PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

So many hours with my wife and family playing this game. I'd encourage peeps to grab some of those early alphas from steam and keep them just in case you can't get them next year or two.
Not the same game for me. I loved where it was going..hate where it went. Appreciate all the effort and dedication...just not for me. Got a gazillion times my money's worth..best value for a game ever. Thank you so much TFP..from the bottom of my heart..you made one of the most addictive and hopeful games I've ever played.

Uh ok. See you for A18.

 

[madmole]

Gas is very easy to scrounge but as MM said that is easier to balance, decrease the amount found, increase fuel usage is vehicles.

Na, I don't want to have to get out and refuel constantly, I've already balanced how long a tank lasts (roughly) so we just need to decrease the amount of fuel you can scavenge.

 

[madmole]

You can add more minerals and metals for the mining.Copper to make the cables and some materials for mechanics and electronics.

Sulfur.

Platinum for some electronic materials and as a precious metal.

Tungsten for some necessary materials of electronics and advanced weapons.

Titanium as the strongest metal, the next level of steel to improve the blocks and to make some materials for vehicles, electronics, advanced weapons.

For larger hordes of zombies and more powerful zombies, something harder than steel is required. The only thing that exceeds steel and is found in mines is titanium.

Apart from that, titanium is necessary for electronics, vehicles and as a last level of weapons. Example: stone ax, iron ax, steel ax and titanium ax. Titanium as the most advanced, last levels of the character and very rare the loot.

Why complicate it to 1000 minerals? Thats just more icons taking space in your backpack.

 

[Exxodous]

In regards to all the discussions surrounding driving away on BM to avoid it, I'm surprised nobody has suggested the following:

Blood Moon can not end until a % of the total Z's are killed.

Drive for days if you want but they will still be coming - or - turn off blood moon via the settings - or - defend like the game is intended.

All are fine options and everyone gets to play horde night like they want.

 

[madmole]

Sometimes you want to play but just don't feel like doing a blood moon. (Shrug). Who cares?

So rent a room from a trader, or build a quick vulture shack on a roof. Try to out run them. Its like plants vs zombies, if you don't feel like clicking guess what, your doing to die lol. If you don't feel like it... I mean come on this is a survival game. Nobody feels like surviving, its just instinctive. You can always just strip down and offer yourself to the zombies and wait til morning to respawn too, an offering to the zombie gods.

 

[PolishBerserker]

Hey my friends my english is not perfect but i hope you will understand me...So when i was playing 7dtd lately on random gem like a maniac i really really really like challanges..so i put difficulty survalist + 64 horde cuz horde night should be a challange but eh it is too easy?I had a iron club that is my best friend bow and a pistol i did it so many times lately like 10 times or more like everytime i was like it is too easy i started once again from 0 i end up with like 6-7 saves with characters close to level 80 bullets are realy easy to get most of the time before a 7day horde i had like 700 pistol bullets 200 shotgun close to 500 7.62 or what ever calliber it is.. most of the time i was making simple base some metal spikes cemetic paste that i got with shovel from farms...like if u know the game it is so easy everything is much easier..i hate to be limited by the level to do something likeso i really like the idea u guys came out schematic+ parts of lets say a truck and u can do it nice m60 and ghily?you read in my mind but how about marksman rifle and hunting rifle if i see 2 of those i scrap them 99% of the time i dont know when i m holding ak in my hand im like BRO lets shoot some zombies when im holding marskman rifle im like bro scrap me for that 5 bullets..and some mechanic parts maybe u guys could think of some other variants of those guns like svd dragunovs sks?also if we talking about guns i would love to see beatifull wooden oak rifle butt to ak or how ever u call it i would also like to see some new pois like air port harbor planes ships empty destroyed tanks? heli crashes that spawns around the world like in dayz that gives diffrent type of loot depens of what kind of heli it was USA/Russia maybe some Ar-15 m4? 5.56? caliber i would love to see winchester M1866 forhunting rifle i would for example put a mosin nagant and a usa variant of similar gun you know what i mean some STG 44?some m1 carabinelike we got so many beatifull pois that are so good to loot and always lots of fun but we got still that same guns i would like to see more variants of military camps like lets say a USA variant and Russian variant maybe u guys could add radation to the game so hazmat suit/parts would make seanse to use and for exaple vodka like in STALKER to remove radation level we got Sedans in the game but we can't use them makes me sad same about school bus i hope u will add some modifications to vehicles spike on wheels flametrower maybe idk lol maybe a torist zombie with machinegun that u need to take from faraway oh also if u are changing bullets in SMG in 7dtd u can notice it is missing some kind of barrel or silencer at front of it but on hotbar u can see it got that silencer i hope u will also add maybe guns at the back of military zombies or random guns laying around in military bases gun locks etc maybe the ak that u craft with your own hands should look a little bit diffrent then the one i can find in wild life?or less durability maybe it should require some cleaning from time to time otherwise it would get stuck and required extra reload to shoot again i would love to see some life in water and a fishing rod would be amazing...maybe u guys can do something with randomgen like half of the city is in forest biome some in burnforest and middle in snow i dont like it makes me wanna look for better place... sorry for that kind of spam but i was just going wiht my flow Great game!keep up the good work

