PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

  • A18 Stable is Out!

    Votes: 2 66.7%

  • <img alt=":)" data-src="" src="___base_url___/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" />

    Votes: 1 33.3%
  • Total voters
    3
Status
Not open for further replies.
Hi guys. Since the B5 update we have been having problems with crafting. Random items will not craft if you try to craft to the maximum number available depending on resources you are carrying. If you drop the number by 1 it will craft no worries. Different items for different players. This is happening across 2 different servers. One modded and one Vanilla. Has anybody else experienced this???
Click to expand...
Yes, known bug, it'll be fixed soon I guess ;)

 
I must have logged off slightly too quickly after beating my day 16 horde. When I loaded the game tonight I found another horde knocking at my door. Queue me frantically looking for and equipping all the weaponry I'd stored away previously. There were a lot more ferals in this fight too.

Much fun!

 
Even a bicycle is a huge game changer. Pay the price 5K or less, or buy the perk and craft one. We can't drop full vehicles in loot. I mean if we did, we'd have to make it so rare, that why bother?
Click to expand...
I like how it is now. Possible purchase at trader but at a high cost. Since the trader refreshes every 3 days, it forces the player to make some tough choices.

For example,

Do I spend the next 3 days making money to buy that one item?

Do I go mining/scavenging to prepare for my horde night?

The player needs to be put in more macro time management situations like these one which will add more depth into the game.

 
I like how it is now. Possible purchase at trader but at a high cost. Since the trader refreshes every 3 days, it forces the player to make some tough choices.
For example,

Do I spend the next 3 days making money to buy that one item?

Do I go mining/scavenging to prepare for my horde night?

The player needs to be put in more macro time management situations like these one which will add more depth into the game.
Click to expand...
Not only that, but I really thought long and hard about buying that cement mixer on day 3. Do I break the bank on an early-game cement mixer, or do I save my money for something else down the road? (I chose the former, but still... Tough choice.)

 
Not very many people liked it, felt like being kicked while you were down. It can be hard enough to get your gear back after death, but traveling there with gimped stamina, and weakened abilities makes it even worse, so we opted for loss of XP, which is can be nasty later game. I'd rather it be more than it is.
Click to expand...
So I was talking to one of the guys I know who prefers to just drop a bedroll where he is when something bad happens and offs himself and his way of thinking was "why be slowed down for an hour with a broken leg if I dont have a splint, when I can kill myself and make more experience in that time than im going to lose from dying being slowed down" And to be honest even though it feels cheesy, hes kinda right.

So what if you shifted the experience loss into a debuff rather than a flat amount? Lose 10% XP for x amount of minutes, with time possibly scaled on character level to some extent. Then there's some incentive even at kinda lower levels to have to think "Do I eat glass and lose xp gains while going these next few POI's or do I stop and go find the way to correct my issue and go back with full xp gains? What's going to cost me more in the long run?"

 
A18 isn't balanced around the traders. It's just 50 and 50 coming together to make 100. Each 50 (looting vs trading/questing) are as powerful as each other and are more than enough on their own..
Click to expand...
Yeah, umm.. that traders are offering fetch quests (for example) that not only give you the loot as you are 'looting' but also give you bonus rewards once you return with the satchel. So what you say is not actually true.

Oh, and that triggering the quest actually resets the POI, so you can run it as you arrive (without triggering the quest marker) Then once you finish it, you then trigger the quest whilst the layout is fresh in your mind and completely clear it in a third of the time.

So yes, traders/quests are a little broken atm, its a nice idea, but they need to be implemented a little better. (ie: perhaps make it so that they don't refresh the POI, and if you have already cleared it prior (due to a random house looting), then it remains cleared, loot and zeds. The most important part about this though is that the trader should never offer the same POI twice, if a satchel has been retrieved, then no more quests for that location)

(and this is not even taking into consideration the mind numbingly easy 'buried stash' quests and their bloated rewards)

 
Yeah, umm.. that traders are offering fetch quests (for example) that not only give you the loot as you are 'looting' but also give you bonus rewards once you return with the satchel. So what you say is not actually true.
Oh, and that triggering the quest actually resets the POI, so you can run it as you arrive (without triggering the quest marker) Then once you finish it, you then trigger the quest whilst the layout is fresh in your mind and completely clear it in a third of the time.

So yes, traders/quests are a little broken atm, its a nice idea, but they need to be implemented a little better. (ie: perhaps make it so that they don't refresh the POI, and if you have already cleared it prior (due to a random house looting), then it remains cleared, loot and zeds. The most important part about this though is that the trader should never offer the same POI twice, if a satchel has been retrieved, then no more quests for that location)

(and this is not even taking into consideration the mind numbingly easy 'buried stash' quests and their bloated rewards)
Click to expand...
Yeah, but what I was saying is that if you did a "no trader run", you wouldn't necessarily be on your knees. It would be tougher, yes, but for most alphas we didn't even have traders, and now we have more loot than ever before.

