PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[RipClaw]

So if hunger is not supposed to be relevant why have it. Seems to me that sounds like an unbalanced mechanic that will be addressed at some point. And this isn't just a tower defense game it's a Survival, Horde, Crafting Game all those elements SHOULD be relevant

Not every part of a game is relevant at all times. On the first day, the horde does not play a role. It is far away. Hunger and thirst play a role. That moves however into the background the nearer the horde come. At this point in the game it's about building a defense.

Lmao that's funny I'm quite well aware how to mod this game. I think the point is being missed Oh well

I don't miss the point at all. I've read enough times that someone should just mod the game if it's too hard for him or if he don't like something. So why not the other way around? If the game is to easy for you than you can mod it harder.

17.0 was released just before Christmas, was not well balanced and had a lot of bugs. Therefore it is assumed that it was released unfinished to take some pressure off the development team. Now you want that unfinished game back. I guess you will only achieve that by modding it yourself or playing one of the existing mods. Have you ever tried Darkness Falls ?

 

[Damocles]

You should always have an opportunity to get new food. But this would keep you busy in the beginning more often than without spoilage, until you found better ways to preserve it.

Then you have to spend time less often, and can concentrate on other tasks more. So its a progression to have more free time.

Food and water are one of the first things you try to get in a survival scenario. Not mining iron.

 

[RevenantWit]

Now you want that unfinished game back.

You've completely missed the point then. I'm not asking for an unfinished product I'm asking them to bring back mechanics that IMO made this game amazing again

 

[Mideval]

Not everything can be done easily through mods. You have not wondered if so many players want the spoilage, because there is no mod in any alpha that addresses this question? If the developers do not give them the right tools the modders have their hands tied.

 

[Guppycur]

It's really quite simple.

Spoilage would be great because food is EXTREMELY easy in this game (always has been). Farming has since been made even easier.

There is zero food challenge. Zip. Nada. None.

...and what's with tying str perks to cooking ability? All this does is show off why perk systems are weak and stupid. "oh, well, we need SOMETHING there, so why not use str?"

 

[Krizzen]

Madmole have you guys ever thought about giving the "interaction point" (i don't know how is it called) a bigger size, less precision and close range? (Polish it)
Let me explain in my poor and primitive english:

When you are trying to open a door, you have to aim directly to it, if your crosshair is 1mm off the door, you can't open it.

Another example: If you stand beside a wall, like 3 meters away from a door, you can open it as long as 1 pixel of the door is in your crosshair

And another one(dj khaled reference): When someone drops a tiny item on the floor, you can pick it up only if your crosshair is exactly aiming to that said item. (I think holding E doesn't add it to your inventory no more, it only gets it closer to you)

I don't know if I explained myself correctly, but I think that little change could enhance interactions in-game.

Trankitas.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Interacting by aiming directly is really best case scenario. However, "Fuzziness" works both ways. So, if you're not aiming at something directly, you can interact with it. That's great if it's something you want to interact with. What about when it's something you don't want to interact with? The fuzziness would make all sorts of annoying situations where you can't open a container because something else is in the way.

No need to complicate things and ultimately annoy the living hell out of the user for a slight usability increase.

 

[Thecolours]

Madmole, what's the max number of Junk turrets you can have?

Also, what's your plan for loading them with ammo?

Is it possible to keep the junk turret ammo in your inventory, rather than loading them each individual?

 

[RipClaw]

Hunting could also do with balancing but that's largely a different mechanic. Failing to balance one because you haven't balanced the other gets you nowhere.

What just bothers me is that they're just talking about how OP farming is and that you have to nerf it. But nobody has ever talked about hunting. There was even the idea that you would have to find all the seeds and not be able to make your own. There are so many players who don't farm because it's not necessary and if you limit it so much then even fewer players will do it. The whole discussion is extremely one-sided.

Hunting would be a lot harder if the animals weren't so suicidally aggressive. Not many animals will fight to death so readily.
Making deer faster and more cowardly would also go a long way to making them harder to kill. Last I checked you could kill a deer on day one with a single stone arrow if you're hidden which does seem a little OP.

The problem is that some animals were brought into the world as a threat to the player. That's why they are so aggressive.