 

[madmole]

I feel this has to be asked as for the future of this game and where it is going.
what is 7dtd turning into? like this whole not wanting players safe during horde night. how does this affect you in MP or single player? this game doesn't really have a congrats you beat the game, so we have to kinda set our own goals as to what we want and if one of the goals is a self sustaining base where we are safe from the horde and don't really need to go out to loot or whatever then who cares?

I'm fine with changes when it makes sense like the talks about nerfing gas or making some stuff slightly harder to find or putting them in more dangerous locations. I would even enjoy more sliders and toggles in the main menu as to roaming horde sizes, zombie damage and a boat load of other things to better set individual play style.

so is 7dtd becoming a game where more and more limits are being set on players or is it going to let us play how we want?

A self sustaining base? Sorry that is just not a reasonable goal. You should have to go out and get supplies for more advanced stuff. There has to be some maintenance cost to the ultimate base.

 

[madmole]

Feels like 7dtd is turning into a shooter more than a RPG.
I would like tfp to give some love to stealth low combat build.

I would like to go to a house, make a decoy sound like throwing a rock too lure the zombies out. Then sneak past them and loot the house.

If it gets tricky I might have to stealth kill a zombie or two.

If you played "the last of us" you know what I mean.

The thrill of sneaking around knowing you might be spotted and all hell will break loose.

I would also like to be able to dodge the bm GPS. I dont mind if that would be at the end of the perk tree.

Let's say when you sneak you emits a heat map.

BM Zombies will run too your vicinity and start to run around looking for you.

If you stand still in the same spot to long they will sniff you out so you got to be moving to keep your heatmap low.

I know some love has been given like lockpicks and some stealth perks.

But there are some bugs that kills the stealth gameplay. Like micro jumps when you sneak over an uneven surface.

We're addressing a ton of stuff with stealth and there are hundreds more perks than A16, how can you say we're turning into a shooter? There are 5 legit attribute based "classes" you can spec into, and mix as much as you want, provided you want to be spread thin for a while if you choose.

 

[madmole]

Emm what? If vehicles are somehow affected during blood moons, then should all the electrical stuff at your base, generators, turrets, traps, lights, your mining helmet light, battery light in your hand held flashlight etc, but that will cripple the gameplay and defensive options among other things.
madmole, please be considerate about major gameplay changing mechanics and if possible, it would be lovely if you don't force it on people, but have it optional under game settings, just like the horde night itself now is optional.

A17 already has seen a lot of stuff being cut out such as zombie looting, only 1 electrical light is craftable, a lot of paint tool textures have been removed as option to paint your base, food stat is totally gone from the game and food restores max stamina now.

I get that you want to move forward, it's your game, your vision of a zombie survival crafting game, but whatever you do, try to be gentle on forcing artificial limitations to players, because it's a creative game and let people be creative, if they want to drive their vehicles on hoard nights, let them, it does't force you to do the same play style as they do.

My suggestion to all of this is - if on hoard night you are on a vehicle, then make zombies spawn a bit in front of the vehicle and make them sprint and ram the vehicle, dealing significantly more damage than on usual days. With this, if you are skilled enough, you at least have the chance to avoid the sprinting zombie mob and it gives a challenge at the same time.

I prefer your solution, but its a lot harder than just making vehicles go dead. I merely posted one idea we talked about 2 years ago lol, and everyone is on edge talking about something that isn't even on the roadmap at all. The first step is fuel balance for a18.

Zombie loot drop chance has been increased in A18, but we're never going back to every zombie has loot, checking 500 corpses for 1 fishing lure is bs. When they do drop loot, its good loot is the better design.

