PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

@Madmole in the video the tooltip in the list states that you gain 10% hypothermal protection, but the description on the book states 10% hyperthermal protection. Little typo I guess

Thanks, fixed. You guys are testing already!

 

[padolamap]

maybe it would be nice to have the unique possibility of finding a certain weapon very randomly which would force you to loot the whole map to find it but that really makes a difference

 

[madmole]

Do you have game goals for what level a player "should" be getting to each few days?
Like day 7 you would like a player to be level x. Day 14 level x. And so on?

Why is the exp gained going faster at higher levels? I understand you gain more exp when you can mine faster, kill faster and harder zombies give more exp, but doesn't it take more xp to gain levels as you grow?

I think lvl 20 on day 7 is fine. So maybe the issue isent a need for an overall nerf but more of a steeper lvl requirement as you level up?

Also I get you kill every zombie you see and you had nerd glasses and did all the quests. But that's you playing a hardcore exp gaining gameplay style. Please keep this in mind. Not everyone likes to play like that.

I hope your balance the game in a "balanced" fashion. Maybe someway to give xp to the builders? I dont want to only kill zombies all day and mine all night. I love to build too.

You guys havent let me down yet, so I have faith. Just some things to think about.

Oh, also this is page 848, woot

Now that there are no level gates, Being level 20 by day 7 is not really that great. There needs to be ample resources and time passed to "be" level 20 and for it to feel right. 1 hour per level is the meta we're shooting for, give or take about 50% depending on the player, luck, RNG, etc.

The requirements get steeper to level but in order for it not to scale off the planet it can't be too much. Our power curve is pretty strong, so you end up getting faster at leveling, at least for a while. We'll see, I'm about level 26 now on day 22. It feels fantastic. I only have a T3 T2 fireaxe so far, a brown AK (found on day 1) and a blue pistol. My armor I crafted most of it, Q3 iron, Q4 iron legs. You need time to find parts and stuff to make what you can craft so leveling too fast = ok now what syndrome. Like I could craft a blue AK, but I only have 3 ak parts, and I need 25. So the player needs to have time to acquire stuff to service the perks he bought.

It just generally feels so much more rewarding stretching out the leveling process. Remember you can go straight to 10 on any attribute nothing stopping you now. I'm man handling regular zombies with my melee right now, but ferals are starting to spawn. We'll see how it goes. Armor rating is about 49% so taking half damage helps.

So far the testers and devs are all loving A18, and the devs. The balance has done some amazing things to it. New content is nice, but having good balance and nice progression is huge, not to mention performance and bugs.

 

[madmole]

I do wonder what was the "Protect your livestock" in that video about. Were farming animals initially planned or was that just a saying which makes sense in the context? (The zombies are coming)

What was dreamed up 6 years ago and where we can realistically go now with the average players best interests at heart are two different things. People bought RUST thinking it was a zombie game, they pulled zombies and the game was better for it. I'm not saying we'll never have that, but its taking away from what really matters at this point, a smooth polished experience. We already have a million features, we want to polish what we have really well before more stuff that is unfinished and if it affects FPS, then its cut until FPS is amazing and we have room to consider stuff.

 

[Trankitas]

Thanks, fixed. You guys are testing already!

Give us the good stuff and let us test for real

 

[madmole]

You did not understand my comment. The thing that's silly is to waste a lot of skill points on attributes that you don't want just for your weapon of choice. I see more bad than good to bundle weapon improvement perks in with character playstyle perks. They are the two choices that players should make without negotiating a compromising with the perk system.
("it is a deliberate design decision") Not to ruffle the feathers of the devs but they change the skill system every update. I think they need some help on a direction. Choices and consequences would still be a part of the equation if this idea was in effect.

Example: If you want to be a master with the shotgun and perk into fortification you would have to waste points lvling up strength just to unlock those shotgun perks. The system is not flexible for the choices I think people want to make.

Nor is fallout but over a billion customers served.

