PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[madmole]

I'll be honest with you. In alpha 16.4 we could play 60min days no problem. Since a17 it just feels too rushed. I played 120 minutes and it was a little over the sweetspot. It's feeling like if you add up to the quests and complexity of the game npc interactions, 60 minutes is just not doable anymore.
The current 60 minute time reminds me of the clunky perk system in a17. You suffer and yet you feel like you are never good enough; in this case you feel like you are never "capable of staying put because of your achievements", which is not fun if you worked for it for tens or hundreds of hours.

Edit: Meaning, you may be late game. But being able to pick your fights sounds like a benefit, or at least having breathing room to prepare very comfortably because of the extra time . It's not like you won't have threats anymore. You are always in constant threat in this game.

I get plenty done on 60 minute days. I like the pressure. Some times though you just have to commit to what you want to get done and skip a few things and improvise. Like I wanted to have more time to make my base, but its literally a box with not even one row of spikes. I got an m60 and quite a few rounds so I'm just going to wing it with some wood bars on a couple sides of my box base. I did get it upgraded to brick, but its only day 14, so I'm not worried.

 

[MechanicalLens]

He just needs an avatar.

If someone could inform me of the process of enabling one's avatar, that would be appreciated. If it requires the linking of a Steam account, then that will be tricky; I created an account on these forums years ago but have since lost the password and the email affiliated with it, and when I tried to link my Steam account, that old, dead account was the only result it could find. :/

 

[FileMachete]

I want to test the waters with vehicle break downs in the future and see how people react to being stranded in the wasteland at night, and give some weight to the grease monkey perk. Imagine like the lock picking minigame but with repair. If people like it, we could consider weapons jamming, and the same minigame to fix it. It could happen frequently on brown and rare on pink.

Nice! Looking forward to it

 

[madmole]

Man.. that's a good fight..is that announced or theoretical?
I really like Johnny Walker.. he is hilarious.. but he may be a bit new still.. needs higher level experience.

I WANT walker to win -- hell im saying Walker is going to win!!

That fight is coming up soon Two weeks if I'm not mistaken on the Diaz Masvidal card.

He's going to knock Anderson out in the first round. His chin isn't that great and he's kind of slow. His striking isn't so good. His whole game is to take you down and ground and pound you, but walker is so tall, strong and fast, and coming to kill you with a flying something, that I don't see it happening. Anderson starts slow and Walker is nuts. I say its over in the first minute.

 

[madmole]

You build it brother we will come
That one is for you Snow!

Trying out random BM now. Starting a fresh game to see what shakes. Still playing vanilla, but testing mods in my spare time. I can honestly say I haven't been this into vanilla for so long in a long time. The team deserves a round on me. Or a protein shake. Whichever will suit you good sir!

I'd do the protein shake but most the guys would take the beer lol. Glad you are liking it.

 

[madmole]

I was thinking lead should be put into more items for crafting. Potassium nitrate and coal are used in a lot of items. Is lead used in anything else besides bullets? Lead seems to be the most prominent ore in the game besides iron.

Radiation shielding perhaps, its not used in much since they discovered its so toxic. I'd rather just reduce the ore veins and see more coal and nitrate tbh.

 

[madmole]

With the Attribute system designed around play styles. Will we see specialized traps for each play style to help with the BM instead of all of them in Intelligence?
I would like to see improved traps specifically designed around each attribute.

An example would be for the Perception build having advanced wire obstacles "triple standard concertina" to slow zombies down for those head shots.

Perhaps.

 

[madmole]

That makes sense if you're making Q5 the new end game item and if you're really lucky you find a Q6. I was hoping though, you'd keep Q6 craftable and add a Q7 for legendary items. Re-purposing Q6 as legendary is a little underwhelming, unless you're planning on beefing them up at a later date.

Higher stats, an extra mod slot and an extra effect is underwhelming?

 

[madmole]

It's well deserved. It must be quite satisfying, especially after some hiccups with A17, that A18 is going along so well. This game is getting awfully addictive!

Yeah a couple months ago I just had this ♥♥♥♥ eating grin playing it and thinking to myself, wow, I'm literally having a blast with this. It was hard to wait to release it to have that soft landing, because I wanted redemption from 17 so bad, but its good it finally is here and has been so well recieved. Hard work pays off. We're in a good spot now and I think most players will like our update rate and how we finish the game from here forward.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

To your last point I have been here for a long while as a lot of others have as well, and we watched the goalposts get moved on end game content several times. By the teams own admission they are targeting 20 hour players so my assessment is not that far off for whats expected for a casual player. They are going to want new players to experience bandits so those surely wont be held off past a certain point from appearing in game. I can only comment on what is in game currently. Not what we think it will look like in the future because we had that vision once and look how drastically things have changed from A13 to now.
Long term goals but in game has been so significantly shortened it is very hard to envision a world where this game is designed to last past day 100. As a matter of fact its been said numerous times that its not entirely designed for that, just that extended play is an option.

true, I can see that. I try and see things as they might be but you are right if judging the game from what is in it now. I like to give TFP the benifit of the doubt you know, but I do see where you are coming from and I do agree. I've been here a while as well, only active for the past couple months though and yes I have seen the goal post moved further and further back as well, no doubt about that.

