PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Usimian]

I think on day 1 you should be very scared and cautious. I've had the experience when you start a new playthrough and your are still settled into your old build , with all it's glorious strengths, and are used to throwing caution to the wind. Then after some dumb mistakes I remember that my avatar is still a weak thing and I need to assess my environment with scrutiny. What once (in the previous build) was something that I did not need to worry about now is a real threat. I love the first few days of this game. Please don't remove the "oh crap!" moments. Please. Pretty please...with sugar on top.?

This! It's got to be really hard in the beginning otherwise the later stages are too easy. In the beginning there should be lots of places you never want to go until you're level 50+.

 

[SnowDog1942]

Has that one perk been finalized yet? I forget the name, something like raging bull maybe?

 

[Goldman_dk]

I think on day 1 you should be very scared and cautious. I've had the experience when you start a new playthrough and your are still settled into your old build , with all it's glorious strengths, and are used to throwing caution to the wind. Then after some dumb mistakes I remember that my avatar is still a weak thing and I need to assess my environment with scrutiny. What once (in the previous build) was something that I did not need to worry about now is a real threat. I love the first few days of this game. Please don't remove the "oh crap!" moments. Please. Pretty please...with sugar on top.?

Yup Yup i love to hate the first days, if too easy- the horror magic will dissapear. :disturbed:

 

[RestInPieces]

Na, I got attacked from behind while fighting zombies and instant bleed with no bandages. At a minimum they need to howl before they go agro and bark or something. Its completely unfair for day 1 survivors unless we changed them like pigs but they aggro if you get too close. Right now they just rush up silently and cheaply kill players who aren't armored yet, that isn't fun for noobs or veterans. Had I been in the wasteland and it was a rad dog, sure, cool eat me I deserved that, but it wasn't.

You should definitely give them some kind of real animal-like behavior - and different behavior for each animal too (since you decided to implement so many of them). For example, make dogs/dog packs walk beside you while barking at you and attack you if you start running - make cougars stalk you from a distance for a while before always attacking you if they see you, or coyotes running away and then coming back etc. Make the player react differently to each encounter.

 

[Khulkhuum]

I think history should be treated more of a telling about many interesting and important moments like wars with surprising outcomes, important discoveries, failings that resonated all around.

You shouldn't learn about 50 kings, rulers and presidents, if most of them didn't do much. Learn about the 300 spartans and why they managed to fight so long. Get to know about Napoleon, Alexander the Great and others that wanted power but failed. Explain their motivations, what guided them and what brought their downfall.

In similar fashion, most memorable and recent betrayals for ones country, fights and discoveries are needed to know. How polish people (am from poland) were treated during ww2, what were the most bloody and rough battles and times in what regions. People forget we were persecuted by not only germans before, during and after ww2. Sometimes people act like no such conflicts happened, like everything was always good and we were always great friends with everyone.

Then there are comments that we were persecuting others, while it was the other way around, like history lessons never existed. Comments as if Greeks and Romans didn't invent most of culture and science. Comments about improper roles of particiapants in some conflicts, treaties and discoveries.

It may seem boring, but many aspects of history need to be taught. Not everything, but things that could influence thinking, reasoning and improvements.

 

[Grandpa Minion]

MM in one of your a18 hoard night videos seems zombies where coming straight through closed doors at your base. Not looking forward to that bug at all.

 

[madmole]

MM, I read a lot of posts about the indestructible landscape and I have 3 questions (I want to tell my viewers the right information).
Garden boxes, ore blocks, the presence of these blocks fits very well in a world with an indestructible landscape. MM, do you smoothly prepare the game so that players can’t change the landscape?

MM, you said that indestructible terrain would be optional at some point. Is it planned after gold?

MM, is there any chance that on gold, 7 Days To Die will have only an indestructible landscape, and it will not be possible to choose the old (current at the moment) option?

It was a hypothetical statement, there is no r & d going on at all right now towards static terrain. If we tried it and it yielded some gains we would make it an option for servers to choose.

 

[madmole]

Hey, MM. I believe maybe a year ago there was a discussion going on about your training diet but I forget any big secrets you had to share. Same as most pro body builders of 80% protein, 10% carb and fat? I was on this diet for maybe a year of body building back 7 years ago. Not a particularly fun time for me.
Having said that, have you heard of this?

I do a high protein, low carb and moderate fat diet. I am liking more plant based stuff, but I love meat, so I'll never get rid of it completely, but you could say that I'm opening up to adding more veggies and low glycemic fruits to my diet in the last few years. Like veggies every meal, and fruit in the morning. No starches though, or rarely I'll splurge and have a baked potato or hash browns, but my staples are fruit, fish, turkey, green beans, broccoli, green peppers and onions, lots of avacado. I juice twice a week carrots, spinach and apples. No dairy or gluten. I feel so much better than I did 5 years ago.