We nest skills under attributes to allow players to specialize in likely used combinations and keep some form of control. It allows us interesting diseases because we can remove all your perks under one attribute with a disease so you are partially crippled but not entirely. This lets the player use work arounds instead of feeling completely useless. So things need to be nested somewhere, otherwise we have to give you the "shotgun disease" and that is BS. Something affecting strength would affect your ability to aim a shotgun or swing a pickaxe, so it keeps things nice and tidy.

No attribute points are wasted. If you want something you pay for it. Even with a LBD flexible character building game like Skyrim you still have to invest TIME into conjuration if you want to conjure the badass daedra.

In my opinion there are plenty of good perks under every attribute. Most are accessible with very little investment so you can grab bits you want but if you want it all you have to pay for the big attribute cost.

 

[madmole]

A prefix and a suffix might be easier and you could have consistent tier names instead of completely random so that players know that speedy is better than hasty for example.
Something like:

Terrifying (prefix) shotgun of Haste (suffix)

The game Path of Exile have mastered this with their loot system and I strongly recommend checking it out for inspiration. It the best system out of any game I’ve ever played.

Cheers

Loc

Cool.

 

[madmole]

Hi,silly query, will be fully translated, for example into Spanish, otherwise there would be some possibility that we could know which file we should translate for this to happen, even to customize it according to the taste of each player or the different idioms that have the regions.

We are planning a localization update after 18 goes stable.

 

[padolamap]

ok, perfect

 

[MajorMunchy]

oooooo all this talk about testing is getting me excited. Makes me feel like release date is closer yet <3

 

[Jost Amman]

I think you are confused. I got really lucky and found the best spiked knuckles in the game, a T3 Q6 pair. I have 3 ranks of brawler so I am pretty ■■■■ed formidable with my wolverine claws. Compared to a brown pistol, yes its better. Now if I had a pink pistol and 3 ranks of gunslinger, perhaps the pistol might be more effective. That said, there are always some randoms involved, like a chance to gib a head, etc making the spec'd into weapon feel better.
Take a trained MMA killer with wolverine claws and stick him in a phone booth with a noob with a pistol. My money goes on the MMA killer.

So no, guns are not always better than Melee, its a matter of perks, mods, quality of the weapons. I would hope the best perks up specialized melee is better than an unranked brown pistol. Again, when the stamina runs out I'm dead in the water, the pistol guy can keep going, repload or change to another pistol.

Unless you got all the books in the Pistol series, then you fight like this...

 

[sinkler]

I think you are confused. I got really lucky and found the best spiked knuckles in the game, a T3 Q6 pair. I have 3 ranks of brawler so I am pretty ■■■■ed formidable with my wolverine claws. Compared to a brown pistol, yes its better. Now if I had a pink pistol and 3 ranks of gunslinger, perhaps the pistol might be more effective. That said, there are always some randoms involved, like a chance to gib a head, etc making the spec'd into weapon feel better.
Take a trained MMA killer with wolverine claws and stick him in a phone booth with a noob with a pistol. My money goes on the MMA killer.

So no, guns are not always better than Melee, its a matter of perks, mods, quality of the weapons. I would hope the best perks up specialized melee is better than an unranked brown pistol. Again, when the stamina runs out I'm dead in the water, the pistol guy can keep going, repload or change to another pistol.

oh i see, so i mistakenly generalized an edge case it seems.

ty for the explanation. :encouragement:

Plz let me refine my question.

I just hope in the common case the following statements are true regarding wep dmg :

(otherwise I still think my previous concerns might be valid)

- unperked T(x) gun >= unperked T(x) melee

- perked T(x) gun >= perked T(x) melee

while only allowing these edge cases:

- unperked T(x) gun < unperked T melee [when x<y]

- unperked T(x) gun < perked T(x) melee

resulting in melee wep being able to do more dmg compared to a gun ONLY if the gun is lower tier and/or less ranked. then it totally makes sense, and guns from other classes always have some use/value to the player as long as their tier is good enough and the rest u salvage/sell.

i agree we must allow the MMA killer to have his way with the melee noob in the phone booth

but letting some dmg "ranges" slip unnoticed, and breaking the above statements, might result in a mob crying "you locked my favorite gun behind a costly attribute and now its worthless cuz ammo/dmg ratio sucks, my melee wep feels much better..." etc.

