PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

Madmole you have seen the mod RAVENHEARST? you can take ideas from that mod.

Mods are off topic here.

 

[lumpoycustards]

I agree with the sentiment that making fuel prohibitively rare wouldn't be fun, and neither would extreme solutions like killing the player for leaving during horde night.

There's always a middle-ground though: engines running poorly, moderate stamina debuff... Plenty of things can work as incentives without hard-line blocking gameplay possibilities.

 

[madmole]

Some good ideas being written here Madmole. Also look at Rust for good ideas or peoples mods like that guy just posted. Can’t wait for a18. Haven’t been playing but plan to soon as a18 hits the streets. Bye Madmole.

I play some rust here and there, but I obliterated the testers and they rage quit and shut down the server so that was that lol.

 

[RipClaw]

And who are these people making such extreme suggestions? Developers? No.
Please give the devs credit that they know what is too much. Do you really think they are going to poison the air outside your base so you die if you take a few steps away? Come on.

I’m not suggesting 100% death for leaving the base and the devs won’t design such idiocy so please leave such counter examples out of your argument.

The desire is for balanced challenge for each tactic of survival. End of story.

I never said developers wanted anything like that. I was explicitly talking about players how you can see in my first sentence. But it's just players discussing in the thread you mentioned.

Your statement was "Besides, nobody is saying to make it impossible to run away or drive around all night."

"Nobody" is not a clearly defined group unlike "developers". Therefore my answer.

And on the subject of the saints defending play styles that are not their own. Someone has to create a counterweight in these threads. Otherwise it's just echo chambers where players confirm to each other how big the problem is and that you have to take extreme measures against it. I also think of other players who don't write in the forum themselves but still like to play the game.

 

[madmole]

@Devs
Was the "Glancing Blow" system implemented at the time of the streams? If not can you showcase it in your next video?

No because it needs some polish.

 

[madmole]

I agree that the roaming hordes later in the game are no longer scary with one exception. The dogs and zombie bear horde is still scary even with a high level and good equipment. The wolves are said to be much more deadly in A18. A wolf horde might then also be more of a threat than a meat delivery.
With a small modlet you can increase the size of the wandering hordes. This of course also increases the cpu load if a wandering horde appears.

Wolves are weak sauce, not sure who told you that. Meals on wheels.

 

[madmole]

My dream of "six shooter" blunderbuss's is real!
Oddly perhaps, that could be my fav A18 feature!

Yes I want to have 4 of them on my belt.

 

[RipClaw]

Wolves are weak sauce, not sure who told you that. Meals on wheels.

I thought I'd remember you writing that wolves and dogs are deadlier in A18. Must have remembered it wrong.

 

[madmole]

I did not know that the loot was affected by gamestage. @madmole could you explain more this. How does gamestage affect loot? Does that mean if in A18, I'm at a super low gamestage, the loot I get will in general be crappy?

Yes, but there is always a low chance for good loot, it just gets better as the game progresses. Its like Skyrim, bandits have iron weapons early game and bosses have steel. Later on a few bosses might have orcish, even later they start having ebony, etc. Still just a chance though, its not guaranteed, its just more likely at a higher level.

 

[madmole]

I do not see any problems with brass or ammo. And this despite the fact that I do not play in a single game, I play on pvp servers. Sometimes just throwing stacks of ammo, no place to put.Much more annoying bleeding from zombies and animals. It will be with you the whole game, regardless of your level, perks or quality armor. Sometimes in one minute I get and cure 2-3 bleedings, it is annoying. Can we expect new modifiers for armor to reduce the chance of bleeding?

Armor is supposed to drastically reduce chance for bleeding in A18.

 

[RipClaw]

That'd be an awfully fine edge to have to balance gas on - enough to allow the player to ride around for 6 days of the week, but not enough to allow them to drive around on the 7th.
To be sure, gas is over-abundant at the moment, but to try and balance it to be another "Don't avoid the Horde" mechanism would require some pretty exquisite balancing, akin to dancing on the head of a pin I reckon.

