PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[bobross]

Then noone will be able to craft iron tools even. We wanted to allow players to at least get out of the stone age with tools, that is why iron tools are made from basic components.

There's two problems with that (and I see the problem with scrapping to parts without requiring them - parts factory). One, you have a severe inconsistency. On the one hand, you have ranged weapons (Rifles, Bows/Crossbows, Pistols, Machineguns) where Tier 2 and Tier 3 both provide the same parts and are both used to create the ranks. On the other you have melee weapons, tools, and armor - where the parts are ONLY used for Tier 3 items, and both parts and items are rare. (I'm leaving aside Intellect, as I suspect there's more to come for them, but they don't fit into the same structure either. That inconsistency is going to confuse new players at a minimum; it's likely to make them think there's something after Steel tools.

The other problem is relative scarcity. Military Armor parts seem to be dropping a bit better now than in the past (could just be RNG), but we've got enough handgun, bow, and machinegun parts to craft all the Tier 4+ we want, and we've found precisely two Steel Pickaxes, with no Steel Fireaxes or Shovels. We may have found a steel tool part here or there, but by the time we did we couldn't craft with them because the three we did have didn't have enough.

I respectfully submit that you need to adjust one or the other to match. Either make steel tool parts (and melee/armor parts) as frequent as Tier 2 ranged weapons are, or decide you want the Tier 3 firearms to be rare as hell as well, and either remove parts from the Tier 2s, or separate them back out into individual item parts. It's just a bit absurd that I can be walking around with a crafted iron sledgehammer on Day 1 with a touch of luck, but my chances of crafting a Steel sledge before Day 21 are nonexistent. We're now 46 hours in (120-minute days) with 6 players and nobody's even seen a machete part, much less a machete. That's fine, but to be running around with (crafted) marksman rifles, M60s, SMGs, and Pump Shotguns at the same time seems off.

 

[Kalex]

Madmole, I have gone into the old underground bunkers. both types. 2 of the small one, and 3 of the one with the well. none had sleepers. whats up with that?

Not all POIs hqave sleepers.

 

[Kalex]

A screenshot would help, "those bunkers" could be 1 of the 572 bunkers in the game.

POI is a small wood house with a stone well out back and the entrance to the bunker is at the bottom of the well.

 

[madmole]

There's two problems with that (and I see the problem with scrapping to parts without requiring them - parts factory). One, you have a severe inconsistency. On the one hand, you have ranged weapons (Rifles, Bows/Crossbows, Pistols, Machineguns) where Tier 2 and Tier 3 both provide the same parts and are both used to create the ranks. On the other you have melee weapons, tools, and armor - where the parts are ONLY used for Tier 3 items, and both parts and items are rare. (I'm leaving aside Intellect, as I suspect there's more to come for them, but they don't fit into the same structure either. That inconsistency is going to confuse new players at a minimum; it's likely to make them think there's something after Steel tools.
The other problem is relative scarcity. Military Armor parts seem to be dropping a bit better now than in the past (could just be RNG), but we've got enough handgun, bow, and machinegun parts to craft all the Tier 4+ we want, and we've found precisely two Steel Pickaxes, with no Steel Fireaxes or Shovels. We may have found a steel tool part here or there, but by the time we did we couldn't craft with them because the three we did have didn't have enough.

I respectfully submit that you need to adjust one or the other to match. Either make steel tool parts (and melee/armor parts) as frequent as Tier 2 ranged weapons are, or decide you want the Tier 3 firearms to be rare as hell as well, and either remove parts from the Tier 2s, or separate them back out into individual item parts. It's just a bit absurd that I can be walking around with a crafted iron sledgehammer on Day 1 with a touch of luck, but my chances of crafting a Steel sledge before Day 21 are nonexistent. We're now 46 hours in (120-minute days) with 6 players and nobody's even seen a machete part, much less a machete. That's fine, but to be running around with (crafted) marksman rifles, M60s, SMGs, and Pump Shotguns at the same time seems off.

I think the design is fine, balance could be off yet on some drops. Having steel by day 21? What will you do from day 21 to day 100? IMO you shouldn't even sniff t3 until level 40+ and around level 60 start getting a decent amount of it but it should be a mix of brown to green mostly, once level 80 maybe have a few purples and blues and one straggler green. I'm level 35 with no steel armor and one brown steel shovel. Feels fine to me.

