PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[madmole]

I feel like I've been leveling too quickly. I pretty much get a level per day. Going to try playing at 25% XP to see how it feels.

1 level an hour isn't too fast IMO, that was the goal. In 17 I'd be level 5-10 on day 1.

 

[madmole]

IMO If trader's become killable you should add some sort of way to get T6 stuff(other then in loot), not that it should be eazy at all but atleast it will be there. Maybe a cnc machine that is only found in a factory and it will require a skill to use it. But nonetheless im fine with anything and like you said, we could just mod this stuff in.

Balance and feedback on what IS in the game, not what isn't in the game. Lets not turn this thread into pie in the sky talk please. No feature requests and no discussion of features on or off the roadmap, only discussion of actual implemented features you can give feedback on.

 

[madmole]

What does this mean? I see servers with 500% and even 1200% experience but I can't set the experience to that amount in single player.

Also side note, half the perks in the game are clearly under powered. The spear and club perks are horrible and mediocre respectively. Everyone thinks the knives and their perks are very weak. The armor perks require too much skill points to work. The flurry of blows is just under powered and doesn't work on heavy and mining tools. The leveling of living off the land is not linear at all.

I feel like there is no need to level after 70 but at the same time I need levels to unlock basic stuff.

In the end if a perk is weak why not just reduce the attribute requirements to lower levels?

It means only a 10 year old would want that fast of XP gain. Most players want to slow things down. What use case do you need to be level 20 on day 1?

Lets not use words like "everyone" to add false weight to your statements. Clubs are OP, what are you talking about? Spears have so much range you would have to go AFK to actually take damage.

No need to level past 70, but you want to get there in 2 hours with 1200% xp?

Armor works fantastic without any perks at all, and since it contains crafting tiers at most we could reduce it to 4.

 

[madmole]

I haven't made it past level 45 because that's when I feel like I've done everything I can do on that particular map.

What about unlocking the other 100 books? You can barely get to rank 5 of your combat perks by then. What about late game horde defense? Level 45 is when it starts to get interesting IMO.

 

[madmole]

@madmole, I'm beating a dead horse, but how you feel about adding gas vents as a danger to mining? So the longer you mine and or get deeper, certain parts will have a subtle-hazy view. Another to distinguish them would maybe be, empty parts of a mine? Essentially invisible air pockets set to damage players, though that makes it obvious so I'd go with terrain with a certain hue. These gas vents would pose a danger by 1) have a 20% chance of being triggered to explode by being hit by a tool or gunfire and 2) if you go in without a hazmat suit or some sort of gas mask filter mod, it'll pretty much kill you.
Why add gas vents? I feel that it should be simple enough in a way to do so, and it would at least bring some minor risk to mining even though I myself don't want this. Contradictorily I know, but it is a survival game and everything should at least have some risk even if its only a more pest annoyance.

No feature requests in this thread. I don't have time for dev diary stuff right now.

 

[madmole]

The XP gain is still very unbalanced, but it became better with A18. I play only private multiplayer with friends and we specialize our chars, mostly according to the persons playstyle.I usually play the "food supply"-guy, so i do farming and cooking. While my buddy is our builder, he now builds a small concrete wall and gains 5 levelups, while im cooking and farming my ass off and get almost nothing at all. Iirc harvesting a plant from a plot gives like... 8 XP, cooking delicious blueberry pie no XP at all.

Lastly i also specialized in rifles and finally built my marksman rifle (after searching the build menu for minutes until i realized, in the build menu its called "mr-10"...) and got no XP for building that.

My buddy upgrades 1 rebar frame with concrete and earns f...ing ~800XP per block... most zombies get less XP when killed. Other way round, repairing damged blocks gives only very little XP.

Yeah, i know, he can place the rebar frames and let me upgrade them... that's what we did anyway, because our builder was 10 levels ahead soon. But that's not how we want to play. He likes building, i don't. But the xp mechanics forces me to do it and he has to stop with it.

I think gained XP should align with the needed skill and ressource costs. Building a weapen should give maybe 1000XP, because it needs specialized skills and expensive ressources. Building a reinforced concrete block doesn't need expensive ressources and you do it a hundred times, so maybe building one block give 50XP. Reparing a 50% damaged reinforced concrete block should accordingly give 25XP then.

Harvesting own plants from plots should at least give the XP like wild plants. Also Cooking should at least give you some XP. Maybe cooking water 2XP, cooking a meat stew 50XP?

