PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

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    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
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Wow you are lucky. I predict 5-10 this horde :)
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I guess we were! We did have Two show up. Luckily we were able to see them coming and get them activated before they got up to the base. Was actually apprehensive about the horde and when the first one showed my heart was pounding a little. It was awesome. We have a tier 5 quest to do next so I am sure 77 will be super “explosive”!

Also, after the update the .44 magnum only reloads to 5 rounds FYI.

 
Ive done a few fort setups across the updates and found taking points into brawler in the first few levels really to set me back too much personally. I push 2 into fort and 2 into regen for the starter quest points cause lets be real, when you hide the first few nights, that free regen is baller. Brawler is rough with zombie rage, you dont have the range of something like sledge/spear/bow or even club to give you that extra second to react, and you cant take hits like you need to to apply the fast attack speed that makes brawler great.
Then 2 points into pain tolerance, and 2 points into heavy armor off exp from doing some initial trader quests and figure out the resources for scrap armor as I go (had issues with that in my current game till I found a bear :D ). Only after getting the 3 defensive perks at level 2 do I think brawler starts to shine. Take very little damage, basically never get stunned, regen what little damage you do take, and start knocking off those heavy armor penalties before you can find the armor mods, which you can add 2 of to the level 3 armor you can make when you do find them. Then you can just go in and unleash without worrying so much and use that fast attack speed to decapitate everything

This is the first run I haven't died in the first few days and its def because I avoided knuckles for the first 2 hours
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Fits my (small) gaming experience with fists pretty well. Once you can take some blows and not be in big trouble because of it it's probably easier to line em up with some combinations, but very early game I felt there was no point tap-retreating with knuckles if I can do it with a sledge that packs more punch and adds extra knockdown frequency for an easy power-attack finish. I'll definitely be playing a pure fort build in the upcoming weeks to see how it fares later on.

 
But isn't everyone doing this? Find an acceptable t2 weapon and you'll often use it instead of your attribute weapon. Until you have a few points into your attributes and weapon perks.
On the whole agi may really be weak compared to other trees because stealth gameplay wastes A LOT OF TIME. But that isn't because of the primitive bow who like all the other tier1 weapons gets used for the first 2 days on average (very rough estimate). And that only because many players do many buried treasure quests on their first (two) day(s).

That you might have bad luck and not find any tier2 of your attribute for some time can happen in all other attributes too. If there is an imbalance in finding wooden bows to other tier2 weapons than that must be addressed as a bug, not as a balance problem. A strength player won't use the blunderbuss much when he finds an ak, until he has specced some into strength. I don't see a difference to Agi.

The Agi player also has pistols as alternative tier2 ranged weapon, did you take that into account ? I'm just not sure whether TFP kept that as an advantage or adjusted drop rate of tier2 agi weapons because there are two of them.

Generally it is VERY difficult comparing the attributes. They are made to be very diverse and allowing very different playstyles and that is a good thing in my book. But it also means that players prefering specific play styles (and who doesn't) will feel the weapons and perks of some attributes giving him more power than others.

And naturally the AK player will mow through POI's much faster than an agility player, but that saved time has to be put into mining additional ammo used while mowing. This means also that the agi player isn't as dependant on resource gathering/mining perks as others. Can the fortitude player survive without spending lots of points into strength/mother lode?

Caveat: I find the agility/stealth player as powerful as he was in A17, I just don't have tried other attributes in A18 yet, they might really be more powerful. I just think your arguments were all over the place, mixing in possible bugs and possibly bad luck does not really show whether agi on the whole is deficient
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Weapons drop equally but since there are loads of agility weapons they are rarer. There are two automatic weapons, 4 ranged agility weapons, so statistically you will have a harder time getting exactly what you want.

IMO the stealth guy may take longer to clear a POI, but he doesn't take damage, he can do a ton of damage with stealth shots using the cheapest ammo in the game so it balances out fine. My agility character always had loads of ammo for horde nights, where my fortitude builds seem to spend a ton of time mining for ammo. At night I would roam around and head shot everyone for xp with one shot usually from my maxed out pistol. Even if you wake someone up just empty a mag into them and its all good. 9mm ammo grows on trees and is SO cheap to craft. Exploding arrows are nice for hordes.

