PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

wait can? So AKA the bucket? or no, cause i like the bucket for making a well....i mean the RWG i HOPE is nice with rivers like you have shown and stated and i do not need it

If this starts a ♥♥♥♥ storm I'm going to ban everyone or close the forums down.

You can no longer boil water in a can. You can simply boil water from a jar of murky water now without a cooking pot, but it takes 4x as long as with a cooking pot.

Why? More sharp sticks. Only veterans knew about the canned water trick and it was only useful on a really bad day where you couldn't find a cooking pot. So we removed cans of water and you can just boil jars of water now. One way to do things is best.

 

[madmole]

Mod request: farming that need irrigation, fertilizing, pest control, zombie and animal protection, quests/skills/percs to progress and bad weather ruins harvest.

Why? Even with zero farming I acquire a giant stockpile of food. Do you just want to be unsuccessful at farming? You want to waste time and see your crops fail, then laugh your way to the fridge and feast on whatever you want in your food box?

 

[Star69]

Nevermind

 

[Tazio]

If this starts a ♥♥♥♥ storm I'm going to ban everyone or close the forums down.
You can no longer boil water in a can. You can simply boil water from a jar of murky water now without a cooking pot, but it takes 4x as long as with a cooking pot.

Why? More sharp sticks. Only veterans knew about the canned water trick and it was only useful on a really bad day where you couldn't find a cooking pot. So we removed cans of water and you can just boil jars of water now. One way to do things is best.

Yep. This confirms it. 7DTD is no longer a survival game.

 

[TSBX]

Ok mr back seat game designer. TFP unanimously loves the new farming system, and that is a first. Farming is .000001% of the game, who cares? The game is way harder than its ever been, so us lowering the biome zombie count is taken out of content. Since when are a few guys in the biomes a threat? All they do is lower performance and nag at you when you are trying to clear a poi you get sandwiched by 20 guys that followed you for 5 miles. Now its only 10 guys sandwiching you. The game is harder now for undisclosed reasons, so you'll probably thank us for these changes when your getting 60fps and having fun for the first time in 5 years.

You know what I used to do if I wanted a nice box around my garden rows? I got off my ass and built them myself.

As far as the biome spawns go, MM it seems like as far as you are concerned the main focus of the game is going from POI to POI for loot and horde night. You're treating everything else like an afterthought. Those "nuisance" biome zombies can add a lot of emergent gameplay in quite a few scenarios that invoke the player to make strategic risk vs. reward decisions.

• Shot and followed a deer, now there are zombies where it fell. It's getting dark. Do I burn daylight trying fight my way through to butcher it or cut my losses and head home?

• If I keep going through these guys, I'm going to be leading a mini-horde toward my base and I don't want that. Should I fight them or work on losing them?

• I could take a shortcut through the burning forest but I'm hurt and have no healing supplies. I'm worried about vultures. Do I take the long way around for safety or do I take the chance?

Those are just a couple off of the top of my head, but little situations like that are really the heart and soul of a game like this, and what really drive replay-ability.

Same thing with farming.

Or getting water.

Or crafting complex items that need rarer materials.

They all gave you a reason to GOYA to do stuff in order to complete the open world goals. You set them because you want to get them done, not because text pops up in a corner that says YOU MUST DO X and here is a checklist. (Getting your rudimentary farm up and eventually making it look good, filling a cistern at your base so you have water handy, finding that damned engine that you need.)

Those are all details that I feel like you personally are not concerned with because they don't interest you personally. But for a good portion of your playerbase, those small details and the emergent situations that are derived from them are what keeps them, myself included, playing.

 

[Tazio]

Why? Even with zero farming I acquire a giant stockpile of food. Do you just want to be unsuccessful at farming? You want to waste time and see your crops fail, then laugh your way to the fridge and feast on whatever you want in your food box?

