PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

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I didn't mention everything because some of the points you mentioned are a matter of taste. But, really, you should try to adapt to all these new features that are anything but stupid.
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all i've mentioned was made better / more logicaly in A17

IRL there's no need for some special pot for rising the corn or anything. Yeah, if you use fertilizer, it'll do better, but it's not must-do. And it was so in A15 (ot 16), before Living the Land perk existed - fertilizer was an option.

And now it looks like additional "level reqiurement" for farming, and forces collecting rotten meat as like it's ammo or something else rare and valuable. Just grind.

At the beginning, maybe. Not when you've good tools. And upgrading blocks is too well payed, for what it worths.
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with good tools and perks mining was still great in leveling in A17.

they said there'll be other way in leveling beasides combat. In fact, you cant level on low levels any way but combat. So, fail.

Healing bandages is also a recipe. You can find it or buy it. Lots of quests rewards are bandages.
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recepie = RNG. And i have to choose bandages as rewards, leaving behind tools, armor, weapons and other useful stuff.

 
) Knives is a joke now. Got myself killed several times because spamming just make zeds rushing endlessly.Don't know about that. So many guns... I keep the knife to clean my nails.
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i think that if zombies are bleeding due to the knife's heavy attack i think they could be slower (just a bit)

but i love the knives now. there fun to uses with how fast they are but i think that there should be a way to slow them down due to the back that you have to get really close to hurt the zeds.

 
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I had considered that but players would probably cry bitter tears if bleeding also lowered movement speed. =P

 
I did a longish vid showing the 3D representation of the glancing system on each weapon and also when they hit. I didnt go too much into detail. It could be a great discussion for debate.

 
I had considered that but players would probably cry bitter tears if bleeding also lowered movement speed. =P
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im talking about the knife heavy attack. with the bleed effect that stacks.

cuz its too risky to uses knives sometimes. maybe it can only slow down zombies?

(note i didnt respond as quick cuz i was in ROTC)

 
Still think the Magnum should be replaced with something more like the Desert Eagle. This would allow for a larger default magazine and for more mods to be used on it. The Magnum often doesn't even feel like an upgrade over the pistol when you have perks and a decent selection of mods available.

 
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Both knife attacks add bleeding stacks.
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ohh i thought the heavy attack gives a special kind of effect. im dumb!

but i do love the knife's there fun to uses just wished that there a safer way to uses them!

 
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1 plant gives 1 seed. 5 plants for 1 seed is ridiculous. :sour:
1 meat gives 1 boiled or grilled meat. 5 meat for 1 boiled/grilled meat is ridiculous. :sour:

1 large bone gives 1 bone knife. 5 bones for 1 knife is ridiculous. :sour:

1 rez sickness is so 1990s. Bad enough you get thrown all the way back at your bed roll but now your weak for 30 minutes because you got overwhelmed by zombies. :sour:

Max stamina and health reduction needs to go. There is no point in it other to make the game frustrating. Make it a switch that defaults to off at the least.

The new crafting 'helper' blocks aren't helping. I like to search the menu for what I want not perform some voodoo nonsense to conjure up a block that isn't right only to have to repeat it over and over.

Forced update to Alpha 18. I was playing in Alpha 17 and now my games are trash. I didn't want 18 especially forced!

If you change the above maybe.
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This is actually a great balance change. could be tweaked a bit by perks perhaps? maybe it is and I havent noticed yet.

but getting 1 seed per 1 fruit/vegetable was just too OP. especially considering traders buy food and you could just make a ton of stews, pies, cornbread etc... not to mention beer/coffee/grain alcohol.

Meat could be 1 for 1 would just need to drop the harvest rate way down. it is a survival game and food in survival should be one of the most challenging aspects.

 
1) Pump shotgun animation is bleh. It's an anti-aircraft gun with how high it flings itself upwards. Shotguns IRL come straight back into your shoulder, and don't rise that much. 7 Days isn't IRL but the radical movement of your crosshair made the pump shotgun very unfun to use.

