PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[chikorina]

To be fair, I still don't like that I have to dig a hole to place a farm plot that is even with the terrain. =P

It would be nice to have a version of the farm plot that was shaped like a plate as well.

That way, we wont get that gap between it and the terrain.

 

[andrough]

I don't understand how this is viewed as a backwards, not lateral, step in complexity. The hoe isn't removed, the gate of forging or looting one is. Fertilizer has actually returned and we don't need a cement mixer to make the stuff. (still, RIP turds) Teaching new players is as simple as telling them to search for the recipe rather than all the steps.

Old farming was never immersive in my opinion. The hoe was instantly useless(this isn't even a tool I use IRL-shovels and trowels are sufficient and serve more purposes. I avoid uni-task tools.). There wasn't any "working the land". You just hoed and planted, then you were done. No weeding, soil testing, pest control, pruning, training, adding supports, on-going fertilization, watering or anything else that I do and enjoy everyday in real life.

Additionally, they look ♥♥♥♥ing great. My favorite part is not needing the extra area for the plates to cover the density gap. I foresee myself using these in places where I already decorate with plants and now I don't have to be annoyed by looking at a voxel gap OR making space for the plates surrounding them.

Finally, I love them because in this whole mess Madmole mentioned tentative plans for the hoe returning as a tool to manipulate density. Have you ever made a winding dirt road climbing a mountain in this game? I have wasted so much time hoeing each block to a certain HP, then fine-tuning with a chainsaw, all while occasionally going too far with some blocks and having to replace them and start from full HP. God I want a block density manipulator so badly.

Anway, just wanted to add some more noise to the shout-fest before farming is off-topic.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Anyhow you and a few others can grumble all you want, but having a wilderness chock full of zeds is a poor design, bad for performance, and a nuisance to the players.

Plus it was also one of the more attractive points of the game, but who am I..

 

[TSRViper]

Having the ability for tool tips on the station icons in the craft list would be useful. As more stations are added, it can get challenging to work out where something is crafted. Not a major issue in vanilla, so maybe make an endpoint available for modders to access.

 

[andrough]

Plus it was also one of the more attractive points of the game, but who am I..

You may have missed it(seems like many have), but he stated they plan to add random encounters that actually occur near the player. The removal of outside spawning is just the random spawning of zeds. I don't think the plan is for the outdoors to be 100% free of zombies or threats.

 

[DaVegaNL]

You don't hoe. The hoe is gone. You craft a box and put it where you want a crop to be.

Mod Note: If you’re catching up please watch this video by Unholy Joe that demonstrates what Madmole is saying here.

Please continue streamlining the game. We haven't streamlined enough. There are still guys with a few hours in the game who are dying. Can't have that!

 

[mr.natural]

Na, I got attacked from behind while fighting zombies and instant bleed with no bandages. At a minimum they need to howl before they go agro and bark or something. Its completely unfair for day 1 survivors unless we changed them like pigs but they aggro if you get too close. Right now they just rush up silently and cheaply kill players who aren't armored yet, that isn't fun for noobs or veterans. Had I been in the wasteland and it was a rad dog, sure, cool eat me I deserved that, but it wasn't.

I'm glad you noticed, these stealth animals have always been a pain in the ***

Just let them make more noise yes please.

EDIT: I see it has been adressed, thank you MM

....
Anyhow you and a few others can grumble all you want, but having a wilderness chock full of zeds is a poor design, bad for performance, and a nuisance to the players.

Completely disagree, there are not enough wild zombie spawns actually. If the wasteland had trees I'd stay there for the thrills. (and no, ninja animals are not a thrill)

 

[DaVegaNL]

You may have missed it(seems like many have), but he stated they plan to add random encounters that actually occur near the player. The removal of outside spawning is just the random spawning of zeds. I don't think the plan is for the outdoors to be 100% free of zombies or threats.

I didn't miss it. I know how the system with random encounters works (see Elder Scrolls, or to a certain degree the Witcher series). Those are repetitive very quickly.

 

[andrough]

I didn't miss it. I know how the system with random encounters works (see Elder Scrolls, or to a certain degree the Witcher series). Those are repetitive very quickly.