 

[madmole]

Bandits taking all your ♥♥♥♥, A19 confirmed!!!!

Can you imagine?

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

If someone could inform me of the process of enabling one's avatar, that would be appreciated. If it requires the linking of a Steam account, then that will be tricky; I created an account on these forums years ago but have since lost the password and the email affiliated with it, and when I tried to link my Steam account, that old, dead account was the only result it could find. :/

YES please get an avatar you have no idea how many times i have confused the two of you lol.

 

[JaxTeller718]

true, I can see that. I try and see things as they might be but you are right if judging the game from what is in it now. I like to give TFP the benifit of the doubt you know, but I do see where you are coming from and I do agree. I've been here a while as well, only active for the past couple months though and yes I have seen the goal post moved further and further back as well, no doubt about that.

And before MM reads all that stuff from before and gets mad at me, again I am enjoying 18. Im merely commenting and pointing out the idea of end game. Im sure we all have different ideas of what that is. I have been hearing bandit talk for 3 years now, seen them in game at one poit for a brief time before they were commented out. You can sort of get them working if you really wanted to but i know that isnt their goal for what they want them to be.

Im one of those guys who will never forget the times i had in 12, 13, 15 and 16. And i know MM hates looking back at that and reminiscing, but it really was enjoyable for a lot of us. I can only imagine what a mix of Alpha 18 and Alpha 15 would have looked like. Which is why I mentioned goal posts. We though for sure we were headed to end game/gold when 16 was released. Bandits were so close. It just needed polish. Then 17 changed it all, and 18 did so again as well. For the better.

But yeah, I WANT to be excited for end game, but I also realize we have been this close before.

 

[Laz Man]

Yeah I was talking to Gazz saying hey we need some kind of block of wood that burns for 10 or 20 minutes exactly so I don't have to click 5000 pieces of wood in the forge and he's like oh you mean like a log? I crafted one and love them. I didn't even think about it, but now I keep a stack of 10 logs in my workstations for easy math wood, plus it feels right throwing a log in the fire.

Oo thanks for the tip!!!!!

 

[Damocles]

Yeah we're going to look at that.

Thanks. All I want is to world to look pretty

 

[Birkenhoff]

true, I can see that. I try and see things as they might be but you are right if judging the game from what is in it now. I like to give TFP the benifit of the doubt you know, but I do see where you are coming from and I do agree. I've been here a while as well, only active for the past couple months though and yes I have seen the goal post moved further and further back as well, no doubt about that.

What goal posts? It's always: When it's done. People were already mad about getting Bandits into the game back in A14.

 

[Laz Man]

I want to test the waters with vehicle break downs in the future and see how people react to being stranded in the wasteland at night, and give some weight to the grease monkey perk. Imagine like the lock picking minigame but with repair. If people like it, we could consider weapons jamming, and the same minigame to fix it. It could happen frequently on brown and rare on pink.

If it takes 20 seconds like the lock picking it will be annoying as hell. What might make it feel good is make it last only 5 seconds while playing a animation of the player unjamming the gun somehow.

I've seen other games where refiring the gun clears the jam so the net outcome is just a delay in firing the gun which is generally not overly punishing.

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

What goal posts? It's always: When it's done. People were already mad about getting Bandits into the game back in A14.

If you cannot see the goal post nothing i say will get you to see it. I'm not hating if thats your impression. I love this game and have always supported it since i started playing which is around A8, through word of mouth, my wallet, time spent testing and reporting bugs all the way to helping as many people within the community as possible when they have issues.

 

[Birkenhoff]

I want to test the waters with vehicle break downs in the future and see how people react to being stranded in the wasteland at night, and give some weight to the grease monkey perk. Imagine like the lock picking minigame but with repair. If people like it, we could consider weapons jamming, and the same minigame to fix it. It could happen frequently on brown and rare on pink.

No big deal since we all have at least rare guns on day 20.

 

[Aldranon]

I enjoy the early survival game the most and not being much of a builder/miner I do get bored later on when I have stacks of supplies, it's not really about the game getting harder.
I like harsher conditions and I've tweaked the gameplay so radiated show up in the first week. It feels more survival based if there are things that make u feel 'oh sh** I need to turn back now!' Like a radiated biker on day 3 XD

25% loot drop helps but its only delays being stocked up again, not sure ppl will enjoy being underpowered and having to scrounge for bits of food even on day 100 but that would be an awesome game for me and keep me playing long term to see how long I could survive.

Since later stages of the game currently focus on "Industrializing" your ammo production and fort defense, I can see why you are not interested in that.

So, back to game options, maybe "Tower Defense" should be only one of several options a player has at game start. Maybe even if there is a Game Stage at all should be an option.

For you, removal of those setting but having a high difficultly starting setting would be your perfect game.

A "True Survival" setting is what you seem to be wanting. (and Roland).