Some builds just take longer to get off the ground is all, but the payoff is worth it IMO.

 
Not really. Why use the honey and then wait a few minutes for it to tick down when i can suicide, clear my buff and then use my level 5 modded out shottie in a house and gain it back in seconds while also continuing to level?
All while gaining back full health and water. Its almost a gimme at that point.
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Good luck when you get to level 80+ and it takes you 2-3 days to level up then.

 
I agree 100 percent with this philosophy.
The only thing i dont see eye to eye with is the death penalty. Its way too lenient. When i get an infection now I never look for a cure, i just die. Go get my stuff (which is usually right where my bed is since i seek death out) and then take the xp hit. Its literally 4 zombies to kill then you are back in blue. No one can argue that there is any real penalty. It slows you down for maybe 4 minutes if even that.

Certainly do not want the old way back either, i hated the perk hit for sure, and stamina was no fun to wait on either, but the current death penalty is a minor inconvenience and I doubt anyone is in stage 3 of infection or food poisoning and waiting it out for a cure. Its a waste of time. Suicide, respawn, kill a few zeds and you're as good as new.
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Beyond level 20 loss of xp is a fairly significant hit to progression. I doubt you suicide at level 60. I mean infection doesn't even cause sides until it turns orange. It happens frequently early game as well if you play nightmare you get hit a lot.

I'm all for a slider for death penalty or something, When we first put it in it was like 50% or something brutal.

 
The quicker updates are keeping the people talking and anticipating each next one. I love the new more frequent updating and I agree it has to be a lot easier on you guys and your testers not having to cram a years worth of stuff in in a few experimentals. Its kept me invested in this Alpha to this day. Just started a new world on b5 having skipped b4 and looking forward to a new adventure.
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Yeah keeping the community engaged is key to staying relevant. We're not going to rush to get patches out, but rather when stuff gets tested in trunk and we're ready we'll move it to an experimental build just like how we're patching the live build now. We're developing risky content in a research branch so trunk is always in good shape. I've already got 4 book sets designed and I'm super excited to get the brawler books, you guys will be pleased :)

 
Yeah keeping the community engaged is key to staying relevant. We're not going to rush to get patches out, but rather when stuff gets tested in trunk and we're ready we'll move it to an experimental build just like how we're patching the live build now. We're developing risky content in a research branch so trunk is always in good shape. I've already got 4 book sets designed and I'm super excited to get the brawler books, you guys will be pleased :)
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The more books, the merrier! Thank you! :)

 
Not really. Why use the honey and then wait a few minutes for it to tick down when i can suicide, clear my buff and then use my level 5 modded out shottie in a house and gain it back in seconds while also continuing to level?
All while gaining back full health and water. Its almost a gimme at that point.
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So are cheese ramps on horde night, but do you use those? Have some self respect and face infection head on. On my recent night mare run speed game in the beginning all zombies were nightmare. The first 3 days were hell and I spent all my time looking for honey and it was a huge game changer in a positive way. Like it was hard and frustrating, but suddenly I couldn't do dig quests because 5 nightmare guys was too much. So I had to search for ruins houses and use my crappy junk turret and whatever, I couldn't even do entry level quests so my whole game has been very hard. After day 3 I put them on jog during the day, sprint and night and nightmare for the other two. I'm nearing day 35 and still don't feel fully recovered for whatever reasons.

Like I'm permanently behind the curve for some reason. I tried to smash a tier 4 skyscraper last night and couldn't even nerd pole up the side they broke my nerd pole and surrounded me, used my limited m60 ammo and crawled to my minibike and drove away with like 10 debuffs and 5% health, after several failed attempts. The nightmare run speed ferals are a huge game changer for me. My old fort build would just fist everything and out tank, but for whatever reason this game is cursed and my character is always struggling lol.

