PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Guppycur]

So Guppycur is essentially playing on the former "normal" setting. Maybe he should scale up difficulty, or adjust loot levels ? Or maybe both ?
@Guppycur: If it is too easy for you, then it will be a challenge for less experienced or new players :smile-new:

Ueah I wanted to stick to his vanilla as possible, so I could make a fair assessment, but I couldn't help myself so raised the level by one...

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Glad you like it. You should have said "me and my group" though, to counter weight guppy's army of fictional arm chair designers that hate 18

Reading comprehension my friend, I never said I hated it. I said it's boring. Big difference.

It's a lot more polished than previous versions, and I said that as well.

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Can I ask why horde night is based on total numbers of zombies versus just having zombies come until 4am? I’m not complaining, just curious about it. I assume there must be a reason. I’d love to see them come all night but not if there’s a performance issue or something similar. Thanks in advance.
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Can I ask why horde night is based on total numbers of zombies versus just having zombies come until 4am? I’m not complaining, just curious about it. I assume there must be a reason. I’d love to see them come all night but not if there’s a performance issue or something similar. Thanks in advance.

You can ask, twice in fact.

 

[madmole]

Sounds like A18 isn't balanced for MP yet. Try playing SP and tell us what you think.

Oh I don't know about that. One of our testers has a team of dudes and he said 100% of their time is spent trying to get ammo. Guppy is a noob (with alpha 18) and is making blanket statements about the game at a very low GS. He has a rude (or welcome awakening) coming.

There is a reason I never showed any low gs hordes, they are a snooze for veterans, but give it time, it gets very nasty.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Once established, making ammo is one of the things I do the most. Possibly even more now in A18..Because, from what I can see so far, crafting most other things is not a priority.

Nah, that's not why. I just like crafting stuff and throwing it in boxes just in case I need it to keep busy at night at a base when I'm established. I haven't crafted much ammo yet.

These two post excerpts contradict each other slightly. You are either saying you have not played enough A18 solo to conclude there is too much ammo, or you are saying that is likely you will need the ammo soon. But then the next statement throws that away. Your first observations about crafting are completely nullified by the second "I'm just crafting whatever".

This would be much easier if we just skipped to providing the information.

 

[unlike them]

Quick question: can we still craft 'flat' barbed-wire fences? I checked helper blocks, but cannot find it.

 

[Doctor3D]

These two post excerpts contradict each other slightly. You are either saying you have not played enough A18 solo to conclude there is too much ammo, or you are saying that is likely you will need the ammo soon. Either case does not strengthen the claim that there is too much ammo loot.This would be much easier if we just skipped to providing the information.

I was just saying I would craft possibly more ammo now in Alpha 18 than before because there's less of other stuff to craft..and I like crafting..so might as well craft ammo..even if I don't necessarily need too.

 

[Odetta]

Difference is at 4am the sun comes out. I'd rather be out getting resources and looting. Sometimes you just have to suck it up and adapt. Do we not have options to make things more difficult? Will turning blood moon count to 64 help? Turnup blood moon zombie speed to nightmare? Want a challenge? Turn your blood moon block damage to 300%. How can YOU make YOUR experience better?

There is no difference. If there is no threat then you can loot and such starting right when the horde ends, 12am, 2am, no difference. I do play with 64 and sometimes edit the xml to 100 but if you kill them fast enough they always stop coming. If it takes you all night to kill 8 zombies that's fine, but for people that are efficient and kill them fast they should keep coming. Then again I've been playing for a while and they used to have it where hordes just keep coming and not stop.

Agree to disagree on this.

 

[Guppycur]

Dude we have to give new players a chance. They should start to last all night by day 35 to 42 from my experience, but like I said we give the player some intentional success, then ramp things up and repeat but by day 100 it gets quite nasty and time management starts to kick your ass trying to get enough bullets to survive the next horde.

Well I get catering towards the more casual player, because it's still a business and sales rule and I have zero problem with that, my concern is that a casual won't even reach day 35 because they're only playing 2 hours a week.

 

[Laz Man]

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.

Aside from MMs ability to kill zeds, keep in mind he plays solo. In a group setting, especially a seasoned group, the night will end quicker. Not sure what the solution to this aside from increasing the zombie count variable that touches gamestage and/or number of players online.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I was just saying I would craft possibly more ammo now in Alpha 18 than before because there's less of other stuff to craft..and I like crafting..so might as well craft ammo..even if I don't necessarily need too.

And that was in reply to my initial questions? Why? What's the relation and how does it mean there's too much ammo in the loot?

