PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[madmole]

the game needs a setting for the cost of the goods for the trader. This would be a logical continuation of the loot settings.For example, I want loot to be small, but the cost of the items found was high.

also need to add settings the RW gen. So that you can create a world without a trader. Many people would like to play without a trader.

The game doesn't need 80 billion settings, you simply need mods. I'm not saying having an economy slider is a bad thing, but it just makes balancing default settings a moving target by adding more stuff.

A lot of you have completely forgotten what its like to be a new player and continue to want things that take 250 hours of play time to even think about.

No, we're not doing no trader versions, we're filling the world with NPCs not removing them. Have some self control and don't use them, noone forces you to use them.

This is 7 Days to Die, not a simulation. That is what mods are for. Lets stay on topic and talk alpha 18 balance, not pimp dreams or mods.

 

[madmole]

My only real issue with that is that shotguns with buckshot are frequently used in home defense scenarios expressly because they won't over-penetrate walls like a 5.56 or 7.62 can. Yes, I know fun gameplay trumps realism, but the damage to containers from an accidental shot or near-miss is actually a problem.
Could it be lowered at least on the standard ammo so that a point-blank shot where one block gets all pellets will still shatter it, but a stray pellet from a middle-distance shot won't wreck the chest you're working towards? That would keep from having to switch ammo but still alleviate the issue.

What chests are you destroying? Most every good loot container has a decent amount of health, and all the boxes have a protective wooden shipping crate around them.

 

[madmole]

@jwagne51
True however, spec-ing into heavy armor does the same thing. It's a bit of a moot point. Heavy armor spec-ing shouldn't give more mobility but rather more protection. Being sneaky doesn't really work right now so that's a bit moot as well. Doesn't matter if you're wearing light or heavy. Zeds wake up the same and stay asleep the same regardless.

None of this is true.

 

[Vintorez]

I don't know where exactly the break point was, but I noticed that with Rank 5 Archery, 4 ranks of Run and Gun and with the Bandolier mod I'm able to fire a compound crossbow faster than the compound bow with non-charged shots. Not sure if you want the crossbow to be able to completely overtake the bow like this.

Edit: Went and retested this and found it was only true when going by the ammo counter. By spam clicking I'm able to occasionally get what I can only describe as double shots where the game is sorta fighting itself between the actual reload and drawing the bow. Not sure what could be done to make it smoother but the charge up bar does make it awkward to try to fire the bow at its fastest speed. It does give me the idea of a weapon mod that disables the charge up mechanic to facilitate faster firing, I believe charging up the shot only makes the arrow fly quicker but doesn't add damage, or at least it feels that way.

You also can't detonate landmines by shooting them with bows or crossbows, but they will be destroyed like a regular block when you shoot them with enough arrows.

 

[Drunknmunkey]

None of this is true.

The difference between Steel and Military @ skill lvl 5 and improved fittings

armor rating 16%

mobility 17.7%

Noise, not improved by specs: Military=50% Steel=100% only muffled fittings changes this so you're still 50% loud in light armor.

In my personal opinion these numbers are not a very good difference between light and heavy armor in the sense of choosing one over the other.

 

[HornBloweR]

The game doesn't need 80 billion settings, you simply need mods. I'm not saying having an economy slider is a bad thing, but it just makes balancing default settings a moving target by adding more stuff.
A lot of you have completely forgotten what its like to be a new player and continue to want things that take 250 hours of play time to even think about.

No, we're not doing no trader versions, we're filling the world with NPCs not removing them. Have some self control and don't use them, noone forces you to use them.

This is 7 Days to Die, not a simulation. That is what mods are for. Lets stay on topic and talk alpha 18 balance, not pimp dreams or mods.

You're absolutely right madmole! Btw. the alpha 18 is amazing

 

[Axebeard]

@jwagne51 Being sneaky doesn't really work right now

???