O.O More repetitive than the same enemies just spawning randomly?(EDIT: more repetitive than lumberjacks in the snow biome? I'd love to see something other than that there.) I am with the crowd that fondly remembers the killfest that old cities were, but this is not that. This is removing a bunch of worthless spawns that are just there to fill space. I drive or run past that stuff half the time, anyway. I really think the tired old "OH LORD LET'S HAND OUT THE PARTICIPATION TROPHIES" reactions are just kneejerk reactions with misplaced anger. I am looking forward to better FPS and targeted encounters instead of spawning a half dozen zombies and pretending that that's a busy, immersive world.

- - - Updated - - -

I'm glad you noticed, these stealth animals have always been a pain in the *** Just let them make more noise yes please.

Except the cougars, apart from maybe one blood-curdling roar just before they rip the back of your skull off. As frustrating as it could be to die to them, I loved the jumpscare those things provided in Red Dead Redemption. I can't think of anything scarier in that game.

 

[DaVegaNL]

I figured something was up when I checked the forum this morning and saw there were ~30 pages of unread posts..

 

[DaVegaNL]

Ok mr back seat game designer. TFP unanimously loves the new farming system, and that is a first. Farming is .000001% of the game, who cares? The game is way harder than its ever been, so us lowering the biome zombie count is taken out of content. Since when are a few guys in the biomes a threat? All they do is lower performance and nag at you when you are trying to clear a poi you get sandwiched by 20 guys that followed you for 5 miles. Now its only 10 guys sandwiching you. The game is harder now for undisclosed reasons, so you'll probably thank us for these changes when your getting 60fps and having fun for the first time in 5 years.

Yeah yeah we get it.. You only like the shooting aspect of the game. I'm struggling to get my mind over the fact that you want to reduce the amount of zombies in the game. A game which is pretty much an empty world anyways, besides the FPS-style POI's now and again.

 

[mr.natural]

You don't hoe. The hoe is gone. You craft a box and put it where you want a crop to be.

Oh no :upset:

But if it is for better FPS I can live with it.

...
Sorry some of you guys were attached to it, but we like one way to do things, and it needs to be simple. Its kind of stupid saying you need a hoe anyway, I can dig a hole with my hands and plant a seed with no tools.

Disclaimer, this not an insult.

I dare you to do that in RL. I DO grow my own vegetables in RL btw.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Dude, chill your horses.A18 is not even out.

Dont mix up simplicity and lack of Challenge. Not the same.

Lay down your toxicity and lay your hand on it.

Remember, this is still Alpha. What they bring in they can change over time.

Simplicity does not equate lack of challenge indeed. Simplicity doesn't equal fun as well, IMHO.

 

[DaVegaNL]

If this starts a ♥♥♥♥ storm I'm going to ban everyone or close the forums down.
You can no longer boil water in a can. You can simply boil water from a jar of murky water now without a cooking pot, but it takes 4x as long as with a cooking pot.

Why? More sharp sticks. Only veterans knew about the canned water trick and it was only useful on a really bad day where you couldn't find a cooking pot. So we removed cans of water and you can just boil jars of water now. One way to do things is best.

Why don't people start with a gun, and a mod, and a bunch of bullets in their inventory? That way they can start shooting straight away, and we don't need to have all this annoying survival stuff in between?

 

[DaVegaNL]

How is improving farming bad for the survival experience? Sorry but we don't want players to crawl over broken glass to do things in the game. Now its easy to understand, how does that make it bad? Try explaining to someone new how to farm. Just do it. Please respond to me and lets watch how ridiculously long the conversation is going to be.
We've been through this before. Its a sharp stick. Now its usable by anyone, without a wiki and a 50 step process. FFS its farming, not rocket science. Why should I need a forge to start a farm? WHy would I need a cement mixer to make fertilizer. That ♥♥♥♥ was lame, now its fun, simple and easy to learn and use. Some people are just married to clunkly old crap and like crawling over broken glass I guess. If that one thing is a deal breaker to play this game you need your head examined or to download a mod that restores legacy farming.

