PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

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A little feedback on hunting:

This is in terms of default loot settings.

I find myself avoiding it completely now. It used to be something I would do from time to time to stock up on food. The only reason I don't now is because I can get enough canned food. The canned food is obviously preferred because there is no risk of food poisoning. Food poisoning is not a big deal, but I'm going to avoid it if it's easy enough.

This is not a complaint about food poisoning or even that the characteristics of the food types swapped. I think it's a good move because food is at least some kind of issue to deal with now. However, I find it a shame because we have some pretty cool tracking perks that few people are going to use.

Hunting serves a purpose for bones, but really there are much better sources. I wouldn't want to mess with bones because in the past there were struggles getting enough duct tape, and these days we need duct tape more than ever. Leather in general just isn't very useful. It has its purposes, but again if you need it, there are several ways to get it a lot easier. The only thing that might be useful is hunting chickens for feathers if you lean heavily in archery, but from what I am seeing not many people do.

With all that said, I don't really have many ideas for what could be changed or added... but I just wanted to point out that hunting has slid further away from being a necessity in the survival aspect of the game in this alpha. One possible idea is selling furs at the trader. Pelts from the more dangerous animals could be worth more than others.

 
I really enjoy the changes made in Alpha 18.

However I think the farming system is too harsh. Personally I think "Rotting Flesh" is too hard to find and I always find myself missing this single item in order to construct farmplots.

Maybe if rotting flesh was easier to find in trashcans, trash etc. or if we could harvest zombies (as we once could) for rotting flesh just as we can with other zombified creatures like bears and vultures.

 
I really enjoy the changes made in Alpha 18. However I think the farming system is too harsh. Personally I think "Rotting Flesh" is too hard to find and I always find myself missing this single item in order to construct farmplots.

Maybe if rotting flesh was easier to find in trashcans, trash etc. or if we could harvest zombies (as we once could) for rotting flesh just as we can with other zombified creatures like bears and vultures.
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I've no issue with rotting flesh but I play solo.

A recipe could be the solution : for example, with 2 raw meats, you get 1 rotting flesh. With a long timer, of course.

 
Just wanted to chime in with a little A18 feedback that I've had from playing recently. All of this is from the standpoint of someone playing single-player who may at most play with a group of up to 4 people, which will adjust some of the experiences I've had.

I want to emphasise that I realise the game is in alpha because it's not finished. There will be systems that are only partially implemented, not fully fleshed out, or simply in need of balance.

To prevent taking up too much visual space on the forums I've collected everything into spoiler tags. I've also cut it back a bit as your forum only allows 10,000 characters per post.

Melee:

Melee in 7D2D has never felt great since I started playing circa alpha 7. It's been passable, but that's about the best I can say about it - especially with A18's new animations. Trying to articulate what's wrong with it, though, is almost as awkward as the combat itself can be. So allow me to try.

Range.

The player's melee range just feels short. Whether it is or isn't is irrelevant to this as it's a matter of perception. Outside of fist weapons, you're swinging something which extends beyond the reach of your arms. Yet the base swing never "feels" like it's going as far as it looks like it should. To compound things, most of the animations appear to "pull" the swing, meaning the already short-feeling range is off a short-feeling attack.

Power Attacks feel even worse for this. They don't have the same "pulled" feel to them, but as a result they feel incredibly short as they appear to share the same range as their standard counterparts.

Some of this may come from the new animations. There's no visual feedback differentiating a hit from a miss as they're all the same. And with the hand/weapon models seemingly being rendered in front of everything else at all times, there's no real "penetration" of the entities either.

Accuracy.

It appears that all attacks can either hit blocks or they can hit entities - not both. Which is used appears to be determined by what is under the centre of the crosshairs, rather than what's closer to the player or what would be hit earlier during the animation. As a result, a swing against a downed Z is more likely to harvest grass than hit said Z, but nearly as likely to harvest the ground if your crosshairs are just a fraction off.