Being sneaky works great. You barely have to run 20m to lose a pack of zombies at night, and if you don't walk over trash like a doofus, you can easily sneak right past MOST zeds. Not all, but most.

- - - Updated - - -

Hello,Edit: i forgot to mention, one thing is missing from the crafting part, you don't actually see the general stats about what you are about to craft, base melee damage, resistance, ligth armor rating, and so on. This means you have to craft an item to actually see the stats, i know there is some rng about the stats too, but the base statistics should be display before crafting (imo).

This please.

 

[Drunknmunkey]

@Axebeard

I should have specified in regards to sleeper zeds. It just doesn't seem to matter if you get to close to them but, maybe that has changed recently.

 

[Axebeard]

@Drunknmunkey

To be fair, I always use a bit of stealth in the early game, but I see sleepers as easy targets so I never try to sneak PAST them, just AROUND them to get a good angle for a headshot.

 

[NukemDed]

My only real issue with that is that shotguns with buckshot are frequently used in home defense scenarios expressly because they won't over-penetrate walls like a 5.56 or 7.62 can. Yes, I know fun gameplay trumps realism, but the damage to containers from an accidental shot or near-miss is actually a problem.
Could it be lowered at least on the standard ammo so that a point-blank shot where one block gets all pellets will still shatter it, but a stray pellet from a middle-distance shot won't wreck the chest you're working towards? That would keep from having to switch ammo but still alleviate the issue.

had to laugh at this one. i can just see myself handing my shotgun over to one of my boys and telling him to be careful when blowing holes in walls

seriously though (actually not) i handed it over to #1 for his first try - i had taken the shells out when he wasnt looking - and yelled out BANG when he pulled the trigger. he wasnt impressed but his 3 younger brothers still give him s**t about it.

 

[BobbyLee298]

hopefully it gets better.
I liked the idea of the sub machinegun being a mp5/10 because I was a tom clancy rainbow six fan (the novel not the game). However in practice it was a bit of a turd.

bring back 10mm give us a Glock 20, add more calibers, maybe make mods that change a weapons caliber... add a M4/m16/AR15 this game is based in a fictionalized america is it not?

Heres a mod for you then. It addes more calibers and repurposes some of the games weapons to create new weapons such as a saiga-12 and a Rem 7600. https://www.nexusmods.com/7daystodie/mods/390

 

[custom_hero]

The game doesn't need 80 billion settings, you simply need mods. I'm not saying having an economy slider is a bad thing, but it just makes balancing default settings a moving target by adding more stuff.
A lot of you have completely forgotten what its like to be a new player and continue to want things that take 250 hours of play time to even think about.

No, we're not doing no trader versions, we're filling the world with NPCs not removing them. Have some self control and don't use them, noone forces you to use them.

This is 7 Days to Die, not a simulation. That is what mods are for. Lets stay on topic and talk alpha 18 balance, not pimp dreams or mods.

Balance is a subtle, static thing.

You most likely want to find a common balance for all the game difficulties.

But there is, many different game styles, different levels of players.

It is already easy for someone to play with the settings of insane 25% loot and 25% exp. Someone on Nomad often dies.

if you are looking for balance, you will have to remove the difficulty levels (give the opportunity to customize everything to the player) or tie everything in the game to the difficulty level. (not only hp/damage value zombie).

The solution to all this would be, after you solve all the problems with the balance of the game, add a separate window with settings for everything that is in the game.

There are such wonderful games as factorio, project zomboid, space engineers, various rts games, where everything is also configured thoroughly.

Where, if desired, in advanced settings, you can configure each parameter separately.

or adding an official (from pimps) game configurator. Which runs through the steam launcher.

This is 7 Days to Die, not a simulation. That is what mods are for. Lets stay on topic and talk alpha 18 balance, not pimp dreams or mods.

To change the difficult of the game, no one will create or download a mod.

I would not name it a mod. This is just a advanced game difficulty settings.

perhaps the presence of such advanced settings is a reason for players to return to the game

let's try this time with other settings to complete the game.