I have to ask.. what survival experience? Survival implies that you have to overcome something. Weather? Food? Thirst? Yes there are enemies in the game, but that would imply that any WW2-shooter out there can be classified as a survival game..

 

[Aurelius]

Cans of water were another sharp stick. An entire system that many players never used or even knew about and the ones who used it did so maybe once in a game. It was the best that could be done at the time but we have better tools now. It is no longer needed.That they were balanced by using more inventory space was just the polishing on the ■■■■.

Not even remotely accurate.

Every time I or a group of us started a new game, the hunt was on for a cooking pot. Every time we found one, there was rejoicing. Every. Time. To be able to go from making a single drink of clean water (and clean water only), to mass producing clean water, or making teas/coffee/what have you, was a leap of progress. It looked, smelt, felt and tasted like progress.

You guys screwed it up by making cooking pots more common than Roland having to prune the DD thread of cruft.

Changing the system so you can boil glass jars of murky water is identical to boiling cans of water, with *zero* drawbacks. So if the old system was "a ■■■■", then the new system is "the scoots."

-A

PS - the issue isn't whether it can be modded or not to our taste. The issue is the design decisions you guys are making all scream "dumb it down."

 

[ZombieHorde]

You are missing the point. You join a server, and are trying to help a noob. He asks you how to craft a hoe and you would have to explain the deep process of gathering clay, stones, kill some animals and get some leather, but make sure to use a bone knife to maximize harvest, search a sink for short metal pipes, and then boil some bones and murky water in a campfire to make duct tape. Then you need to find a forge schematic or buy the first rank of engineering. Next you craft a forge and load it with iron (where do I get iron) and clay. Now that you have a hoe you need to gather fertilizer and right click the earth to make it fertile, then you need to plant a seed
Or you can just craft a farm plot and place it, then plant seeds.

A new player would be overwhelmed with how to start a farm and would have interupted you asking many questions like how do I find iron and clay, where do I get the stuff for fertilizer, etc.

At least now you can look it up in the crafting menu and its clearly right there how to do it. The old system was part urban legend and required looking up on the internet exactly how to do it.

I am sorry you were attached to the old method, but anyone can see the new system offers less confusion, smoother harvest because its nice and flat surface, and less uneeded complicated mechanics. Since when is simple the bad guy? Complex stuff is the bad guy.

We want more players to enjoy the game, not have to tab out to figure out complicated systems. If you never played minecraft nobody would figure it out without a wiki. Now its pretty straight forward. Nothing is worse than struggling to learn a game. We're streamlining systems as we go gold only old players will complain, new ones will just enjoy it because they get it right away.

Sorry MM, this is a stupid argument because newbies shouldn't be starting a farm on day 1. I will probably only start considering it at day 14 at the earliest and at this point a newbie will know about half of those things and either be able to work out the rest themselves or should be able to refer to an easy tool-tip.

Having a farm is rewarding and a progression to your base and should help ease you into a mid-game sort of thing.

From what i'm understanding, getting more nitrate, more clay and rotting flesh is more grind. You mean more digging? Ugh! You mean more mining? But I just did that to get the iron. Rotting flesh? I just pushed that mouse button 20 times to kill that guy and now I need to attack him some more?

I think that's what people are getting upset about. It's becoming more of the same with each Alpha. Sure, each Alpha has it's pro's of course. But game mechanics seems to be getting simpler.

I even remember you saying you wanted the game to force you to eat the moldy sham sandwiches once in a while because you would die of starvation otherwise. But now the game has gotten easier to survive with the only difficulty being the stronger and smarter zombies. If I'd want that, I'll play any other FPS.

 

[mr.natural]

The only difference is how you prepare the ground for planting. Farming is .00001% of the game, I don't see the big deal.

I didn't know I was the only one farming in this game.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Same way I do. Local strip joint.

Don't lie to me. I've seen those inflatable sheep lying around.

 

[DaVegaNL]

You look out for your 3000 fans and I'll look out for our 10 million customers.

10 million customers? Of which max 10 thousand are playing simultaneously? I guess there's a 0.001% remark in there somewhere..