 

[Phoenixshade35]

Some materials need to remain loot only so players can't get rich or have unlimited x. All advanced recipes have an advanced loot only ingredient now.

Now im rather intrigued, i can't wait to see what those happen to be, and i totally understand.

 

[madmole]

This is still the best solution, imo.

Yes imagine zombie hits each damaging your vehicle until it breaks down (something that should happen randomly with an increased chance with decreased vehicle health) and then you are trying to repair it and zeds are running up on you quickly. That would be intense. As I said, this is the harder to implement solution but much better.

 

[Survager]

Hi Medmole. I have already proposed this before, but maybe it was not timely. I will offer again.

Now recipes are sorted every time we open a player’s inventory or craft stations. Also, the recipe list is sorted every time the amount of resources changes.

Sorting sometimes creates a heavy load on the PC.

I propose to disable the automatic sorting of recipes and add a few buttons for sorting: alphabetically and by accessibility. Players will choose when they need to sort the recipes and how.

If I understand correctly, this will greatly reduce the load on the PC.

I also noticed that if you enter a search request in the search field and then close and re-open the inventory, the search result is not saved, but the request remains in the search field. Could you fix it, may be make the search results saved?

Thank you.

 

[Anabella]

1.) Fuel is currently way too prevalent in A17.4

I have played a mod where gas was in shortage and it wasn't fun at all. Made the spending all that time getting the vehicles not worth fooling with cause you could barely use them.

 

[Anabella]

Naw the main focus of group B was that they don't care what others do or how they play, but that they want challenge in what they do. You are a group B member. Just because you /chose/ not to build underground, doesn't exclude you.
A more defined line is "Players who want others to play like they do" vs "Players who don't give a crap what others do", if that helps delineate it for you.

If you looked at the members who were in group B during #undergroundbasegate you'd find that the vast majority of them said something along the lines of "although I personally don't do it, I defend their rights", in addition to statements like "digging zombies is dumb, what would be better is..."

I am one of those I don't care how other play as long as they aren't hurting anyone else and are enjoying the game. People with control complexes annoy the crap out of me.

As far as the driving on horde night. If I need to jump on my bike and go grab something I want to be able to do that. Running form the horde? nah....if I don't want them I can just turn them off. I don't see a single valid reason to change how it is now.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

We're addressing a ton of stuff with stealth and there are hundreds more perks than A16, how can you say we're turning into a shooter? There are 5 legit attribute based "classes" you can spec into, and mix as much as you want, provided you want to be spread thin for a while if you choose.

That is exactly the point tho... At least in my opinion.

Classes do not enhance replayvalue, they constrict it.

Before I could go heavy armor (A16) and club, but also light armor and club.

Now if I go into the heavy armor, I can not skill up my bow without spending extra points, which restricts options.

I'm not saying its the worst part about the A17 changes... not by far, and if that is something you really wanted to do that is fine... but don't act as if "classes" give us more freedom, when in fact, it restricts playstyles by making certain playstyles a lot more skillpoint efficient and others way more skillpointhungry.

 

[Thecolours]

Hey Madmole, any plans for a vid this week?

 

[vicflo]

is it possible to have higher chances of rare loot drop from BM zombies, like a god roll spec item/weapon? that itself would make some people stop and kill a few before fleeing again. would also appease the ones who got butthurt from the zombie loot nerf, that have the need for a risk vs reward to engage in something.

 

[Hamburglar]

Will we be seeing drilling vehicles any time soon?

 

[AlabasterW]

Will we be seeing drilling vehicles any time soon?

Auger + your feet, baby!

 

[madmole]

In my mind an RPG requires one thing above all others, a ROLE. IOW, story.
Considering that this game is utterly without a story and any semblance of a 'role' that you are playing it is not an RPG at all.

Role playing is a lot more than just dialogue with NPCs, its perks, stats you can increase, unique abilities. Your ability to change the world (rebuilding a bridge vs making a castle) is all role playing. Even teams can take roles (medic, builder, killer, sneaky, smart guy, etc) and those are all role playing.

Granted dialogue choices might be some of the more meaningful RPG elements in a game, the lack of them doesn't exclude 7 days from being a great RPG already. We have some of the best RPG mechanics of any game I've ever played. If you take away the story tellers and npcs of skyrim or fallout and reduce it to just game mechanics those games would go from greatest rpgs of all time to greatest failures (fallout 76 for example).

A19 will really start to feel more like an RPG with helping settler quests and hopefully some random quest givers.