencing industry knowledgeable friends it would bolster my own personal opinion. You caught me….

 

[Vaeliorin]

I feel like bookshelves now give far more paper, not to mention I get the same schematics over and over. The off-road light I can use for TP, the other vehicle mods forget it. The trigger mods (and honestly, does anyone use them FFS?) I will find over and over but god-forbid I can get a rad-remover.

This is the one thing that's really bugging me about A20.  Finding schematics is such a pain now with every bookshelf (even the old, "good" ones) mostly just giving paper.  Yes, I know there are books/schematics in crates now, but they tend to repeat quite often and rarely do I find the ones I'd actually like.

 

[Whiteshark68]

To tell the truth i have found more books for sale at the traders than in bookshelves or boxes but that just might be me.

 

[meganoth]

Thank god our #1 fanboy was here to correct everyone.

I feel a ton better now.

Nice insult with the irony mixed in, but where are the actual arguments?

The alternative to having random progression gates is something like a level gate. You just wait for it to fall into your lap, automatically and dependably. Is that really how you want to play the game, every run the same way? There are some players who seem to be happy playing the same thing again and again without variation, but I'm relatively sure most players need variance in a healthy dose to keep playing the same game again and again.

If everything can be built immedaitely from basic resources then looting will be just for getting stuff to scrap so you can craft the things you need, similar to items that you just sell to the trader to convert them to useful stuff. The same complaint about traders being to powerful because of their large selection can then be applied to crafting.

 

[Krougal]

To tell the truth i have found more books for sale at the traders than in bookshelves or boxes but that just might be me.

Which many would call a problem. Looting and salvaging indeed...more like being an errand boy and shopping.

It has become a very different game since the traders were added.

Granted for me most of the books come from the secret stash, which I have maxed barter & DA these days.

 

[meganoth]

@Roland Yes you are right my gf does have higher standards. Her field is in online security, banking , financials … so they can’t afford mediocrity… «  basic issues » ..

Your so called buddies, say that stable means a product without any crashes…but when your turret or car disappears and you have no choice to EXIT the game and come

back , for me it’s considered as bad as a crash!

since you need to restart ..

 when you rewrite a part of a code or entire code you would expect a pre existing functionality or features to be TESTED FIRST and WORKING.

but right I guess it does come down to standards and her standards are different lol

20 senior soft dev, prog…etc and while driving you hit invisible things and your car flips over or just go underground and come back out…go figure

If you have recurring bugs like hitting invisible things then it is likely that either your PC is too slow or you have configuration artefacts from A19 still plaguing you. I would advise following the blue link above and doing a complete clean-up of your settings and worlds if you haven't done already.  You will have to start a completely new game and world then.

I play with 3 friends on a server and one single player game and we had not one missing vehicle yet. Those bugs do not happen to everyone.

 

[Boidster]

This is the one thing that's really bugging me about A20. Finding schematics is such a pain now with every bookshelf (even the old, "good" ones) mostly just giving paper.

They put in place a temporary "fix" due to too many POIs using always-lootable bookshelf blocks instead of the random "helper" blocks which will RNG toggle between lootable and not. So in the future, after a scrub of the bookstore-type POIs, what you'll get is fewer lootable shelves, but back to better odds of getting schematics in each one.

<snip>

Whoops! That's what I get for having A19 and A20 files open right next to each other. A19 had the hack in the XML, A20 does not.

 

[saoron666]

If you have recurring bugs like hitting invisible things then it is likely that either your PC is too slow or you have configuration artefacts from A19 still plaguing you. I would advise following the blue link above and doing a complete clean-up of your settings and worlds if you haven't done already.  You will have to start a completely new game and world then.

I play with 3 friends on a server and one single player game and we had not one missing vehicle yet. Those bugs do not happen to everyone.

i have one of the latest pc’s, i9-11th Gen, godlike z590, 64gb ram, m.2 980pro, zotac 3090 24gb … so I would say it isn’t the pc lol

and I did a full clean up before install , only thing I didn’t delete is maybe some leftover registry files.. but every other place I did.