2) I think the skinning perk (The Huntsman) should move to the Agility tree. It gives you mats for Light Armor, so should be in the Light Armor tree. The Agility tree is also the one with bows and striking from the shadows and stealth, which sounds like hunting to me.

Currently, to be the best guy at hunting animals, you need 3 different trees -- Perception, Fortitude, and Agility, because the animal tracking is in Perception. I think cutting that down to just Perception/Agility is the way to go.

3) The cooking perk being in STR is strange, but Fortitude is already an overloaded tree, and I looked at it trying to think of something you could switch. Maybe Heavy Armor and Cooking trade places? But that kind of guts the "Tank" aspect that Fort was going for. I'm not sure what to do on this one, but Cooking seems to not really belong in any one specific tree, but Fort having the Farming stuff seems like the most likely place.

4) Infiltrator is very lackluster and could probably be just combined with the Lockpicking perk.

 
Shotgun and weapon mechanics

pump shotgun reload needs to be fixed.

I have been railing on this since alpha 1 back when a single shotgun shell completely reloaded the shotgun, now shells are 1 for 1 but the reload still isn't correct.

Considering the power of shotguns and even more so now with things like duck bill choke this a proper reload animation/mechanic is both a nerf and buff.

if you dump all 8 rounds it is very OP that you load 2 and are right back in the fight. Each shell you fired should need to be loaded individually and should take you much longer to reload an empty gun. However the buff side of it is if you are topping up and have only fired 1 shell adding 1 back in should be quicker and if you have emptied the gun a proper interrupt-able reload mechanic would allow for single loading straight to the chamber which would let you fire your entire ammo supply continuously just at a slower rate than from firing from a loaded magazine.

Other firearms also should receive proper loading mechanics. if you have a detachable magazine fed weapon like the pistol (m9) AK mp5 etc... if you don't fire it until its empty you only need to change the magazine and do not need to cycle the action resulting in a faster reload.

the hunting rifle should also should have either a default 4-5 round magazine it appears to be based off a remington 700 which has either an internal mag or a detachable box mag. Could be an mod to make it a viable late game competitor to the sniper rifle.

 
the hunting rifle should also should have either a default 4-5 round magazine it appears to be based off a remington 700 which has either an internal mag or a detachable box mag.
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+1 , somehow didn't think about it.

 
The one potential issue I see with trader is the quest rewards. They feel really OP, especially with the consumables. Getting 15 first aid bandages for 1 quest that took me 10 minutes to do is insane. At least for the Tier 1-3 quests it almost feels if the quantity should be toned down or if possible tied into the loot percentage on the server.

Right now the trader quests and vending machines are what is keeping us alive. So much food and consumables available. If the trader rewards and vending machines both operated on server loot percentages that would be nice.

 
The ability to craft guns is completely overwhelmed by finding better guns than you can craft in loot. I imagine this will change in mid-late game but I haven't gotten there yet. For that matter crafting almost anything early on is pretty pointless. I think that's been tipped a touch too far towards looting, but it could just be my RNG luck has been better this particular game than normal. /shrug

Farming has been reduced to a late-game hobby. Not by the seeds, although I did think that for a week or so, but by the farm plots. Suggest making them slightly lower rotting flesh cost. Balance of canned foods etc. in POI's make farming unnecessary anyway, provided you spend most of your time looting. Well...single player. A group eats so much more that they probably would need to farm. Can't test that personally since both boys have all but stopped playing again.

The dungeon/story POIs start developing much the same feel after the first hundred or so. Much of their jump-scare charm wears off when nearly every building is one and there are only so many techniques possible to apply to them. At this point I'm happy to see an old building I don't remember because I know its interior will be in a non-story style and therefore different.

Dye not having any value at all feels weird. Glass blocks have a (minimal) value. Why not dye/paint?

