PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Jugginator]

More T1/2/3/4 quests being shown at any given time would be hugely welcome in my opinion, if you would ever be willing to put that in. Once you get to T5 (and especially T5, since they take ages to clear out), the trader often offers you 4 (occasionally 3) T5 quests to do and only 1-2 lower end quests. In my opinion, it should be the opposite. Just saying.

Ooff, a T5 quest? no thank you. I like those POIs, very thoughtfully designed mind you - I love them - but damn do they take foreeever to clear out. Honestly the loot at the end isn't even remotely worth it lmao. Just for the funs and exploring. Def something to do with a team, but forget that solo lol. Once is more than enough.

 

[MechanicalLens]

We do that to tease you because we know you can't raise the money.

Ahem. I afforded a T6 AK-47 by day 4, and T6 Steel Knuckles by day 11. 90 minute days aside, I would still have had enough time to afford them before restock day, so... I would have been a fool not to take them, but a nerf would be appreciated. :3

 

[MechanicalLens]

Ooff, a T5 quest? no thank you. I like those POIs, very thoughtfully designed mind you - I love them - but damn do they take foreeever to clear out. Honestly the loot at the end isn't even remotely worth it lmao. Just for the funs and exploring. Def something to do with a team, but forget that solo lol. Once is more than enough.

I agree. But no one has time to do 4 T5 POI's in one day, and imo, they're just cluttering up space where more, lower end quests could show up. 1-2 T5 POI's showing up at the end would be a much "cleaner" system, imo.

 

[Jugginator]

I agree. But no one has time to do 4 T5 POI's in one day, and imo, they're just cluttering up space where more, lower end quests could show up. 1-2 T5 POI's showing up at the end would be a much "cleaner" system, imo.

Oh yeah I saw you and Joel talking about teleporting to them or something - I can see that being cool. Definitely different, perhaps they could be placed in the rad-zone? Be a cool little thing. Force rad suits or something to go there. I'd still leave maybe 1 or 2 out in the world *shrug*. idk lol, but I agree as much as I love them I won't be doing them twice. If I'm desperate for loot I'll go in the bottom floors and loot what's there and gtfo.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Oh yeah I saw you and Joel talking about teleporting to them or something - I can see that being cool. Definitely different, perhaps they could be placed in the rad-zone? Be a cool little thing. Force rad suits or something to go there. I'd still leave maybe 1 or 2 out in the world *shrug*. idk lol, but I agree as much as I love them I won't be doing them twice. If I'm desperate for loot I'll go in the bottom floors and loot what's there and gtfo.

That's not what I was referring to. Lol Please don't twist my own words like that.

You do quests from the trader, you get higher tier quests, right? Well, at T5, the traders are almost exclusively offer you T5 missions, which take ages to do and can get pretty tedious after a while. (Too much of a good thing, I guess.) Physically, how many there are in each world, I think it's fine. I'm just saying that in my opinion, the trader should offer you a greater variety of lower end quests at the end, not just, "T5 Clear, T5 Fetch, T5 Clear, T5 Fetch / Clear, T3 Fetch", for example.

 

[Jugginator]

That's not what I was referring to. Lol Please don't twist my own words like that.
You do quests from the trader, you get higher tier quests, right? Well, at T5, the traders are almost exclusively offer you T5 missions, which take ages to do and can get pretty tedious after a while. (Too much of a good thing, I guess.) Physically, how many there are in each world, I think it's fine. I'm just saying that in my opinion, the trader should offer you a greater variety of lower end quests at the end, not just, "T5 Clear, T5 Fetch, T5 Clear, T5 Fetch / Clear, T3 Fetch", for example.

Wasn't intentional lol, that's kinda what I meant; instead of T5 quests have them as the teleporting/helicopter ride option you can do end game as separate options, not replacing the other tier quests. I would never accept a T5 quest solo or duo.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Wasn't intentional lol, that's kinda what I meant; instead of T5 quests have them as the teleporting/helicopter ride option you can do end game as separate options, not replacing the other tier quests. I would never accept a T5 quest solo or duo.