Sweet jesus! Are you even listening to yourself? Yes! We all want food to be an issue. Maybe you should be reducing the drop rate on canned food if you're so food rich without having to do any work for it. Or better yet, make all that canned food you're looting worthless with a threat of botulism and death.

 

[madmole]

With all due respect, TFP aren't the ones buying the game. Your players are. And if your players don't like the changes made to farming they will stop playing. This is supposed to be a survival game. There's more to survival than running into a POI guns blazing to grab some sweet loot. You have to mine. You have to build. You have to eat. It seems like you're making changes designed to please a new player that's going to put in 10 hours before moving on to something else. That's not who you should be catering to. And if that's who you think you're supposed to be catering to, I'm playing the wrong game.

How is improving farming bad for the survival experience? Sorry but we don't want players to crawl over broken glass to do things in the game. Now its easy to understand, how does that make it bad? Try explaining to someone new how to farm. Just do it. Please respond to me and lets watch how ridiculously long the conversation is going to be.

We've been through this before. Its a sharp stick. Now its usable by anyone, without a wiki and a 50 step process. FFS its farming, not rocket science. Why should I need a forge to start a farm? WHy would I need a cement mixer to make fertilizer. That ♥♥♥♥ was lame, now its fun, simple and easy to learn and use. Some people are just married to clunkly old crap and like crawling over broken glass I guess. If that one thing is a deal breaker to play this game you need your head examined or to download a mod that restores legacy farming.

 

[Axe13]

Is there a visual of the growboxes somewhere? In a stream or something? I missed it's announcement, just wondering what the new #gate is....

 

[Rassilon]

Yep. This confirms it. 7DTD is no longer a survival game.

It never really was. Not to me.

Yes it had stronger Survival Elements then it has now. But even tho "survival" is in the slogan the Sandbox/Freedom Part was the main attraction for me and lots of others.

This was never a DayZ or something like that.

And i really cant blame TFP if they want to go to simpler Mechanics in newbie Era of the game. It took even me several attempts to get hook on this game with lots of months inbetween where i thought "meh"

Started to play with A7 or so. stayed to play since A15+.

 

[madmole]

Here we go again....Console is back.....So no matter where you are you make the magic box and place it and pick which plant you want?? No more hoeing or planting seed or fertilizer?
I always hoped to be able to make your own exploding barrels as another trap/defense....recipe of fertilizer and oil shale...guess that recipe is never going to happen now.

Next we arent going to have zombies anymore.....

Coughs * Whatever * Coughs

You plant seeds just like before, but over a nice flat surface no more watching your seedling die as it falls off a piece of grass because you placed it in the wrong spot.

 

[madmole]

Can you name some of the ways it's harder?
I'm talking about harder, not grindier. In which ways is a18 *harder*.

Imagine being early game for 35 hours now instead of 3.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

(outdoor zombie stuff)

Do you think that for now, since these wasteful zombies are out, we could get a more impressive wandering horde?

 

[madmole]

It's not farming. It's just crafting with a delay before you get your item. May as well just craft straight to the finished product.

The only difference is how you prepare the ground for planting. Farming is .00001% of the game, I don't see the big deal.

 

[Tazio]

How is improving farming bad for the survival experience? Sorry but we don't want players to crawl over broken glass to do things in the game. Now its easy to understand, how does that make it bad? Try explaining to someone new how to farm. Just do it. Please respond to me and lets watch how ridiculously long the conversation is going to be.
We've been through this before. Its a sharp stick. Now its usable by anyone, without a wiki and a 50 step process. FFS its farming, not rocket science. Why should I need a forge to start a farm? WHy would I need a cement mixer to make fertilizer. That ♥♥♥♥ was lame, now its fun, simple and easy to learn and use. Some people are just married to clunkly old crap and like crawling over broken glass I guess. If that one thing is a deal breaker to play this game you need your head examined or to download a mod that restores legacy farming.