 

[madmole]

POI is a small wood house with a stone well out back and the entrance to the bunker is at the bottom of the well.

Its on the list to be improved.

 

[Laz Man]

I think the design is fine, balance could be off yet on some drops. Having steel by day 21? What will you do from day 21 to day 100? IMO you shouldn't even sniff t3 until level 40+ and around level 60 start getting a decent amount of it but it should be a mix of brown to green mostly, once level 80 maybe have a few purples and blues and one straggler green. I'm level 35 with no steel armor and one brown steel shovel. Feels fine to me.

A couple more balancing passes and I think you guys will be in that sweet spot. Must be a hell of a job trying to objectively review all this feedback when players have so many different settings to choose from. Thank you MM for your balancing efforts!

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Where is your avatar?

I was going through the settings trying to figure out something and I guess I deleted it by accident. Fixed.

 

[JaxTeller718]

The poi everyone should look for near the beginning of the game is Carl’s Corn.....the one with Grace the pig. I got 3000 cement(mother lode 3) nearly a thousand cobble, roughly 6 or 7 broken workstations to wrench, several hundred meat, nitrate from farm plots, super corn, rotten meat, bones & fat from a couple dozen dead bodies on top of usual loot. Because of that poi, I had my reinforced concrete base up and functional by Day 7 plus plenty of food for a couple weeks.

This was probably balanced for someone who doesnt leave their base or even their area but wanted everything they needed to make it to end game. This poi is almost comically OP and if you get a quest in it it is indeed end game city.

Maybe that was what it was intended as but seems silly to have all this balance in other areas and then this poi just laughs in the face of all of it.

 

[meganoth]

In my current playthrough, of which i'm only like 19 days in on 90 minute per day, I crafted a tier 5 iron pickaxe, axe, shovel, and sledgehammer. The name escapes me but I rushed the perk that allows you to craft better tools. I only just now found a tier 3 steel pickaxe that replaced my crafted one, but the others are still in use.
Same with my iron armor, I had to craft a tier 3 iron helmet, gloves, legs, and boots all because my previous looted ones (that I had for the majority of this session) were lower tier and my gloves were actually only leather. As luck would have it though, as soon as I crafted the armor, the very next POI I looted had tier 4 iron legs lmao.

I have yet to find a M60 at all, and I currently have 2 points into automatic weapons, so might need to craft one as well.

I should mention though that a decent chunk of my time has been focused on building, i'm in no way saying that its currently in a good spot.

Same here. As agility player (in a MP game and SP game, both started at release of A18) I recently crafted all my armor at quality 5. I crafted one or two wooden bows and pistols, I think the pistol was an upgrade, not sure about the bow. Didn't spec much in knife yet and haven't found enough machete parts to be able to craft a good one.

I'm just gonna spitball here, and I apologize if this has already been discussed. Maybe crafted items should come with one more mod slot? I don't know if that would be a big deal or not, but I think crafted items should have just a small edge over looted things. That way you're rewared for speccing into them, but the benefit is small enough that looted items are still worthwhile. Of course legendary items would be better than crafted ones when they come.

You are already rewarded for speccing into them, the craft perks are also the perks that makes you better at using them.

 

[Moldy Bread]

So where does one get Steel Tool Schematics?

 

[Aldranon]

This was probably balanced for someone who doesnt leave their base or even their area but wanted everything they needed to make it to end game. This poi is almost comically OP and if you get a quest in it it is indeed end game city.
Maybe that was what it was intended as but seems silly to have all this balance in other areas and then this poi just laughs in the face of all of it.

Of course TFP don't want to go to the other extreme and make every POI "Game Stage Clones". No point in adventuring then.

Yes, Graces is one of several "OMG! Found it!" POI's that are great to find.

Once weapon(and armor?) degradation is put in, POI's like that will not border on game breaking.

 

[Aldranon]

But the one thing that should be hard coded above player level 40 is: The Auger!

Cant find it and no trader will sell it until you break level 40.

It is the only late game item that almost guarantees you will do OK during late game.

T3 vs T6 M60? Not really, if the T3 guy can make 5 times the ammo as the T6 guy, he is in a stronger position!

 

[Guppys Fur]

Mr. Mole.

