PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[Laz Man]

are you stupid or you hit your head when your were a kid?, you go around assuming ♥♥♥♥ when i never said it was my pc that lost power, use what is left of your brain a little bit and realise that this post was moved to feedback by a moderator for a reason, i am glad is not someone like you who is developing this game.

Maybe you should provide that key detail instead of just complaining. MM, made the same assumption due to "your" lack of providing information. So check the attitude at the door. Hope you have a great day.

 

[Laz Man]

Are you ♥♥♥♥ing serious? are you rly telling me to back up my files every day i play the game???Out of your control??? is out of your control to make the game create a saved file every ingame midnight??

Are you rly so short of sight as to assume ♥♥♥♥ i have never said?? this town has electric problems whenever there is strong winds, so should i go complain to the electric company because your incapability of putting your ego aside and analyse feeback in a objective manner to improve your game???

I seriously cant believe you are working with the professionals who made this nice game possible.

Your the one who needs to put your ego aside. Computers are not designed to lose power randomly that's why someone invented UPC battery backups. Those protect your hardware and gives you a few minutes of battery life to shutdown your PC properly. File corruption is a real issue for many applications not just this video game. So instead of bringing your attitude here, open your mind and do your research first.

- - - Updated - - -

Ironically, was thinking about starting an SP nomad game with a 28-day horde night just so I can enjoy some POIs.
That said though, is Day 28 (even on 120-minute days on an MP server) where the players are right around Level 30-35 in any way, shape, or form "late game"? That's my concern. We're getting demolishers at Level 30. If you're saying that's fine, then that's fine, but it seems a tad rough to me.

I think I'm bringing it up because we were told (and your games demonstrated) that Demolishers are late-game, and we're getting them before Level 40 in massive quantity.

Maybe an MP balance issue. I recall MM, stating the game should only take account the player with the highest GS for horde nights. Not sure if it got implemented or not yet.

 

[madmole]

I agree that Master Chef shouldn't be under strength. It would fit in better with Fortitude since it also has the Iron Gut perk which balances out eating cooked food.I'd also like to point out that the fortitude build allows for heavy armor and healing/buffs through iron gut and regeneration. Heavy Armor would be better served under strength where you have to be up close and personal for both the club and shotgun. Split up the defensive/support perks between the two builds.

How many times do I have to explain this? All combat focuses attributes need a way to heal. Strength gets master chef, those muscles need a lot of calories as well for mining, sledgehammers etc. Fortitude doesn't use any stamina in comparison (fists don't use much) has self healing and damage resistance already. Int has medicine for healing. Perception and agility avoid taking damage by shooting at a distance or hiding in the shadows.

 

[madmole]

I think your spot on. I have had the same experience with crafting. I have tons of crafting parts for weapons but since I'm not perked into most of them, crafting them at a low quality has stopped me everytime from trying a craft.
@MM or @Gazz, what if crafting weapons/tools had a random chance of making a better quality tier as well?

For example, lvl 1 shotgun perk (forget its name) has a chance of yielding a shotgun of quality q2 to q3, lvl 2 : q3 to q4, etc. So that way, people will still be encouraged to use their crafting parts even if their applicable perk lvls are not that high. Otherwise, its sell all weapons/parts we plan on never perking up.

That would promote spam crafting. If we get stingy on anything but brown maybe people would craft more. Its a balance issue, not a design problem.

 

[madmole]

The best gear should ONLY be craftable.
Saying that 'the game is over' as soon as you craft it... isn't that the same as saying that the game is over as soon as you find it?

What's the difference?

People who'll stop playing when they have the best stuff will stop playing when they have the best stuff. Regardless of whether they found it or crafted it.

On the other hand, crafting a top-tier daedric sword requires getting the ingots, the daedra heart, and having a maxed smiting skill with perk-points in daedric crafting.

Finding one just requires killing a couple of high-level daedra and looting until you get lucky.

I'd rather have 'getting the absolute best weapon' be the results of my effort to gather all the required materials, level up and learn the right skills to make what I want, rather than the bland anticlimax of finding it in a box somewhere, usually while i'm looking for something else.

Aren't you just more satisfied when your primary weapon is something that you made yourself, from your own hard work?

