PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Anthonydevidal]

I assume it is an alpha and is open to changes and that were a problem I would not buy.

buy game - rust (ALPHA)- being a zombie post-apocalypse game and now there are no zombies.

and it is understood what madmole wants to say but many times they lose the forms and when someone releases an opinion it is automatically invalid and does not represent the community..

If what the community thinks does not represent the community then I do not understand anything. Lbd is a clear example of a massive demand from the large community and the developers do not try to reach an intermediate point between the current system of progression and LBD.

 

[art1336]

If 17 is really that bad, how come it its selling 2-3x as many copies as 16 did? Just because some old customers don't like change doesn't mean they are game designers or need pleasing. Overall 17 is better, but we made some blunders. We're working hard on correcting a lot of these issues and I think 18 will sell as good as 16 and 17 combined. It's part of early access. Some ideas work well, others don't but mostly its just a matter of balance. Way too many features were rewritten or changed all at once, making it an untamable beast. We're taming it now though.
The fact is, new players with no bias are coming in and liking the game. More so than during A16, and this is even with the horrible console freakshow giving us a bad rep. The negative reviews are coming from the 300+ hour crowd who doesn't like change, and most of them are too lazy to try the patches. So again, how are these old players paying the bills when new ones are buying the game and giving us good reviews and old ones are not buying the game and giving bad reviews?

Could you give some stats on how many copies the average -300 hour player has purchased versus those at 1000, 2000, or 2500 hours? It's a multiplayer game for many of us, and I know I've bought several copies for friends and family.

Also, saying that older players don't like change is a bit of a misleading statement. Do a survey and ask people that have been playing for two years how they feel about some of the changes. I think you'll be surprised by what we do and don't like, and how it is mostly a few features for many players.

Now, do a survey on the people who have just bought the game within the past month. Now ask them how they feel about moving from 14-15, and what they loved and hated about 15. Ask them about the intro to electricity in 16, and then how they feel about how 17 kind of ignored electricity. Ask them how they feel about the past few years of your game.

They can not answer because they did not play it. But ask them to look over the patch notes, maybe spend an hour or two on each older patch. And then see how well they like certain things better. If you were to actually do that, you would have some solid evidence for the theory that overall people do or do not like change. All we have to go on is what one segment says, because the newer players, by definition, can not.

Thus, it is a misleading statement to defend your position.

Again, I say negative things, but I have bought several copies. Me telling you that you did something I did not like does not prevent me from purchasing more copies of the game. This is just the part where the community tries to communicate with you. Sometimes ya'll listen and sometimes you don't. It's part of early access.

 

[The Gaffer]

If 17 is really that bad, how come it its selling 2-3x as many copies as 16 did? Just because some old customers don't like change doesn't mean they are game designers or need pleasing. Overall 17 is better, but we made some blunders. We're working hard on correcting a lot of these issues and I think 18 will sell as good as 16 and 17 combined. It's part of early access. Some ideas work well, others don't but mostly its just a matter of balance. Way too many features were rewritten or changed all at once, making it an untamable beast. We're taming it now though.
The fact is, new players with no bias are coming in and liking the game. More so than during A16, and this is even with the horrible console freakshow giving us a bad rep. The negative reviews are coming from the 300+ hour crowd who doesn't like change, and most of them are too lazy to try the patches. So again, how are these old players paying the bills when new ones are buying the game and giving us good reviews and old ones are not buying the game and giving bad reviews?

To be fair as much as i cannot play alpha 17 because its boring i have had over 2000 hours in game so i have had my moneys worth along time ago

 

[art1336]

Wow, that is a horrible philosophy to have. What a way to ♥♥♥♥ on the old players, you know the people that allowed you to get where you are by buying the game in the first place.

It is a philosophy to be sure. Horrible to some, delectable to others. I suppose it's whether you played two thousand hours and purchased ten copies or played twenty hours and purchased one on sale.

 

[Anthonydevidal]

and I honestly would like A18 to come out as soon as possible.

because the truth is that I do not play the A17 ...maybe that's why we're in such a hurry in the patches...

I wish the game experience of A16 in A18

 

[art1336]

maybe you sell 2 or 3 times more because your community has spoken well of the game during the development of it, with youtube channels, on tweets and other media, it is a very ungrateful way to talk about the old players, those who supported you from the beginning.