 

[RipClaw]

Not everything can be done easily through mods. You have not wondered if so many players want the spoilage, because there is no mod in any alpha that addresses this question? If the developers do not give them the right tools the modders have their hands tied.

There was food spoilage in the Starvation Mod. It seems quite possible to integrate that.

Food spoilage wouldn't be a problem for me. I would adapt to it.

What is a problem for me is that there is always a discussion about farming while hunting is completely ignored. And this even though many players apparently don't farm at all because they are well supplied by the hunting and the food they find in POIs.

 

[madmole]

I think we need the zombie version of all the big animals and make them the most common to find.Make them difficult to distinguish at a distance and which will force you to approach or kill them from a distance to check if they have usable meat.

Animals like the zombie deer would also spawn in the heat zone of the crops and thus we avoid that the cultivation areas become a meat factory.

Thats just fluff that is easily handled with balance. I'd rather have room for bandits and more zombies. You guys need to start thinking about your designs, every solution or suggestion here requires about 4 million dollars budgeting and a ton of effort.

 

[RipClaw]

You've completely missed the point then. I'm not asking for an unfinished product I'm asking them to bring back mechanics that IMO made this game amazing again

Exactly these mechanics you love so much have been rejected by a multitude of players. So why do you think the Fun Pimps would bring them back at your request?

Especially level gates are still strictly rejected although only the intellect branch is affected.

 

[madmole]

The point is that to some the part that we like most about the game is its potential for survival game. I only fully enjoy the game the first two or three days, when your survival matters.Agriculture right now is not necessary, and if we make it anyway anyway once you have the farm running, you do not need any maintenance and you just have to sit and wait and see how everything multiplies.

I like to have unforeseen things happen, just like when they infect you, you need to urgently look for medicines regardless of day 1 or day 300. If you do not have medicine, you will die.

With the food should be the same, the crops should be spoiled in certain circumstances, the hunting should be scarce and should not be able to accumulate unlimited food is completely stupid.

It forces players like me to make decisions, between going to POIs to try to get food cans or desperately looking for an animal to get food while it is ready for the next harvest.

Food easy to get and infinite is boring for someone like me.

I would like to take care of the food was something important and useful and that my colleagues need me for it while they enjoy killing zombies. I would sincerely like there was a place for a guy like me in this game.

Some of us bought the game because it was a survival game in the voxel world, the zombies, tower defense and others are secondary to us. Those people who only want to kill zombies already have their game.

Put an option for others so no one complains. The options are good, right Madmole?

One more enter to separate your paragraphs would have made this a bit less painful to read. I skip walls of text, but this one was only a ledge of text so I got through it. Options that add legs to the game are great, ones that make it more accessible are ok, but ones that clutter up the menu over a minor preference I think are generally not so good for the product or consumer because new guys setting up their first game can be overwhelmed. Perhaps "advanced options" might be in order at some point and you have to click on it to see it, etc, but at that point you might as well have a server config.
I'm not sure food should be hard to find, it punishes new players who don't know what they are doing, and later game its kind of just an annoyance, players move on and want higher level challenges. Like I feel that scrounging for food early game has its place, but as you progress it shouldn't be an issue, but bigger newer challenges, such as bandits.

 

[madmole]

Cool screenshot!
Is that spear made of dragon glass?

I have a bad feeling about the dragon queen's future. The foreshadowing was too strong to ignore lol.

 

[madmole]

@Madmole

https://twitter.com/x/status/1043499384762073088

That must be fairly old post. We're looking at 2020 for gold now and that could certainly get pushed further because adding bandits and story is no easy task, as well as bringing up every system to gold standard. Its when its done to be honest. 17 ended up being a wild stallion to tame and we're still working a lot on that. If 18 is well received then perhaps we can move on to finishing the game, but right now its more about repairing good will by restoring fps and balancing the game better.

 

[RevenantWit]

Exactly these mechanics you love so much have been rejected by a multitude of players. So why do you think the Fun Pimps would bring them back at your request?Especially level gates are still strictly rejected although only the intellect branch is affected.

I never said I thought they would and it wasn't really a multitude it was just the loudest voice cause most everyone else just shut up and moved on to something different. I'm just expressing my personal opinion same as you and everyone else here. level gates didn't originally affect only INT and they were an excellent way to extend the early game and I know many players and streamers that would agree. If not level gating something still needs to be done to extend the game more. Again just my opinion.