 

[madmole]

So are you planning of opening your own school?

I've thought about discussing my thoughts about success on youtube. I'm no tony robbins but I think some people could relate to me and profit from what I have to say. Small town nobody who made it happen. I imagine I would have been one on the short list of least likely to succeed if you'd have known me in high school, but I made it.

 

[madmole]

Is there any reason not to make different casings? Steel casings? Metal dukes worth 1 duke, brass dukes worth 5 dukes? Is there a "police your brass" perk book? maybe every 1 in 20 chance to keep your casing? There's really no reason to ever lose your casings using a Magnum is there outside of panic loading.
You folks are clever so give me another thing to look for or craft and i'll be just as happy.

in pimps we trust!

-Lad

Its not good to be a bullet factory with no danger. You can mine all of it but brass? Get off your ass and find some Its not an issue until late game, or its only an issue if you waste time on traps late game like I did. LIke I dropped everything and messed with traps, I should have secured my 3k rounds, THEN put whatever time was left into the traps.

 

[madmole]

@madmole: In A17, chugging an antibiotics, herbal antibiotics, and/or honey only had a chance to cure infection. Is this feature returning in A18, or will antibiotics/herbal antibiotics/honey have a 100% chance to cure infection in A18?

I posted the full design.

 

[madmole]

Hey Mr Mole, you mentioned that there's no POIs repeated in cities, happy days. Does that also mean though that there's only going to be one Shotgun Messiah, Working Stiffs etc per map or do they repeat in cities?

Its a minimum distance, so there can be a shotgun messiah in another town I'd guess.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Then making it howl, or prioritizing zeds is a better option than removing the threat entirely from early game.
... what's the point of these animals if we only see them when we can handle them? Oh good, more meat to fill my crates with.

The danger isn't there with gamestaging.

You get what I mean? First post of the morning, not yet coherent.

Wait, i thought MM already said biome gamestage scaling like this wasn't fair to new players who may be travelling in the area at the same time or right after a GS 100?

Has he changed his mind on biome scaling?

 

[madmole]

Removing biome spawning seems to be completely against what everyone seems to want. Chief complaint is how empty the world is with all the encounters being sleeper based. An event only system is just going to be boring.
At the risk of drawing your ire Im going to bounce some advice off you that you have given to countless other players. Get Good. We have been dealing with these animals for a few alphas now, and as a strict melee build who uses NO guns I have never had any extreme difficulty in handling them. Remember your game is also stealth based and strategy is important.

What everyone loves about it is the fact you arent locked into one build. You can melee, have a bow as backup and a gun for emergencies. If I am reading correctly either you're playing JUST to be a run and gunner or you have crippled variety. Its as if you must make a decision day one what character you will roll. If thats the case lets just add professions at the character select screen. It will save people the trouble of believing they have any type of choice in how they handle in game events.

The funny thing is I fully believe if you were not the developer of this game I think you would be in here raging at devs for spawning near a wolf or not getting a gun on day 3. And then some dev can tell you to adapt or get good. At least the old Mad Mole would have told that complainer that.

I'm fantastic at the game, I rarely die except when something cheap happens. Like you are fighting a zombie on day 1 with your meager club or whatever, and you are back pedaling and out of nowhere a wolf bites you a couple times, there are no bandages and no chance of stopping the bleeding. That is a cheap bs move on the games part that needs to be addressed. Its actually already fixed, and ready to be tested.

Animals will not investigate sounds so far away. What happened was they hear a sound for a long ways away and go investigate the crumb, then when you least expect it they attack you because the noise you are making fighting a zombie. So now you will need to get pretty close for an animal to attack you. I also increased chance for them to flee when hurt (something new), so after trading some blows hopefully the pesky wolf will f off and run, instead of fight to the death every time.

It has nothing to do with getting good. Animals lurk in trees or behind a barn, and investigated sounds.

Anyhow we thinned biome spawning of zeds (they are all like the snow biome now). Its good for the performance of the game, and biome zombies don't do anything but get in your way for no reason. WE did add more zombies to the night in the wasteland so if you want that challenge, go there at night, but the average guy doesn't need to get raped 10x on day 1 and rage quit.

You guys can mod it back in if you want, we don't care, but most zeds in the wild are just costing performance and aren't adding any game play value. Half the time they follow you to the POI and you have to kill 10 guys before you can even go in, and are out of ammo and screwed. So now it will be 5 guys instead of 10.

