PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

TFP thank you all for this interesting place to talk about how awesome A18 is and all the features! better farming, less ninja wolfs, a return to books in loot, better mining, quests, new POI's, perk tree fixes, different ways to play the game, the list goes on and on! i only have 120 hours in the game i am a newb but im excited to play and love all the news you have posted. not gonna lie Madmole has me scared im gonna die lots of times from making rookie mistakes and playing it like alpha 16 or 17. good times ahead!

Its definitely more intense than any previous version.

 

[The Gronk]

Just place them on the ground so they are waist high. Why bend over or crouch to work? Make a green house, nobody would put their crops out in the open anyway in an apocalypse.

Why go to the effort of building raised beds? We have fields around here with medieval raised beds and they barely get to knee height.

At least tell me that sunken beds don't have a motorcycle trap around them in form of a soil/block boundary.

 

[Locusta]

No we didn't do it for performance, we did it for gameplay and it is a performance bonus. We have rage zombies now, they get mad when hit and basically sprint in your face. This is overwhelming to new players and with bread crumbs it felt like the whole city came to my poi and sandwiched me in there. There are still plenty of zombies in the wild, the number and what it does is deceiving. Last night I had 5 snow zombies from across the lake raid my dig quest and I got rekt, no way out. I was in that hole for under a minute and they broke out my frame box and dropped in the hole and I was toast.
Putting it simple, A18 is much harder than 17 "in the wild". There are cougars that pounce on you, coyotes that are fast, vultures etc. Its nasty. So nasty we set the default difficulty to adventurer and the team was still getting raped and it just felt like the biome zombies were this annoying pest that hunted you and there were way too many of them, maybe Shawns voodooo ai code is so nice now that there were always a LOT more zombies than we ever knew there were.

So we turned it down, there are still a lot, and they are pain in the ass, combined with rage speeds and animals, you will thank me for this change. The AI is so much better they hear and investigate to a new player with a fresh look at 18, I should have kept my mouth shut, nobody would have noticed, but instead it would be oh wow I'm surrounded and this is scary af.

So yeah the idea of less zombies sounds bad on the surface. Put simply there are less stupid zombies that can't find you or hear you idling around wasting cpu, but now more zombies (than 17) trying to eat you in your face. How does that sound?

So let me get this straight...you removed zombies only to add the rage mechanic to HELP newbs? Don’t you think the rage mechanic will end up being the rage-quit mechanic for newbs?

A17 - get boxed in by 10 zombies, you have a slim chance of surviving

A18 - get boxed in by 5 zombies with rage mechanic, get rekt

Is this accurate?

Loc

 

[madmole]

That's nice for you and your builds, MadMole but you aren't everyone else.
Some people like crude designs and you shouldn't shut them out. You keep your beautiful flush boxes but give others the option to keep old style tilling of shaiyt mountains. When you going to get stuck in to this conversation re: the your sacrilege against farming?

P.S - I must admit, your 'voxel turd block' remark was hilarious

I mentioned we can consider bringing back voxel turd blocks after 18 drops, I think we need real feedback from hours logged. Its not far now. 23 mfs.

 

[Gazz]

Why so much emphasis on the new player? Like seriously? Where is this coming from?I think you are forgetting that today’s gamers are pretty good at figuring things out.

No, they're not.

The majority of the typical starting problems in A17 could be avoided by reading the item descriptions or even... gasp... the journal entries explaining how stuff works.

If you watched any of the streams (performed by Today's Gamers)... that wasn't happening.

The reason why gamers think they are so smart is that many games are now focus-grouped to death and go out of their way to hold the gamers' hands. 7D largely allows players to do what they want when they want and that doesn't always work out well. =P

 

[madmole]

Farming is not simple. And it shouldn't be in game.

Its arguably more complex than 17. Why should farmers need blacksmith to get started?

 

[madmole]

I'm wondering, are the old-school quests still going to be in A18? (Where you have to read a note, go to x location, activate a waypoint, kill the zombies that spawn, and get paid at any trader.)

Yes.

 

[madmole]

I LOVE the idea of raging zombies. But I am curious... Did you mean that most zombies will rage (but not all will), or that zombies will most likely rage? There's a difference.

You'll have to play it and see.

 

[Roland]

Yeah because the advent of walls and fences aren't a thing, right.
Also people like making big farms, whose going to make a 100 x 100 'greenhouse.'

Maybe you missed my comment to Sage (MechanicalLens) - tilling hundreds of blocks isn't anywhere near as tedious as making hundreds of planters to go in hundreds of holes, or hundreds of placements for an obscenely large supergreenhouse to encase everything.

Hoe + land = beautiful.

Planters + base buildinf = beautiful.

Farming gone + crafting/ potted plant fettish = a nightmare.

Farming

1) Prepare the land

2) Plant the seeds

3) Nourish and tend the plants

4) Harvest

1) Has been changed from striking the ground with a hoe to digging up earth and mixing it with fertilizer and placing it in a planter box.

2) No change

3) Never existed in the game.

4) Changed from hitting the plant to pressing E

You keep saying "farming is gone" and the "death of farming" and "what you have done is unforgivable" and yet look at my outline. Farming is just as present as it has always been. The method of preparing the land for planting has changed and that is it. Farming still exists as much as it ever did. More so, if you actually know anything about gardening and the relative importance of a hoe to a shovel...

