PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Doctor3D]

I'm enjoying it, but some play mechanics are really changed. Because of all the loot drops and plentiful ammo, stealth is out the window. I go in guns blazing and clear out a poi in minutes. I know I'll find a crap load of ammo, so thats no issue. Why bother with stealth when you have every gun under the sun and hundreds of bullets and your trust junk turret by your side? I don;t even stop at night.... they simply don;t have a chance.

That has been my experience as well. It was like that in A17 for me too, and I QUICKLY burned out on it because of it. This particular part of the game is even worse than A17 was, imo. There's just so much loot without any risk. The game is virtually over in just a few game-days. There is almost always a net-gain in ammo after shooting and looting your way through a POI. No sense in stealth..it takes more time..and it's not necessary when you can just blast through it quickly. The towns are empty, so there's little threat at all in the town - you can strip all the cars, loot everything laying around town in a couple game days and maybe encounter a dozen zombies over the course of those two days. There's very little risk, but an overabundance of reward. There's so much ammo now that the game is essentially a zombie shooter more than anything else. There's much less things you need to actually craft and the things you actually need once you're established - are junk items like glue, brass, etc which you can just get in abundance outside in any trash pile.

For me anyway, Food poisoning is just a non-issue due to all the magic vending machines. Just sell all the loot, and buy the clean food. Hunting, Farming, etc is really just a role-play thing - you don't NEED to do any of those things.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Yesterday is the key word. That crap is fixed. People need to earn their farms one gore pile, vulture or zombie dog at a time.

That noise you heard was me cackling. My wife was moaning about farming (shes the farmer of our group) and she found out she could go dig those plots up watching a streamer. So today shes planning to go out and dig some up.

You know what you have to do Joel right? We cant have her digging those plots up so the patch has to come soon. I need to see the look on her face when she goes to dig them up and gets nothing. 14 years sir. 14 years of my life with her will have been worth it to see her disappointment

 

[Aldranon]

That's not how radiation works.
Jax's plan has merit because as he said, he's properly preparing the garden and starting from seed, so even the ecoli argument could be made moot since farming is dictated by perks, i.e. skill.

Well, that is how it works with some nuclear isotopes, as they get absorbed into the roots.

But finding non-contaminated soil (maybe have some bags at construction sites) would work.

 

[SnowDog1942]

That noise you heard was me cackling. My wife was moaning about farming (shes the farmer of our group) and she found out she could go dig those plots up watching a streamer. So today shes planning to go out and dig some up.
You know what you have to do Joel right? We cant have her digging those plots up so the patch has to come soon. I need to see the look on her face when she goes to dig them up and gets nothing. 14 years sir. 14 years of my life with her will have been worth it to see her disappointment

Jax, I haven’t played A18 much yet, was wondering how u feel about the difficulty, and how it feels compared to A17. I know you usually land on the same side of the balance argument as me on this.

 

[wolfbain5]

That noise you heard was me cackling. My wife was moaning about farming (shes the farmer of our group) and she found out she could go dig those plots up watching a streamer. So today shes planning to go out and dig some up.
You know what you have to do Joel right? We cant have her digging those plots up so the patch has to come soon. I need to see the look on her face when she goes to dig them up and gets nothing. 14 years sir. 14 years of my life with her will have been worth it to see her disappointment

if I knew your sense of humor better, I woulda commented on this the way I tease devega and snowdog

 

[agrastiOs]

The Vomit Lottery is honestly a great mechanic to make high tier foods more valuable and not let you just churn down 100 yucca fruits.

 

[Blake_]

The Vomit Lottery is honestly a great mechanic to make high tier foods more valuable and not let you just churn down 100 yucca fruits.

I like it too. Makes you be careful and stay on your toes. Eventually you can use some points to be immune.

 

[faatal]

People need to learn to overcome things instead of lowering every challenge to be easy.
Use a ranged weapon, run some distance till they return to base speed, get good at melee combat, invest in knockdown skills - I use all 4.