As above, Power Attacks amplify this. A massive area for potential hit detection is defeated entirely by having a single point on your screen in slightly the wrong spot. This really doesn't feel good, and in large removes the primary opportunity to successfully land a Power Attack in the first place. By that I mean you knock a Z down, line up on their face, prepare an almighty swing... and wind up with a large chunk of stamina missing and some cotton in your inventory.

Granted I can see the upside to this, which is perhaps why it's implemented. If an attack his a Z it won't hit your walls, so it saves your base from some undesirable wear and tear. But the reverse is not true. In fact, I'd argue the reverse is exactly the opposite to how it should be - if there's a Z anywhere in your attack area, odds are pretty well 100% that your intent is to hit a Z; not a block.

Z presence.

Zs appear to have little if any actual "presence" in the game world. By this, I mean that they simply move by an animation, direction, and distance, without any "mass" to speak of. They can turn immediately in such a way that parts can be up to a whole block away from where they were in the previous frame. These jitters can and do result in times where hits that should have landed just don't, simply because dumb luck meant that the split second before the collision calculation the target vanished from the attack area.

This goes on to be made worse by the ability for one animation to immediately interrupt another, without necessarily cancelling any underlying mechanics. While not normally readily obvious, it becomes as such when you try to engage a crawling Z - it can immediately cancel its attack animation back into crawling, or perhaps outright ignore the attack animation, resulting in you being "hit" by an arm that's not outstretched.

Heat map:

The heat map is something that I feel needs further attention. I understand the reasoning for it - directing the attention of the Zs towards an active settlement, forcing the player to engage with the game. The trouble is that the map as it stands represents a "feast or famine" implementation which either overwhelms a player or feeds them a near-endless amount of experience.

My understanding of the heat map is that it goes up by doing things and goes down by not-doing things. Perhaps not quite that simple but that's the gist of it. When an area gets "hot" enough, Screamers start showing up with increasing frequency based on the heat.

This becomes a problem when only solution is to be doing anything at all. You're already trying to stay inside and not make much noise, but the heat map means you can't really be running your workstations to keep yourself occupied, nor can you even really illuminate your settlement. The end result is you will reach a point where you either have to up and move (which can be massively inconvenient for a small group or solo player), or just sit there - in the dark - twiddling your thumbs.

Now, I appreciate that this is somewhat a realistic scenario. In a real apocalypse such as this there would doubtless be times where sitting still in the dark would be exactly what happens. But this is a video game - sitting at a nearly blank screen doing nothing is what happens while it's loading, not afterwards. As such there needs to be something to let you re-engage the game.

Such counter-play might include things like killing a Screamer that spawned in response to the heat map actually reducing the heat. This breaks the infinite feedback loop of Screamers - instead of having to do more things to kill one, making more heat and increasing the rate at which they spawn, the rate will go up based on how much you're doing vs how much you're dealing with the problem it's creating.

Lighting is another point which needs attention. At present, the only zero-heat lighting option is solar-/battery-powered electric lighting. By the time you're looking at electric lighting you're probably also looking at electrical defenses, such that the heat they generate can be dealt with. These two electrical options are both the kind of counter-play I'm talking about.

But if you've not taken the Intellect route, found the appropriate plans, and/or found the right items? There's no counter-play option. No more resource-expensive closed lantern or a potato-powered bulb. In other words, the difficulty is increased for the player who needs such an increase the least, and all they can do is grin and bare it - or sit in the dark and do nothing.

Foodstuffs:

Before I get into this, let me preface it by saying that I understand why it's done the way it's done. Variety is important, otherwise you may as well break everything down into generic "Resource" categories, which would be horrendously boring. But too much variety is can be just as bad, if not worse.

Specifically I'm finding canned foodstuffs to be a problem. Especially with how the inventory is implemented, you can very quickly wind up encumbered or full because you have a lot of different things, rather than lots of things, and there are a lot of different cans. By my count there are 16 different pre-canned goods, or around 1/3 of your inventory.