Of course this then needs to be scaled to what XP amount is which level.

Maybe that is not (so) relevant in singleplayer, because the single player has to do everything anyway.

Adding craft xp would skew balance a lot and promote spam crafting. I wouldn't mind it on cooking and crafting of stuff that has unfarmable resources but it would just be more crap to balance and we have enough on our plate. Nerfing concrete to 50 would be way too much. There is a probable limit to how many concrete blocks a player might put down, where zombie killing is infinite.

 

[beHypE]

That is not what I am saying at all. What I am saying is there is always an item that is not found after an extended play time. Whether it is something I want or not. When I say extended, I mean like by like day 80. If I then go into the creative menu and give that item to my player and save the game. Then I drop that Item on the ground, I will, with out fail, find that item in subsequent loot runs in appropriate containers. It is a QA check that people in the industry use quite often. It is to check if an item being loaded into memory affects the chance it will be found. In this case it does. I have done a lot of video game QA as an actual job. Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean the person pointing it out is wrong.

Lmao get off your horse, my wife is a professional QA and I'm a developer, so I understood perfectly what you said. I was saying that you probably lack a decent sample size to draw conclusions; maybe I'm wrong but 95% of people on the forums that come with these "I did this and the result was that" automatically jump to the conclusion that it works that way without considering that they may just have been lucky / unlucky.

But i'd be pretty interested in you backing it up with some actual tests, like spawning an item and open 100 chests after it, repeated several times. Because unless you did that, there's literally no evidence that there's a bug, and you're just branding your own stories as facts.

 

[CoolJ]

I certainly am not one of those that think that knife perks are weak. I can tell you from experience with my current character. The only zombies in the game I can't one hit are radiated bikers and such. I had a wandering horde come by the base yesterday when I was doing some repairs, With a purple machete, level4 of the knives perk, and the fire mod, I went down the line just slashing and going for the next one. If the heads didn't instantly explode, they died soon after from DOT damage.

I got pinned in a corner by a radiated wight on a quest and I panicked and instead of pulling out my AK I switched to the machete by accident and I gave him two slashes to the face and a final power attack because, I just knew I was dead anyway. So screw it right? Well, it died! LOL. Never even hit me. There might be a case to be made if you are playing the game on a higher difficulty setting than default, but I don't see that info being very useful currently. I mean, you asked for more difficulty did you not? I am sure there are some things that will need to scale in a minor way with increased difficulty. I am not so sure that is what this thread is for though.

 

[CoolJ]

Lmao get off your horse, my wife is a professional QA and I'm a developer, so I understood perfectly what you said. I was saying that you probably lack a decent sample size to draw conclusions; maybe I'm wrong but 95% of people on the forums that come with these "I did this and the result was that" automatically jump to the conclusion that it works that way without considering that they may just have been lucky.
But i'd be pretty interested in you backing it up with some actual tests, like spawning an item and open 100 chests after it, repeated several times. Because unless you did that, there's literally no evidence but bad luck.

If that were even remotely true you would have stated such in your original posting and asked for statistical evidence at that time. I am also the president of Morocco and I win the office bridge tournament every year. You just went and googled it, found out I wasn't just making things up and then provided some five minute rebuttal you read about. And yes, I have done it enough times over the past several years in this game to recognize the trend. Statistical box openings have also been done and posted to this very forum showing bias based on the position in the loot list. You kids really need to stop pretending that you know everything because you have a freaking computer that can tell you. It's too late. You already ran off at the mouth and gave yourself away.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Upgrading 20 blocks requires your time and activity. Cooking 20 delicious blueberry pies is clicking a button and then forgetting it.
You could upgrade 20 blocks simultaneously with your pies baking and get both xp rewards which would leave your builder friend behind.

Ongoing crafting xp— especially those jobs done at workstations simply turn into xp factories for the sake of power leveling when they exist in the game.

You're right, then take this into account to. Cooking and other crafting requires less time then building, but it does not work in no time. Also it requires ressources you partially haven't gotten XP for collecting them. Looting itself doesn't give any XP too. No XP for lockpicking too (at least i haven't noticed). And both examples take also time, they even show a countdown.

Currently building is the same XP-farm. You just don't need to farm just for XP, because you need to build anyway and in relation it gives way to much XP.

