PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

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Would/Should it be possible to make a higher tier item beyond tier 1 (grey) if I find the schematic for it but don't want to invest points into the perk to make a better quality version? Perhaps if a player finds and consumes the same schematic twice, the player can then make a tier 2 version of that item. Cap it at say tier 3 (yellow) to make the perk still worth considering investing points into.
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No. Why would you want anything you aren't specialized into anyway, other than say a nice auger? Like if I'm into strength, I could care less about what quality of knuckles or spears I can craft. I don't use stuff I'm not efficient in, except maybe a hunting knife to harvest is the only exception.

 
Feedback on building stuff in a18:
Honestly, I'm the kind of guy that, when I finish the base I make a 10 deep 30 tall wall of concrete spawning dozens of meters far and wide just for the xp.

It takes no more than a few real hours to get that done and I absolutely love it.

I've never done that in any of the 17 previous alphas. Why? Because now in a18 it feels rewarding to have that kind of xp and I can't stop building and putting my mixers and forges to max all day all night.

I feel like the xp balance has been achieved on the building front: more xp would be too much, any less and it won't be viable to keep up with a Zd-killer build.

Crafting xp for everything? Ok, but very little. Like 1-5 xp per ordinary item. Is it really needed? Nope.

More feedback on Ores/recipes/resources:

There's another topic that I would like to touch about resources/ores/recipes:

I loved the plant fiber to cloth recipe, it turned it into a valid and useful item once again.

Regarding ores, I really think there should be the same abundance of all Ores in every biome (except iron, which is abundant on POIS) .

While it might be cool on paper to have ore differences, their current status is confusing and difficult to transmit to the player. Biomes already have , and will have personaliced spawns/ items to tell them appart. Why make a convoluted ore distribution system that can result in a player being unable to find, say, coal for days because he spawned in the middle of 3 non coal biomes?
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I agree I think XP is in a pretty good spot. On horde night with traps and grenades you can crank out a lot of XP, 5k per grenade toss typically when several are clustered together.

AFAIK We made all ores equal except for shale which is only in the desert.

 
There are a ton of great perks with the books though that have nothing to do with combat. I guess I want them all, the special unlocks are great. I don't see how you have time to twiddle your thumbs waiting for a horde. Turn up how often hordes come. I'm busy grinding mats for ammo, questing and looting for brass and better gear. You shouldn't even have any purple gear at level 45, be mostly orange and green iron, and no t3 stuff yet IMO. We'll get it balanced so its 100 hours to get mostly feeling done.
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To be fair, we had the hordes on 7 + d4 days or so and we are cranking it up for the next game, but we're doing 50% loot even and this is our game at the "I'm bored and ready for the next one" point:

RqXPoto.jpg


*edit: forgot to mention we have double zombie spawns too, going to 5x for the next one, with 25% loot. Normal difficulty.

 
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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.
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Frankly, one of the first things I sought after upon A18 was a mod that restored the old exponent. For some reason I can't stand the extreme jumps in XP requirements. Maybe I'm weird in that I'd rather have 100% XP on A17 than 300% xp on A18; I like the steadier pace of levels, and the increase in gamestage just means the challenge keeps ramping up, while I'm allowed to spend extra skill points into other attributes to diversify my build. Which is fun. I like being able to justify using off-stat weapons.

But then, I also always play with 50% loot multiplier, so the game is slowed down in other ways.

 
I agree I think XP is in a pretty good spot. On horde night with traps and grenades you can crank out a lot of XP, 5k per grenade toss typically when several are clustered together.
AFAIK We made all ores equal except for shale which is only in the desert.
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Yes. I love horde xp. I just built a 3 deep 10 tall 15x15 square of concrete hollow on the inside with bars on top and a safeish hole in the middle for tossing grenades. No spikes. Nothing. Just the the square, the hole and me on top of those bars.

Horde night day 49 GS 267 .Edit: always 64 alive. Good stuff. Top adrenaline.

I used 343 grenades. And around 100 9mm bullets to finish off the last stray radiated big mama and about 7 puking vultures.

I depleted the 49 horde at 3:40 (lol) by tossing 2 or 3 unexploded grenades, then ignited them with another, rinse and repeat. The most xp I got was 21.400~ . Usually 5000~ like you said (they move too damn much even in that little space) It was so glorious that I didn't care about the tough repairs in the morning ( 4 damaged concrete pillars where holding the whole stuff together). If it weren't for active defense gameplay I would've definitely be dead by 1 o'clock.

My point is, xp is golden and The Minimal bullet- Demolitions expert gameplay is the funniest/most rewarding gameplay of them all. It is also expensive and dangerous, but man, the XP balance and reward is so good that I wouldn't mind a trigger charge.

With the trigger charge you could do controlled explosions with the push of a button and increase the fun even more. The feeling is unparalleled and full of delayed pleasure.