I agree. Lol. But that's not what I'm trying to talk about here. Just saying. (I don't want anyone else to be confused by my/your position. I have my ideas, you have your own. Even if it wasn't your intention, please try not to merge them.)

 

[Damocles]

Ultimately I'd like options in RWG where we can pick a % of POIS from buckets. Tier 1's, 2,'s, ruins houses, etc. Then I wouldn't have to look at a town full of teir 5 factories and not one book store. I had two shamways next to each other and a shotgun messiah and the water plant thingy eating up a whole town prior to release and it was disappointing. I cleared them, but it was nuts plus there are bugs where it collapses every time and is a cheap death trap.
Like something 60% as big full of bandits with chaos shootouts would be a lot more fun IMO.

Until you have more customizable options in RWG you can try NitroGen, with balanced POIs in cities, that dont repeat most of the time.

 

[Tetrameth]

I just adds to gamestage. It is as if you jumped into the future (by a week or two), looted the box and jumped back.

That still doesn't answer my question

 

[MrSamuelAdam]

When testing if you don't have a number pad on your keyboard. What is the command to get the zombies health up to see what it is when testing weapons out? When it shows all the stats above their head, I hope there is another way. I know you're supposed to put 0 but my zero above the I&O doesn't work.

 

[Ralathar44]

What no one seems to get, is that in relation to bullets it feels unnecessary (the nerf) I don't even use bows and I'm not saying you can't because there isn't enough feathers. I was trying to say (and failed apparently) that in relation bullets it doesn't seem balanced. As you pointed out, "you shouldn't have 150 feathers on day one" but finding 200 9mm, 100 7.62, and 50 shot shells and their corresponding guns on day 1 is ok? (default settings).
To reiterate I'm not saying the feather nerf was bad in it of itself. Just that it seems weird when guns and ammo are so easily found and accumulated. But whatever. I was the catalyst for this feather nerf so I feel partly responsible for any negatives resulting. If everyone is cool with it then I'm cool with it :indecisiveness:

What you seem to be missing is that Archery is the stealth tree AND you can recover arrows/bolts and your ammunition expenditure if you play the build correctly is much MUCH lower than other classes. As someone who played Agility purist build to day 40+ as my first play through I can tell you that once you get past primitive bow and start investing in some skill ranks your ammo usage becomes TRIVIAL compared to other spec's. You end up with mostly 1 shot 1 kill and recovering like 50% of the arrows/bolts you shoot.

Then your T3 ammo doesn't even use feathers anymore, it uses plastic polymers. If anything agility has it too easy regarding ammo mid to later game. It's only early game when people have not invested in their skills and they are using the primitive bow that feathers feel scarce.

People say that Junk Turret ammo is cheap, but it costs thousands and thousands of iron, which can be an issue early to mid game before your miing tools hit high end levels with good quality augurs or high quality steel pick. Agility, after the you hit day 14ish, has almost no ammunition cost at all. At day 14 I was already 1 shot 1 killing stealthing 50% of the zombies in a POI and recovering about half the arrows/bolts, and the % of both 1 shot kills from stealth and recovered arrows only went up with more skill ranks.

Agility Archer is kind of OP truthfully with the addition of explosive arrows. Cheapest/easiest POI clears and really cheap horde nights too, but still super effective.

 

[Odetta]

What you seem to be missing is that Archery is the stealth tree AND you can recover arrows/bolts and your ammunition expenditure if you play the build correctly is much MUCH lower than other classes. As someone who played Agility purist build to day 40+ as my first play through I can tell you that once you get past primitive bow and start investing in some skill ranks your ammo usage becomes TRIVIAL compared to other spec's. You end up with mostly 1 shot 1 kill and recovering like 50% of the arrows/bolts you shoot.
Then your T3 ammo doesn't even use feathers anymore, it uses plastic polymers. If anything agility has it too easy regarding ammo mid to later game. It's only early game when people have not invested in their skills and they are using the primitive bow that feathers feel scarce.

People say that Junk Turret ammo is cheap, but it costs thousands and thousands of iron, which can be an issue early to mid game before your miing tools hit high end levels with good quality augurs or high quality steel pick. Agility, after the you hit day 14ish, has almost no ammunition cost at all. At day 14 I was already 1 shot 1 killing stealthing 50% of the zombies in a POI and recovering about half the arrows/bolts, and the % of both 1 shot kills from stealth and recovered arrows only went up with more skill ranks.