Look... you said this:

So you might as well just go into a large POI at night and loot to get even more stuff to sell and shoot with. The shotgun I might use for both situations as a quick backup - but I tend to separate the primary ammo types for each use type so that I always have a positive cache for horde night.

You are watching your ammo. Why? If there's sooooo much in the world to loot, you wouldn't concern yourself.

 

[Guppycur]

Oh I don't know about that. One of our testers has a team of dudes and he said 100% of their time is spent trying to get ammo. Guppy is a noob (with alpha 18) and is making blanket statements about the game at a very low GS. He has a rude (or welcome awakening) coming.
There is a reason I never showed any low gs hordes, they are a snooze for veterans, but give it time, it gets very nasty.

Fingers crossed.

 

[Damocles]

Ok, just had a very annoying bug: before starting a POI fetch quest, I put down a storage chest to store additional loot I was carrying.

Well, starting the quest, the POI got reset, including deleting my chest (and all its contents).

Maybe you can scan for player placed chests, and keep them in the reset POI, when not colliding with a POI placed block.

Or show some warning message

 

[rdunham3]

A few thoughts from last night's session:

Vultures happily attack people at 100% health now. I miss the old (and wrong, btw) theory that they only attack the injured.

The new small piles of canned food on tabletops in POI's are great, they're keeping me going in our 3-player game, and I think it's absolutely hilarious my kids walk right past them all the time. Since they're usually ahead of me that means I get the free food without having to fight every zombie for every can. Win!

The metallic clunk when that pack of wolves jumped me last night (I was wearing metal armor) threw me off for a couple seconds but after the fight was over I thought it was rather cool. Too metal-door sounding though, need one that's more muffled since the armor is on a fleshy thing. Shouldn't ring like scrap if the body is dampening the vibration.

Whoever was saying anvils are hard to get a few pages back, we had two on/by day 2. Working Stiff boxes in so many POI's really changes the balance of things like that. Loot more craft less. We also found the bellows and a forge book, right AFTER I took that skill point, I might add...RNG has a wicked sense of humor that way.

 

[MajorMunchy]

oooooooooo idea: Make m60s be mountable on blocks etc.

This way, in big multilayer settings or something you can just make a but load and set them up wherever and have bunkers!

 

[rdunham3]

In a17.4 it complained about a player-placed chest in the street outside the POI and I had to go break it down before it would let us start the quest. That's not a thing anymore? It was cool.

 

[MajorMunchy]

Ok, just had a very annoying bug: before starting a POI fetch quest, I put down a storage chest to store additional loot I was carrying.Well, starting the quest, the POI got reset, including deleting my chest (and all its contents).

Maybe you can scan for player placed chests, and keep them in the reset POI, when not colliding with a POI placed block.

Or show some warning message

Just place it farther out?

Or it coudl be added to the list it checks like how it checks for beds/respawn points

 

[madmole]

I can kill a horde with shiv. And I find a18 to be perfect (playing always warrior level). It is rewarding and fun and not easy. This game was a polarizing bunch of clunky systems mixed with some good mechanics. Now It's the opposite. I feel I can play it past day 28. That's huge. If you can make this game function perfectly without bandit/campaign content, steam library will have only 1 game for me when those are in.

I was the same way before 18, end game at day 28-35 with every alpha.

 

[Senkan]

There is no difference. If there is no threat then you can loot and such starting right when the horde ends, 12am, 2am, no difference. I do play with 64 and sometimes edit the xml to 100 but if you kill them fast enough they always stop coming. If it takes you all night to kill 8 zombies that's fine, but for people that are efficient and kill them fast they should keep coming. Then again I've been playing for a while and they used to have it where hordes just keep coming and not stop.
Agree to disagree on this.

Ever play horde every night with permadeath?

 

[betam4x]

He's GS 1 because he died 80 times.

Died? I thought Joel was a zombie.

 

[madmole]

Well said! It's just like back in A16, to a degree; the first several hordes were somewhat underwhelming to say the least, but post day 49+, the switch was flipped. If you didn't have a suitable base, a boatload of ammo, traps... You were ef'ed. I am normally quite passive, but to anyone who is saying that A18 is "lackluster" thus far, I would love to see the looks on their faces when A18's switch is flipped, so to speak. (That is, if they keep playing. I hope they do; it's a fantastic game. )

I build my own base so that time is needed to get a good strong base built.

 

[madmole]

View attachment 29571
Amen brother! GG on A18e to all the devs. Awaiting with bated breath the next experimental release, hopefully with fix(es) for the fps issue. Until then, running the game in a 720p window.

I know we have a Delete on Death option for gear now, but any chance we will see a true Dead is Dead option in the near future (where it also deletes the character profile/save, and resets any cell with LCB placed)?

Yes hopefully.