Yeah, I played by myself my first couple hundred hours. Then, when looking for a video on how to do a particular type of build, I stumbled across J.C. and loved him. When he, a streamer, launched a public server due to pressure from fans, many of us got to know each other. That server ended, but only after sixteen ended. He left it and we kept it going. Got several friends and family members to play. Several people on the server did. And we've had a great time, and sometimes I buy someone a copy and they play a whole five hours, but that's okay, because they tried it.

Because we speak well of it. Or did. Some did.

 

[art1336]

We should allow old players to shape development so could all spam craft stone axes again

You can spam craft stone axes right now. Nobody is stopping you. I spam craft things all the time. I spam craft concrete, cement mix, forged steel bars, bottled water, ammo, etc.

Ahh, you mean we can spam craft stone axes to level up. Ahh, I see. You know, there are several ways to cheat the system for exp right now. And people do it. In single player they use creative, and on servers people exploit glitches. So since you don't like what someone did in 14, does that mean you are fine with item duping in 16 or 17? Are you okay with the way people exploit the ai now?

You see, we can support the areas of the game we want without wanting to exploit the game, and arguing that conservatives are conservatives only because they wanted to game the system is argumentum ad hominem my friend, and that is intellectually dishonest.

You are attacking me. Attack my idea. Right now I was talking about older players often feeling left behind. Attack that idea, don't attack people that spam crafted stone axes to level up quickly. I am sure you have exploited yourself, and it serves no purpose to say such things.

 

[Poutre]

Wow, that is a horrible philosophy to have. What a way to ♥♥♥♥ on the old players, you know the people that allowed you to get where you are by buying the game in the first place.

He's right. Indeed older players helped make the game what it is, but that doesn't make them the ones who know what is best for the game. The devs think they are wrong this time. Why are you talking about philosophy ?

My guess is after 7 years developping a game and assembling a crew of good developpers, they might know what is best for the game.

EDIT: my point is that the majority is not always right. The people who have the knowledge certainly are to.

 

[art1336]

Guys. They said they made some mistakes and are correcting them.
Since there is LITERALLY nothing they can do to appease y'all, why keep up the hate?

It's not productive.

I dislike a17 as much as the next guy, and I'm not liking the direction they went with it, but if they say "yeh we made some blunders but are correcting them" then wtf else can they do?!?

17.2 corrected some things 17 had wrong, so isn't it within the realm of possibility that 17.3 will be even better? That 18 will be better than that?

They heard the hate and are responding to it in /exactly/ the way we want.

...what else can they do?

You are, as usual, completely correct. It really doesn't do any good. I know that the game itself is being worked on. That doesn't bother me. It is the attitude displayed. "I" don't like learning by doing, so even though I admitted that I didn't play for a year during 16 I'll take it out. I know much of the playerbase liked it, but "I" don't. That, to me, is a poor attitude. Maybe "Hey guys, we did some surveys, and it appears most people dislike lbd." "Hey guys, we had a serious discussion, and even though we realize many liked lbd, we just don't think that it is going to fit with the vision of the game. Since ya'll had an idea of where the game was going, and we definitely moved to left field, here is what we were thinking. This is where we were going."

But saying "Hey, we're working, but it's about what I want" is not, to me, the best approach. But hey, I'm just some random guy.

 

[art1336]

I assume it is an alpha and is open to changes and that were a problem I would not buy.
buy game - rust (ALPHA)- being a zombie post-apocalypse game and now there are no zombies.

and it is understood what madmole wants to say but many times they lose the forms and when someone releases an opinion it is automatically invalid and does not represent the community..

If what the community thinks does not represent the community then I do not understand anything. Lbd is a clear example of a massive demand from the large community and the developers do not try to reach an intermediate point between the current system of progression and LBD.

This will be my last reply and I'm done for the day I think.

Yes, it is obvious just by reading the forums and reddit pages what people think. Not all players enjoyed learning by doing, but enough people do and did that it is always defended when mentioned. It lasted for a while in alpha, and was simply taken out. Again, what is the big problem with it? Can it be gamed? Sure, but the trader can. Quests can. Sleepers can. But one person saying "You want to spam stone axes!" tells me that he did that or spent more time thinking about it then everyone who doesn't fixate on it, the same as someone complaining "You want to run into cacti over and over!" as if I am going to spend two hours doing that rather than stocking up on first aid bandages and going Texas Chainsaw Massacre on a poi. I get that ya'll might not like the game that people have been playing the past several years but, well, we did. We did enough to buy the game and promote it to everyone we know.