About ore: I had bad results searching for coal in the last couple of maps, deposits were rare and low on yield. Maybe I was just unlucky. Late game deposits deplete faster than we can use them. I needed a couple of each (coal and nitrate mines) for gunpowder this last horde.

 
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No. Why would you want anything you aren't specialized into anyway, other than say a nice auger? Like if I'm into strength, I could care less about what quality of knuckles or spears I can craft. I don't use stuff I'm not efficient in, except maybe a hunting knife to harvest is the only exception.
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Speaking of augers I kind of feel like Mechanical tools should be governed by an int perk. I wanna say adv. engineering makes the most sense but it's aready such a strong perk, maybe "Yeah, Science" simply because after a while there is really no point in taking the perk past level 1. all it gives you is recipe unlocks which I can get elsewhere and a lot of those unlocks are for recipes that aren't really a big deal.

At most I'd take it to 3 if I was having bad luck with finding a first aid schematic, and then elixir out of it as soon as I found the schematic.

Or maybe grease monkey for a similar reason, It's nice to have early cheaper motorcycles or Trucks, but once you have them built the perk is useless.

 
Doesn't gathering ammo mats for the next horde keep you busy?
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It does... my comment started off open to the heavy respec cost of a complete mind wipe to make the decision more meaningful

...but then came around to leaving the current implementation as is.

Coolj makes a strong point about the heavy cost of losing schematics....akin to trading in your entire pokemon collection and starting over...😂

 
The respec potion is fine the way it is. If there are any changes it should be to increase the price only.
It is a nice option if you mistakenly wasted points early game, or decided you want to play a different play style. Especially if you are playing a long game with friends and realize you hate your build, and none of them want to start over with you, lel.
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Upping the cost is one option if it's too OP for the devs sensibilities.

 
Or maybe grease monkey for a similar reason, It's nice to have early cheaper motorcycles or Trucks, but once you have them built the perk is useless.
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Totally agree with this. There needs to be reasons BEYOND unlocking recipes for all the perks. Maybe Grease Monkey also makes vehicles use less fuel or something, but there needs to be persistent bonuses or something or else the perks feel wasted.

 
Have you guys even looked at the perks you get from finding all of the books in a volume? You would be crazy to throw that away just to re-roll some points. If your points are actually so misplaced that you are entertaining the idea, then you might as well just start the game over. Losing everything in this context is absurd. A better system would be to have the elixir explicitly allow you to re-roll say one or two points by giving you a remove point option in the perk menu. Then, the more jacked up your character is the more you have to pay to fix it.
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Why do you keep mentioning books and schematics? You don't lose them. All that happens is that all the skill points revert to unused, and you can distribute them again.

 
Totally agree with this. There needs to be reasons BEYOND unlocking recipes for all the perks. Maybe Grease Monkey also makes vehicles use less fuel or something, but there needs to be persistent bonuses or something or else the perks feel wasted.
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I noticed this too !!!

Perks and there respected tree’s become redundant fast if end result is already achieved through other ways.

Not sure this was meant to be but seems to radically limit perk choice when i.e said bike is obtained and the likes of GreaseMonkey is no longer even looked at. Same goes for other perk tree’s.

 
One thing I would like for balance is to have an adjustment for gamestage rate. Allow me to explain:

I can appreciate the slower leveling and long term gameplay recent updates have gone for, and I think it's great for a large number of players. Myself however, prefer the idea of burning hot. To me when I want to launch the game, I'm thinking "Seven days to die", not "seventy days to die" or "one hundred and seventy days to die". I play hardcore, when my character dies - that's it. I delete the world, and move onto the next attempt. So the current approach of stretching things out over 100+ hours isn't really what I'm in for. At that point, it's just not fun to me - I'm not interested in softcore (no disrespect to those that are).

A lot of deaths in seven days to die are.... not fantastic deaths. It's actually pretty rare I go down with a fighting chance, it's usually due to a momentary mistake. This is perfectly cool with me, not a problem at all. However these mistakes can happen on day 4, day 24, or day 74. So I get 40+ hours in, die and need to restart. Ok, no problem. Now... it's 20 hours before I really get basic operation going (forge, crafting, basic mining, and some sort of looting setup). This gets tedious redoing these long stretches just to get back to what feels like a "baseline".

Right now, the solution might seem like "increase experience gain to accelerate the game". Which I do. I set XP to 200%, and progression feels good for this kind of restart heavy hardcore play - as far as skills are concerned. But what I'm finding is that I outpace the gamestage far too fast. Increasing the difficulty doesn't change this, as increasing the difficulty just adds a base multiplier to gamestage - the curve gamestage follows remains the same.