 

[White-Gandalf]

XP progression exponent should be lowered instead of ascent clipped

I am now in the endgame for the first time in A18 and have the impression that level gaining was better balanced in previous alphas. I acknowledge the desire of many, if not most, players from previous alphas to slow down the progression a bit, but by raising the exponential factor from 1.015 to 1.05, despite removing the low level cap of previous alphas, you effectively introduced a new level cap that is way lower than it ever was. I cannot imagine how anyone could go beyond level 100, even with the ascend cap at level 60.

I nowadays (at level around 70) get no more than barely one level per ingame day, and that only when i dig like insane with an auger. Questing or killing zombies is by far in no way leading to any noticeable level gain.

While that may be OK regarding capping of the difficulty level of horde nights (don't know if that was intended by funpimps), it well limits the fun in the endgame phase. At least for those who play the game with a fun factor in character development, that stagnation limits their fun.

Now, regarding the possibly gain-able levels, the limit of character development at beginning of the endgame phase is around 60 levels. It seems to me being a very well defined reason why you defined the ascend cap at just level 60. There is not much more the character will develop, if that cap would not have been introduced with the last update.

Even with that ascend cap, it becomes boringly slow.

With those 60 levels, you can barely max out exactly 1 of the 5 perk trees (9 perk types per attribute, 5 perk levels per perk = 45 perk points, plus 20 points in the concerning attribute = 65 points per perk tree). IF and only if you complete ignore all others. Which no one who not already knows the game from in and out would ever do. Such type of powergaming is in every existing game the endpoint of gaming for peoples that mastered the game to the roots. But it is far from having fun.

So, people playing the game for fun and not knowing the last freaking detail of optimization in advance, will likely experience a critical fun limitation.

The impression that has grown in me is: That ♥♥♥♥s. To get to a level of 130, which you would need to have the preferred perk tree somewhat maxed while having a bit of accompanying perks in other trees built up, you would have to madly auger-dig through mountains of mud for about 60 ingame days without any need of the resources, only to get those ♥♥♥♥ing learning points. Because other activities would by far not yield a fraction of the necessary XP.

Summing this up, i recommend lowering the exponential factor again, to something higher than in alphas until 17, but rather lower than that of A18. I for myself modded that exponential factor to something like 1.02 in the previous alphas and was satisfied. In the current perk scaling however, it maybe would best fit to set it at 1.03 - remarkably lower progression than in previous alphas, thus effectively limiting the level at around 100-150 (depending on the penetrance of the player), but sufficiently quicker and more prolonged progression than in the current state. The same time i would scrap the ascend cap.

So for my next playthrough, i will modd it that way and see if it's more satisfying than at the moment.

 

[White-Gandalf]

To give a positive experience to protocol: Digging is fun by itself...

While i am digging like a madman - for reasons i described in a shortly previous post -, i am having pure fun for the well made mouthwatering ore textures and the well made texture processing at material transitions.

I am extremely turned on by the textures of iron and lead. And that of the gravel in between. And how well you can predict what is what and how to dig to prevent things from collapsing. For example.

In comparison to previous alphas, i appreciate that to be a mayor progression. Do not (!) scrap that system ever from now on! You have done exceptional good work here, by my humble opinion.

 

[White-Gandalf]

I am very attracted by the comment of custom_hero regarding game difficulty setting.

In the process of playing a game with enthusiasm, you go a very long way from being a complete newbie - who should never ever be frustrated for the fact of being a newbie - to being an optimization and reaction tank who would be able to take on a whole horde of newbies singlehandedly and with a club only.

If there would be configurable scaling factors for a range of aspects, it could contribute to a higher replayability. If you divide it to different scales for different aspects, you could accommodate different playstyles and progression roads from different natures of gamers.

I would not blast that ideas into oblivion just for simplification of the code. Those configurable variables would be not more than variables, after all. You do not need to do more than a replacement of anyways already existing constants with those variables, after all.

