PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

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I don't like the sound of random breakdowns for no reason either, that's just a boring and even annoying event. But what if there was a reason? Say it happened to be a RARE occurrence, and that it was actually a trigger for an event?

Motor dies, zombies crawl out of dirt (can we get that animation in TFP?) and gives out a reward at the end for those that stick around to the end of the event (no reward for the grease monkeys that want to book it). Now that I wouldn't be opposed to. Oh and bicycles do not breakdown.
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No reason? Of course there's a reason. Something broke or went wrong. Happens all the time and usually when you are on vacation with your family in an unfamiliar place on a weekend after business hours.

I used to ride my bike to work every day and there were times I had to call in that I would be late because of a flat tire or a broken chain. Bikes do "break down". The break downs will be abstracted to simply a doesn't work status that you will need to repair and your imagination can fill in the reasons and details if you really need that.

 
Eventually we want to do chunk reset of unvisited chunks as a server option. A lot of server owners do this manually already.
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it would be possible to start a timer to restore chunks after a player has dug up a treasure. like lootbox timer

 
I would like a new quests.
Type

1) bring some resources or items, get a reward for that.

2) deliver the item to a specific point. (trader to trader). in a certain time.

3) Repair a damaged communication transmitter. or road, bridge.

4) connect to the electricity, some block, poi on the map.
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maybe @MM answered. who knows, will there be new quests on the new alpha?

 
No reason? Of course there's a reason. Something broke or went wrong. Happens all the time and usually when you are on vacation with your family in an unfamiliar place on a weekend after business hours.
I used to ride my bike to work every day and there were times I had to call in that I would be late because of a flat tire or a broken chain. Bikes do "break down". The break downs will be abstracted to simply a doesn't work status that you will need to repair and your imagination can fill in the reasons and details if you really need that.
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My final opinion on this is on hold.

My initial reaction is that it doesnt sound fun and it's out of the players control which is usually not well received in many games. What I think might be more tolerable is to make vehicles durability degrade gradually with use so the players can gauge when their vehicles will need repair.

If the devs want to try the random break down element, perhaps reserve that for when durability dips below 25%

 
Grease monkey governs how easily you can repair a vehicle once we get random breakdowns in. It will be like the lockpicking mini game and use repair kits instead.
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Would be fun for those that use vehicles to avoid hordes though :) and it could also be tragically fun with the gyro!

 
No reason? Of course there's a reason. Something broke or went wrong. Happens all the time and usually when you are on vacation with your family in an unfamiliar place on a weekend after business hours.
I used to ride my bike to work every day and there were times I had to call in that I would be late because of a flat tire or a broken chain. Bikes do "break down". The break downs will be abstracted to simply a doesn't work status that you will need to repair and your imagination can fill in the reasons and details if you really need that.
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Hrm okay, well not exactly the point I was trying to get at. I'm not looking for a reason as to why it happens, as you said you can fill in the blank with your imagination, but rather I was trying to make a suggestion to give the breakdown a meaningful and more importantly fun purpose. So, what I meant is I don't like the sound of random breakdowns for "no fun reason". The point of a game is to have fun, and simply breaking down, hopping off, repair, then back on just doesn't sound fun.

 
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My final opinion on this is on hold.
My initial reaction is that it doesnt sound fun and it's out of the players control which is usually not well received in many games. What I think might be more tolerable is to make vehicles durability degrade gradually with use so the players can gauge when their vehicles will need repair.

If the devs want to try the random break down element, perhaps reserve that for when durability dips below 25%
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I completely agree with you. It doesn't sound even remotely ok on paper. Last 25% durability random breakdown might be the solution.

But again, vehicles break often enough and some need tons of fuel. Why implement a redundant feature? Unless... MM was planning complete counterbalance of the feature by those sweetazz vehicle mods.

That would make sense.

 
Nope, just give them brown legendaries or whatever color their gs has earned.
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To use the diablo/path of exile comparison, there are low-level legendaries as well, so this does make sense. And if the downsides are stark enough, they shouldn't be the kind of legendary that nullifies any hope of challenge until it's obsolete.

 
Well, it wouldn't be much different than a landmine in some way... but you're right, you can't see gas so it would be unfair being killed by something you can't try to avoid by being alert.
So what if there was a way to actually see a gas leak before it explodes?

Example: a mild particle effect which you can see (like yellow smoke) so that you get a couple seconds to run for your life.

We/you have talked for years about making the underground more dangerous and now that finally the A18 framework is ready you could add some underground danger and the corresponding perk to help surviving better underground. I'm not a game dev, but I guess adding a random chance for a particle effect while mining shouldn't be the end of the world... am I right?
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Its a noble idea but it turns one of the therapeutic activities into something stressful, and adds complexity I don't think is needed. Maybe when we get bandits in and other stuff that actually raises someone's pulse a bit is done we can round back to this.

