PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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I think it's a little like the issue with the INT tree in A17. A large part of this game is about crafting, so players flocked to intelligence because it was the only way to unlock more crafting recipes. In the same way, building is a huge part of the game, in fact one of it's unique selling points, and so players will try to increase their ability to build, and miner 69er/mother lode are the obvious choices for that unless you want to build out of hay bales.
"If players want to build a lot, then they spec into strength. That's their choice"

Doesn't this go against the whole thesis of the perk system? Give multiple ways to achieve the same goal, and let that add replayability to the game. If your goal is to "become a badass zombie killer", then the current perk system does really shine in giving player a lot of interesting ways to deal the problem. However, I'm pretty sure that's not everyone's goal. I get that A17 was a first pass on dealing with some stuff, but it feels as dismissive of the building aspect of the game as if "+20% damage vs the undead" was the only combat-related perk.

(btw my biggest goal is usually survival)
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Bingo - this guy gets it.

 
Guys this idea that you're stuck with melee weapons if you want to build is ridiculous. Ridiculonious!

I'm playing a perception/agility char and haven't been mining at all. Haven't smacked a single iron ore and I've only broken a few boulders to clear an area for my horde night battle arena.

I use the working forge at the trader and smelt the metal I have from scrapping loot. I have enough to make hundreds of rebar frames. I get stone, cobblestone, and cement from the brick piles and bags.

I have enough stone in my forge to make a few thousand cement.

Last night I crafted 1000 flagstone. Digging up a few treasure chests & buried supplies gave me more than enough clay even with poor digging abilities.

I've bought 1000+ concrete off the trader. Dozens of rebar frames.

If I actually took some time to break metal piles in the wasteland I could drop a few thousand more metal into my forge and have several hundred more rebar frames. If I went to a construction site/tower and gathered all the brick piles and cement bags I would then have more than enough to build an epic cement fortress.

Even though I barely have any points in strength. And I only recently put anything at all into miner 69er/lode, after level 60. I already had most of the above materials before sinking any points into those.

I have every capability to build. The only thing I'm missing out on is huge XP gains from being able to tear through ores.

Y'all are making a mountain out of a madmole-hill.

 
Guys this idea that you're stuck with melee weapons if you want to build is ridiculous. Ridiculonious!
I'm playing a perception/agility char and haven't been mining at all. Haven't smacked a single iron ore and I've only broken a few boulders to clear an area for my horde night battle arena.

&lt;..snip..&gt;

I have every capability to build. The only thing I'm missing out on is huge XP gains from being able to tear through ores.

Y'all are making a mountain out of a madmole-hill.
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^^ This ^^ is why I personally don't understand the arguement. I love building in 7days, I enjoy mining as well, toss a couple points into Str to get the perks when you can and voila (based on everything MM has said about A18). Done. Good to go. Why have a "special" tier for builders? This is not simplifying it, it's making things more complicated. Besides, as Socrastein says better than I could, there's not a ton of need to even do that (in A17 currently) mat's are everywhere... in abundance. Grab it and get to building. Just my humble opinion.

 
Guys this idea that you're stuck with melee weapons if you want to build is ridiculous. Ridiculonious!
I'm playing a perception/agility char and haven't been mining at all. Haven't smacked a single iron ore and I've only broken a few boulders to clear an area for my horde night battle arena.

I use the working forge at the trader and smelt the metal I have from scrapping loot. I have enough to make hundreds of rebar frames. I get stone, cobblestone, and cement from the brick piles and bags.

I have enough stone in my forge to make a few thousand cement.

Last night I crafted 1000 flagstone. Digging up a few treasure chests & buried supplies gave me more than enough clay even with poor digging abilities.

I've bought 1000+ concrete off the trader. Dozens of rebar frames.

If I actually took some time to break metal piles in the wasteland I could drop a few thousand more metal into my forge and have several hundred more rebar frames. If I went to a construction site/tower and gathered all the brick piles and cement bags I would then have more than enough to build an epic cement fortress.

Even though I barely have any points in strength. And I only recently put anything at all into miner 69er/lode, after level 60. I already had most of the above materials before sinking any points into those.

I have every capability to build. The only thing I'm missing out on is huge XP gains from being able to tear through ores.