Agility Archer is kind of OP truthfully with the addition of explosive arrows. Cheapest/easiest POI clears and really cheap horde nights too, but still super effective.

I'm willing to admit I was wrong on this subject. I just felt bad cause I'm the one that caused the nerf in the first place. Since the latest patch the divide isn't noticable because of the pass on loot. If others are good then I'm good on this subject.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Each terrain image type can have Diffuse, Normal, Height, Smoothness and AO textures. They each have at least 3 of those, while some like snow and stone have all 5. The more there are, the more texture look ups, the slower the pixel shader runs.
I can try some combinations of less textures on the GTX 960. See what the FPS does. If there is an issue we would have to come up with a way to remove some of those at run time.

Oh so thats what they are, so it is indeed the way I pictured it in my head. I will bet that a little less texture as you said will fix it. I cannot think of anything else that can possibly be the cause. Your plan sounds like it will fix it.

 

[sillls]

Hey, I wanted to say thanks for saying something about the bicycle having storage. I looked at it earlier and didn't see anything. I checked the trunk. When I looked again. I saw my mistake. So thanks.

 

[SnowDog1942]

Lol, I think snowdog is having low fps. We can't count on him right now, faatal will fix him soon enough.

Been running great for me on ultra widescreen using a gtx1080.

 

[Tetrameth]

What no one seems to get, is that in relation to bullets it feels unnecessary (the nerf) I don't even use bows and I'm not saying you can't because there isn't enough feathers. I was trying to say (and failed apparently) that in relation bullets it doesn't seem balanced. As you pointed out, "you shouldn't have 150 feathers on day one" but finding 200 9mm, 100 7.62, and 50 shot shells and their corresponding guns on day 1 is ok? (default settings).
To reiterate I'm not saying the feather nerf was bad in it of itself. Just that it seems weird when guns and ammo are so easily found and accumulated. But whatever. I was the catalyst for this feather nerf so I feel partly responsible for any negatives resulting. If everyone is cool with it then I'm cool with it :indecisiveness:

I think the feather balance is fine and I use bow more than anything (I only use guns for running around to mitigate damage from those annoying surprise attacks from wolves etc)

Make sure you destroy every nest (for the bonus feathers), and get your looting skills up asap (which is kind of a no brainer that works for the entire game) you should be swimming in feathers, even by the end of day 1.

edit: I gotta add that ammo usage will be LOADS better once they fix the hitboxes on the zombie heads

 

[Ralathar44]

Traders will get a quality nerf soon.

I enjoy the thought of making quality 6 more rare, but I don't enjoy the idea of that 4th mod slot being locked behind that even more rare drop. 4th slot is pretty pivotal for armors since you want to have custom fittings, armor mod, pockets, and then an insulation mod...but then there are additioanl must have mods specific to armor pieces like bandolier for chest, helmet light for helmet, and impact bracing for feet that make the mod economy tighter. Plus advanced mufflers for agility.

What is the target day range yall want people to be decked out in quality 6 gear? I'm at day 39 right now and I've had full barter perks for a long time and 2/5 of my armor pieces are Quality 6, my 2 turrets are T6 (one was crafted), but everything else I have is Quality 2 - Quality 5. I've crafted 2 quality 6 stun batons and both were worse or equal to my quality 5 lol. My steel axe is quality 2, my steel pick is quality 2, and my steel shovel is quality 5. I recently found a quality 5 augur and quality 5 wrench.

So I'm nowhere even close to halfway decked out yet. Spending 60 days (60 hours) is not too much time to find the best gear IMO, BUT I think it may be too much time to find 4 mod slot gear. Even though I know logically that unlocking that 4th mod slot is literally unlocking more power, experientially as a player it feels like I'm unlocking a quality of life feature. I'd much rather have to choose between lower stats on a lower quality gear piece and more mod slots than be completely gated from 4 mod slots until quality 6. Maybe the # of mod slots can become part of the random stats? Example: quality 5 can have between 2 and 4 mod slots, quality 1 can have between 0 and 1, quality 2 can have between 1 and 2, and quality 6 would always have 4. That way more quality can still = more mod slots but it can potentially solve this issue.

