PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

Status
Not open for further replies.
The game is too empty and boring. Up the spawn rates.

I get you want "performance", but it's boring to get zombies only in horde nights, you focus too much on horde nights, no one asked for this "We also lowered biome spawning some so players could have a little more breathing room when just exploring the world.".

With all of this new "performance" improvements, why don't you try focusing on allowing a bigger number of zombies instead of making combat more difficult? What's the point of performance if you can't even get more zombies on screen? And what's the point of lowering zombie spawn even MORE if you made the game run smoother?

Where are the 20+ zombie hordes? Where are the streets filled with zombies? Where is the danger of going into a hub city and shooting your weapon like crazy in the hopes that there will come some zombies to attack you? What's the point of sneaking when you got so few zombies in the world?

 
Last edited by a moderator:
The game is too empty and boring. Up the spawn rates.
I get you want "performance", but it's boring to get zombies only in horde nights, you focus too much on horde nights, no one asked for this "We also lowered biome spawning some so players could have a little more breathing room when just exploring the world.".

With all of this new "performance" improvements, why don't you try focusing on allowing a bigger number of zombies instead of making combat more difficult? What's the point of performance if you can't even get more zombies on screen? And what's the point of lowering zombie spawn even LESS if you made the game run smoother?

Where are the 20+ zombie hordes? Where are the streets filled with zombies? Where is the danger of going into a hub city and shooting your weapon like crazy in the hopes that there will come some zombies to attack you? What's the point of sneaking when you got so few zombies in the world?
Click to expand...
I think that's tied to gamestage. I've progressively seen a lot more zombies the higher I got in my latest run. I started seeing zombies everywhere at one point. I think the change was to make it to where you weren't getting numb to zombies since all you were doing is seeing them every 5 seconds. It kinda adds surprise/fear when you see them.

 
I like A18 more than A17 thus far. Here are a few critical points though.

SUMMARY:

1. Melee needs tweaking.

2. Too much firearm ammo vs. arrows, cf. also point 1.

3. Loot vs. hassle ratio of large vs. small POIs is completely off balance.

4. Farm plots cause a rotten meat shortage vs. plentiful fresh meat.

1. There has been a lot of discussion about melee, and I also think it needs tweaking. With the wonky animations and hitboxes combined with the zombie rage-mode, it may be much more of a thrill now to melee but it also gets you maimed pretty easily. I like the direction A18 is taking here but it needs balancing and tweaking. Melee is also made less of an option due to early access to guns and to huge amounts of ammo – which gets me to the second point:

2. There are too many bullets in the game, making not only melee less of a necessity but bows pretty much obsolete (whereas in A17 I would prefer bows to bullets way into the 50+ days, preserving firearm ammo for the horde and emergencies). Since feather collection has also been nerfed (I agree with this choice however), I find myself lacking arrows and having too many bullets. It used to be that the main reward for fighting with melee and arrows was that you did not waste bullets, and getting to self-sufficiency with ammo production was a major milestone in the game. Now I'm on day 15 and I have 1000 9mm ammo and 500 7.62 ammo. I think that's insane. Not only are bullets easily looted, the mining overhaul has made it child's play to make a thousand pieces of bullets early on. Although I already have insane amounts of bullets, I COULD have five times more if I wanted. Also since there is a smaller chance of waking up other zombies in A18, I can quite literally go in guns blazing and won't have to worry about waking everyone up. So my stealthy bow and arrow tactic is now dead.