Down the road with random encounters, we can simulate an extremely populated world without being stupid and spawning 10 zombies in every region like now, which is a waste of resources most of them you'll never see anyway. We could have zeds eating a corpse on the road with some loot left in it, a pack of wolves, group of coyotes, or bandits try to ambush you or rob you, etc. It would seem like more is going on with less actual resources being wasted.

Nobody at TFP minds dying in the game, but when its a cheap death, that irks even veterans. "Getting Gud" has nothing to do with it. Its about proper pacing. Its like a poi you walk into and the first room has 10 guys in it, that is bs. There needs to be some dead spaces so when you do have an encounter, its actually meaningful. Anyone who's watched an action movie with no story knows this. Games are no different. If zombies spawn constantly there is no fear you grow numb to it. If its dead quiet for a bit, then out of nowhere theres 10 guys you ♥♥♥♥ your pants, and its awesome.

Anyhow you and a few others can grumble all you want, but having a wilderness chock full of zeds is a poor design, bad for performance, and a nuisance to the players.

 

[madmole]

I (like everyone who's thinking about their own DAY 1) am not positive what will be good for my own play-style. An INT build is calling to me however, because the fighting is asymmetrical. Something new.
Could I clear an early game POI by filling it with cheap spikes as I go, for example? Does INT even get exp for spikes? Turrets only?

If MM's Day 98 is "Finished Dart Traps", then they appear to completely suck. UNLESS the INT guy gets a huge buff in traps. There are buffs, I just haven't added them all up yet.

Or do I go with what I know and max strength? Yes I'll take damaged, but can I mitigate that with 3 belt slots full of healing items and the heavy armor AND can I even build healing items?

We buffed dart traps too, but I have no idea how much. TBH I think my design was bad, I could have made 4 traps in a fork gauntlet much more effective than what I had done.

 

[madmole]

That reminds me of our playthrough where I spawned next to wasteland, and my trader quest was right through it, a full day's walk.
That turned into three days, and I kept getting killed repeatedly by wasteland nastiness.

I'd hope a new change would be to have spawns reasonably close to their starting quest trader to avoid startup game crap like that.

Mine was 600 meters away in one game and 1.4 or so in another?

 

[Ladarian]

Get off your ass and find some

I thought I listed interesting options that all required going and getting, sorry boss.

 

[madmole]

That might be a good new book set.... Turrets for Dummies. Books could increase ammo storage, increase # deployed, increase number deployed, add rad remover, and set completion could add bonus turret damage, bonus xp, or add an additional bonus deployable turret.
Book sets just write themselves!

Yeah we're already planning more. RIght now its get out what we have.

 

[Rassilon]

Anyhow we thinned biome spawning of zeds (they are all like the snow biome now). Its good for the performance of the game, and biome zombies don't do anything but get in your way for no reason. WE did add more zombies to the night in the wasteland so if you want that challenge, go there at night, but the average guy doesn't need to get raped 10x on day 1 and rage quit.

Exactly what im observing on our Server too. Seeing the Logs, there are so many entries of Player XY joined, got killed 5 minutes after and leave for good.

We even made a command that gets them to their Backpack (every 30 min) and an enhanced Starting Kit.

But it seems getting killed at that young Time on the game brings a lot of players to ragequit.

 

[madmole]

I think he might be meaning new players like it's their fist steps into a new game they've never played before getting destroyed by a wolf and raging quitting to never play again.
Either way i do agree with what you're saying.

I remember the days when this game was developed to be the hardest game you've ever played. Somewhere that changed and it's become a little softer to open up to a wider variety of players while sacrificing their 'hardcore' audience.

In the meantime we're still hiding behind the same iron bars on horde night that we've been hiding behind for what seems like ages and ages. Luckily we can mod or potentially have a working difficulty menu option with future alphas.

Im 2000+ hours in, with at least 12 copies bought for family and friends - im not going anywhere regardless of development time and or changes.

Well, that and hello borderlands 3.

In pimps we trust.

No game should just throw you into a death sentence. LIke Ark you die about 50 times and then you finally get a house and bed roll and things settle down. Thats just horrible. You need to give the player some success while they are getting going, let them learn the game, have some fun, and when they go "Ok I got this" you turn it up and feed them cycles. Not just drop them in a pit of dogs and say tough ♥♥♥♥. So we're trying to smooth out the death loop and cheap death scenarios. I love a good death, like old Orc in Skyrim, but not being back stabbed by a silent ninja dog.