PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

This is SOOOOO weird to me. Not even because of the realism...But you removed gunparts, which had SO MUCH POTENTIAL to really impact so many different things, for the sake of micromanagement.

And now you introduce baseballbat parts.

I mean... I won't ever use a baseballbat anyways... but it is just sooo weird!

It's not weird.

They removed "mix and match various different parts with different qualities to get the optimum gun" because it was unnecessary micromanagement.

They've introduced "making a top tier weapon needs a single special ingredient that you need to find/buy/craft" to make you work for them.

The two systems are completely different in scope and complexity.

 

[meganoth]

Makes me really nervous that your getting 12 lvls a day and talking xp nerfs. This coming from someone who never has even come close to 12 levels in a day. Like on a good day I might get 2.

I have a friend who likes to amplify any numbers to make a point. A movie with 30 people dying in gun fights would be described as "Hundreds of people get shot". Madmole is the same, his "12 levels" are a synomym for "too many levels". You are reading this forum long enough, you should know his style by now.

 

[Katitof]

This is SOOOOO weird to me. Not even because of the realism...But you removed gunparts, which had SO MUCH POTENTIAL to really impact so many different things, for the sake of micromanagement.

And now you introduce baseballbat parts.

I mean... I won't ever use a baseballbat anyways... but it is just sooo weird!

Gun parts had zero potential compared to current weapon mods.

It was just annoying micromanagement and inventory clutter.

It was nothing more then a time gate for the sake of time gating guns/quality.

Parts in A18 have nothing in common with old gun parts outside of "parts" being in name.

 

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Hey! No kink-shaming!
It's lithophagia btw, you made me google it

My only gripe is that they look a bit cartoony but that's my own aesthetic choice. Hunting for ore deposits should be a bit of a challenge, these may be a little obvious to make the hunt feel rewarding.

Don't forget that in the screenshots they were out in the open in a cleared area to show them off.

When there are trees and bushes and boulders and things in the way they'll be a lot less obvious, I guess.

 

[Viktoriusiii]

Gun parts had zero potential compared to current weapon mods.

just off the top of my head:

-different stats/effects for each part (barrel accuracy, magazine size, parts might force a reload because a bullet is stuck and so on)

-combining different weapon warts for different weapons

-1-600 quality meant more gradual effects

-better balance of loot (since you had to find multiple things and had to replace the bad ones) making exploration more rewarding

you can make more mods... sure. and the effects are neat. But in my short time in A17 I was never "OH YEAH NICE FINALLY A SHORT STOCK! It has lower range and nearly no benefits" and this for basicially every weaponmod. In A16 each weaponpart was exciting. And if you made them scrappable to mechanical parts like how guns are in A17, this would have INSTANTLY fixed all the "micromanage" problems.

 

[Trankitas]

I punched a boar out cold.

You're not kidding anyone Joel. We saw you fighting that pig

 

[Roland]

just off the top of my head:-different stats/effects for each part (barrel accuracy, magazine size, parts might force a reload because a bullet is stuck and so on)

-combining different weapon warts for different weapons

-1-600 quality meant more gradual effects

-better balance of loot (since you had to find multiple things and had to replace the bad ones) making exploration more rewarding

you can make more mods... sure. and the effects are neat. But in my short time in A17 I was never "OH YEAH NICE FINALLY A SHORT STOCK! It has lower range and nearly no benefits" and this for basicially every weaponmod. In A16 each weaponpart was exciting. And if you made them scrappable to mechanical parts like how guns are in A17, this would have INSTANTLY fixed all the "micromanage" problems.

There would have only ever been five parts possible for each gun since those parts were the recipe to create the gun. Now there is no limit to the number of parts that can be added and swapped in and out for guns since they are independent of being the gun’s recipe.

I did like the quality game of slowly improving the quality of the gun by adding better quality parts but even that boiled down to only adding durability and damaging power to each weapon. Mods have a much wider variety of stats that can be manipulated.

 

[madmole]

Baseball bat parts are a completely reasonable thing. Composite bats can use a combination of parts; For example, a wooden composite bat typically consists of a plastic foam core surrounded by woven layers of resin-impregnated synthetic fibers. Some bats are wooden with cork centers or even ceramic centers. They have greatly increased hitting power than the 1 part wooden bats.
Although you won't find these bats in MLB. They are legal in most other leagues. That said, even the wooden ones require some fine tools to make, otherwise we might call them clubs.

I will choose the multi-part baseball bat for hitting zombies. All those who don't like baseball bat parts can remain ignorant and let us have all the fun. :smile-new:

Thank you I was going to correct them with this info, but was too tired last night and having too much fun with A18 to be concerned about some knee jerks over something that works great for the game.

 

[Dark_Corvid]

This is SOOOOO weird to me. Not even because of the realism...But you removed gunparts, which had SO MUCH POTENTIAL to really impact so many different things, for the sake of micromanagement.

And now you introduce baseballbat parts.

I mean... I won't ever use a baseballbat anyways... but it is just sooo weird!

The biggest difference from A16 is the granularity of the system. As I understand it, the actual "weapon parts" part is singular. So there is one component called "baseball bat parts" and any other components are common.

It isn't the same system as it has been refined to increase the chances of making a whole weapon since players won't have to search for 4 different rare components. From a game system design standpoint, it does indeed make sense.

It is a similar system, not exactly the same, but similar, to Bethesdas' tried and true crafting.

Ugh. I need to learn to hold off commenting until I read all comments.