 

[Roland]

Since you’re already at high gamestage why not turn xp earning up to 300% so you can keep leveling at an acceptable rate? Nobody wants to tell White Gandalf at level 100, “ You shall not pass!”

 

[Scyris]

What chests are you destroying? Most every good loot container has a decent amount of health, and all the boxes have a protective wooden shipping crate around them.

Roughly anything that has about 100-200ish health with buckshot. Book shelves being the number 1 victim of being 1 shotted by stray shotgun pellets for me, with cabinets being a close second. Destroyed a few medical piles as well with a stray pellet or 2 multiple times as well. What usually happens is I unload a buckshot shell into a zombie at close range, but it doesn't take all 10 pellets to kill it, so the rest seem to just sort of phase thru the zombies body and hit whatever is behind it, which is useful if its another zombie, but annoying when its a bookshelf or something else as it'll most likely get destroyed. I got a solution though. Allow the player to convert the buckshot into a diff type of buckshot on the fly, that removes (or reduces it to 1 per pellet) the block damage, sort of like a toggle, but you have to do it with the ammo, can use the existing icon, and it'd just be a recipe and a item entry, a xml thing at most. Then again you'd have to add it to the shotgun's ammo selector, unsure how that process is. Have the looted/trader bought buckshot ammo just all be the normal ones. This way you got your block destroying buckshot, but now you have a option to convert to a type with 1 block dmg per pellet. Another solution is to just up the hp of certan lootables, namely, bookshelves and cabinets to be about 300, this way it'd prevent this I think.

 

[Scyris]

Since you’re already at high gamestage why not turn xp earning up to 300% so you can keep leveling at an acceptable rate? Nobody wants to tell White Gandalf at level 100, “ You shall not pass!”

Some players (like me) view changing stuff like that mid game as cheating. For example, if I start a game on hard difficulty, I will only lower it, but never raise it back up again once i've lowered it. Just like some consider junk turrets to be exploiting/cheating if used outside of horde night. Example if used for poi clearing=exploit/cheating as they too good for a 0 int build, for how much of a joke they make the game even as a 0 int build, that knockdown they have is godly. I'd like to see the knockdown chance removed entirely, unless you have points in the turret syndrome perk, which it then adds some of it back, with the full amount being at 5/5 turret syndrome.

 

[White-Gandalf]

Since you’re already at high gamestage why not turn xp earning up to 300% so you can keep leveling at an acceptable rate? Nobody wants to tell White Gandalf at level 100, “ You shall not pass!”

Yes, that's complete correct, of course. You know: The internal pig dog that argues: "You should get through it with those chosen settings!"

The XP earning slider is, of course, a valid and well thought individual mitigation tools for exact this aspect.

So the post is simply meant as an opinion regarding the "default balance". In the way of: "I had a better impression in previous alphas with default settings". No more, no less.

Lastly, if the funpimps experience a greater lot of people using that XP adaption just for the late game phase, it's just an indicator that the balance could be adjusted in the direction i suggested. Not a pressing necessity, but a would-be-nice.

 

[Roland]

Some players (like me) view changing stuff like that mid game as cheating. For example, if I start a game on hard difficulty, I will only lower it, but never raise it back up again once i've lowered it. Just like some consider junk turrets to be exploiting/cheating if used outside of horde night. Example if used for poi clearing=exploit/cheating as they too good for a 0 int build, for how much of a joke they make the game even as a 0 int build, that knockdown they have is godly. I'd like to see the knockdown chance removed entirely, unless you have points in the turret syndrome perk, which it then adds some of it back, with the full amount being at 5/5 turret syndrome.

If settings were meant to be locked in once chosen they would be locked in once chosen. If you aren’t having fun and a provided setting change can restore that fun then....

@White-Gandalf you are 100% correct. I wasn’t saying your feedback wasn’t good.