I see it more as a motivator for the players to mine oil shale. If I were someone who wants to avoid the horde, I'd just ride my bicycle or walk during the week. By the way I also have to save gas for the generators in my base to fight the horde.

The fact that there will be less gasoline to be found in A18 has actually been known for weeks. If I remember correctly madmole said back then that the player would have to decide in the future whether he could make several short trips per week or one long trip. He didn't mention the horde at that time.

 

[RipClaw]

You can't find or craft it, its 1000 dukes per ounce.

How much gas do I get if I sell my kidney ?

 

[RipClaw]

Armor is supposed to drastically reduce chance for bleeding in A18.

That's great to hear.

 

[madmole]

Yea. Wheres our "special" loot? Legendary? Named loot? That what I'm waiting for.
Just look at what the borderlands mod is doing.

That is coming probably in A19, it was a significant amount of work addressing A17's balance issues, now A19 should be working on mostly fun stuff like vehicle mods, mod overhaul and then legendary items that are procedurally generated and named from a list.

And before anyone asks, no you can't craft legendary items lol.

 

[Tin]

That is coming probably in A19, it was a significant amount of work addressing A17's balance issues, now A19 should be working on mostly fun stuff like vehicle mods, mod overhaul and then legendary items that are procedurally generated and named from a list.
And before anyone asks, no you can't craft legendary items lol.

Sweet!

 

[RipClaw]

That is coming probably in A19, it was a significant amount of work addressing A17's balance issues, now A19 should be working on mostly fun stuff like vehicle mods, mod overhaul and then legendary items that are procedurally generated and named from a list.

I wonder if by coincidence also a burning red sledgehammer could be generated ? I think Kage already has the right name

 

[madmole]

I have what might be a stupid question but I'll ask it anyway.
If I take a quest for a t5 building does that raise the difficulty of the zombies that spawn there? Do t5 buildin naturally have high gamestage spawns?

I ask because I have since gone back to t2 and t3 buildings without quests and the zombies are MUCH easier there.

Most spawns are game staged, so it doesn't matter what tier you do. The tiers have more zombies and may spawn more alive at once. Loot rooms of T4+ typically don't game stage and just have badasses no matter what.

 

[Ayrton]

Madmole, great work to be putting together, I love, I will buy more copies of this great game just for the pleasure of helping this company and of course to play with my friends, today I have several friends and family to recommend 7 days, and all were very satisfied, only the Spanish translation would be missing that I already commented to them that it is coming when we have A18 stable, as you told me, how far we are from the experimental A18? will they have the serpentines three days before we the mortals? or is it released to the general public? the desire to play A18 is great friend!

 

[madmole]

I agree, to me it feels like player death has too much influence on game stage. At least for warrior up a less drastic influence on gamestage might be in order.
A small anecdote: In my last game I died two times by stepping backwards into my own spike traps (getting damage from two at the same time gave me practically no time to react). I don't think that should give me easy-mode zombies.

You can monitor your game stage in the player screen. I don't pay much attention to it but I don't die very often either. If you guys want, give me some stats, like I was level 50 and it was x, then I died once and it was y, I died 4x and it was z. It took AAA time to reach x again, and I was level whatever.

I don't think it changes a ton but I could be wrong.

 

[madmole]

I would stay in the forest biome because the others look like crap. And I dont mean that as a dig on the game. They look like crap because they are are run down or burned down. I have the same issue with empyrion. That game game difficulties on other planets I would like to try but they look like crap.
Please keep the challenge in the forest biome. At least for horde nights. I could see harder pois in the other biomes though.

Yeah I get depressed in the other biomes so I always build in the forest. Snow isn't ugly but until we get weather fixed I'm not building a snow base, and desert is kinda meh to me, snakes sneak up on you and piss me off. The plan was to make forest the start biome and then make the other ones have various difficulty and resources. We might never do that though, we need to get weather survival fixed first.