PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

  • <img alt=":)" data-src="" src="___base_url___/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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Old

Find or craft a hoe

Till soil

Plant seeds

Wait and quench thirst with a can of water.

New

Gather soil, nitrate, and rotten flesh

Craft a planter box

Place planter box

Plant seeds

Wait and quench thirst with a bottle of water.

dunno...seems pretty parallel as far as complexity. I had to type more words for the new method.

 
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I gotta go home tonight and try farming. Honestly, other than using the hoe to create the planter boxes months ago when they were first implemented...I haven't done a bit of farming since which is why I didn't know it changed.
OMG.....I was neglecting the .00001%
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You'll thank me on your first seed planted and first harvest.

 
How much nitrate are we talking about exactly? 10? 20? 50? 100?
(I'm solely asking for one reason: The Dishong Tower Challenge. If you're unaware of it, it's where you have to survive in the Dishong Tower (you can never leave) and you must survive long enough to craft a gyrocopter and leave from the rooftop. It is possible, yes. I'm just curious on the nitrate cost of the planter boxes, because if it's high, then this challenge will be an semi-unmissed but unexpected casualty. :p )
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25 nitrate 10 flesh, some clay.

 
I honestly miss when you had to defend your garden from whatever entity might accidentally trample them. There were a lot of different threats(all the while waiting on bandits BTW) . It was engaging, I miss the wandering hordes that you could warn your friends (without a map) that it looked like they were headed your way. I honestly miss an A16 exp. bug that if you missed a server setting a zombie would follow you forever, if you did not kill it or it wasn't distracted. More and more I am the minority in the eyes of...whatever. been fun yo

 
And thanks to all the other modders who put in the time and effort to make this game playable, challenging, and fun.
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You’re welcome. I enjoyed the bit of xpath modding I did. Be sure to let me know who you are when you com back as an alt so I can rep you. ;-)

 
Conventional Ralston: individual difficulties, not server-set(not sure if this is the case, actually. haven't bothered to find a good server since my buds moved on. They are gaming butterflies.)

OR: dynamic/modifiable difficulty

 
I dont know about anyone else, but I'm gonna wait and play A18 before I complain about a feature change.
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probably the biggest complaint you will have will be, "you should have made these changes several alphas back?" :)

 
More elegance = better game is honestly true in almost every case.
Imagine a reality where every turn in monopoly the player has to make a calculation for 2% of what they own and pay that in tax to the bank. Sure it's more complex, but it's completely unneeded and just serves to make the game more taxing (ha) to play. What if minecraft's crafting table required rotten flesh for fuel for every craft? It's completely unnecessary and arguably makes the game much worse. It's the same reason why TFP switched to the list craft instead of the grid craft, grid craft adds absolutely nothing to the game other than just being a weird minigame that gets old after the first 3 times you make something.
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Also on the topic of elegant design one thing we consider when designing is that you need to consider what does this player get as a reward for his efforts? Is it a simple reward or a big game changing reward? So in this case its a rather simple reward, such as a single ear of corn. So the player has to farm clay, harvest nitrate once you find a mine, and harvest some dogs or vultures for the rotten flesh after killing them. Then craft a farm plot, place it, find a seed and plant it, and then wait 3 days to get a single ear of corn. So why make it super complicated when the reward is pretty minute? Its still arguably more work than it is worth if you think about the work involved for the small reward.

Something game changing like a vehicle? Sure, lets make that fairly complex, require perks or a lot of scavenging, a bit of luck buying parts, etc. Complex crafting feels rewarding when the reward is worth it.

After making the farm plots we asked all the devs, hey after playing with the new plots would you ever go back to the old way? A huge unanimous no. NOone found the old way rewarding, but tedious and not worth the time when you can go loot a corn field. For such a small reward, the gate needs to be simple, and the old design was too complicated for the reward, as well as difficult to learn for new players. We teach crafting right away, so why not invent a special mechanic for farming when it could be managed by an existing system, and improve usability in one swift stroke?

I

 
The problem I had with the hoe was after I hoed my garden, maybe 5 minutes time, I had no use for the hoe ever again. So used it for 5 minutes then either melted or sold every one I found thereafter. Something in a game that's only useful for 5 minutes is hard to justify. That was my issue with farming, not it being complicated or not complicated. Why waste the time on an object with so little use? I don't know about the new system, I'll have to play it first but getting rid of a pretty useless tool is good in my humble opinion.

 
What about those random farm plots in towns that might contain, say, 40 potatoes or 40 blueberries or an odd amount of corn? Are those gone in A18? Just asking, because in A17, that's how I got most of my seeds. :p Just saying.
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They don't drop seeds. Seeds are schematic craft or find only, or perk unlock the crafting recipe. It takes 5 crops to replicate one seed so its very slow getting a large farm going.

 
Oh my, quite the flood of tears we've had. Very theatrical. "You're killing the game's SOUL!" "Planter boxes?! You might as well start all players with instant-kill guns with infinite ammo!" And my personal favorite is the dude going full drama queen and thanking modders, one at a time. You can practically hear his voice quavering with indignation. Get a grip, already. Sheesh!
I can understand the disappointment with fewer world zombies, but they're a 'meh' execution as-is, they're expensive, and the replacement solution (random encounters, sounds like) isn't ready. 7DTD is never going to have the giant hordes of zombies other games have. The tech just isn't there. So they have to come up with different gameplay. Plopping a bunch of zombies randomly in the wilderness is too inefficient for what it brings to the table. Hopefully random encounters arrive soon and are better.
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Amen to a stable voice on the matter.

 
They don't drop seeds. Seeds are schematic craft or find only, or perk unlock the crafting recipe. It takes 5 crops to replicate one seed so its very slow getting a large farm going.
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Ahh okay, good change! I know that farm plots spawn rather excessively in 17.4 so this wouldn't be an accurate representation based on intended spawning rules, but in my current world, I have over 600 potatoes... and I haven't planted a single one. I just have over 600 potatoes sitting in a chest that I punched from those naturally generated small crop plots within towns. It's a little bit too easy, so I'm glad to see it being made more challenging. ^^

 
Now your making the incorrect conclusion in the other direction. I never said "more complexity = better game" either, and using a contrived example doesn't validate your argument.
Again, more elegance does not equate to a better game (and I'll add for clarity's sake), more complexity does not equate to a better game. Having meaningful choices for the player makes a better game. Removing meaningful choices to simplify the game is not improving it. Neither is adding complexity which doesn't have associated meaningful choices.

-A
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In the case of the farm plot, I would say its every bit as deep without the frustrating steps of hoeing dirt and planting on uneven voxel terrain. Clearing grass and all that nonsense was traded for less frustrating user experience, and a little more rewarding path to obtain a larger farm. Make a box vs finding a hoe are both abstracts, but the former is overall more pleasing to work with, and makes for amazing decorations in your house.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EB0KWe_U8AEgJi7?format=jpg&name=large

 
Keep the hoe as a grass removal tool...

Tier 1: Hoe

Tier 2: Scythe

Tier 3: Gas Powered Weed Eater

Legendary: Rider Mower

 
Default is lower? Good.
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Ding ding ding!

Conventional = Default

Ralston = an Adventurer.

It is very good as statistically only .00001% of players will overcome their ego to turn the difficulty down below default when necessary. ;)

 
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