3. I happened to move in next door to the Shotgun Messiah factory. I decided to go for the gold and loot it. The place was absolutely teeming with zombies compared to other places (it seems that unlike other POIs, here the zombie count has not been reduced). So it took me three (3!) days to loot the place, killing easily more than a hundred zombies and... I got almost nothing out of it! The big loot at the end gave me just some arrows and ammo in crates and some leather armour and what have you. Pissed, I raided a small cabin around the corner... six (6!) zombies and five minutes later I had better loot than I got in the Shotgun Messiah! The difficulty vs. loot balance is currently completely off. I think the WEAPONS FACTORY of all places has been the only POI where I spent more ammo than I looted. On the one hand I like it that even the smallest huts have great loot; on the other hand they now have about the same amount of great loot as the biggest and baddest POIs, minus the hassle. So now I'm just looting cabins and houses, and getting tired of it. I see absolutely no reason to loot the big places anymore, while in A17 it used to be the way to get awesome stuff and not just another set of cans and pipes. Please consider making big POIs worth it loot-wise! Since I can get dozens of great loot crates within minutes of game play by storming a row of small houses, a factory could easily have dozens of such crates at the end and not <10. It would not feel like an overkill after wading through the sea of zombies. (EDIT: It was days 7–9, I had two points in lucky looter, and lucky goggles. But anyway the point is not that I had bad loot in that big POI but the relationship between big and small POIs. Overall loot is great.)

4. I like the new farm plots, as it was too easy to farm your way into not having to worry about food and drink ever again. But now I find myself in the odd situation that I am happier about rotten than fresh meat! Since self-made food was nerfed with food poisoning chances, I prefer to eat canned food, so now on day 15 already I have almost a thousand pieces of meat that I don't use. Yet I have to go hunting for road kills and body bags to get rotten meat for my precious, precious farm plots. This should be rebalanced: no way a post-apocalyptic survivor is going to prefer rotten meat to real meat. Yet I do. A quick and dirty (and perfectly sensible) solution would be: make rotten meat craftable from fresh meat. It makes zero sense that I can't take my meat and let it rot. To keep farm plots precious, the rotten meat requirement could be higher. The issue is not the difficulty of obtaining farm plots but the ridiculous search for specifically rotten meat.

Keep up the good work!

 
Last edited by a moderator:
How does max alive have anything to do with ammo used? I’d use the same ammo killing 100 zombies with 16 alive at a time as I would killing 100 zombies with 24 alive at a time.
Click to expand...
Because when you only have 8 zombies on the screen you can pick them off with head shots quickly with just about any gun. With 64 zombies all piled up you are forced to shoot anything moving to break up the pile as much as you can or things get destroyed... and likely with an automatic. Nobody is holding that off with a hunting rifle even with 100% accuracy. Maybe there are other reasons, but I'm not going to fine tune my observations to arrive at the same conclusion. All I know is that when you up your max alive, there is some point where your accuracy fails and you will use more ammo.

 
How does max alive have anything to do with ammo used? I’d use the same ammo killing 100 zombies with 16 alive at a time as I would killing 100 zombies with 24 alive at a time.
Click to expand...
I think it is the max number per wave. Max alive is how many z's can be alive at 1 time on the map afaik.

So 8 zombies can attack per wave or up to 64 per wave and you will be having to kill a ton more zombies to keep from getting overrun with the latter. Per wave and per horde night.

Oh you are right though, I think the first few low gamestage horde nights have a hard limit of total zombies. So hordes can end early. But that ends after a certain point afaik. (if that is even still in the game) not sure.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think that's tied to gamestage. I've progressively seen a lot more zombies the higher I got in my latest run. I started seeing zombies everywhere at one point. I think the change was to make it to where you weren't getting numb to zombies since all you were doing is seeing them every 5 seconds. It kinda adds surprise/fear when you see them.
Click to expand...
Well, if that's the case, it would have been nice of TFP to confirm this. I mean, okay, you lower the spawn rates when the game is running even smoother, but where's the logic in that? At least tell us how we can get more zombies, confirm that the gamestage influences this.

I'm not bashing TFP about this, but the thing is, with lower leveling speed and less spawning in the beginning, it's a bit more difficult to get a high gamestage. Also, all we can do now is make assumptions of why they made this choice. Hope they can make things clear about this, or hope we hear about their new encountering system, or at least make cities full of zombies like in old alphas.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Warrior diff Day 19. Doing the shotgun messiah i fired 300+ AK47 rounds. 70% aimed headshots. The loot was completly useless. Time + Brass> LOOT
Click to expand...
Personally I use mostly melee when clearing PoIs. With T5 i ocassionally use shotgun to get out of tight spot. For the big rooms full of ferals and irradiateds I pop either moonshine or recog to clear them. This way I get balanced ammo usage or I am even in the positive numbers. Its a bit slower. However If I loot only the most important containers - boxes, safes, bookshelves I can clear 2 lvl 5 PoI in single day. With good quality weapons and full perks of course.

