PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[ZombieHorde]

Why? How many stations do you need? Do gates excite you?

Yes, they do.

Building your base and fleshing it out with stuff is really cool and fun and stations are definitely one of those things that makes me go 'Home, sweet home' whenever I walk through my drawbridge.

 

[TSBX]

On the topic of auto reload for the crossbow/blunderbuss, can we at least have the ability to switch out of that belt slot during the reload animation? It's super aggravating to get stuck reloading uselessly while waiting, but the auto reload function is necessary in and of itself.

 

[meganoth]

Yes, they do.
Building your base and fleshing it out with stuff is really cool and fun and stations are definitely one of those things that makes me go 'Home, sweet home' whenever I walk in my drawbridge.

The downside is that you have hundreds of recipes distributed over all these workstations and need to continually search for the right workstation for a specific product. How about more decorative elements and posters on the wall, that will individualize your home as well?

I would much prefer (preferably) electrified upgrades to existing workstations with slightly better recipes. That would make a real difference as you would have to decide whether and when you want to upgrade, because electrified stations have also obvious downsides.

On the topic of auto reload for the crossbow/blunderbuss, can we at least have the ability to switch out of that belt slot during the reload animation? It's super aggravating to get stuck reloading uselessly while waiting, but the auto reload function is necessary in and of itself.

AFAIK bows and crossbows have comparable damage to guns AND are silent from the start. They are balanced by their slow reload. This simply means you have to use guns if you don't want to be stuck in reload or bows if you don't want to be loud.

 

[TSBX]

The downside is that you have hundreds of recipes distributed over all these workstations and need to continually search for the right workstation for a specific product. How about more decorative elements and posters on the wall, that will individualize your home as well?
I would much prefer (preferably) electrified upgrades to existing workstations with slightly better recipes. That would make a real difference as you would have to decide whether and when you want to upgrade, because electrified stations have also obvious downsides.

AFAIK bows and crossbows have comparable damage to guns AND are silent from the start. They are balanced by their slow reload. This simply means you have to use guns if you don't want to be stuck in reload or bows if you don't want to be loud.

The slow reload is fine. Being stuck in the animation and unable to switch to a bandage or a melee weapon is a big problem however. All it really does is take agency away from the player to be able to solve dynamic problems that come up in combat, and feels like an oversight.

 

[Unkfester.pm]

It would be nice if you could craft poisoned food, looks like normal food. Could leave it for raiders on pvp

 

[meganoth]

The slow reload is fine. Being stuck in the animation and unable to switch to a bandage or a melee weapon is a big problem however. All it really does is take agency away from the player to be able to solve dynamic problems that come up in combat, and feels like an oversight.

Ok, so why should I ever use a gun if I can just put 3 *bows in my belt and shoot a salvo of 3 arrows/bolts into any zombie? Sure, lots of slots used, but in 95% of cases you can simply "one-to-three-shot" zombies without waking any other zombie so you have all the time in the world to reload.

The slow reload means you have to include that time into all calculations. If you shoot with a *bow, always keep enough distance so that zombies can't reach you before you can actually switch the weapon. It really means distance and careful inspection of your surroundings is a lot more important for *bow than with other weapons. In POIs you always have to try to shoot from across a room and invest heavily into perks that give you faster movement stealthed if you want to reduce risks.

Except for horde night *bows are used from day 1 till really late game. I have never played a game where I had no *bow in my belt at any time and I think this is true for my co-players as well. *bows don't seem to be second rate weapons (unlike the blunderbuss which really is a special case that is used for fun not for efficiency) because of their reload.

 

[The Gronk]

<snipped for space>

Soldiers are trained that it's quicker to switch weapons than to reload. On horde night my tool belt usually contains 2-3 ranged weapons. If I suffer a breach I'd rather switch weapon while falling back to the next line of defense than try to reload while going backwards.

 

[kamer1337]

It would be nice if you could craft poisoned food, looks like normal food. Could leave it for raiders on pvp

i would prefer exploding chest when you break a lock

 

[TSBX]

Ok, so why should I ever use a gun if I can just put 3 *bows in my belt and shoot a salvo of 3 arrows/bolts into any zombie? Sure, lots of slots used, but in 95% of cases you can simply "one-to-three-shot" zombies without waking any other zombie so you have all the time in the world to reload.
The slow reload means you have to include that time into all calculations. If you shoot with a *bow, always keep enough distance so that zombies can't reach you before you can actually switch the weapon. It really means distance and careful inspection of your surroundings is a lot more important for *bow than with other weapons. In POIs you always have to try to shoot from across a room and invest heavily into perks that give you faster movement stealthed if you want to reduce risks.

Except for horde night *bows are used from day 1 till really late game. I have never played a game where I had no *bow in my belt at any time and I think this is true for my co-players as well. *bows don't seem to be second rate weapons (unlike the blunderbuss which really is a special case that is used for fun not for efficiency) because of their reload.