I don't extend the same argument to crops and recipes. Not only are there fewer different types of crops (6) and other raw ingredients (another 5 by my count), but these are optional. There's nothing to stop you trying to live on just grilled meat or raw corn - you can pick a recipe you like and stick to it. Cans don't offer that, since you don't get to choose what shows up in loot, and if you can't make it yourself you have to take what you can get.

Harvesting:

A lesser issue compared to the others, the current means of harvesting in some cases just feels wrong, almost to the point of being penalising in certain circumstances. Specifically I'm referring to grass/fibres and plants, including foodstuffs.

Previously most of these things (not grass, mind) could be collected by simply "using" them, in the same way that you might collect an arrow, a stone, or a dropped item. Now, however, they require the use of a tool; even if that tool is an empty hand. In a game with no "mighty hand" (see Duke Nukem's "Mighty Foot"), this either means inventory juggling or wasting the durability of an item which conveys no benefit to being used for the harvest in either speed or quantity.

There are naturally some things which make perfect sense when it comes to using a tool to harvest. An axe for wood, a shovel for dirt or snow, a wrench for mechanical things, a knife for animal products. But a flower or vegetable can surely just be yanked from the ground (or the plant) by hand, rather than having to punch it free.

I'd also like to mention that I'm much more a fan of the older progression implementation - the learn-by-doing (LBD) method. But I understand why it's not coming back as this caused some pretty weird behaviour; I myself spent many a night crafting stone axes and dropping them down a mineshaft, or running laps of a house. The current system just feels so... generic, though.

Plus I'd like to mirror the suggestion I've seen elsewhere about having an option to tweak the number of skill points earned. Especially as a solo player or with 1-2 other people, when you have to do large amounts by yourself, earning levels more rapidly with an increased XP modifier (which is provided) is only going to make problems as the gamestage advances more quickly.

 
I was playing single player and got around to endgame level. So the observations are heavily biased toward SP issues I had.

I personally think the leveling slows down too much by 40-50. It takes hundreds of zombie kills to level up once.

I also think the difficulty curve needs to be a bit steeper - while in A17 I had to crank up the difficulty a lot just to not walk through the zombies, in A18 i had fun on only +1 from default (and jog during the day) But after I got decent armor and a steel fireaxe/decent marksman rifle I just stopped dying outright, barely even needing any healing apart from food and occasional painkiller. But if I start at higher difficulty, it's pretty impossible as low level character doesn't do enough damage to reliably make even the ♥♥♥♥tiest zombie at least stutter if not fall down.

Primitive weapons are really ♥♥♥♥. Stone arrows seem like a total waste of time, even in like a T4 iron crossbow they did laughable damage, primitive or wooden bows seemed even worse.

Repairs being gated behind a workbench are pretty annoying at the beginning. It's really hard at the start (as any weapon will be low tier and quickly break) and by the endgame it's basically free (solo play, day ~38, I own like a 100 repair kits just from looting, and I could make a thousand more outright). It would be nice if steel/military/motor tools/vehicles required advanced kits. I've got a crate full of gun/tool/armor parts and nothing to use it on, since I can't even craft T6 stuff anymore.

I don't really have a good idea how to introduce a reasonable resource drain. We always end up with humongous piles of loot and at that point game begins to get kinda boring. There is nothing to work towards after endgame in a PVE game

I would love to see more feral/irradiated zombies, maybe some more new zombie types for day-to-day encounters, based on gamestage (all that extra juicy XP included

What I find infuriating are random hordes of feral animals that sometimes happen at low level and just shred me with no recourse.

 
Also, why should the person making the food, or gathering the resources, be left behind ? Is it not coop ? The XP gains are not balanced. The guy who runs the trader quest will be level 100, and the guys looking after and building the base will be level 20.
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Sounds like a personal choice.

