PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Sullen Skulls]

I like most of A18, but I can't help but feel stealth is broken. I've found the mod for advanced mufflers and made 3 of them, I've got the stealth perk to 3, and read most of the night hunter books, including the one that makes you sneak better at night, but even so, I'm getting more Z's then in A17 wake up on me, or be already freaking awake when I get on the same floor as them. And I suspect a few were awake when I was one floor below them.
Also I seem to get a lot of wandering Z's when I'm looting a POI. I try to kill them from the door, but sometimes I need to move outside, and then *POOF* I have Z sleepers in the POI where I had cleared or was no sleeper before.

Anyway we can have a "grace" area / or time once we've entered the POI to not re-spawn sleepers? And can you all fix those 1 hex wide stairs, dear lord I make a lot of noise on those things, especially on mis-matched areas when you go from one level to the other. It's almost less noise to lay down wooden plates to bypass those.

Really? I find the Stealth to be quite well balanced. Its not great (at all) at early levels, but once I hit level 50ish, had 7 agility, lvl 4 in archery/knives/stealth/light armor perks and most of the appropriate books, I was able to completely (except one occasion where I completely missed a cop zombie hiding in one obscure corner) able to stealth my way through the huge Shotgun Messiah building, and 1-shot kill everything except the radiated bikers/cops/fatties on the very top floor. This was using mostly leather/military gear, all with advanced mufflers in them, and without yet having the military stealth boots.

Once you have found most of the Night Stalker books, most of the smaller POI looting is even easier at night than it is during the day. Sure, you're probably dead if you screw it up, but 1-shots and stealth are even better at night. Admittedly I up the gamma to 60 instead of 40, so maybe that's a little cheaty, but hey I justify it by the fact that if you are genuinely a 'Night Stalker' you would have better night vision than most people anyway.

 

[Damocles]

That is guppy's baby. IF everyone can axe murder his idea we'll get that out of the game once and for all and be in a good spot balance wise.
Its probably a good design, if there is 0% chance to get good loot early game people will feel compelled to power level until the magic colors start dropping. Its just a matter of balance to where the high quality stuff is super rare early game.

Nothing but a few hundred hours further testing will solve this. We adjusted it more, but maybe it needs more. I have 2 hours into it so I have no idea how it feels yet.

Maybe some kind of "bonus points", where the player is cut out of high level loot, but has a chance using up a "bonus loot point". So every low level player can get like 2 high level items, but not more / using up that loot budget.

Its really fun to find very high level loot early on, but should be strictly limited, even when looting non stop.

 

[dhlmaster]

Should look like this.

More like this on my game



Edit: It looks lit up when you are placing it, and then it goes dark as soon as you set it down. Just talked to another player who experiences the same thing.

- - - Updated - - -

Tell me that is new. If it isn't, I'm a dunce, and I blame it on the fact that I usually am fixated on the other information that I totally forget to notice the direction.
Thanks, TFP, for doing things the way I would like before I even ask! (The map thing still would be cool. Each trader just has a quest map hanging in the room with them. Consult it for quests instead of asking the trader.)

It is new. Changed in the most recent build.

 

[Jedo]

It is new. Changed in the most recent build.

Ah ha. I haven't taken a quest in the new build, and I only glanced over the patch notes.

 

[EmpV]

Fine we'll push browns out to level 120, then crafting will be relevant. Have you started a new game yet? The goal is to make crafting relevant not OP. We pushed out how long a player will find crappy gear, so this should get people crafting again.

This is an improvement and moving in the right direction, but T5/T6 rarity only goes so far.

The problem is that as soon as you loot your main T5/T6 weapon/gear, crafting that gear becomes irrelevant since that gear will last forever. I haven't crafted any of my main gear in A18 yet because loot quality is ahead of the crafting curve. It gets worse in multiplayer since your pals might loot a T5/T6 weapon that you can use.

If gear could only be repaired a limited number of times and eventually need replacement, then crafting/looting main gear would always be relevant from early game to end game.

 

[cork]

Land Claim Exploit?

Is there any known issue with land claims with any a18 patches? I am playing on a MP server with infinite offline claim durability yet I logged in this morning to find my front door missing and chests all raided. I keep my chests above zombie reach so I doubt it was any kind of zombie exploit to bash them in. The server hasn't wiped since first exp release so I'm wondering if this is the sign to wipe or if there is an exploit i'm unaware of.

 

[beerfly]

It is new. Changed in the most recent build.

It`s a nice touch.

Would be great if it had random chance to make screamers go back from where they come, scaring them, if put outside of the base

 

[dhlmaster]

Land Claim Exploit?
Is there any known issue with land claims with any a18 patches? I am playing on a MP server with infinite offline claim durability yet I logged in this morning to find my front door missing and chests all raided. I keep my chests above zombie reach so I doubt it was any kind of zombie exploit to bash them in. The server hasn't wiped since first exp release so I'm wondering if this is the sign to wipe or if there is an exploit i'm unaware of.

Explosives defeat LCB protection. It has been an issue on my pve server.

 

[RotaryPSi]

@Madmole So I've been playing A18 Experimental for awhile now. Love it by the way, zero complaints.

But I have noticed some things that could be looked into. So something is off with the Hunting Rifle, it doesn't always aim when you want it to, something about it feels really clunky.