 

[meganoth]

We'll see, I'm about level 26 now on day 22. It feels fantastic. I only have a T3 T2 fireaxe so far, a brown AK (found on day 1) and a blue pistol. My armor I crafted most of it, Q3 iron, Q4 iron legs. You need time to find parts and stuff to make what you can craft so leveling too fast = ok now what syndrome. Like I could craft a blue AK, but I only have 3 ak parts, and I need 25. So the player needs to have time to acquire stuff to service the perks he bought.

Me like that. But:

Is that with the ak typical? If crafting is supposed to be the emergency fallback if you don't find the weapon, but you need to find 9 weapons of that type first to craft it. Then isn't it much more likely that one of the 9 weapons is already of a similar or better quality than the one you could craft?

 

[Locusta]

Cool.

I’m not sure if you are being sarcastic and I can understand if you are. I realize suggestions from other games can be a touchy subject, but I am not suggesting copy paste it or anything like that. The game I mentioned is an action rpg which is obviously based around loot, so by nature, having an excellent loot system is key (you guys are already on the right track).

I’ll post this link to save time and to give you a glimpse of how deep of a system they have (not saying 7dtd needs to be this complex) as they have a lot of great ideas I think could spark some ideas for you. I hope you take a look!

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Modifiers

Thanks for the response Madmole. I know your time is valuable.

Cheers,

Loc

 

[meganoth]

I just hope in the common case the following statements are true regarding wep dmg :

- unperked T(x) gun >= unperked T(x) melee

- perked T(x) gun >= perked T(x) melee

Weapons in other games seldom follow such a rule. Since you need to get near an opponent to melee him, melee has to have more damage or ammo has to be really scarce. Otherwise nobody would use melee.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Its already done, sorry. Herb "Cackler" Dugall. Cackler was what they called foremen or guys who stood around talking more than mining. Dugall, like he dug it all up.

Hehe nice! No hard feelings

 

[Ayrton]

Madmole, are there plans to have an NPC that resets the purchased Skill? maybe the merchants?

Are the NPC and bandits for Alfa 19 or 20?

 

[SnowDog1942]

Does armor still slow you down and drain alot stamina in A18. I love heavy armor classes in games but its not even an option for me in A17.

 

[sinkler]

Weapons in other games seldom follow such a rule. Since you need to get near an opponent to melee him, melee has to have more damage or ammo has to be really scarce. Otherwise nobody would use melee.

my initial assumptions are ofc:

- ammo IS scarce AND costly to obtain (as by design in 7D2D afaik).

- the balance is melee does less dmg (in the general case as discussed) and is more dangerous,

but doesnt require costly ammo, hence better is some situations, worst in others.

 

[Aldranon]

I think you are confused. I got really lucky and found the best spiked knuckles in the game, a T3 Q6 pair. I have 3 ranks of brawler so I am pretty ■■■■ed formidable with my wolverine claws. Compared to a brown pistol, yes its better. Now if I had a pink pistol and 3 ranks of gunslinger, perhaps the pistol might be more effective. That said, there are always some randoms involved, like a chance to gib a head, etc making the spec'd into weapon feel better.
Take a trained MMA killer with wolverine claws and stick him in a phone booth with a noob with a pistol. My money goes on the MMA killer.

So no, guns are not always better than Melee, its a matter of perks, mods, quality of the weapons. I would hope the best perks up specialized melee is better than an unranked brown pistol. Again, when the stamina runs out I'm dead in the water, the pistol guy can keep going, repload or change to another pistol.

Kage848 is going to love the spiked knuckles. I think he has a mod in A17 and he goes around in talking smack while clearing out POI's using his brass knuckles. Good fun to watch.