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 love this, this is what frustrated me a lot about A17. I really didn't like being bottle necked and essentially forced to all-in intelligence, it was the only real way to make technological progress. Whenever my friend and I played A17 we had to agree on who was doing what, I was always the Intelligence guy because I was going to craft most of the stuff anyway. As a result I was much weaker at everything else in the game and he was the only one who got to actually build combat stuff. It's even worse when you're by yourself, you must build intellect, there's no one else to carry your lack of crafting knowledge.
Thank you for making each tree its own unique way of play. Do you think there will be new trees added in the future? More perks within each tree?
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Glad you like it. No new attributes planned, but we can always add more perks, but nothing is planned yet. We will probably add more books, as there are no books for the intellect guy to do bulk crafting with his turret ammo, and nothing for the explosives guy, and some other areas could be expanded a bit, but we took on a lot for A18 so I can crank the new books out for A19 no problem.

 
This is slightly wrong. Nobody can craft a tier 3 weapon without a book/schematic. Perks let you craft tier 2 weapons like sawed offs, Ak's, hunting rifles, but to craft the top tier 3 weapons like pump shotties, m60's, and sniper rifles you need to find a book/schematic.
Most likely you will find your weapon in loot, but it depends on play style. You can't craft guns without looting because the parts are loot only.
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I know I don't say this often enough, but... I love you.

/no homo

//well, maybe a little

 
Those darn milk drinkers and cheese hoarders... :p

gQBxYT3.jpg


 
Just to clarify a bit. You could not craft a baseball bat at all by going into the intelligence branch since that is the top tier version of clubs which are in the strength build.
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I stopped reading here. The baseball bat was purely an example to illustrate a point.

 
You assume the people who have been point dumping into int the last 2 builds do it because they want to be so super good at killing zombies. I did it so I could be the crafting guy in MP so others didn't need points in int. You have removed the crafter as a player option and replaced it with another combat roll. That isn't what I and probably many other people wanted from int. For us we were just told to our face, "♥♥♥♥ you, you are a combat guy now no ifs ands or butts and if you don't it well suck it" I stand by A16 have the better mix between crafting and looting. It took so long to get better stuf and there were more levels of quality between items if you had found a 600 item it felt like substantial upgrade and because it took so long to get crafting up both looting and crafting felt worth it.
honestly at this point if you don't want people crafting things just remove crafting and don't ♥♥♥♥ us around, it's just rude at that point.
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Sorry but INT was ridiculously an "must have" in A17. Int was a ♥♥♥♥ you to every other player class before and so was strength. Now its at least semi balanced but people will argue you still need them.

A16's idea of getting better stuff was stupid, lets combine 5000 brown items into a good one? And spend 20 minutes in the assembly screen and workbench doing it? No thanks, great weapons are found now or bought (yes we have a decent economy now) and good ones are crafted.

Who said anything about combat? As an int player you don't have to kill a single zombie your traps do all your dirty work and you get XP for those kills. Combat is optional as always.

What looting in 16? There was no loot. 18 is the first version with loot, ever. Guns actually have multiple random attributes now so finding the perfect gun is a never ending process. In 16 every item was the same if it was pink. Now you might have something that does more damage but has a small mag, or vice versa, among other random state.

We want people crafting, just not sitting on your ass and producing the best gear in the game from common ingredients. We added gun parts and most every recipe has some odd trinket to prevent spam crafting, (planning on bringing craft xp back in a19). But this change might infuriate you as well, but I'm going to just assume we made all the best decisions for A18 ever, and you don't know what you are talking about because you haven't played it yet. I'll admit I haven't done the INT build yet, so some changes might come, but the team likes it.

 
so bow/crossbow may not be a viable long term build then unless we avoid horde nights. doesn't sound promising. I know people were complaining about things like brass being against gun bunnies, but this may slant things too far the other direction. but I will have to reserve my opinion until I give it a good run.

crossbow is covered by agility?

is archery perks getting love or a book series? like quick draw, rapid reload, or multishot? using old d&d terms
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Yes there is an archery book series, and night stalker touches on bows too.

 
that was 16 alive, I currently play 32 or 64. perhaps I will need to scale back a wee bit
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Or turn down the difficulty. 32+ is pretty insane IMO.