 
I like A18 more than A17 thus far. Here are a few critical points though.

4. I like the new farm plots, as it was too easy to farm your way into not having to worry about food and drink ever again. But now I find myself in the odd situation that I am happier about rotten than fresh meat! Since self-made food was nerfed with food poisoning chances, I prefer to eat canned food, so now on day 15 already I have almost a thousand pieces of meat that I don't use. Yet I have to go hunting for road kills and body bags to get rotten meat for my precious, precious farm plots. This should be rebalanced: no way a post-apocalyptic survivor is going to prefer rotten meat to real meat. Yet I do. A quick and dirty (and perfectly sensible) solution would be: make rotten meat craftable from fresh meat. It makes zero sense that I can't take my meat and let it rot. To keep farm plots precious, the rotten meat requirement could be higher. The issue is not the difficulty of obtaining farm plots but the ridiculous search for specifically rotten meat.

Keep up the good work!
Click to expand...
Dont tell them that, you wont get more rotten meat. Just way less animals lmao... Balance

Joking though, kinda, actually kinda believe that, incoming invisible animals.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Personally I use mostly melee when clearing PoIs. With T5 i ocassionally use shotgun to get out of tight spot. For the big rooms full of ferals and irradiateds I pop either moonshine or recog to clear them. This way I get balanced ammo usage or I am even in the positive numbers. Its a bit slower. However If I loot only the most important containers - boxes, safes, bookshelves I can clear 2 lvl 5 PoI in single day. With good quality weapons and full perks of course.
Click to expand...

I do the same thing. I use melee unless I am getting swarmed in a T5 then I pop a couple zeds with a quick shot to the head and finish the rest off with more melee.

On a side note. I absolutely love how many zombies are in the T5 poi's. I would love that in all of em lol.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I like A18 more than A17 thus far. Here are a few critical points though.
SUMMARY:

1. Melee needs tweaking.

2. Too much firearm ammo vs. arrows, cf. also point 1.

3. Loot vs. hassle ratio of large vs. small POIs is completely off balance.

4. Farm plots cause a rotten meat shortage vs. plentiful fresh meat.

1. There has been a lot of discussion about melee, and I also think it needs tweaking. With the wonky animations and hitboxes combined with the zombie rage-mode, it may be much more of a thrill now to melee but it also gets you maimed pretty easily. I like the direction A18 is taking here but it needs balancing and tweaking. Melee is also made less of an option due to early access to guns and to huge amounts of ammo – which gets me to the second point:

3. I happened to move in next door to the Shotgun Messiah factory. I decided to go for the gold and loot it. The place was absolutely teeming with zombies compared to other places (it seems that unlike other POIs, here the zombie count has not been reduced). So it took me three (3!) days to loot the place, killing easily more than a hundred zombies and... I got almost nothing out of it! The big loot at the end gave me just some arrows and ammo in crates and some leather armour and what have you. Pissed, I raided a small cabin around the corner... six (6!) zombies and five minutes later I had better loot than I got in the Shotgun Messiah! The difficulty vs. loot balance is currently completely off. I think the WEAPONS FACTORY of all places has been the only POI where I spent more ammo than I looted. On the one hand I like it that even the smallest huts have great loot; on the other hand they now have about the same amount of great loot as the biggest and baddest POIs, minus the hassle. So now I'm just looting cabins and houses, and getting tired of it. I see absolutely no reason to loot the big places anymore, while in A17 it used to be the way to get awesome stuff and not just another set of cans and pipes. Please consider making big POIs worth it loot-wise! Since I can get dozens of great loot crates within minutes of game play by storming a row of small houses, a factory could easily have dozens of such crates at the end and not <10. It would not feel like an overkill after wading through the sea of zombies. (EDIT: It was days 7–9, I had two points in lucky looter, and lucky goggles. But anyway the point is not that I had bad loot in that big POI but the relationship between big and small POIs. Overall loot is great.)