 

[madmole]

Hold up, you can take apart shopping carts with a wrench! I had no idea.

Yes and about anything metal with some kind of part hinge or wheel to it would have a mechanical part.

 

[Trankitas]

As much as I like the new models for the lead-ore and the potassium-ore, I don't like the oil-shale model very much. In no way does the shape, size and form of the model shown on Twitter resemble what you guys would call oil-shale. Of course I understand in the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter one tiny bit, but still..
Daddy is not angry, daddy is disappointed!

Show us a photo of how it should be, geologist.

 

[Callum123456789]

joel how does it feel starting out from alpha 1 coming very far to a18? I imagine you must be impressed as most of us are

 

[Qyzer]

A few random things (I would put them as separate posts, but the forum would just join them up anyway):

I REALLY want dead is dead as a server option (and some version of it for multiplayer servers). Nonetheless, if you want to reward people surviving and not dying, then you should REWARD them with a buff. Call it Morale or something. You lose it when you die. The whole "death penalty" thing is people trying to reinvent the resting penalty "problem" Blizzard solved by making it a buff. There is a reason death penalties are almost unheard of anymore, most people hate them, unlike most of us masochists here.

It's also obvious that survivors are just zombies that get better, it really explains everything about how death works in the game, from why you start the game with next to nothing and why (depending on settings) when you die, some of your gear is where you "died."

I'm all for nerfing gas, but it would be interesting if we got these as an option (for slower versions of vehicles for game balance reasons):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

I'm pretty sure they have been mentioned before, it's exactly the kind of tech you would see post-apocalypse.

Please bring back permanent repair damage, it's yet another reason to keep looting. Maybe not for legendary items.

And lastly:

Thank you TFP for putting so much in the XMLs where we can mod it. There are plenty of things I have quibbles with and the ability to go in and un-quibble it is incredible. I would like it to be easier to remove Traders and not have Quests so prevalent, but I'm willing to do the extra work for my odd play preferences.

 

[madmole]

I notice that on one of them you say:


I'm curious about where you consider the correct balance on fuel quantities to be and what you consider to be "tons".

Basically, is the intent that you will have to mine if you want to use a vehicle?

Or is the intent that light vehicle use will still be feasible on scavenged gas and you'll only have to mine shale if you use one constantly and also run generators most of the time?

The goal is to feel the pinch of gas like you do every other popular resource, every few days its a problem if you stop looting or can't find any in loot. I'd say I've achieved it as the cars in my save are starting to dryup. Bear in mind there are plenty in POIS yet, its just the road cars are drying up on the roads I use frequently. I still cannot craft gasoline as I'm waiting for a schematic to drop, so for now I'm still scavenging cars and gaming the system by clearing a poi before hitting the quest start so it resets and I can get double resources.

 

[madmole]

Can you visually see the knocking out of their teeth? A teeth particle coming out of the mouth when you punch the zombie would be badass.

No its just an abstraction of why you aren't getting infected constantly.

 

[beerfly]

Thank you I was going to correct them with this info, but was too tired last night and having too much fun with A18 to be concerned about some knee jerks over something that works great for the game.

This thing with bat parts is much better, indeed. We already have wooden club if someone like wacking around with a "one part wooden weapon"

 

[madmole]

What are your game settings? 90 min days? Default xp? You gain 12 levels in 1 day on those settings? What stage of the game? Day 3 or day 60?
Video or didnt happen lol.

Makes me really nervous that your getting 12 lvls a day and talking xp nerfs. This coming from someone who never has even come close to 12 levels in a day. Like on a good day I might get 2.

This was before the XP nerf. I play default settings, but set air drop to once every 7 days, turn on the air drop marker, and set max alive to 16 or 24. Use molotov for crowd control on horde night with 24 zombies and get 5-10k xp right there with one shot.

Mining was super OP, at level 50 with all the perks and a decent steel pick you could level every 30 seconds. (I'm sure its this way in 17 yet). I play default length days, 60 minutes I think they are. Bear in mind every zed I see I kill traveling and I'd have nerd goggles for XP bonus. It wasn't uncommon with the zed density in the POIs to level up on the way to the POI, be at the POI when a wandering horde showed up outside, and level up 3-4 levels in the POI, come home gain more xp, turn in the quest and level again. So if you quest constantly, kill everything, mine most the night and do some daily upgrade to your fort, you could level super fast. Like level 20 by day 7 for sure, and then it got faster and faster as you could kill zeds faster, you are getting more xp.

You can see my current level in the screens I posted on twitter. Its 1 more than your max HP now. Its definitely slowed down to a good pace now IMO.

We've completely rebalanced XP since 17.4 so that each activity is fairly close.

 

[madmole]

This is SOOOOO weird to me. Not even because of the realism...But you removed gunparts, which had SO MUCH POTENTIAL to really impact so many different things, for the sake of micromanagement.

And now you introduce baseballbat parts.

I mean... I won't ever use a baseballbat anyways... but it is just sooo weird!

Gun parts are back too, FYI.

 

[Callum123456789]

gun parts are back ok that may be good not gunna lie also I think its a good move because in the a17 you can just find about 3 guns in a shotgun messiah crate like you can also find endgmae guns in about 2 hours of starting the game so maybe find gun parts and guns will probably slow your progression through guns and it will also enable you to slowly build up a high lvl gun and also can you build the gun parts just wondering?

 

[sillls]

Wow. Wow. Hold it there. No-one needs to be eaten.

Tell that to the zombies. lol