EDIT:

WTF, I just checked my settings it was only 12 alive???? You guys saw 12 alive and it was insane. I'm impressed with our AI now if that was only 12 alive.

 
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Regarding zombie loot (from within the z bags), is the quality of the loot determined by gamestage/Lucky Looter level, or could you theoretically find a purple M60 from the first zombie bag that drops? (I am also unsure what determines the loot quality within zombie bags in A17, if such a mechanic exists at all.)

Edit: Also, yesterday in my solo A17 world, on day 2 with Lucky Looter 2/5, I found a level 6 chainsaw within a destroyed workbench. I had never acquired something so "overpowered" within a destroyed workbench in the entire time I've played A17. Since this "drop" is apparently so rare, do you plan on keeping the chainsaw within the destroyed workbench loot table? Just curious.

 
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First of all the int guy doesn't craft anything with quality except for his specialized weapons, like junk turrets and stun batons. All crafting is governed by the perk that governs the item. Before int was required, now its not, its as simple as that. So int guys are not "crafters", they are int guys. Everyone is a crafter in A18. The shotgun guy crafts great shotguns, the smg guy crafts great smgs. The best is in loot because its really poor game play to sit on your ass and make the best gear possible, that was great for a 20 hour game, now we have a 100 to 200 hour game for average guys and a 14000 hour game for the serious enthusiasts out there.
Your tears feel premature, you don't even comprehend the system and haven't played it.
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Do you need to be insulting like Roland is?

I'm not claiming knowledge on something I haven't played. I've reasoned, perhaps incorrectly using things that you have said on here. And now it seems that INT will be another thing to avoid rather than spec into. I'm more than happy to be corrected just try to do so graciously.

Suppose a player for whatever reason, however, chose to invest into INT for those unlocks, since youve gimped the exp - aren't they going to be forced into looting POI's as well as into some alternative builds that they may not want just to get their kills for exp?

This is what I fear, being forced to invest points into something I don't want just to get something I do. If I misunderstood then by all means correct me, just leave the sting out of it

 
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Sorry but INT was ridiculously an "must have" in A17. Int was a ♥♥♥♥ you to every other player class before and so was strength. Now its at least semi balanced but people will argue you still need them.
A16's idea of getting better stuff was stupid, lets combine 5000 brown items into a good one? And spend 20 minutes in the assembly screen and workbench doing it? No thanks, great weapons are found now or bought (yes we have a decent economy now) and good ones are crafted.

Who said anything about combat? As an int player you don't have to kill a single zombie your traps do all your dirty work and you get XP for those kills. Combat is optional as always.

What looting in 16? There was no loot. 18 is the first version with loot, ever. Guns actually have multiple random attributes now so finding the perfect gun is a never ending process. In 16 every item was the same if it was pink. Now you might have something that does more damage but has a small mag, or vice versa, among other random state.

We want people crafting, just not sitting on your ass and producing the best gear in the game from common ingredients. We added gun parts and most every recipe has some odd trinket to prevent spam crafting, (planning on bringing craft xp back in a19). But this change might infuriate you as well, but I'm going to just assume we made all the best decisions for A18 ever, and you don't know what you are talking about because you haven't played it yet. I'll admit I haven't done the INT build yet, so some changes might come, but the team likes it.
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wait different mag?!?!? Can you elaborate on exactly WHICH STATS on said guns are random?

 
So as a mostly single player guy, the agility class doesn’t sound that appealing as you just stated that they are not great on horde nights. Shouldn’t the balance be that all classes are able to handle hordes in some fashion? Especially because the entire game revolves around horde night.
I’m all for a challenge and what not, but I’d hate to see so much work being put into a class that not a lot of players use because it’s inferior to other classes.

Loc
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How is it inferior? He is light on his feet but armored nicely at tier 3 and not a slow stamina guzzling idiot? He can operate in the dark... its a trade off, the agility guy can murder an entire POI in his underwear and not get a scratch, but he does less DPS on horde night. The guy can reload and attack 5x faster than everyone else too. Yeah sure if all you care about is DPS, you can call the agility player inferior, but in stealth and with perks it balances out IMO.

That is what makes each build interesting to me, strengths and weaknesses. If you are that concerned about it, its pretty easy to grab 2-3 ranks of fortitude and get an M60 going. Getting all 5 ranks is a bigger commitment though.

 
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