Keep up the good work!
Click to expand...
1. Personally I am club fanatic since alpha 17. The animations were fixed I think, still a bit wonky, but Iam ok with it. For me there should be more danger in melee combat, because once I have heavy armor, bleed and infection is almost non-existent threat. Later on I have tons of antibiotics I never get to use. Plenty of bandages and painkillers too.

3. The large PoIs are truly a bit off. But on the other hand, you cannot count only the loot at the end of the run. There are several safes, lot of boxes, usually at least two hidden caches and plenty of loot between all of those. On top of that you get lot of XP for killing all those zombies and the proverbial cherry on tom is guaranteed Q5-Q6 item from quest. All in all I would say it is balanced right now. What I dont like however is that this is almost entire late game - take q go to one of 4 lvl 5 POI (mostly one of two factories) clear it rinse and repeat. It gets old after a while. Cant wait for bandits and other late game stuff.

 
While I discovered I actually enjoy the even more loot-based focus of A18 vs. the slightly more camp-in-your-base style of A17, I feel crafting has taken a backseat. Requiring parts to craft items is ridiculous, and completely defeats the purpose of crafting. For example, to craft a steel sledgehammer, you don't need steel as much as you need steel sledgehammer parts. By the time you're ever able to craft one, you've probably found 3+ tier 6 steel sledgehammers, making crafting completely pointless.

The two possible solutions are pretty simple:

A) Remove item parts and restore crafting to a similar state as before

B) Remove armor/weapon crafting altogether

There's not much room for gray area. If looting is the clear winner on how to get better weapons/armor, then crafting is pointless.

On the other hand, it takes time to be able to craft good weapons/armor. The time delay of skilling up or finding recipes to craft allows the RNG of looting to work it's magic.

So let me present another possible solution:

C)

A good compromise could be adding "upgrade components" that allow you to craft either 1 tier higher or with just slightly better stats. So for example, if you can craft a tier 5 shotgun, but you also have the upgrade component, you can now craft a slightly above tier 6 shotgun. This would make crafting not pointless and keep looting as important as TFP desire. Again, the stats should be a *SLIGHT* increase, and not some tier 7 or tier 8 level of item. The point is that all those points you invested in crafting before suddenly finding a tier 6 would actually be useful further down the line. This would keep looting vs. crafting from cannibalizing each other.

 
While I discovered I actually enjoy the even more loot-based focus of A18 vs. the slightly more camp-in-your-base style of A17, I feel crafting has taken a backseat. Requiring parts to craft items is ridiculous, and completely defeats the purpose of crafting. For example, to craft a steel sledgehammer, you don't need steel as much as you need steel sledgehammer parts. By the time you're ever able to craft one, you've probably found 3+ tier 6 steel sledgehammers, making crafting completely pointless.
The two possible solutions are pretty simple:

A) Remove item parts and restore crafting to a similar state as before

B) Remove armor/weapon crafting altogether

There's not much room for gray area. If looting is the clear winner on how to get better weapons/armor, then crafting is pointless.

On the other hand, it takes time to be able to craft good weapons/armor. The time delay of skilling up or finding recipes to craft allows the RNG of looting to work it's magic.

So let me present another possible solution:

C)

A good compromise could be adding "upgrade components" that allow you to craft either 1 tier higher or with just slightly better stats. So for example, if you can craft a tier 5 shotgun, but you also have the upgrade component, you can now craft a slightly above tier 6 shotgun. This would make crafting not pointless and keep looting as important as TFP desire. Again, the stats should be a *SLIGHT* increase, and not some tier 7 or tier 8 level of item. The point is that all those points you invested in crafting before suddenly finding a tier 6 would actually be useful further down the line. This would keep looting vs. crafting from cannibalizing each other.
Click to expand...