And maybe make harvesting plants a timer like opening a lootcontainer. Combine it with the living off the land skill, Level 3 (or4?) requires 15s to gather 3 items (if you interrupt before time ran up you only get 1 or 2 according to the time). Then it is also timeconsuming, like upgrading a rebarframe with concrete takes about 5s, the harvesting food from plants in 15s is then also worth ~2400XP per plant. All fine, then you got at least XP for collecting the ressources and don't need XP for cooking them.

 

[meganoth]

If that were even remotely true you would have stated such in your original posting and asked for statistical evidence at that time. I am also the president of Morocco and I win the office bridge tournament every year. You just went and googled it, found out I wasn't just making things up and then provided some five minute rebuttal you read about. And yes, I have done it enough times over the past several years in this game to recognize the trend. Statistical box openings have also been done and posted to this very forum showing bias based on the position in the loot list. You kids really need to stop pretending that you know everything because you have a freaking computer that can tell you. It's too late. You already ran off at the mouth and gave yourself away.

That you are the president of Morocco and that the random roll in this game is influenced by something being in memory instead of in the cache or on disk is also on the same level of believable. So like BeHypE I take your facts with a generous dose of reasonable doubt until you can show that you really had a meaningful test setup.

What has any bug about position on the loot list (which is a lot more believable considering the complex rules of loot box generation (at least in older alphas)) to do with this caching(?) bug?

 

[ZombieSurvivor]

Feedback regarding tin cans in loot.

Now that I have actually put in a good amount of hours in A18, playing stable for now in order to actually play without restarting, I feel I can speak on this. Also this opinion comes from not having invested in lucky looter at all in A18 and loot at 100%. It feels like tin cans spawn in loot just a little to much, not a lot just a little. Maybe this can be lowered ever so slightely.

Note: not sure if there is a book in game or magazine that increases the % of tin cans found in loot, if so I probably read it and thats why it feels this way....if that is the case disregard all this.

 

[beHypE]

If that were even remotely true you would have stated such in your original posting and asked for statistical evidence at that time. I am also the president of Morocco and I win the office bridge tournament every year. You just went and googled it, found out I wasn't just making things up and then provided some five minute rebuttal you read about. And yes, I have done it enough times over the past several years in this game to recognize the trend. Statistical box openings have also been done and posted to this very forum showing bias based on the position in the loot list. You kids really need to stop pretending that you know everything because you have a freaking computer that can tell you. It's too late. You already ran off at the mouth and gave yourself away.

Didn't I? I specifically said your personal experience isn't enough data to back your claims. Indeed I didn't use the words 'statistical evidence', my bad. That being said you still didn't provide any.

But I guess the answer 'I did it enough to know there's a trend' is the perfectly classic line anyone with a results oriented bias would throw at me. Add in the classic distraction of making the debate about me and whether I'm lying or not about my job, and we have a 101 example of trying to win a debate with no arguments.

Fwiw I'm indeed a Java Engineer and have been so for close to a decade now, and my soon to be wife just obtained the ISTQB level 2 certification, but whatever makes you sleep better pal

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Adding craft xp would skew balance a lot and promote spam crafting.

You're also right, like i also answered Roland. Indeed i see the problem with crafting XP when crafting in not-player-ressources.

Nerfing concrete to 50 would be way too much. There is a probable limit to how many concrete blocks a player might put down, where zombie killing is infinite.

50 wasn't a well chosen value, i just wanted to put into some relations because i think the current values are way to high. Especially in comparison to other activites like as i said harvesting your own garden.

So building (the building itself, not the crafting of the ressources for building) currently gives you a very high amount of XP while others like harvesting ressources for food gives almost nothing.

There is a limit on how many concrete blocks a player can place?

 

[CoolJ]

That you are the president of Morocco and that the random roll in this game is influenced by something being in memory instead of in the cache or on disk is also on the same level of believable. So like BeHypE I take your facts with a generous dose of reasonable doubt until you can show that you really had a meaningful test setup.
What has any bug about position on the loot list (which is a lot more believable considering the complex rules of loot box generation (at least in older alphas)) to do with this caching(?) bug?