Please, tell me how my analysis above is wrong and farming as a whole is dead and gone as of A18.

 

[madmole]

madmole will we have random zombie encounters in like a19 or a20 because I knida miss them but if they where re added into the game that would be good I know we still do have random encounters with zombies but only like 1-2 zombies or are you talking about random bandit encounters?

We already have it, its called a wandering horde.

We'll buff that code to personalized random encounters, that are game staged to the guy who will probably cross paths with them. Bandits, traders, injured survivor, pack of coyotes, etc.

 

[Guppycur]

Its arguably more complex than 17. Why should farmers need blacksmith to get started?

Who needs a blacksmith? An alternative "fix" would have been stone hoe's or more common loot drop hoe's.

 

[madmole]

I am the opposite here.
I cannot play a Bethesda game through to the end without modding the crap out of it. Bethesda is one of the worst gameplay game makers that exist IMO. They are also the absolute best world creators out there.

MODS fix the gameplay so I can enjoy the rich, amazing and detailed worlds they create

I'd disagree, they are (were as of late) the best devs on the planet, with Rockstart runner up. INterested to see what Obsidian does. I mean I take it as a whole. As a whole product. Yeah some stuff is meh but no games have had me log that many hours. Of course mods extend the length, but the story, npcs, player classes had me when I looked at the box.

 

[Zombie_Jam]

Farming
1) Prepare the land

2) Plant the seeds

3) Nourish and tend the plants

4) Harvest

1) Has been changed from striking the ground with a hoe to digging up earth and mixing it with fertilizer and placing it in a planter box.

2) No change

3) Never existed in the game.

4) Changed from hitting the plant to pressing E

You keep saying "farming is gone" and the "death of farming" and "what you have done is unforgivable" and yet look at my outline. Farming is just as present as it has always been. The method of preparing the land for planting has changed and that is it. Farming still exists as much as it ever did. More so, if you actually know anything about gardening and the relative importance of a hoe to a shovel...

Please, tell me how my analysis above is wrong and farming as a whole is dead and gone as of A18.

Do you want to kiss me? You're always creepily on my back. Off you go now.

Shoo

 

[Locusta]

No, they're not.The majority of the typical starting problems in A17 could be avoided by reading the item descriptions or even... gasp... the journal entries explaining how stuff works.

If you watched any of the streams (performed by Today's Gamers)... that wasn't happening.

The reason why gamers think they are so smart is that many games are now focus-grouped to death and go out of their way to hold the gamers' hands. 7D largely allows players to do what they want when they want and that doesn't always work out well. =P

I watch a ton of streamers thanks. Taking my comments out of context doesn’t help your response. I also added that players have more resources than ever to help figure things out.

Having good tool tips and in game tutorials is not hand holding. It’s good game design. The journal entries are hidden and feel like an afterthought. On screen tips keep gameplay moving and removes the need for cumbersome menus.

My ideas aren’t coming from some made up theories. I am a user interface architect by profession (10+ years). User testing done right should’ve solved this issue long ago.

Loc

 

[madmole]

Looting =/= 100% survival. Other tasks separate from looting like farming, building a base, crafting, traps...things that take time and make the player SACRIFICE something to gain something else is a huge part of survival. Making those choices trivial or a simple inconvenience to looting is what I think everyone is up in arms about. Yes looting is fun and part of it, but if it’s the only reliable or worthy thing to do to get through the game, well, it’ll be monotonous imo.

Loc

Takes longer to craft and place a farm plot than to hoe the dirt IMO.

 

[DaVegaNL]

I had 5 biome zombies after me last night, nobody will even notice. Max alive might have been preventing that former larger value from even spawning.
Yes I am against this change in theory, but in practice you barely notice, there are still zeds mulling about and sandwiching you in POIs, yet the game feels smoother and faster. Its a win win now, and will be a win win win later when we add random encounters. I did add more than 17 has to the wasteland though, so if you feeling frisky go there at night.

Thanks for the answer.

Of course I have to play it to know how it feels.. But I just have a bad feeling.. Could be the mexican food of yesterday though.

 

[CannedSmeef]

Do you want to kiss me? You're always creepily on my back. Off you go now.
Shoo

"Haha, you're just nitpicking and biased. I win, bye bye"

 

[madmole]

In the video a couple trees were planted. Are there plans to expand the allowed tree types and what can be planted? I would love to be able to plant the smaller pine trees in the regular game. Or this there some way you can stop the growth of a tree you planted so it does not reach full size? I want the variety in looks more than anything else.

You need to rotate your seeds and mix a oak in here and there.

 

[DaVegaNL]

You mean ugly points. Its still involved doing it, but no clunky throw away hoe, and anyone can figure it out without a wiki now.
Edit: I thought you were on about farming.

Um read my other post, you can't even notice, I should have never even said anything.

Yeah sorry I have a couple of posts of a more critical nature posted over a couple of pages.. Had to play ketchup!

 

[madmole]

Yeh it was kind of a joke; I'd love to see a charcoal filter addition to get purified water...

You need coal to craft mineral water, along with goldenrod and red tea thingy. And a book to learn it.