Y'all are making a mountain out of a madmole-hill.
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And you are arguing with something that no one has said.

You are not locked to melee but the system itself promotes that path. There is a BETTER way to do it - namely do not promote one combat path over another by putting building or other non-combat perks there. You do not NEED int either in 17.4 but the system is set up that the vast majority of players will be guided to int because the power there. Clearly, TFP seen that as a negative.

This is not a world ender, a terrible change and I need to leave negative feedback criticism. I am positive that the new perk system will be a damn good step in the right direction. What I am saying is that I think there is an even better way to do it. We will see when it drops but we already have a system with building under str and the game already guides the player to str because of it (and pack mule - another non combat perk related to str though that one seems to have been addressed).

I would have 0 points in str right now if not for mining. Because of mining my toon almost universally ends up a melee character - it takes to many damn points in other levels early game to properly diversify when specking melee costs 1/3 to 1/4 what it would if that were not the case. The game itself incentives taking those perks if you are also mining. That is NOT an ideal progression system. A better progression system leaves the combat progression open without leading the player down a certain path.

You CAN work around it - that does not mean that you should have to or that this is an ideal situation. The decision to go agility for bows, intellect for the awesome new electrified weapon or str for the good 'ol reliable shotguns should be totally separate decision as to whether or not you want to sharpen your mining prowess. They are separate parts of the game.

 
I'm not saying make it complicated, I'm proposing making it challenging. I think it is possible to make food and water management challenging without making it complicated.
I think having to worry about food/water, or at least having to plan them ahead beyond simply hoarding as much of them as possible inside storage chests, would enhance the post-apocalyptic survival aspect of the game.
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I have to wonder how much of this is an issue of experience. The first 7dtd death I experienced was due to thirst. Now I know the ins and outs so food is trivial even in the beginning. If you have no idea where to get food and/or the details of what you need to gather food may be a much bigger deal.

 
If I actually took some time to break metal piles in the wasteland I could drop a few thousand more metal into my forge and have several hundred more rebar frames. If I went to a construction site/tower and gathered all the brick piles and cement bags I would then have more than enough to build an epic cement fortress.
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I think you underestimate how much material you need for a decent base.

I've already used 1000-1500 rebar frames and about 10000-15000 cement to build my current working base. And I'm not finished with the construction yet. These are completely different quantities than the little bit you can get from the trader and the pallets in the POIs. And the base is not even very big. It is only 20 x 20 blocks with a height of 17 blocks and surrounded by a 4 block high concrete wall and a 4 block deep and 2 block wide trench with concrete walls.

 
I think you underestimate how much material you need for a decent base.
I have already used 1000-1500 rebar frames and about 10000-15000 concrete in my current work base and I am not finished with the construction yet. These are completely different quantities than the little bit you can get from the trader and the pallets in the POIs. And the base is not even very big. It is only 20 x 20 blocks with a height of 17 blocks and surrounded by a 4 block high concrete wall and a 4 block deep and 2 block wide trench with concrete walls.
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That is an absurdly huge base. Realistically all you need to survive is a 5x5x3 cube, maybe with double-thick walls as the nights progress. Pretty, no, but it will be functional through those horde nights. Focus on sprucing up your base when you can actually afford to!

 
And you are arguing with something that no one has said.
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Partly, I think that most of the non-combat perks should be in a separate category and the game balanced so that builders are not artificially moved to strength combat skills
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You specifically said builders are artificially moved to strength skills.

I retorted that without strength skills I have acquired enough materials to build a base with several hundred concrete blocks and over a thousand flagstone blocks. So I can build grand structures even though I’m perked into ranged weapons & stealth. I was specifically addressing your inaccurate, exaggerated complaint and others like it.

I also have about 700 forged iron and a full stack of wood sitting in a chest so I could surround that fortress with tons of wooden and iron spikes and barbed wire.

The claw hammers and nail guns I’ve found work just fine without strength points or perks.

As madmole has factually stated, mining is labor intensive. Makes perfect sense that I can’t break safes or rocks as fast as a strength-focused character. The same strength that allows you to hit rocks harder allows you to swing clubs harder. A perfect union of synergistic abilities.