That said, the difference between craftable (Blue) and lootable (Purple) is fairly minor. One extra mod slot and a little damage. Not a gambreaker

The main issue currently is that... as said before, getting parts to build a weapon is harder than just finding the weapon.

The solutions listed above would probably fix it pretty nicely. Raising the drop-rate for trash-tier steel tools or weapons. (broken or not. brown tools are only useful for scrapping anyway) or just making the parts themselves drop more.

It's not necessary with guns, imo, since you can already make high-tier guns with the parts from their low-tier variants. (SMGs use Pistol Parts, not SMG parts) so you have a decent stack of those, even if you also use them for turrets.

Not with tools though. Iron tools can't be used to make steel tools.

TLDR: I truly do believe that getting the best possible item should be a culmination of player level-ups, skill-investment and resource gathering, rather than the result of a random roll on the loot-table, but being able to make blue quality is fine, so long as the parts used to make them aren't rarer than the items themselves.

I understand that you don't want players to be able to get Q6 gear too easily, but we already need schematics for forges, schematics for steel tools/armour/weapon, a crucible, a bunch of forged steel and a bunch of other miscellaneous resources like ducttape and mechanical parts.

Oh, and enough skillpoints to get whatever crafting skill we intend to use to the max, which usually means getting the associated stat to the max too.

That's not an easy feat at all. All that stuff is so gated off that it's pretty much endgame content already.

I'd found a pair of Q6 handguns and a half a set of Q6 steel armour long before I had max ranks in either of those skills, and a gunned for them pretty hard, right from the start.

Granted, I didn't want pistols, I wanted an AK, but eh. I found a bunch of those too, but they were all trash.

Still, made myself a Q5 m60, so that's pretty sweet.

The spirit and intent of your message is beautiful. However the min maxers will team up and craft end game gear for everyone on the team by day 3, so it has to be limited to looting only, so that online play is a long game just like playing solo is.

 

[wordwaster]

day 10 and haven't found a pistol. 3 players. have found multiple aks, shotguns, rifles, junk turrets, etc. not a single pistol. not for sale, not in loot. sup with that?

 

[JamesKirk]

The spirit and intent of your message is beautiful. However the min maxers will team up and craft end game gear for everyone on the team by day 3, so it has to be limited to looting only, so that online play is a long game just like playing solo is.

So, what would be wrong doing so? It's the nature of professions. Each one is specialized in performing well in his job. There are surgeons, electricians, carpenter, hunter etc. Each one would give his best in apocalypse for the sake of mankind (or himself).

Survival works best with profession and talent sharing. IMO it's legal and logical.

 

[Laz Man]

So, what would be wrong doing so? It's the nature of professions. Each one is specialized in performing well in his job. There are surgeons, electricians, carpenter, hunter etc. Each one would give his best in apocalypse for the sake of mankind (or himself).Survival works best with profession and talent sharing. IMO it's legal and logical.

Probably for game balance/progression reasons. I think that's why in other online games with crafting elements, end game crafts require hard to acquire raid materials that require alot of time to acquire to prevent the market from getting over saturated.

 

[JamesKirk]

Probably for game balance/progression reasons. I think that's why in other online games with crafting elements, end game crafts require hard to acquire raid materials that require alot of time to acquire to prevent the market from getting over saturated.

Maybe a solution would be to increase the amount of resources needed. That would represent a selection of the best parts from a given stock. Only the best parts give the best weapons.

 

[madmole]

We need more brass! (or have i missed someting?)
The game main object is to shoot zombies. If I want to play on hardest difficulty and for that run around with an AK47 and build lots of turrets the thing I miss most is BRASS.

The only way nowdasy seems to pick cars apart since the brass fauchets and lamps are almost gone. SO I need to spend all day finding cars further and further away and then spend all the presious bullets on shooting down zombies in 2 min before needing go out again and search for brass.

And NO, Im done with melee, bow and shotgun.

I want to use the end game weapons. And for that I need crazy amounts of brass that nowdays are way to rare in the game.

Smelt your dukes.

 

[Onarr]

Are you ♥♥♥♥ing serious? are you rly telling me to back up my files every day i play the game???Out of your control??? is out of your control to make the game create a saved file every ingame midnight??