 
So I was talking to one of the guys I know who prefers to just drop a bedroll where he is when something bad happens and offs himself and his way of thinking was "why be slowed down for an hour with a broken leg if I dont have a splint, when I can kill myself and make more experience in that time than im going to lose from dying being slowed down" And to be honest even though it feels cheesy, hes kinda right.
So what if you shifted the experience loss into a debuff rather than a flat amount? Lose 10% XP for x amount of minutes, with time possibly scaled on character level to some extent. Then there's some incentive even at kinda lower levels to have to think "Do I eat glass and lose xp gains while going these next few POI's or do I stop and go find the way to correct my issue and go back with full xp gains? What's going to cost me more in the long run?"
Click to expand...
hehe, nice, I like it !

Why stop there though, perhaps force a varied length of time of 'extreme drunk vision' based on a level incremented scale, make reloading take double the time, and crafting at half quality, perhaps even traders can charge you double the price and buy things at half the usual cost, as they snicker at your misfortune.

Actually, I'd just love it if a proper 'dead is dead' mode was put in. Savegame instantly shredded, rudely and forcibly thrust back into the main menu etc...

 
MM I found a couple of typos in the "From the Shadows" perk. I also reported them in the bug reports section.

Typos in "From the Shadows" perk:

RANK 1 (Lurker) -----------&gt; double point at the end of the paragraph (after "faster")

View attachment 30341

RANK 5 (Shadow Ninja) ---&gt; Missing a "%" symbol after the first "50"

View attachment 30340

20191101214546_1.jpg

20191101214534_1.jpg

 
hehe, nice, I like it !
Why stop there though, perhaps force a varied length of time of 'extreme drunk vision' based on a level incremented scale, make reloading take double the time, and crafting at half quality, perhaps even traders can charge you double the price and buy things at half the usual cost, as they snicker at your misfortune.

Actually, I'd just love it if a proper 'dead is dead' mode was put in. Savegame instantly shredded, rudely and forcibly thrust back into the main menu etc...
Click to expand...
Stop there because the goal of them changing from dying screwing with your skills was that it made it harder to actually go out and do things and just kinda felt ♥♥♥♥ty to lose access to perks and such, so you dont want to lose too much playability when you die, which is why they shifted to just xp losses to begin :D

 
Stop there because the goal of them changing from dying screwing with your skills was that it made it harder to actually go out and do things and just kinda felt ♥♥♥♥ty to lose access to perks and such, so you dont want to lose too much playability when you die, which is why they shifted to just xp losses to begin :D
Click to expand...
The pimps just need to do alittle more balancing. If it's still an easy choice to eat glass, increase the XP penalty until it's enough to make the decision to eat glass difficult. 😂

 
Yeah, but what I was saying is that if you did a "no trader run", you wouldn't necessarily be on your knees. It would be tougher, yes, but for most alphas we didn't even have traders, and now we have more loot than ever before.
Click to expand...
I actually ran a fair few games as no crafting whatsoever, and they were VERY interesting playthroughs. I relied very strongly on the traders, and the struggle was real in the beginning, but once the loot started rolling in, I sadly once again became a loot overlord.

I skilled up in trader skills early and found that it just became obscene in the gear I was being offered (during both the quests and the rewards).

It felt really nice to literally worship every single bullet I found in the beginning though, and to only use the gun when I had no other option (it reminded me of the movie 'The Survivalist', look it up, damn fine movie if you haven't seen it).

Ammo became plentiful for day to day usage, but horde night I would cringe in a corner of a POI I could only reinforce by cutting out staircases or bolster with found frames etc. I would do this to conserve ammo, as its not difficult to peel through a thousand rounds if you are in a good position. Concrete buildings became something I would mark on my map for instances such as this, and I would update the map as they were rendered useless.

My current A18 game I really only craft ammunition, everything else is looted, I think now that stable has dropped, its time to restart and drop my loot level back down for a more punishing experience.

 
Is it intentional that screamer shows up if we use augar only to destory 15-18 blocks, I think that is too fast for screamer, making augar worthless, as the time we spend fighting screamer is more than time we spend using pickaxe [i can use steel in my case],
Click to expand...
Fixed today:

Fixed auger (ranged looping items) playing the start sound repeatedly, which makes lots of heat.

Fixed playing a sound on an entity made heat at wrong position if origin not 0.

 
The pimps just need to do a little more balancing. If it's still an easy choice to eat glass, increase the XP penalty until it's enough to make the decision to eat glass difficult. 😂
Click to expand...
Flat XP just scales poorly. You're most at risk of poor planning and not having food/water/meds at the early game, when its easiest to just jump off a building and come back at 100% and carry on with the smallest losses to xp that can be recovered after a few kills. Later game you're less likely needing to abuse death to clear bad things. Its more that random landmine you rode your bike over :crushed: or that demo guy you accidently set off

 
We're planning load screen tips, but the design isn't that knives are harder than clubs, I feel its very subjective.
Click to expand...
Maybe it's been mention but compressing the loading images (lossy format) to save a few MB's doesn't look too good as the text is harder to read in A18. Could you revisit this and look to improve legibility of text on load screen tips?

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top