 
A little feedback on hunting:This is in terms of default loot settings.

I find myself avoiding it completely now. It used to be something I would do from time to time to stock up on food. The only reason I don't now is because I can get enough canned food. The canned food is obviously preferred because there is no risk of food poisoning. Food poisoning is not a big deal, but I'm going to avoid it if it's easy enough.
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How are you acquiring the canned food? Just looting or doing quests or what?

How much food is enough for you? Are you using 5 cans a day, 15 cans?

 
I personally think the leveling slows down too much by 40-50. It takes hundreds of zombie kills to level up once.
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What do you think should be done about it? I agree it gets slow. Do you think we should just be expected to turn up the XP gain at some point or should the game do it automatically as we level?

Or maybe should the game just automatically make more and more zombies appear so you are able to kill the 100s of zombies easily? Curious as to a fix for this.

 
I've no issue with rotting flesh but I play solo. A recipe could be the solution : for example, with 2 raw meats, you get 1 rotting flesh. With a long timer, of course.
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I like this. Fits well with existing system, makes logical sense and sounds balanced. Give up one resource to gain another at half the yield; yeah I think that would be a fun and useful choice to be faced with

 
@MadMole
I can honestly say now in a18 that I have not been able to craft one single gun better than loot drops by the time I had enough resources and schematic unlocks in more than 160 game days. We DID finally craft iron tools yesterday better than what we had because they aren't gated by looted found parts or schematics, like steel toolls are.

Here's an off the wall thought:

Maybe reverse the drop rate of gun parts vs found complete guns, and remove the schematics for them completely. That way if people find enough parts they will be able to craft them, so looting is still addicting. It won't be raining complete guns anymore, and players will HAVE to look into crafting them.

(On our new 12 day sp game I alone have 5 ak machine guns with the best being tier 4, and a tier 3 pistol, among 1/4 chest of found guns... and this is only the loot I've found myself. The other players (3) have the same personal stash of guns.)

We would still have the random specs of found guns and the random specs on crafted ones as well. Maybe the main attributes can increase crafted gun quality probability for the weapon types associated with them when invested in? Its kind of like a hybrid of the old crafted weapons from a15 and the new system.

I would also drop the steel tool schematic, and possibly even the required parts, or just increase the probability of finding the steel tool parts in loot. That would resolve the steel tool crafting issue.

(Again, never been able to craft one single steel tool in 160 game days now because of lack of either the schematic or the parts.)

For reference, thats one 77 day game, one 56 day game, and now one 12 day mp game.

These seem like the simplest fixes for weapon and steel tool crafting to me.
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How the hell are you playing the game..? I mainly do quests while my co-op partner farm and fix the house, we are relatively around the same level. I got steel pickaxe, shovel and fireaxe, she got the pickaxe and shovel at steel level 5, day 15 atm. All default settings except max horde night zombies set to 32, while the parts for the steel tools aren't abundant, the tools themselves are, and scrapping these gives you 3 parts. You need like what, 15 parts for a level 5 tool? That's finding 5 tools and scrapping them, excluding the parts you find on their own, I've found too many steel tool schematics to even keep track of, I have NO IDEA how you have failed to craft a single steel tool in a 77 days, THATS 77 HOURS ON DEFAULT SETTINGS. What are you doing with your time? Sitting in a hole and digging straight? Hell, Ive even found enough steel tools to scrap from horde nights to have enough parts.

The only thing I'd whine about A18 are the bugs and the RWG, 2 maps only had shamway, shotgun messiah and the hotel as T5 hubs which gets tiresome, using nitros RWG tool we managed to get the old skyscrapers in which also acts as T5 quest areas. And the bugs, oh man, sometimes vehicles multiply when you pick them up, sometimes you cant hit zombies and you just hit straight through them, even they cant hit me, however I can strike blocks just fine. And the melee overall is... Really fun!