 

[madmole]

Maybe take away the whole xp stuff. It's not gonna work very well anyways. You're just chasing your own tail trying to integrate it in a way that fits the game. ;-P Action-Bound xp just hurts your game. I never thought I'd say this, but Roland had a great idea - "Daily Skillpoint For Surviving".
Link to his mod:

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?114413-0XP-RolMod

Uh ok. XP has worked forever in games. Rolands idea is suitable for a mod, but doesn't meet our vision for the game. Aside from that is totally flawed. A farmer can sit in his base with enough food to survive, go AFK and come back level 300 without actually doing anything at all.

 

[madmole]

Personally, I think the xp on the zombies is fine, it's the 'risk' that is missing, and how we approach and view the zombies now.In the early builds, getting the "infection" actually caused a sense of dread and urgency. Then it was a priority to find antibiotics to cure it, because the antibiotics were rare and turned into the first real goal of trying to get a mini stockpile of them throughout the game.

It wasn't until the mid/later part of the game, to where you had a decent supply of them, that the zombie smashing really started to take place (at least for me).

That sense of urgency is missing now, not because I'm so much better at the game, but the 'fear' of getting infected is pretty much gone.

Sure, we can still die at the hands of the zombies now, if we are caught unawares, or we did something risky to get pummeled to death, or failed to bring enough bandages, but they really are nothing more than targets at a shooting gallery now, little risk involved.

I remember quite a few times, fighting zeds, wining the confrontation, only to get infected in the process, then the new urgency and need of finding a way to cure. This often resulted in traveling, looting, fighting more zeds in the process (if I didn't have the materials to make the antibiotics on hand) because just getting all the ingredients together, or finding the antibiotics themselves, was longer to come by, which made the threat of getting infected meaningful.

Now? It's nothing more than an after thought, after the first couple/few days in game at best, and that it's basically impossible for the infection to kill you.

This is spot on. Unfortunately all the old diseases got broke with the rewrite of the new awesome framework for A17. When we get time we should have something like this again.

 

[RestInPieces]

This is spot on. Unfortunately all the old diseases got broke with the rewrite of the new awesome framework for A17. When we get time we should have something like this again.

No matter the risk, players will still actively hunt zombies with this kind of XP, but nevermind that, it is something you will see for yourself in the future as well. It is good that you agree with this sentiment about diseases, but since a disease is mostly feared for its result which is death, and seeing how you reduced the effects of death since 17.0, how do you plan on implementing that risk when fighting zombies?

 

[Tildja]

@madmole

Is there any work beeing done on the current road situation, where we end up with a road going straight up or down depending on where your comming from ?

 

[Anthonydevidal]

my fear and concern is the distancing of the community and the developers.

and as between these two entities is not dialogue but rather is imposed by the developers

and if you do not like you have the generic answers ramdom:

Roland-----> if you do not like make your own game (This is my favorite, I have a predilection for Roland)

Madmole---->If you do not like it look for a mod that suits your tastes.

other Devs---->currently Unity does not allow us to do it without overloading the cpu and gpu.

this is a bit the summary of this thread A17 / A18

 

[jcalvelli]

In my opinion, death should have a temporary damage and a permanent random damage (-1 attribute point for example). With the disease working again and the possibility of permanent damage the zombie fighting approach will be different, making the fights something you try to avoid because survive is more important (a feeling that must be pursued in a survival game!).

 

[Guppycur]

...how should it be? They're a company that has a leadership structure.

Those answers you cited are spot on. How they should be.

/Predilecting for Roland since 1971

 

[Anthonydevidal]

...how should it be? They're a company that has a leadership structure.
Those answers you cited are spot on. How they should be.

/Predilecting for Roland since 1971

I did not say there is any problem,I said lack of communication,and that is supposed to be one of the objectives of a Forum, right?

PD

I love your vehicles mod

 

[Guppycur]

I did not say there is any problem,I said lack of communication,and that is supposed to be one of the objectives of a Forum, right?

PD

I love your vehicles mod

Thanks!

I respectfully disagree. I tried a few other game forums, this is the only one where I know the devs by first and last name, have talked to them publically and some privately, because they're f*cking cool people.

I talk a lot of crap, but they're good people, trying to do a good job, and I appreciate their willingness to interact with us fools.

Joel's skin grew about 6 inches thicker from a few years ago, so deep down I think he appreciates us for our asshaterry too.

 

[Anthonydevidal]

I understand you, if I had to read a guy saying, the game is now too easy, and the next saying now the game is too difficult. I would send them to hell