If you just aren't able to handle it there are plenty of settings to lower the difficulty.

Yep. They rage for 6-10 seconds. Run away, then fight. Too hard? Lower difficulty. At the lowest they never rage.

 

[Guppycur]

What made the game boring for you? What changes in A18 removed depth of you? You should give constructive criticism to TFP instead of posting and then saying that you shouldn't have posted yet anyway...

I thought I was pretty clear. Threats are few and far between, poi's are a yawn fest, blood moons end too early, and there's no depth.

But I'll elaborate further since you asked.

The "end game" is shortened to waaaay before we even see glowies. When we were at day 29 or so we had all the bullets and concrete we could ever need, because there's zero threat in the wilds so we can take our time to mine, and mining is so incredibly easy now thanks to the borg ships on the ground saying "dig here!" that our chests are full. POI's take but minutes to empty now, which is fine I like that, but since it's not balanced by exterior threats (I'd rather be chased in than out, but that's preference) and the loot abundance is ridiculous (even the crap houses have piles of ammo) I know my M60 with a 2x scope (aka my sniper rifle) and double magazine is always full, as is my junk turret.

I've died 4 times, and 3 of those were me testing the candy mine's efficiency. Hint, it's very efficient. =) I *think* the other death was finding a feral on day 1 or 2 and not expecting it, so that was a fantastic death... but now that I know they're out there this early (thank God), even they're no real threat. No, wait, it was from a damn cougar and Latheos laughing at me. =)

Place junk turret, shoot with m60. Even with the nerfed turret it's easy. And now that I have a bat? Pfft.

As far as depth, I no longer need specialized items, I can make pretty much everything I need with the junk that I normally toss... streamlined crafting means I can make more with less. Sure, I could go out and find oil, or plastic, or paper, or etc, but why would I? Duct Tape and Forged Iron is all I need for anything. And I don't even need to forge my own iron half the time, and when I do I can just do it at one of the many working forges I find and mark.

I set the difficulty to 3 but even if I set it to whatever the max is, it won't change the streamlining that made the game easier for me, it'll only mean I need more of the same.

I should add the deaths occurred fairly recently, so my GS was highest on the server for the horde nights.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Jax, I haven’t played A18 much yet, was wondering how u feel about the difficulty, and how it feels compared to A17. I know you usually land on the same side of the balance argument as me on this.

Its way more fun than 17 was. I was quite upset at how 17 went, and I was a bit rude to Joel and Roland and others. !7 was a big adjustment and one I just could not sink my teeth into after years of Alphas I had loved. Im noticing the rage on zombies is a pleasant addition to difficulty. So even though there is (sadly) less zombies overall each encounter can be deadly. Mind you this is early game. I've had 2 plays so far. My first was to day 14 and we had one horde night. It was a day 7. My wife died early on (around 2350) and respawned in our basement. Unfortunately she did not get back outside fast enough and i killed the last zombie before they could sense her.

For some reason our horde night ended right there. It was majorly disappointing. As was our second. I may need to crank difficulty though. Of course, I am not the target 7 days player as you probably suspect because I love things much harder so I wont hold the vanilla game at fault for this.

My only two complaints are crafting and loot. I know MM wants to move away from things being craft dependant so i kind of expected this. But crafting is just.... not required except for MAYBE food and even then you want canned food. I miss crafting mats and tools. Now i just find them right away. Which is my other bone of contention. Loot seems (to me again not the average player mind you) a bit high. Sure you get low quality stuff but the stats can be very good and "so far" i have not had a need for mods. Again early game. The scavenging game is strong. Pois are amazing i feel. The overall tone of the alpha is spot on.