If it wasn't for the bugs where you cant hit unless perfect aim, I had my PC freeze for half a second at the perfect moment, I had my crosshair on the zombies upper chest, right side and of course the hit missed. I can have 2 zombies straight in my face and do a powerattack with the baseball bat just to miss both, not even glancing blows. I can have birds IN my face, not just right infront of it, but they are actually inside my damn head, impossible to hit. None of these issues existed in A16.

 
What do you think should be done about it? I agree it gets slow. Do you think we should just be expected to turn up the XP gain at some point or should the game do it automatically as we level?
Or maybe should the game just automatically make more and more zombies appear so you are able to kill the 100s of zombies easily? Curious as to a fix for this.
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as game stage rises, xp should too. not only by spawning more ferals which grant 750xp, but by increasing those xp with GS.

GS1 ferals 750xp

GS10 ferals 800xp and so on.

as much as we all woud like "make more and more zombies appear", that idea is heavily limited by game engine/code vs performance, no?

 
J
I'd also like to mention that I'm much more a fan of the older progression implementation - the learn-by-doing (LBD) method. But I understand why it's not coming back as this caused some pretty weird behaviour; I myself spent many a night crafting stone axes and dropping them down a mineshaft, or running laps of a house. The current system just feels so... generic, though.
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Agree with everything here. Especially about the leveling system which is not that fun or rewarding at the moment. Maybe learn by doing could be implemented in a limited version were crafting were improved through skill points while actions like shooting, melee attacks, mining etc. was improved through learn by doing.

 
as game stage rises, xp should too. not only by spawning more ferals which grant 750xp, but by increasing those xp with GS.
GS1 ferals 750xp

GS10 ferals 800xp and so on.

as much as we all woud like "make more and more zombies appear", that idea is heavily limited by game engine/code vs performance, no?
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Yes true, I guess they can't have too many zombies at once for performance. I've played many overhaul mods with lots of zombies and never had performance problems but as A18 has shown, performance varies greatly on each system.

I like where your thinking is going though.

 
Agree with everything here. Especially about the leveling system which is not that fun or rewarding at the moment. Maybe learn by doing could be implemented in a limited version were crafting were improved through skill points while actions like shooting, melee attacks, mining etc. was improved through learn by doing.
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what i really liked about LBD was traveling never felt like time wasting. since u would increase ur stamina that way, which also felt immersive.

now u have 2 "waste" points on it and traveling, even with vehicles (since they re really slow, sadly), feels just like a chore.

and spam crafting was already gone in a16 and no one missed it. dunno why LBD adversaries always support their arguments with spam crafting.

 
hi there, im suuuper having trouble finding iron ore on snow biomes, more specifically navezgane's snow biome where the tree cutter factory and the last journey hotel are, i understand that most ores got reworked in the game after each iteration, i ve actually dug a 52x50 hole all the way into the bedrock without finding a single ore :( is it just me?

 
i think its more effective 2 watch for the "brand new 3d surface boulders of each ore type" and dig down from there.

 
whhhhaaaaaat this is a troll post right? None of this is true besides xp deficit.
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Yeah that was my bad. Wasn't meant to be a troll post. I was thinking he was talking about the old system where when you die you lose max health and stamina. I misread where he was playing A17.

 
I've no issue with rotting flesh but I play solo. A recipe could be the solution : for example, with 2 raw meats, you get 1 rotting flesh. With a long timer, of course.
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Were do you usually find big yields of rotting flesh?

One farm plot costs 10 rotting flesh and in order to make an effective farming you would need at the very least 50 farm plots which would cost you 500 rotting flesh.

I have a very hard time finding such big quantities....

 
Corpses, carcasses, vultures, zombie dogs. Always use a knife to optimize the harvest. Body bags: with an axe.

There are many POIs that are filled with corpses or body bags. I'm sure in a few days you'll fall under the rotten meat :)

 
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