 

[Drithyl]

It's really quite simple.
Spoilage would be great because food is EXTREMELY easy in this game (always has been). Farming has since been made even easier.

There is zero food challenge. Zip. Nada. None.

...and what's with tying str perks to cooking ability? All this does is show off why perk systems are weak and stupid. "oh, well, we need SOMETHING there, so why not use str?"

Shades of grey, Guppy, and not the kinky ones. Just because one perk/skill is misplaced does not mean the whole idea of having perks and skills is bad! I do agree that putting perks under attributes means that some of them will be a bit more far-fetched than others. But then there's nothing stopping them from making a tab of generic skills under no attributes either. That would require a fairly big redesign though. Just live with it and mod it differently in your updated Medieval mod (which I loved and want to see more of ).

 

[Roland]

Thats just fluff that is easily handled with balance. I'd rather have room for bandits and more zombies. You guys need to start thinking about your designs, every solution or suggestion here requires about 4 million dollars budgeting and a ton of effort.

So for balancing I would like to see canned food slowly disappear from the loot lists simulating that all the pre-apocalyptic canned food sources are getting found and eaten so that you can only count on canned food for the first week or two and then they become rare and then they are gone altogether. For farms I would like to see one more phase added to the cycle which is dead so that if the plant isn't harvested during the right window you miss out.

For one more 4 million dollar idea maybe instead of food spoilage that causes food to disappear there could be a daily 5% increase to the chance of food poisoning applied to all food already existing in inventories and containers that aren't working fridges and vending machines. So the food never disappears and can always be eaten but it will eventually be guaranteed to make the player sick.

 

[Gnomaana]

I'm not sure food should be hard to find, it punishes new players who don't know what they are doing, and later game its kind of just an annoyance, players move on and want higher level challenges. Like I feel that scrounging for food early game has its place, but as you progress it shouldn't be an issue, but bigger newer challenges, such as bandits.

You've said similar several times. Then why have it at all? Any suggestion that hunger/thirst should be harder to solve always elicits this response. So if it is never meant to be even just an "annoyance", what purpose does it have in game?

 

[madmole]

If stack sizes are too small, we're just gonna mod them back anyway. Already do for some things.(or make much much bigger storage spaces)

Some cooked foods could do with smaller stacks yes. Stews etc.

Of course, I'd like to see canning of the cooked stuff ala some of the mods.

You lose some of the benefits, but, increased stack size and portability.

(so no hot soup warming buff if you can it. Want the buff while out and about, make a campfire and heat the food)

Make the stews (stack to say 5), grab a bunch, head to the WORKBENCH, and can'em.

Take the cans out with you.

Actually, pretty much all the prepared stuff should get canned, jerked, whatever, except cornbread.

That could be converted to something like hardtack. (nasty, I know)

Long term storage vs short term.

All it takes is a few more recipies. (modders already do this btw)

Bandages though, no. First Aid kits? mebbe. (5?)

It's already too damned easy to get sliced and the bleed effect, so 10 bandages is a not bad size.

Smaller just makes it more annoying. (ok, I stop and make a few more out of the stack of cloth scraps)

LOL, we'll just mod it out.. ok thats like .001% of players that use mods. Everyone plays vanilla except the rare few that get hooked and think they need mods. Preparation is important, right now its no thought at all, just take 50 veg stew and you can heal forever and not starve or get thirsty. Bleeding is probably too frequent and wasn't even working with armor. Armor is supposed to reduce and nearly block completely at some point.

How is forced thought into preparation annoying? Your just used to the stupid large stack numbers that have had zero thought put into them. A design is coming though. People might actually want higher tier foods if they can't take 5000 corn bread with them in one slot.

 

[madmole]

You have to be strong to cook? That is the type of thing that will drive me crazy. Someone awhile back suggested a Misc category for skills that weren't tied to a specific attribute. This is the reason that is a good idea. Now in game I'm going to have to make the decision, "Well, I want to be able to cook bacon and eggs I better get a point of STRENGTH." I'm probably in the minority but that kind of disconnect bothers me. A lot more than it should I know but it's the way I'm wired.

You missed the memo. All craftable items have schematics that take more than 1 point to get.