 

[saoron666]

To tell the truth i have found more books for sale at the traders than in bookshelves or boxes but that just might be me.

You are 100% right, they just playing with the odds and variables. These changes are not calculated and tested. Same way me and you can easily change the values in the game file and get random effects, they seem to be doing same thing.. 

let’s give more paper to everyone and make fire with it or on the next patch they can eat it since food became rare lmao oh wait while they inside looting, let’s disappear their car when they come out

 

[Pernicious]

Over the years and over many games, I came to realise that some people play games to be challenged, and some people to feel like a hero.

I'm mostly the former, though I have to say there is often a thrill of excitement and a sense of achievement when I get a new, more powerful gun, a new spell, a new vehicle.

Not sure how many people here are futurama fans, but remember this episode of The Scary Door?



He wins on the first pull and thinks it is heaven. He wins on every pull and thinks it's hell.

Imagine how hard it would be to balance a game with the two types of players I mentioned above. At its peak, World of Warcraft had a team of 30+ psychologists tweaking loot probabilities to get to that sweet spot of effort vs reward to keep you playing just that little longer.

The game feels right for me. But I am clearing T5s primarily with a steel sledge hammer because I am still on a double barrelled shotgun. A storage crate 2/3rds full if looted shotgun shells mind you. But it's a challenge I wouldn't have otherwise put on myself, and I have to say, while I failed my first 3 runs, after that, the sense of achievement was sweet!

 

[Pernicious]

@Roland Yes you are right my gf does have higher standards. Her field is in online security, banking , financials … so they can’t afford mediocrity… «  basic issues » ..

I scrolled past this, as I don't usually like to get too much into mud slinging. But it annoyed me, so I'm coming back to it before it distracts me all day.

I have been in Cybersecurity 25 years now. First job was virus analysis - code reverse engineering. I am currently an enterprise security architect, so a few years removed from getting my hands dirty, but 6 years of my career was in what is now known as Appsec with a bit of overlap into DevSecOps.

I came here to say that Banking and Finance code is pretty much the simplest production code there is out there, short of OT/ICS/SCADA. It's almost universally true the more critical a system is, the simpler the code to run it is. There is more code in a basic, non self driving car, than there is in an F35 which can deliver a precision guided bomb. The code that runs nuclear reactors is only a few megabytes large typically. And banking code? They keep it as simple as possible because they want the user to be so constrained. You can buy or sell a stock. You don't animate that stock sale, and change the price based on the trader's experience.

In other words, you're comparing your girlfriend doing quality control on an army land rover - that uses gravity fed pumps, a detuned diesel so that it can run on dirty cooking oil in a pinch and no electronics so it can operate after a EMP blast, against a Tesla, which is designed as an experimental car, is self driving, runs an entertainment system... and claiming she's doing a better job of keeping the car running. Of course she is. But is that the kind of car you want to be driving for your daily commute?

 

[Boidster]

I am currently an enterprise security architect

OMG I read a funny article you'd like, it's at jndi:\\lol.wat/thisis/ajoke/keke.bat

\they're backwards to double-emphasize that I'm not tryin' to hack anybody

 

[Noctoras]

I take recipes over stupid levelling any day. If everyone just has everything, what's the point?? 

I even think that loot is too linear, having an extremely rare chance for high level items also in early game would be great. Nothing beats finding a powerful recipe in times when you need it most

 

[Whiteshark68]

Which many would call a problem. Looting and salvaging indeed...more like being an errand boy and shopping.

It has become a very different game since the traders were added.

Granted for me most of the books come from the secret stash, which I have maxed barter & DA these days.

Just to clarify the trouble with not finding many books is more than likely more due to the fact that i haven't found any book stores besides the one in the oldwest town which has like 2 bookshelves in it.