By day 5 (solo, mostly default settings) I had a couple guns to use as backup for my mostly melee looting runs. Felt good. By day 10 I was using the pistol in maybe 1/3 of the POI's where there were groups of zombies, not because I had to but because I had hundreds of extra rounds. Early game so not having to blow through lots of ammo on horde nights is a big factor, I'm sure. I've got a lousy baseball bat that's become my backup for the spear, and sometimes even primary melee, as it's more effective at everything but reach despite being 3 quality levels lower than the spear. Crazy.

Spears sometimes disappear when thrown. I'm assuming it's managing to fall through the terrain instead of sticking but there is usually a zombie between me and where it lands so I can't be sure. I doubt I'll put mods in spears ever because of that chance for loss. Spears can't jab through things we can shoot through which lessens their utility when defending. Would be nice if they could jab through bars, for instance. They sure look like they should be able to.

The new trash cans, trash carts, food piles etc. don't appear until I'm within a few (3?) blocks of them, and disappear if I step away again. I'm guessing that's a bug. Encourages close-in examination of every room, lol.

Zombies seem to avoid the falling floors if there's a non-falling path close by. Been trying to lure them over the collapsing ceiling tiles and haven't gotten them to yet. They shouldn't realize.

The rage-on-hit hasn't been happening very often in 18.1 experimental compared to the last 18.0 experimental on the same difficulty. I like that. It was too often before.

 
I have been looking forward to the new update and I was not disappointed. Great job!

My wife and I team up to play together. We are on day 12 and here are some of my thoughts:

1. I have friendly fire on (I like having to be careful not to shoot your friend in the face). However, we keep hitting each other far away. Like if we attack the same block, we need to be a couple of blocks away from the target. It seems we could be closer in older versions to the target of an attack.

2. The infection is interesting. Until we can get a recipe for antibiotics, we are constantly on the lookout for honey and antibiotics. When we hit a new town, we rush to any pharmacy. However, looting an entire pharmacy resulted in just 1 antibiotic. This may have bad luck. We just take turns with who will just get sicker and sicker. I think maybe a tea that can help keep it in check may be a good balance to this.

3. We put in a lot of torches in our base, but closed it so zombies could not see. But I guess that doesn't really help. By the second day, we were constantly killing screamers and the hordes they were bringing. We abandoned that base and ran to a new one after killing around 10 screamers in a row.

4. I would like a rabbit snare trap.

5. Sometimes trees would appear and disappear if it went from one side of my screen to the other.

6. I think it would be cool if there was some zombie population density map. So at some point screamers have no new zombies to pull forth until more accumulate in some hidden population map. That way you could kind of clear out a zone and not have endless screamer hordes.

 
I just found +1150 gasoline in one fuel pump. The other had just over 500. Default settings, pregen03, SP. Loot really is off and needs balance.

And I do remember Madmole stating that gas is harder to find and well balanced. Guess he is wrong... again.

 
I just found +1150 gasoline in one fuel pump. The other had just over 500. Default settings, pregen03, SP. Loot really is off and needs balance.
And I do remember Madmole stating that gas is harder to find and well balanced. Guess he is wrong... again.
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He did nerf the gas barrels. And I think what ended up happening is they instead increased fuel consumption on vehicles. And maybe the auger and chainsaw, haven't checked those. But the 4x4 went from "<property name="fuelKmPerL" value="1"/>" in A17 to "<property name="fuelKmPerL" value=".1"/>" in A18. So it uses 10x more gas.

 
ohh i thought the heavy attack gives a special kind of effect. im dumb!

but i do love the knife's there fun to uses just wished that there a safer way to uses them!
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The heavy attack always applies the maximum stacks of bleeds possible, while light attacks only have a % chance to apply a single stack per hit. Once you're at like rank 4 or 5, it's fun to just hit zombies with a single power attack then walk away, letting them die behind you.

 
Fun Pimps PLEASE add back the fov slider. I literally feel sick when having to use the garbage fov you have it set to. Yes i know you can use commands, thats not the point. Who ever thought that was a good idea....

 
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