Farming isn't even hard now:

1) acquire hoe

2) till soil

3) plant seed

4) wait

5) harvest

If that's too hard for you and too hard to explain to people, then maybe it's best you stick to canned food.

 

[JaxTeller718]

You plant seeds just like before, but over a nice flat surface no more watching your seedling die as it falls off a piece of grass because you placed it in the wrong spot.

I dont think anyone has ever done this. I hope you didnt. Thats worse than tossing your bow on horde night.

 

[Tazio]

The only difference is how you prepare the ground for planting. Farming is .00001% of the game, I don't see the big deal.

The fact that you don't see this as a big deal should show you how out of touch with your player base you really are

 

[KLOWN]

been gone for a while was not into A17

come back to static environment no zombies in the wild .....etc

sure glad i got my hours in when the game was good

- - - Updated - - -

I dont think anyone has ever done this. I hope you didnt. Thats worse than tossing your bow on horde night.

then changes the drop key

LMAO

 

[madmole]

"Why would the wilderness be full of zombies".
Well the easy answer is because it's fun to have zombies in a zombie game. Fun > realism, right?

The better answers are that there are a lot of buildings with holes in it, a lot of cars on the roads and a lot of open pois, so where did all of THOSE people go to die? They all crawled into that same cupboard or on top of those rafters and acoustic ceilings?

The best answer though is that's where they are in every zombie game, tv show and movie ever. By the thousands.

And I run (ran, recently upgraded to a 2080) on an i5 with a 980ti, and *never* had a fps hitch outside of multiplayer horde nights...

Removing/cutting back wilderness counts will not even be noticed from a performance perspective.

...it's like you and I don't even play the same game...

Maybe shawns breadcrumb code is working well because this is what happens and we're sick of it. You go to a poi, and then 20 jerks from outside after you cleared a block sandwich you in there. They hear for a long ways and just come from everywhere. Or you arrive at 5 pm and its 9 by the time you clear the streets and then you can't even do your POI that day, which is completely annoying.

Everything you say is a waste of breath because your talking about 17. Until you play 18 you don't know what we're doing or the context of the need for these changes. So just stop annoying me with this. Reserve judgement on release day FFS.

 

[Aurelius]

If this starts a ♥♥♥♥ storm I'm going to ban everyone or close the forums down.
You can no longer boil water in a can. You can simply boil water from a jar of murky water now without a cooking pot, but it takes 4x as long as with a cooking pot.

Do you understand why this isn't as good as boiled cans? Because you can't stack cans of water - they forced you to manage your inventory. Another minor mini-game that made it all that more urgent to find a cooking pot...

Why? More sharp sticks. Only veterans knew about the canned water trick and it was only useful on a really bad day where you couldn't find a cooking pot. So we removed cans of water and you can just boil jars of water now. One way to do things is best.

One way to do things isn't best - it's just the easiest to implement and for players to learn. What's best is giving the players options which have meaningful consequences to their choices. Do I carry 5 cans of boiled water as I trek across the burnt biome and give up looting space? Tradeoff.

I'm sorry you see this as people attacking you - it's not - but many of the people who are asking these questions have thousands of hours playing this game. They are just as passionate as you are about it, they've devoted years of their lives and thousands of dollars to this game - they are Invested. Perhaps they are seeing something you don't? To me, that should be a signal to listen and double check, and not banning or shutting the forums down.

-A

 

[madmole]

Uhhhh.... wow. Just... wow.
I can't count the number of games where the (early game) survival challenge was getting enough water to drink. Not being able to find a cooking pot, building after building, and being forced to rely on cans of boiled water. Sometimes there was only one can available, which came from my starter can of chili.

The challenge was REAL, and when I finally found the pot and a couple of jars, the feeling of accomplishment and relief was REAL. Just as real as surviving a horde of zombies with a bow and a club for the first time.

-A

Yes and its the same, except you boil it with a jar instead of a can. It takes ages to boil one.