Well i can't speak for everyone but I only take weapon perks so that I am better with that weapon. I don't do it for crafting.

When I get maxed in that skill I might craft a Q5 if I have the parts laying around or if I haven't found one yet but thats it.

 
I think the "roof loot" is a general problem for balance.

Beginners might follow the normal path up. But anyone with experience can just pole up, and have an easy pick.

Moving the loot inside would counter that - with some "one way opening hatch", to allow an easy escape onto the roof, but not from the roof inside.

Other games solve that with classic keys or triggers or codes.

 
A potential fix would be either a menu option to disable all auto-ADS, or like we used to have, tap RMB to auto-ADS, hold RMB for only manual-ADS with no lock in.
Click to expand...
Agreed. Just a quality of life issue, for me at least. I'd much rather have the zoom release when I let go of the mouse button.

- - - Updated - - -

I feel the exact opposite. No xp should be shared, go get your own dang xp. jk, but I really do feel that way.
Click to expand...
It's really a hybrid of both perspectives. You share XP for zombie kills cause it sucks to be fighting and someone 1 shots everything and you get no XP at all. Mining and stuff is a solo thing and you should only get your own XP.

I do hear the perspective of people wanting to be the groups miner and such but that's a personal choice and not a direction the game funnels you into.

 
I feel that exp should be shared for all actions. Like when I play with a friend, the person who goes Strength (harvesting / mining) always has a lot more exp than the rest of the group. I don't see why this shouldn't be shared if others are around.
Click to expand...
When creating a new MP game, adjust the slider for "Shared XP Range" - it goes up to something ridiculous like 10,000 meters (blocks). This is what my friends and I do when we play together (leaving the rest at defaults except for Mark Air Drops to on).

There's not much room for gray area. If looting is the clear winner on how to get better weapons/armor, then crafting is pointless.
Click to expand...
Item stats are randomized now, so Blue items aren't automatically better than everything below them. Crafting allows you to remove one of the RNG rolls (looting), in order to reroll the other (item stats). Scrapping low level items (Brown, Orange, Yellow) allow you to save up parts in order to craft Blues to try to roll a better item. The Perks allow you to focus your points, thereby increasing stats on a few select gear types which ensures even lower quality items remain relevant as you progress - thus giving you the flexibility to save up parts in order to craft that perfect Blue while you search for that elusive Purple.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
With how easy it is to craft ammo in the mid game. I think ammo found in loot needs to be a lot less. because I got a pistol day one and have never looked back.
Click to expand...
I saw madmole post that finding a gun and ammo early is by design. They want people to be able to start using guns early cause it's fun. The hard part is not finding a gun or ammo, but the challenge of producing lots and lots of ammo at harder difficulties. Look at all the feedback of people having to devote whole days to mining to make ammo.

 
After playing the first a18 up day 77 and the last two up to day 56, I think there are still loot vs crafting concerns.

Farming: At day 56, I still haven't been able to find or by the ability to make seeds for several crops. This means even at day 56, I still cannot cook any meals other than cornbread or steak and potato meals. And I can't craft potato seeds, so I've been only able to make one of those so far. At Day 56! In my first playthough, I only cooked cornbread or grill meat, because thats all I could make at all. Farming is nerfed so badly that its very late game by now, possibly way too late to even bother with. Eggs are also so rare that cooking with them is unthinkable, since I used the ones I had to make bacon and eggs.

Crafting: While I've accumulated more parts, I still have not been able to craft anything better at all than looting. That means there is zero reason to craft weapons, because by the time you have the schematics and the parts, you've already looted better anyway.

In addition I never found the steel tool schematic so I couldn't craft steel tools in either game, a total of 130+ play hours.

So I couldn't craft anything worthwhile at day 56 in one game and 77 in the earlier game.

Crafting for me has been investing perks in intelligence, and making generators and electric defenses, as well as iron, steel, ammo and vehicles.