Concerning this your last measures helped alot. But you may be right and it needs further adjustments.

As of Level 23 i got 3 Armor Parts of Steel (Q2,4 and 5) and also found several Guns Q4 and 5.

Q6 dropped so far once (Pistol)

I do medium amount of Loottours, i also spend a lot time building my Base and Hordebase. So a Player with Lootfocus might accomplish better Items even faster.

I would really appriciate if this Progression-curve (or how you call it) gets slowed down a bit further.

Let 'em fight for loot ^^

 

[Syrex]

That is awesome. I got outer worlds and it feels exactly like a Fallout game, and I'm sure I'll end up sinking loads of time into it, but tbh I play a bit, start thinking about my base needing this or that, and next thing you know I'm back into 7 days lol.

I did the exact same thing! Though I have to admit, that game feels too linear and not enough open world to me (maybe cuz i havent gotten off edgewater yet), though i do like how they did the skills/perk system

 

[JaxTeller718]

Of course TFP don't want to go to the other extreme and make every POI "Game Stage Clones". No point in adventuring then.
Yes, Graces is one of several "OMG! Found it!" POI's that are great to find.

Once weapon(and armor?) degradation is put in, POI's like that will not border on game breaking.

What exactly does weapon degradation have to do with concrete, cobble, flesh, bones, meat etc. Are we having the same conversation? You immediately went into defense mode when no one is asking to gamestage it all to hell, or remove treasure chests and working poi boxes.

But ok I will wait until degradation for armor goes in before i comment any further on.... food and resource gathering from a farm poi.

 

[Birkenhoff]

That is what I've heard, but in his video (I skimmed a lot) they seemed to hold up a long long time.

Nerv confirmed.

 

[GingerBeard]

You are already rewarded for speccing into them, the craft perks are also the perks that makes you better at using them.

Oh I agree that they're still useful, the other effects they give are really nice to have. It's more so to address those that feel crafting is undervalued now, which too an extent I can understand. Yes you can only get a tier 6 by looting, so why would you bother trying to spec into a perk to build better stuff? The problem is I could go 50hrs into a game before I see one, and it might not even be something I use. It's ultimately down to rng and time, which is why I feel its mostly fine as is. However i'm not against giving an ever so slight buff to crafted items, or just further improving the loot drops like Madmole has suggested I believe.

While on the topic of those perks, the Machine Gunner's stamina bonus seems out of place does it not? Not saying it's a bad effect, just that I don't see how it makes sense to pair it with automatics. I'm not really running around when using one since they have pretty effective killing power. I can usually just stand in place/walk and not use any stamina while mowing down the zeds. Just me?

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

They didn't stand a chance. Do the electric fences degrade? Seemed to last forever? I haven't tried one yet but you made the int build look fun.

Yes it was a blast! I'm loving the multilayer defense I've been able to setup. This Trap config helps me slow down the horde enough for me to actively engage them. Feels like a good balance of active defense and trap utilization.
Not sure if the electric posts degrade but I did take the extra precation to shield them with sheet metal to prevent collateral zombie damage. Gas consumption on generators looks like they need some balancing though. At the end of the video I think I checked how much gas was left and it hardly had dropped any.

I agree his video made int build look really fun. I'm glad he posted it because it has encouraged me to actually start using traps. Thank you again Laz Man . I know its like the 3rd time i said thanks lol...

 

[Jugginator]

While on the topic of those perks, the Machine Gunner's stamina bonus seems out of place does it not? Not saying it's a bad effect, just that I don't see how it makes sense to pair it with automatics. I'm not really running around when using one since they have pretty effective killing power. I can usually just stand in place/walk and not use any stamina while mowing down the zeds. Just me?

I think it's for harder difficulties on higher gamestages, plus to help with armor usage if you haven't invested into heavy armor perk. I find it rather useful for meleeing to start then swapping to an MG to regain stamina and finish them off, saves ammo in the end. Gives a "hold the line, retreat, hold the line" tactic boost to regain stamina used while running to a new position too.

I also feel gun crafting CAN be iffy, but it's useful for: crafting when RNG hates you, crafting for your friends (if you have friends), or crafting to sell to traders (really useful).

 

[Laz Man]

Nerv confirmed.

Hopefully he will be gentle....dont even think about it snow...