Specifically for armor. I've never once found the Well Insulated perk compelling and with the addition of pockets I don't think Pack Mule is valuable enough to consider taking without some additional bonuses. Perks that you can completely bypass via looted items like packmule via pockets, master chef via finding recipes, yeah science via schematics, grease monkey via schematics, etc feel really really bad to invest in right now without significant additional bonuses. Advanced Engineering is a good example of having compelling bonuses to complement the unlocks. Even Physician at least tries, though the power of baseline healing items and the fact that the healing perk doesn't unlock the healing item scehamtics kind of takes away from it. (maybe put the healing/drug unlocks in Physician and then give yeah science some nice secondary bonuses?)

 

[Zynq]

I am a big proponent of Tier 5 quests, but I can understand that the resource allocation and development time is too great to justify making more.

They are bad for framerate, chunk building speed and at most 10% of players use them. I'd rather see more tier 2,s 3's and 4's, those huge ones take way too long to play and too long for us to develop... Its a neat novelty then after you've done it its a waste of space because nobody in their right mind will want to do it again.

I can't say whether or not only 10% of players use Tier 5s, but I'd like to hear specific reasons as to why you'd avoid clearing them. In my game, the Tier 5s available so far have been the apartment building (9 out of 10 times), and sometimes the hospital. Though I suppose you can always get assigned one of the brand name factory POIs, which are certainly more difficult. There are roughly 5 traders that I run in a circuit for quests, and often times I get 2-3 quests at the same building. The best part about the quest system is that the POI completely regenerates once you start the quest, and Tier 5s are offered 100% of the time at the trader once unlocked. Essentially, you get unlimited kills for exp, and unlimited salvage and loot... if you know where to look. On top of that, especially if you put enough points in daring adventurer for +2 reward choices, you always get at least one 6 quality tool/weapon, and if all of the rewards you're offered are not upgrades to your current gear, just sell the most expensive reward for dukes.

I'd be ok with smaller tier 5's but no more giant ass factories that take 2+ real hours to clear out that only large groups can do.

Speaking from experience playing on warrior day 50, though I have been clearing T5s since day 20. Considering every single potential spawn, there are maybe four enemies that are a legitimate threat to the player. One of them is the zombie bear. The other three would be the radiated biker, radiated cop and radiated soldier, which spawn mostly near the loot room if they spawn at all. If you are in a large party, your gamestage is going to be through the roof, and its highly likely you'll be spawning radiated tough guys even on the regular floors of the POI. The positive is that nothing beats the fun of team gameplay, even if you run a stealth build and no one else on your team does.

Playing on an agility build which is really OP for quest clears (only if you're solo, lol), I can run the easiest Tier 5, the apartment, in around 25 minutes depending on how little I loot, using mainly a compound crossbow with iron bolts and a silenced pistol. I opted to use Advanced Muffled Connectors on all armor along with rank 5 in the sneaking skills to stay absolutely hidden. And I'll throw in ghillie suit legs as an added bonus. I would estimate that there are 150-200 potential spawns in the apartment, but hardly any get the chance to wake up. If I can proc the sneaking bonus on a headshot, everything dies in one hit besides big ferals/radiated. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, except the fish don't even move when you line em up.

 

[Senkan]

I think the feather balance is fine and I use bow more than anything (I only use guns for running around to mitigate damage from those annoying surprise attacks from wolves etc)
Make sure you destroy every nest (for the bonus feathers), and get your looting skills up asap (which is kind of a no brainer that works for the entire game) you should be swimming in feathers, even by the end of day 1.

MadMole, How bout allow us to make synthetic feathers. You think all arrows are made out of bird feathers? Give us a recipe and make them at station.

 

[Tetrameth]

What is the target day range yall want people to be decked out in quality 6 gear?

If people have been playing so long that they want to restart, and they still haven't found level 6 gear. Then design focus should be shifted to other areas, as clearly its not the thrill of acquiring level 6 gear that is keeping them there.

Once the donkey gets the carrot from the stick, its game over.