Here is the thing you fail to understand. I don't give a crap about anyone's feelings. I am not participating in this thread with the agenda to disparage the fun pimps or to ingratiate them. My motive is to provide my opinion based on my experience and knowledge in order to point out a flaw to the fun pimps. One which they are already well aware of. Influence based on position in the list. Also, two more that they may not be aware of. One based on the item being loaded into memory, and the very real effects of having such long lists when we already know that the list position affects loot probability. This is not in question. The thread exists in this forum with conclusive evidence. It also not in any way a damning accusation to say that these things exist. Since they exist also in similar games and they are not that big of a problem when managed correctly.

I really don't care one way or another whether you believe me or not. I care that the fun pimps look into it. Because there are changes that can be made to compensate for this type of problem. One of which is to make the lists shorter and more contextual.

 

[tricorius]

Maybe. I seriously thought there would be a flood of complaints about slowed leveling, but it got a pretty warm welcome. I thought we could also add a loot modifier that slows down how soon you get good loot or speeds it up, same with game staging because frankly those are knobs that add replay value.

I like these ideas. I'm hoping you also have some sort of "categorized" loot balancing in the works. For instance, either eliminating or at least prioritizing toward certain loot tables based off of what you're looting. (I think I read previously something like "parts" or "broken" items being more likely in garbage piles, etc; but being able to maybe loot an actual working gun out of a sealed crate. That sort of thing would be pretty awesome for flavor and consistency.

(I know it feels nitpicky; but I'm absolutely convinced that it feels pretty good right now...it just needs some tuning. And even if people don't realize what's happening beneath the covers, it just "feels good" when it's all working together in a "believable" way.)

 

[Louie04k]

Fov slider when?

 

[dcsobral]

This is not balancing, but it's feedback, so I'm hoping it's the proper place. If it isn't, please move it instead of deleting it?

I have a strong interest in random world generation, both in "vanilla" and modded 7 Days to Die. I've created a whole setup to spit out hundreds of random generation seeds back in Alpha 17, which I used to both find interesting seeds for sharing and to test and balance the mixer for one of the most popular mods.

Right now, I can't use it on Alpha 18. Any seeds I generate are different than what you get when you use non-dedicated, and there's *no way* I can generate them in an automated fashion non-dedicated, unless I start using some UI-interaction bot. Now, I expect that, eventually, the world generation will be unified again, but I suspect it might not even be on alpha 18.

So, feedback: please make "-batchmode" (or some other flag) work in such a way that a map is automatically generated in non-dedicated mode? I can start 7d2d, I can stop 7d2d, I can provide it all configurations it needs, but I have no way of getting a non-dedicated instance to generate a map unless I click through menus.

I'd love to give feedback on the random world generation itself, but I can't if I cannot generate enough seeds to be of statistical significance.

 

[Roland]

Here is the thing you fail to understand. I don't give a crap about anyone's feelings. I am not participating in this thread with the agenda to disparage the fun pimps or to ingratiate them. My motive is to provide my opinion based on my experience and knowledge in order to point out a flaw to the fun pimps. One which they are already well aware of. Influence based on position in the list. Also, two more that they may not be aware of. One based on the item being loaded into memory, and the very real effects of having such long lists when we already know that the list position affects loot probability. This is not in question. The thread exists in this forum with conclusive evidence. It also not in any way a damning accusation to say that these things exist. Since they exist also in similar games and they are not that big of a problem when managed correctly.
I really don't care one way or another whether you believe me or not. I care that the fun pimps look into it. Because there are changes that can be made to compensate for this type of problem. One of which is to make the lists shorter and more contextual.

As far as I know the way lists work in this game is that the game tests each item with the coded probability starting at the top of the list and rolls for it and if it fails it then moves to the next item in the list and tests that. Things at the bottom of the list only show up if everything above them failed their tests. In the past this was proven true by shuffling the list of POIs. Whichever POI was at the top of the list was the most commonly spawned POI in the city.

It isn't too much of a leap to entertain the idea that CoolJ is correct. I'm not sure why taking a book from creative and dropping it and then looting and finding that book would be a thing though. Weird.

I know this testing down the list process is how it used to be and I'm not aware that it has changed. This process does indeed have a probability bias that benefits things at the top of the list vs a process that gives everything an equal chance to be pulled out of the hat so to speak.

 

[iBane]

Yes, that is coming.

Will the design also include a mechanism to find other traders or is the plan to have this drive exploration?

Personally, I like the idea of a trader-locator mechanism (signs, lootable quest papers that lead you there, etc.) as long exploratory runs are kinda of a big time sink when I'd rather be doing all the other important stuff.