Vehicles are gated by high intelligence, so even in both games I never obtained a gyrocopter. (I did get a 4x4 in both games.)

At this point the game is fun, but crafting is so overshadowed by looting that most of the best items to craft be it tools, weapons or food isn't achievable to end game, and by then you don't really need it because of the looting.

Another concern is in later game, it takes a full day to go through a regualar puzzle poi, let alone one of the big ones. Some take two full days.

So after a horde night it takes 2-3 days to repair and obtain materials for ammo leaving only 4 days to try to do quests, maintain a base, and attempt farming.

(I think at day 56 I have 18 total farm plots using all the rotten meat.) Without enough crop diversity, farming has been a waste of time in both playthroughs.) Seeds either need to be more plentiful in looting, or not gated by a schematic.

Loot wise I'm seeing a ton of guns and ammo, VERY few vehicle parts (In both games I've only found 1 bicycle handlebars, 1 4x4 chassis, and 1 gyro accessories. I never saw any minibike or motorcycle parts at all, the the cost was SO high at the traders that I'd never ever be able to buy any of them.

Melee feels great, but the balance for crafting is just very broken. You could literally remove all gun, tool and food crafting, and I wouldn't have missed it in a18 at all because I could never use any of it to any significance. Thats a HUGE gameplay loss in diversity.

Guns need to be less plentiful in loot, vehicle parts need to be less rare or quest payments need to be higher to make those expensive vehicle items affordable.

New players would never be able to use anything I mentioned, making the game's crafting seem very shallow.

 
How does max alive have anything to do with ammo used? I’d use the same ammo killing 100 zombies with 16 alive at a time as I would killing 100 zombies with 24 alive at a time.
Click to expand...
Are you sure about that? I know for myself I tend to take my time with headshots when there is a small group, but more alive at one time might make me go full auto, thus using more ammo.

 
There is too much loot and crafting has little purpose.

No need to craft any low-level part ever if you loot POI's just half time, low-level parts such as : mechanical parts, pipe, etc.

No need to craft any weapon.

In fact my last game played to level 61, the only things I ever crafted were:

ammo

weapon/armor/tool mods

tools

tires

Forged Iron and Forged Steel

A few housing construction items: rebar frames, iron bars, etc

Bigger parts such as handlebars and then the finished vehicle product.

I did craft a few leather armor items in this game, but realized that far better to wait for these items in POI loot.

Bottom line here:

There is too much emphasis on Mr. Joel's Beard style of play of POI looting all the time then mass trips to a trader.

The crafters play style is neglected in A18.

EDIT: a18 is great though, the best so far. Even the balance is the best, BUT please strive for even better balance.

 
There definitely needs to be more steel tool part drops. I am on day 52 now and still only have a total of 6 steel tool parts. That means I cannot make even a single steel tool. Both drops I got from zombie loot bags. I have found 6 traders on my map and I visit them all every cycle. None of them ever have steel tools or steel tool parts. I am well into Tier5 quests now and still have never found a steel tool or parts in loot.

I know everyone is going to say "But CoolJ, Steel tools are supposed to be rare." I agree they should be. Just note, I already have a Chainsaw and an Auger. I have had them now for a long time. I have a Gyro also. At this point. Steel tools won't even benefit me. With this drop rate, there is no way I will ever be able to make a single steel tool.

Another thing. Ammo for bows is way harder to get than ammo for guns. Retrieval doesn't make up for the losses suffered on horde night. Feathers are far more scarce. I think a lot of that has to do with loot container reset being set to 30days at default. That used to be fine when the feather drop rate was much higher. It's just not working out now. I can wrench a couple of Air Conditioners and have enough brass for 1000 rounds of AP or HP ammo. Steel arrows require polymer, which is a good change, but the polymer drop rate has to change now to reflect that. Brass casings are very cheap at the trader. I can afford to buy all they have. Polymer is not cheap. I once tried to buy some at the trader and he wanted over 11k dukes for less than half a stack.

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top