PC Alpha 18 Dev Diary!!

[Piratenking]

It takes 1 to 2 real time hours to clear shamway or shotgun messiah factories with fists, unless you have a team of guys and have done it 10 times and have it memorized. I have never cleared a full town, I'd rather walk down the road and explore than systematically grind a town out hitting POIs that visually have no interest to me or look too risky for where I am at in the game.
Anyhow, town size is fine I played with towns half this size and felt like it was borderline too much when we made them as big as they are now so no way are we making them bigger. It won't kill you to sprint down the road for a few minutes to find another town I do it on day one with crap stamina and no gear if I spawn in a non forest biome because of the dangers.

That said I'm sure a modder or even us might expose some sliders at some point like "town size", frequency, etc.

oh you meant the huge bussines, yeah that take longer ofc, at the moment of writing the town i was refering to didnt have any of those. well it was early game so i just grabbed up the closest town and cleaned it but this one happened to be the small type (30 buildings), i started a new game today and this time i settled in a 60 buildings town, with a big military base and a hospital, feels much better, by the time i clear it the initally cleaned houses would have the loot respawned probably, so it can keep me busy until i move to a city.

Btw i have tested the stun baton and the junk turrets and i have to say they are great additions, i have had lots of fun with them, and the lockpicks are super usefull.

 

[Laz Man]

Shotgun shells fire 8 pellets.
The "problem" is that our shotguns are somewhat realistic in that they don't have a 45° spread like in many video games.

(still much higher spread than would actually be realistic but not comically wide)

Try a pumpgun with a sawn off barrel mod to see a more "normal computer game" shotgun.

Hi gaz, I think it's a simple xml edit? but could the stat display for shotguns show the dmg x 8 next to it? I know it's a minor thing but would be a nice touch.

OR

Perhaps add number of pellets a separate stat that is impacted by mods or special shotgun ammo types.

 

[Guppys Fur]

So sit idle and let a few jackasses hurt our business? Less money = less guys kicking ass = lower quality final product.

Mr. Mole.

Just admit, you just want the Gold-Plated Weights for your Platinum-plated Benchpress!!!!1111.

Jokes aside, contributed 50 thumb ups or more

With A18 the game deserves all the love it possibly can get.

 

[Piratenking]

Yes, because in loads of 18 hours I've yet to find a set.

would you consider adding a "landing spot highlight" for when you throw molotovs and granades as to make sure were they will land before latting the mouse button go?? or a "path line" to make sure there is no collision in the way when you throw them between blocks?

- - - Updated - - -

34,200 In-Game! All time smashing record for us!

wow congrats, thats more than some so called "AAA" games, keep up the good work!

 

[madmole]

The only thing I hate about this game right now from the bottom of my heart is that quests don't have a warning for the player leaving the quest area and just pop failed.
It's a common mistake for players to do Fetch and Clear Multiplayer quests and forget the Fetch part and screw your 3 hours clearing it without fair warning.

NEGATIVE REVIEW INCOMING :strawberry:

Yes there is. Your "stay within" starts flashing and changes colors.

 

[madmole]

Does armor not protect any damage against mines? Just did a quick test up to full steel armor and it's still one hit kill stepping on hub cap and tin mine.

It does, but I think hub cap mines do a ton of damage. I've survived one later game with some decent steel armor, perhaps I had some pain tolerance. I'm not sure of the magic formula yet to survive it.

 

[madmole]

@madmole
just a little question. when im picking the juniper tree (treejuniper4m) from creative menu and want to place it, no tree get placed...just an invisible block(i cant place another block on that same postion after placing. is this a bug with missing texture or did you guys just deleted this treeblock?

have a nice day

I have no idea, don't use CM except for experimenting.

 

[madmole]

If you create the possibility to include soil types in the painting menu ( brush ) the problem would be solved.

You can't paint soil only opaque atlas blocks. You still haven't really said the use case.

 

[Gazz]

Perhaps add number of pellets a separate stat that is impacted by mods or special shotgun ammo types.

Yes. Look at shotgun ammo types.

 

[madmole]

Interesting, I thought black beast had that in the bag.
Part of me was *hoping* Diaz was just about to turn it up in round 4, he tends to do better late in fight .....shame he robbed the opportunity.

I always liked Wonderboy but during the first Woodley fight we named him Crumpleboy, — so we dont call him Wonderboy anymore lol

I don’t even wanna talk about walker. I don’t even know WTF to say about that fight. .

That russian took down Black beast several times and landed a lot of shots. He had a lot of ring control and more volume I thought.

Masvidal has reinvented himself and trains with Yoel. He's a whole new fighter now I figured he would man handle Diaz who is the same fighter he was 10 years ago.

Walkers ego of "going the distance" was stupid. Like when Ngannu froze in the Stipe and Beast fight. He has the tools to destroy, but you have to pull the trigger.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Grats all! 36K barrier broken!

 

[madmole]

Is there any chance future RGW will include some sort of a highway on the map? Like a bigger road, maybe a single branch, and going through the entire map? Maybe it's separated by a barrier, etc.

Maybe after we get basic roads working properly.

 

[madmole]

The bulletproof glass doesn't look very pretty, is it a problem of graphic settings or did someone else encounter this weirdness ?

Mine looks fine, just don't rotate it or you get visible seams where they connect.