I'd love it if I could start the game day 1 and it's easy, time to get some quick looting in, and establish myself. By day 5 I'm encountering ferals in buildings, by day 7 maybe see some cops, by day 14 I should maybe see a demolisher, and day 21 should be a right nasty horde. Right now I can spend an entire day shooting arrows into the air and trying to catch them and still be fine for the next horde night. Is it optimal to waste an entire day? No. But is every single day's efficiency required? Also no, the game plays far too slow. I prefer a style where every decision matters. Should I rush the PoI faster and take more risks, or pick PoI "b" over PoI "a", is going to the trader really worth the time investment right now?

This can only in a minor way be achieved by shortening the days. I say in a minor way because with shorter days you're far more limited in the maps you can play as you can't travel far during light, which makes it reset heavy to get a decent spawn.

What I'm trying to say is the game is moving survival to "stamina" rather than "strategy". Surviving a horde night isn't that hard, it's about being able to be prepared in time for the next one, recovering your supplies and pushing ahead before dealing with the next wave rather than simply trying to survive the wave on hand.

If we could get a control that could adjust how quickly gamestage accelerates (make it a steeper curve, rather than linear progression) I think it would be fantastic. Players that like the long drawn out defense game can keep xp at 100%, and gamestage at "normal", players that want more challenge can drop xp and/or increase gamestage acceleration to "End is Nigh", and players like me that are looking for fast burns could adjust xp to 200%~ and gamestage to "Ragnarok", where surviving past day 21 would be an accomplishment rather than having an infinite world that keeps going until you get bored of it.

 
@faatal IF possible

A question about bloodmoon zombies AI.

I got an underground bunker with 2 entrances and during the blood moon a small portion of the zombies keeps on attacking the "worst" entrance with (from a "user" point of view) no reason.

I got a clean surface with a cement tower and a hole going doing, 20 block circa between the 2 entrances.

Entrance number 1 is the 3-blocks-wide hole with ramps going down in an underground corridor.

At the end of the corridor i got only a scrap metal door blocking the path to me (AND i keep it open during blood moon usually).

Entrance number 2 is a vertical tunnel in the middle of a 7x7 cement tower (5 blocks height) connected to the underground base, with a vault hatch in top of that and a vault door down (both closed).

No spikes, no traps in the paths, no torches outside the tower.

I remember that some zombies AI can be "stupid" in a random way, but how stupid is a zombie that keeps on attacking a path with: 1 vault door, 3 pairs of reinforced cement blocks instead a single scrap iron door?

May be the distance between the two entrances the problem?

Final question:How much is the minimum "search" range of the stupid-est AI when looking for a way to reach you?

sorry for the length of post,

feel free to ignore.

 
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If we could get a control that could adjust how quickly gamestage accelerates (make it a steeper curve, rather than linear progression) I think it would be fantastic. Players that like the long drawn out defense game can keep xp at 100%, and gamestage at "normal", players that want more challenge can drop xp and/or increase gamestage acceleration to "End is Nigh", and players like me that are looking for fast burns could adjust xp to 200%~ and gamestage to "Ragnarok", where surviving past day 21 would be an accomplishment rather than having an infinite world that keeps going until you get bored of it.
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The Gamestage is determined by 3 factors. Your level, the number of days you have played and the level of difficulty.

As you wrote yourself, you can turn up the XP so that you are very fast on a high level. Or you can reduce the length of the day so that the days go by faster. The third possibility would be to increase the difficulty factor in the gamestages.xml file.

The multipliers at the moment are:

Scavenger 1.0

Adventurer (Default) 1.2

Nomad 1.5

Warrior 1.7

Survivalist 2.0

Insane 2.5

For example, to have the first feral zombies on day 5, the gamestage would have to be over 50 at this point. If I assume that you already have a level of 10 on day 5 then the multiplier would have to be 3.5 to have the first feral zombies by day 5.

 
Na, then you end up crafting arbitrary garbage you don't even want to use just for XP. We had that in 17, I didn't like it. I'd rather do a reasonable amount of XP for stuff that has loot mats to craft, like guns, food that requires looting, etc.
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Perhaps add it for items that are expensive? crafting a rifle, traps etc.

 
I'd like to leave some feedback regarding the new icons in A18.

For the most part they are good, but there is a few I think are a bit 'crowded' and hard to tell at a quick glance like the old icons.

Repairkit , scrapiron and plastics is the ones I can think of right now.

Gunpowder and Nitrate have a distracting icon of a bullet/bottle on them.

Rotten meat looks a bit too much like the small rock

and the sham sandwich looks absolutely delicous now.

 
I'd like to leave some feedback regarding the new icons in A18.For the most part they are good, but there is a few I think are a bit 'crowded' and hard to tell at a quick glance like the old icons.

Repairkit , scrapiron and plastics is the ones I can think of right now.

Gunpowder and Nitrate have a distracting icon of a bullet/bottle on them.

Rotten meat looks a bit too much like the small rock

and the sham sandwich looks absolutely delicous now.
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I can’t look at the gunpowder icon without thinking it’s bullets first lol.

 
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