The original point was to

A.) Bring the issue to the Dev team's attention

B.) Get their input on intent/balance/whatever

There can be balance without making the player have to sit through an arbitrary animation simply due to the reason of, "because".

I know it's tough having to completely ignore reason to blindly support whatever is in the game right now as being 100% done and fully intended, and I'm praying for you, but you can take a break. It's fine, I promise.

EDIT: To your toolbelt "argument" you could also load it up with 6 SMG's and have it be even more OP, so your point is completely invalidated.

 

[meganoth]

The original point was to A.) Bring the issue to the Dev team's attention

B.) Get their input on intent/balance/whatever

There can be balance without making the player have to sit through an arbitrary animation simply due to the reason of, "because".

I know it's tough having to completely ignore reason to blindly support whatever is in the game right now as being 100% done and fully intended, and I'm praying for you, but you can take a break. It's fine, I promise.

Do you really want to make ad hominems instead of bringing arguments?

My point is that bows are well balanced at the moment. If you remove one of the drawbacks you have to add drawbacks somewhere else. Unquestionably that can be done, but please also post where? Do you (and most other players as well) accept a damage nerf to balance that? If no, what then?

Or do you think bows are too weak? Why then are they used so extensively by everyone?

EDIT: Ok, you added an SMG argument: Well, the SMG already has such a big magazine that nobody would really use more than one SMG. SMG drawback is the high ammo use, damage per bullet is quite low. Magazine size is really not the problem.

More than one sniper rifle, THAT would make sense. But with sniper the same drawback is included, you can't switch the weapon instead of reload, otherwise sniper would be OP

 

[TSBX]

You can call it ad hominem, but your post behavior tends to try to justify the way things are right now, even if they are only partially implemented or not confirmed as being how things are supposed to work. Even if they change later as the game gets further balance passes.

If you interrupt the reload animations on ANY weapon, the weapon STILL needs to be reloaded. How many you can put in your belt is arbitrary. The fact that the interrupt is absent on those two weapons bears the question of, "Is this intended?". Full Stop.

 

[Roland]

Maybe the balance could be that if you interrupt the reload animation, the weapon doesn’t get reloaded. At least then you can’t cycle endlessly through crossbows 1-3 on your belt. You can go through all three without waiting for the animation but then they are empty just like when you first craft one or run out of ammo and then have to press R or the radial menu to manually reload.

Skipping the animation but having it still reload in the background would be the truly undesirable outcome.

 

[TSBX]

New players won't understand why weapon A can ignore the animation while weapon B can't be. We have to think of the children after all.

Also,

Gun 1 and

Gun 2 both have separate magazines and switching from one to another to fire off rounds isn't unheard of and is common in a LOT of games.

If somebody wants to spend that much iron to make 6 blunderbusses, let them go to work.

 

[madmole]

You've got to have workstations. Even the campfire to a degree is a workstation.
Without these things a base would be nothing more than a collection of storage boxes, which is not particularly interesting.

LOL ok, you should see my bases. Pimp pads, swimming pools, full on castles. Check my twitter.

 

[madmole]

I might be late to the party, but yeah, sub-biomes.Like for example a big snowy mountain with forest at the base and then rocky snowy mountains without trees at the higher to peak levels? That would be cool.

Could also work for desert, the more to the middle one gets, the more sparse plants become.

Or a forest becoming denser.

Not gradually, but with perhaps just one 'inner circle' for hopefully big biomes, maybe even tied to the heightmap, so those barren mountain peaks can shine through programmatically?

Like that?

Or full scale blends of biomes next to each other instead of inside each other, as I envisioned in the first two examples?

Yeah with sub biome size control we could do anything.

 

[madmole]

hail sithis!

We Know.

 

[n2n1]

Yeah with sub biome size control we could do anything.

There was a limit to the number of sub-biomes types in the biome. About ~8 sub.

Will this limitation remain in the new system?

 

[sinda]

so there is no gravity and spoon doesnt bend.

did you just say there IS a spoon??

 

[madmole]

Good, that was a major complaint about A17.x


I wish the Crossbow was as good as the one in H1Z1, that crossbow was awesome.

We've hacked in a tier 3 crossbow using the same model for now that will be better than the tier 2 one.

 

[madmole]

Something like this is what I would hope for:
View attachment 28496

Just one example. Kinda similar to the bands style we saw momentarily I think in 17.1. However, it doesn't need to be. The snow mountains could easily be centered on the map with desert edges. Likewise desert could be the center with snow maintains on the edges. Quite a few arrangements are possible. All that matters is that the rules are followed that a biome can only be adjacent to specific biomes (or sub-biomes, whatever you want to call them) for nice transitions.

Again, for the wasteland, I would probably determine their locations after determining city placement. The ground is rubble, so half a city could be in tact, perhaps the most damaged at the edge followed by the wasteland. Or in the center of a large city. Or not at all for most cities.

Yeah that is pretty cool.