 
Yes you are, I mean, you broke my brother's house door, then you kidnapped me. Funny stuff!
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I played as a female character with a rather large.. uh.. personality? So that balances things, no? ^-^

 
So are cheese ramps on horde night, but do you use those? Have some self respect and face infection head on. On my recent night mare run speed game in the beginning all zombies were nightmare. The first 3 days were hell and I spent all my time looking for honey and it was a huge game changer in a positive way. Like it was hard and frustrating, but suddenly I couldn't do dig quests because 5 nightmare guys was too much. So I had to search for ruins houses and use my crappy junk turret and whatever, I couldn't even do entry level quests so my whole game has been very hard. After day 3 I put them on jog during the day, sprint and night and nightmare for the other two. I'm nearing day 35 and still don't feel fully recovered for whatever reasons.
Like I'm permanently behind the curve for some reason. I tried to smash a tier 4 skyscraper last night and couldn't even nerd pole up the side they broke my nerd pole and surrounded me, used my limited m60 ammo and crawled to my minibike and drove away with like 10 debuffs and 5% health, after several failed attempts. The nightmare run speed ferals are a huge game changer for me. My old fort build would just fist everything and out tank, but for whatever reason this game is cursed and my character is always struggling lol.
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Skyscraper? Weren't those removed in RWG?

 
Weapons drop equally but since there are loads of agility weapons they are rarer. There are two automatic weapons, 4 ranged agility weapons, so statistically you will have a harder time getting exactly what you want.
IMO the stealth guy may take longer to clear a POI, but he doesn't take damage, he can do a ton of damage with stealth shots using the cheapest ammo in the game so it balances out fine. My agility character always had loads of ammo for horde nights, where my fortitude builds seem to spend a ton of time mining for ammo. At night I would roam around and head shot everyone for xp with one shot usually from my maxed out pistol. Even if you wake someone up just empty a mag into them and its all good. 9mm ammo grows on trees and is SO cheap to craft. Exploding arrows are nice for hordes.

Some builds just take longer to get off the ground is all, but the payoff is worth it IMO.
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Speaking of drop rates...I would be very, very, happy to trade any of my firearms for a simple bicycle. IMO, fully assembled bicycles should appear in loot with greater frequency. Besides Pass'nGas crates and traders, I never see them. Really, they can be found almost anywhere IRL. So perhaps more chance to spawn in cars or those unmarked wooden crates or maybe best in workbenches since they are common in garages.

Just be nice to be thrown a bit of a bone for early game transportation. Nerf the storage if you have to.

Also, and maybe oddly, I found myself needing a sewing kit and noticed I couldn't craft one. Could that be possible? Maybe 1 scrap iron and 1 cloth fragment?

Game's playing great. I've ran through to level 40-50'ish on 5 different starts and just started my 6th. :) This Alpha really has a 'coming together' vibe to it.

 
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I agree 100 percent with this philosophy.
The only thing i dont see eye to eye with is the death penalty. Its way too lenient. When i get an infection now I never look for a cure, i just die. Go get my stuff (which is usually right where my bed is since i seek death out) and then take the xp hit. Its literally 4 zombies to kill then you are back in blue. No one can argue that there is any real penalty. It slows you down for maybe 4 minutes if even that.

Certainly do not want the old way back either, i hated the perk hit for sure, and stamina was no fun to wait on either, but the current death penalty is a minor inconvenience and I doubt anyone is in stage 3 of infection or food poisoning and waiting it out for a cure. Its a waste of time. Suicide, respawn, kill a few zeds and you're as good as new.
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I agree, death penalty is a mosquito bite (well, without malaria).

But to be honnest, there IS a real death penalty in the settings : "destroy all" (backpack+belt) when you die. But strangely, it's a parameter rarely used by players.

 
I agree, death penalty is a mosquito bite (well, without malaria). But to be honnest, there IS a real death penalty in the settings : "destroy all" (backpack+belt) when you die. But strangely, it's a parameter rarely used by players.
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i just think it could be good if they mixed the two.

you lose stats temporarily. but you lose XP and to get your stats back you need to get your XP back

also i would make it 25% lost XP insead of 10%

 
i just think it could be good if they mixed the two.you lose stats temporarily. but you lose XP and to get your stats back you need to get your XP back
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They'll never go with stats removal because something like that can lead to a death loop.

 
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