Are you rly so short of sight as to assume ♥♥♥♥ i have never said?? this town has electric problems whenever there is strong winds, so should i go complain to the electric company because your incapability of putting your ego aside and analyse feeback in a objective manner to improve your game???

I seriously cant believe you are working with the professionals who made this nice game possible.

Sir, you seriously need to calm down lest you give yourself an aneurysm.

 

[wordwaster]

Or use the dukes to buy bullets. Seriously I was in the same boat in a17. I like shooting, wasn’t enough brass to feed my habit. Then I found a use for the merchants other than solar panels. They got the cure for what ails ya.

But seriously, why can’t my people find a pistol?

 

[madmole]

Have you guys thought of incresing the default duration of the day?When npcs and random encounters are in plus campaign, the game will be so flavoury that it would really tire the player to prepare time and time again for the horde.

I would wish for several things on that front:

Increase the default day to 100 minutes or so and add day duration options 240/480/960 minutes for players that would like to avoid touching horde day frequency settings and stay true to the game's name.

Have a place that charges 25.000 dukes per head to protect you from the horde night (it would be cool if you managed a fully destroyable design that repairs in the morning yet is totally safe for the player if he stays inside certain area.

I wouldn't recommend a destroyable safe haven with infinite turrets and bullets if the game's performance wasn't getting so good lately.

No one hour is a good default. 7 hours to see what this game is all about is long enough. All the time sink activities are only a distraction if you let them be. Think back to before quests, one hour days were more than enough. I think it used to be 40 or 50 minutes at one time.

Lets try not to turn this into a pimp dreams random idea dump thread. Lets talk strictly balance.

 

[madmole]

are you stupid or you hit your head when your were a kid?, you go around assuming ♥♥♥♥ when i never said it was my pc that lost power, use what is left of your brain a little bit and realise that this post was moved to feedback by a moderator for a reason, i am glad is not someone like you who is developing this game.

Yes you did, you were complaining about corrupted saves due to power failure. We're not tolerating insulting behavior here, I gave you an infraction for this. Laz is a good guy, but you asked for it the way you were ranting about a problem out of our control.

 

[madmole]

@Madmole:
When doing legendaries, maybe you can also do legendary versions of the mods as well?

Basically the same mods we now have available, but with higher percentage of their effects. (Like say, crippler that dismembers 50%-100% of the time with limb hits.) That would also give players flexibility combining legendary mods on top of legendary weapons.

(For example, you have a bow that multiplies fire damage speed, and when using fire arrows they go up in particle burst of ash in 4 seconds.)

For tools that could be a one shot tree chop, or a one shot mineral hit. An accompanying sound effect or animation for some could be fun... like the one shot tree chop using the full arc power weapon swing with a wood explosion of the impact point of the tree.

That could extend to legendary mods for vehicles as well.... a short turbo speed burst for vehicles, or a very efficient mpg mod for the 4x4, or even a junk turret mod for the gyro that allows straife firing on ground targets. (Or a jump liftoff for it giving it instant ground clearance and forward movement that lets you lift off of small rooftops easily)

Legendaries could add a lot of endgame fun!

I have some legendary mods designed, but nothing is set in stone yet.

 

[madmole]

Are you ♥♥♥♥ing serious? are you rly telling me to back up my files every day i play the game???Out of your control??? is out of your control to make the game create a saved file every ingame midnight??

Are you rly so short of sight as to assume ♥♥♥♥ i have never said?? this town has electric problems whenever there is strong winds, so should i go complain to the electric company because your incapability of putting your ego aside and analyse feeback in a objective manner to improve your game???

I seriously cant believe you are working with the professionals who made this nice game possible.

You are the one with the problem of flaky power. Sure we could write an incremental save game system but we're in alpha so how hard is it for you to understand that its a low priority 1 in 10 million edge cases of losing power while playing the game, when a save happens to be writing, which is the only way it could get corrupted. Its your issue, so I am telling you to make a shortcut to your save folder and make a backup periodically. This is a computer basic, I'm sure a master of pirating can figure out how to create a backup folder.