 
No reason? Of course there's a reason. Something broke or went wrong. Happens all the time and usually when you are on vacation with your family in an unfamiliar place on a weekend after business hours.
I used to ride my bike to work every day and there were times I had to call in that I would be late because of a flat tire or a broken chain. Bikes do "break down". The break downs will be abstracted to simply a doesn't work status that you will need to repair and your imagination can fill in the reasons and details if you really need that.
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It will awesome IMO.

Imagine breaking down in the middle of the wasteland where you typically just get in your car and drive off if the threat gets too crazy. I go harvest cars for fuel at night, so a break down could be scary and ♥♥♥♥ happens so its realistic or plausible.

It will give weight to the grease monkey perks, faster repair, use less repair kits etc.

It would trigger rarely just driving down the road, but probably the more common use case is you hit something or went airborn and landed hard would trigger the need for an emergency road side repair.

 
it would be possible to start a timer to restore chunks after a player has dug up a treasure. like lootbox timer
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It is a lot more involved than that, but yes it would handle restoring all the holes players made digging.

 
Have you guys considered adding more game/server difficulty options? One of my favorite things about the game is just how damn customizable it is with blood moon frequency, zombie move speeds, XP gain, etc. It would be nice to have more things like zombie frequency in the open world, amount of XP loss on death, food/hunger rates, etc.

Sorry, not sure if this is the right thread or not.

 
My final opinion on this is on hold.
My initial reaction is that it doesnt sound fun and it's out of the players control which is usually not well received in many games. What I think might be more tolerable is to make vehicles durability degrade gradually with use so the players can gauge when their vehicles will need repair.

If the devs want to try the random break down element, perhaps reserve that for when durability dips below 25%
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As I said, it would be from accidents primarily, or yeah the random chance starts below 75% for the random fuel filter clog or whatever. I think it will be awesome and avoidable if you drive good and maintain your vehicle.

 
To use the diablo/path of exile comparison, there are low-level legendaries as well, so this does make sense. And if the downsides are stark enough, they shouldn't be the kind of legendary that nullifies any hope of challenge until it's obsolete.
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Originally we thought they would be purple only, but then I was thinking, doesn't that make this a 2% feature? Most people never make it to level 100, so why put all this work into it so 2% of the audience might start to see them? Let them spawn in all colors sooner so maybe by day 30 you find your first brown legendary item and as the game progresses you start seeing better quality ones and higher tier ones come in.

 
Originally we thought they would be purple only, but then I was thinking, doesn't that make this a 2% feature? Most people never make it to level 100, so why put all this work into it so 2% of the audience might start to see them? Let them spawn in all colors sooner so maybe by day 30 you find your first brown legendary item and as the game progresses you start seeing better quality ones and higher tier ones come in.
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Nothing to say here. Just awesome. Just remember that you answered me not long ago expressing that this diablo-like methodology could end up being a balance nightmare in the sense that could render normal random-stat weapons pointless/ of lower value.

Unless legendary weapons were rare, which I think they should be. Just boss/end POI stuff. No trader.

 
how hard would it be to make an item max limit on a server? for example, a Legendary item that is so amazing that there is only 1 on the server. or the server owner can set the max of an item?

I am thinking longer-term around a quest item that has a time or max item limit per server.

 
Hrm okay, well not exactly the point I was trying to get at. I'm not looking for a reason as to why it happens, as you said you can fill in the blank with your imagination, but rather I was trying to make a suggestion to give the breakdown a meaningful and more importantly fun purpose. So, what I meant is I don't like the sound of random breakdowns for "no fun reason". The point of a game is to have fun, and simply breaking down, hopping off, repair, then back on just doesn't sound fun.
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I'm picking up what you're putting down now. :)

Here is the problem. If a breakdown triggers a random encounter in order to make things fun then you will come to always expect some kind of encounter or approaching horde whenever your vehicle breaks down. It just needs to be a rare random chance and sometimes you get out and repair it and get back in and drive off and other times it will be at the worst possible time and then things will get interesting.

I think that if it doesn't happen at all if you keep your vehicle well maintained and by driving well then that is a great feature. When it does happen it will be annoying sometimes, terrifying sometimes, and could start a chain of events that totally disrupts you from your plans and goals which in a survival game is exactly what needs to happen at times.

 
Originally we thought they would be purple only, but then I was thinking, doesn't that make this a 2% feature? Most people never make it to level 100, so why put all this work into it so 2% of the audience might start to see them? Let them spawn in all colors sooner so maybe by day 30 you find your first brown legendary item and as the game progresses you start seeing better quality ones and higher tier ones come in.
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Counterpoint...it might just be the thing that keeps me playing to level 100. Right now, game fizzles around 50 'cause I've already got all the cool stuff. Legendary should be legendary...only spawning 1 Legendary per game world for each tool/weapon. Make collecting them a thing, trading them a thing, hunting down the guy who has the Legendary Black M60 and taking it from him a thing...

 
I don't like the sound of random breakdowns for no reason either, that's just a boring and even annoying event. But what if there was a reason? Say it happened to be a RARE occurrence, and that it was actually a trigger for an event?
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I was thinking something along the lines of "a tire has blown out and you need to replace it" or "the engine exploded because you were driving through the desert at top RPM and you need to replace it".

 
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