 

[TSBX]

Not yet but maybe it could be done in the future. At least it's an idea instead of complaining.

Or we could go back to A17 distant terrain which looked almost as good with much better performance and without neutering another aspect that wasn't hurting anything, but just became another victim of "The Artist's Curse".

At least it's a real solution instead of just keep toeing the assumed company line and slurping up whatever MM says.

 

[madmole]

Because some people like things that you now think are useless but were around for 17 alphas. Thats why its so important. Sometimes it appears like you just dont like something and no one else should either. World building was a heavy focus at one point in this game, I know that has shifted recently but that does not mean those who loved it just stop loving it. I know streamlining is a huge focus now but its important to remember some of the things that brought all of us to your table in the first place. We already lost maple and plains, couldnt the deco fans out there keep SOMETHING they like around?
You can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

Yeah unfortunately after 6 months of developing splat map terrain I get handed a problem, we can only let players add 3 blocks, which ones shall it be? So we went with adaptive, dirt and gravel. We could swap gravel for asphalt perhaps if people would rather make asphalt roads (I know I do).

 

[Piratenking]

And we improved these quite a bit, they howl before they attack now, before they were just stealth biters. Some people complained were dumbing it down lol. They are still super nasty.

just dont over dumb them, one of the several things that made ATLAS a failure was that they made animals behave as if they had alzheimer after people complained, i can understand his frustration but this is a survival afterall

 

[madmole]

For me it's just weird that MM took over a "design" role but all that he's done is cater to his particular gamestyle (Run and gun and loot) and any fan resistance to the deficit of other roles and playstyles has been met with.
A.) Handwaving away by MM which can largely be spelled out with two words, "Business" and "Streamlining". This is very similar to taking credit to a past administration's successes as your own. Business decisions and lack of streamlining were part of the formula that brought up this game for 17 alphas and made it successful. Going away from this trend will bring in more sales, probably, but the sales will be directed at the generic game players typically only seen on consoles and casual "Make more Chocolate" games and future gameplay WILL suffer for it. You're diluting your playerbase and alienating the people who have been here with you for 6 years.

B.) The sycophants that agree with ANYTHING that MM puts out or says. Guys, come on, we all love this game, and MM can be a positive infulence for sure, but when he says that the sky is green and you agree emphatically but everybody else looks out the window and says, "Yeah still blue here...", that's a "you" problem, not an "everybody else" problem.

Forming an army about a wrong opinion says more about the army than the contrast of ideas. Get your ♥♥♥♥ together, forums.

As usual you add nothing positive to the conversation.

FYI, I designed most of the game play on every alpha except for 17. The guy who did that quit before we shipped so I deleted his abomination of a perk system and jammed something in 6 weeks. You can't make a good perk system in 6 weeks but a lot of it stands today. For 18 I designed 100% of it on paper and then the team molded that paper design into what we have (not many changes really, just a few things were not easily done so we changed a few book perks etc).

That said alpha 18 appears to be the best build yet, so I would say you guys are in good hands now. I'm still playing and continuing to balance, because I care. New peak concurrent players, its selling very well and review scores are rising.

I'm trying to stay humble and stay in the trenches with you guys, identifying problems and finding solutions and balance.

 

[HungryZombie]

People are only mentioning it now because the masterpiece is indeed in the first 24 hours of play. But once you settle in and have your base is where the fun USED to begin for a lot of us.

Surely you understand that TFP's goal this Alpha was to polish those 24hrs of play. Without that further development is more difficult. From everything I've seen them post I think they will be adding more stuff to make the next 24 hours or whatever time you'd like of play better in future patches and updates.

This is a game in development, not a finished product. They got a great start to hook players in. Now they will season the game for longer playthoughs.

 

[madmole]

I agree that it is very weak, but early game I always used it as oh♥♥♥♥zombieinmyfacegoawaynow solution. Its quite fun when you unload both barrels and see him fly
- - - Updated - - -

From what I heard, he started this whole project to create a game HE would love to play. I think that is his vision and I can respect that. I also do it like this for my projects. But I do agree that it would be nice if he listened to feedback and actually thought about it in depth. I feel that he takes it on very surface level. Usually the player feels something is off, he tries to identify it and report it.

However most players are not good at identifiing the key underlying issues so they will tell you: T2 bow should be craftable without parts. But real issue here is that it is hard to get into stealth gameplay because of rarity of weapons to go with that playstyle. Here lies the question: Is understanding player needs in Designers job description? I would think so. I like that MM takes time to react for many posts here. That is good. But I would like it if he thought a bit about what the poster tries to actually say. Otherwise there is failure to get idea across, and it creates devide between him and some of his playerbase.

And yeah, I really dislike fanatic fanboys that downplay any valid criticism. Game can be pretty awesome but still has its problems, especially in early access

I might sound dismissive, but then my subconscious doesn't let go of what was said and it sits there and I might experience it myself or hear of it again, and eventually I come around to agreeing to some point or land on an improvement tweak where we land on some middle ground.

 

[HungryZombie]

Hi gaz, I think it's a simple xml edit? but could the stat display for shotguns show the dmg x 8 next to it? I know it's a minor thing but would be a nice touch.
OR

Perhaps add number of pellets a separate stat that is impacted by mods or special shotgun ammo types.

The damage shown on a shotgun is really Damagex8? one for each pellet? I never knew that.