We have to stay focused on completing the game, not wasting engineering effort on 1 in 10 million edge cases that can be prevented with basic windows copy/paste functions.

 

[madmole]

Ironically, was thinking about starting an SP nomad game with a 28-day horde night just so I can enjoy some POIs.
That said though, is Day 28 (even on 120-minute days on an MP server) where the players are right around Level 30-35 in any way, shape, or form "late game"? That's my concern. We're getting demolishers at Level 30. If you're saying that's fine, then that's fine, but it seems a tad rough to me.

I think I'm bringing it up because we were told (and your games demonstrated) that Demolishers are late-game, and we're getting them before Level 40 in massive quantity.

Its highly possible the formula for MP game stage is too aggressive. I think it just adds up your gs, so 6 level 30 guys is like one level 180 guy which is extreme late game. I'll visit with the guys on the actual formula. One man's too hard is another man's too easy.

 

[Gr.o.m.]

Not saying I agree with the fact the best loot should be craft only, but given how many parts you'd need to craft a Q6 if it was available, "just grind away until that happens" may take long enough to be honest ^^
On another topic, we've started over a bunch of times already with my friend, and indeed, nothing trumps looting, no matter what you're looking for. We tried doing the old fashioned way of gathering resources in the wild, mining early, getting a forge going, making bullets by using the traders workbench and... you're actually better off looting house after house and picking up those weapon bags / ammo piles, it's less of a grind and actually way faster. Same for food, the best way to keep your belly full is to loot kitchen after kitchen (which, in a way, makes sense). And well... same for tools/weapons. In the grand scheme of things it isn't really an issue but it's indeed quite a drastic change compared to A17 and previous versions.

The one thing I truly dislike is the fact that there's literally no use for all the parts / low quality weapons & tools that you find if you don't plan on specializing in them. Basically, once you pick your tree, you're going to be crafting a maximum of 3 different weapons, and maybe some tools if you spec into Miner 69er. All the rest is either of decent enough quality to be used, or is sold or scrapped and then sold. Makes the looting experience a bit dull sometimes when you can't find anything useful (or got lucky early), and the crafting experience kind of inexistant.

I feel the whole system works quite well but there's one little thing missing to make it all stick together. I don't know quite what it is, but either a combine feature that lets you slowly increase the quality of a gun/tool you're not specialized into, or a LBD system only for guns/tools (so that using that Q1 pistol eventually enables you to craft a higher quality pistol), or something else. Especially regarding the tools which in the end everybody needs, it's quite the double punishment that not putting points in Miner 69er both leaves you stuck with ♥♥♥♥ty tools AND with poor mining skills.

I mostly agree.

You can now get everything without cooking, mining or crafting. Those aspects feel now secondrate. Shure your can grind XP by mining and make a fine penny by selling those materials to the trader. But you can also raid a shamway or shotgun factory and walk out with thousands of cobblestone and cement shoveled by a stone shovel and getting food, loads of recepts, guns ammo and tools.

You can feed yourself for the whole game just by raiding 2 footautomatons per day. Poisonfree for a few dukes.

I don't want A 17 back. Crafting tools and guns was lame. But I think TFP should do something to bring thrilling aspects onto mining, crafting and cooking.

Create endgame recipies who give you fine buffs by perking cooking to tier 5 and those recipies should NOT be found by looting or buying.

Do the same for mining and crafting. Miners with 96er tier 5 should be able to craft those diamond tools but only by materials you can get by superrare mingnodes.

Crafters should get quests repair xy or bring me 3 of xy you can craft only by perking into crafting.

 

[madmole]

day 10 and haven't found a pistol. 3 players. have found multiple aks, shotguns, rifles, junk turrets, etc. not a single pistol. not for sale, not in loot. sup with that?

You got really lucky.

 

[madmole]

Maybe a solution would be to increase the amount of resources needed. That would represent a selection of the best parts from a given stock. Only the best parts give the best weapons.

No thanks Ark. We scale resources some, but 4000 ingots for my legendary rifle? No thanks. That is just grindy af. Reasonable costs and rare trinkets to craft good stuff is a good design, we just need to balance the loot drops of steel tool parts and more brown guns IMO then crafting will happen more. Late game you can slowly find purples, problem solved.