(for example, when you're running around with the gun in your hands and see a zed, I try and quickly aim at it, but the gun doesn't seem to aim half the time and I have to re-aim.)

(all of this is with the iron sights too, I haven't tried with a scope.)

And the other thing, I really wish it didn't auto-aim after each reload. A lot of times I get stuck aiming when I would like to be moving after each shot.

Also, I really wish crouch didn't break your aim. I like to aim before going into sneak mode, but it breaks aim, so I have to re-aim after crouching.

There's also a bug to where if you click really fast with the Hunting Rifle it will keep firing without reloading.

You're the best Joel!

 

[DaVegaNL]

It`s a nice touch.Would be great if it had random chance to make screamers go back from where they come, scaring them, if put outside of the base

Or we could show them some naked pictures of me. That will scare them for sure.

 

[Kattla]

Ugly and OP. was meant for large king kong fence top decortions but everyone used them instead of the proper ones we intended them to use.

The replacement wasn't less OP, so i suppose that kinda narrows down the reason to how they looked.

 

[cork]

Explosives defeat LCB protection. It has been an issue on my pve server.

Dang. Is that an a18 bug or has it been a thing for a while? I've never had this come up on servers with 100% protection before.

 

[sinkler]

@Madmole So I've been playing A18 Experimental for awhile now. Love it by the way, zero complaints.
But I have noticed some things that could be looked into. So something is off with the Hunting Rifle, it doesn't always aim when you want it to, something about it feels really clunky.

(for example, when you're running around with the gun in your hands and see a zed, I try and quickly aim at it, but the gun doesn't seem to aim half the time and I have to re-aim.)

(all of this is with the iron sights too, I haven't tried with a scope.)

And the other thing, I really wish it didn't auto-aim after each reload. A lot of times I get stuck aiming when I would like to be moving after each shot.

Also, I really wish crouch didn't break your aim. I like to aim before going into sneak mode, but it breaks aim, so I have to re-aim after crouching.

There's also a bug to where if you click really fast with the Hunting Rifle it will keep firing without reloading.

You're the best Joel!

i can confirm all of the above are happening with the primitive and normal bows as well

(at least on b149, haven't tried the new patch yet),

might be an aim issue regardless of weapon used.

 

[Phantasm98532]

I want to do away with alphas. Instead you will get "the book update", "The vehicle update", "The bandit update", etc. We will see though. There are some big things we want to do that will take 6 months or more, so I'd hate to not give any updates when we could do smaller content updates in the mean time, THEN get you the bigger stuff. Bandits are probably 9 months out I'd guess, but I could get you guys new books in 3-6 weeks, and vehicle mods 2 months after that. Legendaries could go in too.

Oh god I can't wait for legendary loot, I really feel like it will give substantial incentive to keep venturing out and looting once you reach late game.

Speaking of Legendary loot, will there be Zany or special effects on said items you think? Or just a higher stat ceiling when finding one?

 

[Odetta]

I'm not a fan of ADS toggle at all. It would be nice if it had an option to enable / disable.

Yes, I guess you noticed the "reload to automatic zoom aim" thing too. It's wack son.

 

[beerfly]

Or we could show them some naked pictures of me. That will scare them for sure.

You can`t cause another great migration of the Species, I wouldn`t worry : ))

*double clink on 7dtd icon*

 

[Thecolours]

I want to do away with alphas. Instead you will get "the book update", "The vehicle update", "The bandit update", etc. We will see though. There are some big things we want to do that will take 6 months or more, so I'd hate to not give any updates when we could do smaller content updates in the mean time, THEN get you the bigger stuff. Bandits are probably 9 months out I'd guess, but I could get you guys new books in 3-6 weeks, and vehicle mods 2 months after that. Legendaries could go in too.

Smaller updated would be nice. It would incentivize players to start a new game and keep 7DTD on steam top 20 more consistently.

 

[Odetta]

Ugly and OP. was meant for large king kong fence top decortions but everyone used them instead of the proper ones we intended them to use.

You could re-purpose the model for a fire trap. Like a giant griddle. Have zombies that walk over it catch fire. Best part is you wouldn't even need to add a flame particle to the trap. Just think of it as stepping on a hot pan that's been on the stove. Low cost, and easy to do. Have them be really expensive to make to balance. You could also make the spike pointing up and make it 2 blocks tall so zombies wouldn't try to walk over it but brush up against the sides, lighting them on fire. Or they would attack it directly if in their path, still lighting them on fire.

Spoiler

Edit: You could use the Steel Spike model, it already looks like a grill.

Spoiler

Large Version: https://ibb.co/JtbtWHZ

 

[Odetta]

Should look like this.

So awesome.

 

[cork]

I want to do away with alphas. Instead you will get "the book update", "The vehicle update", "The bandit update", etc. We will see though. There are some big things we want to do that will take 6 months or more, so I'd hate to not give any updates when we could do smaller content updates in the mean time, THEN get you the bigger stuff. Bandits are probably 9 months out I'd guess, but I could get you guys new books in 3-6 weeks, and vehicle mods 2 months after that. Legendaries could go in too.

I like the smaller, more frequent updates. Whenever there is an official update, it gives a reason to start fresh or to bring the server gang back together after people drift off to other games over time. For me, 3-6 months is probably a sweet spot for release cycle.