If anything, building is too easy considering I’m not perked into it at all. I’d be totally fine only being able to have 1/3rd of what I do in building supplies. I’m not even building a base. I’m just fighting the horde and turning it into a Doom-like event (don’t stop moving!).

I literally have all this stuff for which to build a base in case I decide I want to eventually. If I was really trying, I’d have quite a lot more.

I don’t HAVE to work around low/no strength. it’s not even a factor. I’m also getting by just fine with 0 crafting perks. I read a grease monkey magazine and built a bike that I ride everywhere. Before that I just popped a mega crush if I needed to travel 2km.

And it’s important to note, I’ve only found one trader. If I could peruse the inventory of 2 or 3 I would have access to even more concrete, iron, electronic devices, etc.

I think you should actually try low/no strength and see how easy it is to build. It sounds like your doing a lot of armchair theorizing while I’m actually playing the way you say is unreasonably challenging with no problem at all.

 
That is an absurdly huge base. Realistically all you need to survive is a 5x5x3 cube, maybe with double-thick walls as the nights progress. Pretty, no, but it will be functional through those horde nights. Focus on sprucing up your base when you can actually afford to!
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A 5x5x3 base would give me claustrophobia.

Besides this is my working base. On the roof is my garden and I have plenty of storage space and enough workstations to run several productions at the same time.

My horde base is a little bit smaller. From memory I would estimate the dimensions to be 10x15x8. Equipped with 6 dart traps, 3 electric fences and one blade trap. But I left some space to install more traps if necessary. In a previous game I had the same horde base with 14 dart traps and 7 electric fences. Has easily held up against a gamestage 900 horde.

In A16, I had a large horde base. It was about 40x40 blocks. Equipped with 8 shotgun turrets and on the ground there were about 1000 wooden spikes. It was great fun to build this base.

 
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I thought you were talking about a bug where if you did too much damage you missed part of the harvest. The old harvest more resources at the end feature I liked but Gazz said it made balancing harder so I let him remove it. When things are done moving around we could possibly add it back.
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I like the idea of the bonus, but it should have been removed because it was a calculation error.

I would like to see something added back intentionally with valid and correct values.

It helps to encourage people to finish what they started... especially on servers.

Edit: Sorry for the redundant post, I just read that you said the exact same thing. Just know someone else is thinking the same.

 
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is there going to be more paint options? seems to be what i hear most from the "girl gamers", especially late game when bases and outposts are in their polishing/aesthetics mode.
i can remember but were there more paint options before? i didnt do much of that even since steam release up until a16 when i stopped scrapping paintbrushes but i felt there were even more choices after unlocking them through those magazines.
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https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?111778-Alpha-18-Dev-Diary!!/page275https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?111778-Alpha-18-Dev-Diary!!/page275

https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?111778-Alpha-18-Dev-Diary!!/page281https://7daystodie.com/forums/showthread.php?111778-Alpha-18-Dev-Diary!!/page281

 
Sure, then it could be something like :- Mother Lode : In the dark - 5% more stone when mining underground

- Mother Lode : Timber - 5% chance to one shot trees when using a steel axe

- Mother Lode : Iron man - 5% more iron when mining boulders with a pickaxe

- Mother Lode : Cotton candy - Twice more cotton from curtains

And what not. Possibilities are endless.

However, personally, I'll wait till A18 drops before assuming anything.
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We already have stuff like this.

 
is there going to be more paint options? seems to be what i hear most from the "girl gamers", especially late game when bases and outposts are in their polishing/aesthetics mode.
i can remember but were there more paint options before? i didnt do much of that even since steam release up until a16 when i stopped scrapping paintbrushes but i felt there were even more choices after unlocking them through those magazines.
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No plans but I want to make a few materials for players so their forts could look newer and relatively unblemished.

 
My wife will love random stats on clothes. She will probably drag me out shopping every day looking for that perfect high stat shoes..

Maybe you should shelve that feature.
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With random colors coming maybe you'll be shopping until closing time, but then the horde comes out lol.

 
Yo MM,

I think for the warhammer you should add a swipe effect on the right click (like Reinhardt AA). It would be ♥♥♥♥ing awesome.

 
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