Overall though I am enjoying it. I will continue to enjoy vanilla for quite a bit more time before most likely doing my thing and making loot rarer etc. But I LOVE the long game. I can easily go to day 600 and still not get bored but that is 100 percent NOT what MM and TFP are targeting. So i slow down XP a bit, I lower loot a bit. But that by no means is meant to infer that this Alpha is not good. It is, Im just a VERY picky player.

I must say the books and schematics are my most favorite part. I find myself ALWAYS looking for them, even if just to complete them. Its a fun thing to collect and the bonuses are quite nice. Im so happy they added them in. JUST buying perks got boring in 17. This adds spice.

In summary, I am a Pimps Believer again. And I am also a modder. And as a modder Im extremely excited for the tools they have given us. As a player I look forward to seeing these new systems expanded and added to.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

That has been my experience as well. It was like that in A17 for me too, and I QUICKLY burned out on it because of it. This particular part of the game is even worse than A17 was, imo. There's just so much loot without any risk. The game is virtually over in just a few game-days. There is almost always a net-gain in ammo after shooting and looting your way through a POI. No sense in stealth..it takes more time..and it's not necessary when you can just blast through it quickly. The towns are empty, so there's little threat at all in the town - you can strip all the cars, loot everything laying around town in a couple game days and maybe encounter a dozen zombies over the course of those two days. There's very little risk, but an overabundance of reward. There's so much ammo now that the game is essentially a zombie shooter more than anything else. There's much less things you need to actually craft and the things you actually need once you're established - are junk items like glue, brass, etc which you can just get in abundance outside in any trash pile.
For me anyway, Food poisoning is just a non-issue due to all the magic vending machines. Just sell all the loot, and buy the clean food. Hunting, Farming, etc is really just a role-play thing - you don't NEED to do any of those things.

How are you not spending buttloads of ammo on horde night? What’s the highest level horde night you have reached so far in this alpha to know there is too much ammo?

 

[JaxTeller718]

if I knew your sense of humor better, I woulda commented on this the way I tease devega and snowdog

Despite how grumpy i can seem on here at times I have a very sarcastic sense of humor and can handle anything. 18 being so fun again has relieved some tension

 

[Guppycur]

How are you not spending buttloads of ammo on horde night? What’s the highest level horde night you have reached so far in this alpha to know there is too much ammo?

Because they end at midnight, maybe 1am? We're on top of a bakery, we usually find them hitting random stuff on the bottom but they're easy to pick off from the roof as we see them spawn not too far away... pop, pop, pop, a few make it under. <shrug>

 

[meganoth]

I agree but the problem occurs when you ask 10 people what good gameplay is and you get 10 different answers.
Hence the goalposts can always be moved whenever someone just does not like something.

As a further comment on the #foodgate, for realism in a game you don't need more than a fitting explanation.

If canned food gets you poisoned then it is because it is old. If canned food doesn't it is because it isn't THAT old.

If cooked food gets you poisoned then it is because of zombie germs in the air. If cooked food doesn't get you poisoned, then there are no zombie germs.

People who argue that any mechanic is NOT realistic have a "small" problem, because they have to think of and then eliminate ALL possible explanations before they have a proper case.

 

[Blake_]

That would be OP IMO. Maybe your last suggestion wouldn't be bad, but its fine as is. I never buy the huntsman because I play solo so I'm swimming in meat, that perk is for unlucky players and mp server players.

Huntsman is king with 25% loot.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Because they end at midnight, maybe 1am? We're on top of a bakery, we usually find them hitting random stuff on the bottom but they're easy to pick off from the roof as we see them spawn not too far away... pop, pop, pop, a few make it under. <shrug>

They didn’t end that quickly in Joel’s videos though. What’s different?

 

[Guppycur]

They didn’t end that quickly in Joel’s videos though. What’s different?

I'm sure he'll take offense, but he's not very good? There's a finite count of zombies, and if you just let them in while you run around going into your chests, instead of having your "horde backpack" prepped, like he does, you're pretty much fighting the same zombies for a longer time... but if you're prepared, they're pretty easy to get to the limit quickly.

I'd really love to see a return of "non-stop until 4am" zombies, because it would not change a newbies game (maxAlive is maxAlive), but it would certainly give people with some experience in the game something to do for the other 2/3rd's of the night.

Mind you, this is all straight vanilla because I really believe in getting that experience before modding.

 

[Ti2xGr]

Texture streaming fix seems very promising so far. I was getting 45-60 fps at 1920 before, after the fix I was getting a solid 60fps so I bumped it to 2560 and am getting 52-60fps

Great news. That's on an RTX 2080, correct?

 

[iBane]

Not needed. Vitamins, iron gut or just have enough food around to deal with it. Everything on earth is contaminated, the soil, the rain, the meat, except pre war cans. Its a great system people just need to forget the past and use the mechanics provided. Stop knee jerking (not really speaking to you Jax) about it and just play the game. In fallout you get rads with everything you eat and have to reduce it with medicine periodically and every point of rads you have blackens your health bar. This is much more forgiving IMO.
Farming works great, just take your vitamins or have some canned food ready in case you barf when you are on the road.

I love the new mechanic. Roll the dice every time I eat or drink...nice bit of texture..."Do I want to risk dysentery or food poisoning in the middle of this POI or live with the dehydration?"

 

[SnowDog1942]

Its way more fun than 17 was. I was quite upset at how 17 went, and I was a bit rude to Joel and Roland and others. !7 was a big adjustment and one I just could not sink my teeth into after years of Alphas I had loved. Im noticing the rage on zombies is a pleasant addition to difficulty. So even though there is (sadly) less zombies overall each encounter can be deadly. Mind you this is early game. I've had 2 plays so far. My first was to day 14 and we had one horde night. It was a day 7. My wife died early on (around 2350) and respawned in our basement. Unfortunately she did not get back outside fast enough and i killed the last zombie before they could sense her.
For some reason our horde night ended right there. It was majorly disappointing. As was our second. I may need to crank difficulty though. Of course, I am not the target 7 days player as you probably suspect because I love things much harder so I wont hold the vanilla game at fault for this.

My only two complaints are crafting and loot. I know MM wants to move away from things being craft dependant so i kind of expected this. But crafting is just.... not required except for MAYBE food and even then you want canned food. I miss crafting mats and tools. Now i just find them right away. Which is my other bone of contention. Loot seems (to me again not the average player mind you) a bit high. Sure you get low quality stuff but the stats can be very good and "so far" i have not had a need for mods. Again early game. The scavenging game is strong. Pois are amazing i feel. The overall tone of the alpha is spot on.

Overall though I am enjoying it. I will continue to enjoy vanilla for quite a bit more time before most likely doing my thing and making loot rarer etc. But I LOVE the long game. I can easily go to day 600 and still not get bored but that is 100 percent NOT what MM and TFP are targeting. So i slow down XP a bit, I lower loot a bit. But that by no means is meant to infer that this Alpha is not good. It is, Im just a VERY picky player.

I must say the books and schematics are my most favorite part. I find myself ALWAYS looking for them, even if just to complete them. Its a fun thing to collect and the bonuses are quite nice. Im so happy they added them in. JUST buying perks got boring in 17. This adds spice.

In summary, I am a Pimps Believer again. And I am also a modder. And as a modder Im extremely excited for the tools they have given us. As a player I look forward to seeing these new systems expanded and added to.

Thanks, seems like a lot of people feel the first blood moons are very underwhelming. I believe Mr Mole even said something similar a few weeks back. Atleast that is not a hard mod to make. I do wish for an eventual blood moon count slider (not max alive) — and Independent of the difficulty slider which ups your stage giving you more zeds.

Give me 1.5 x the total number of BM zombies etc.

Or 1.1x. Or 2x

Or for the pansies, .5x etc

Would suck to have the first challenging horde night not show up till day 28 or 35