PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[Gareee]

@Madmole:

Been gone camping for a week (in refreshing 35 degree weather in a tent) and I know you are balancing loot tables, but I've still yet to see the steel arrow schematic in several playthroughs now.

That means stealth playthrough might be nerfed too much because you simply can't do high enough damage with a bow after day 30 or so when zeds get tougher. Maybe its percentage chances of finding need to be increased? (Steel tool parts and schematic seem fine now.)

I'm also swimming in too much ammo and once you get silencers, you can pretty much just run through a quest poi with a silenced pistol. After horde night 28 I still have 8 stacks of 7.62 and 4 stacks of 9mm, with very little ammo crafting.

Vehicle progression feels good now, and not spending any points for vehicles is possible.

Also as far as future vehicle damage is concerned, I truly hate the bumpy terrain now, making off roading a pita. Having them take damage as well and constantly needing repairs might trigger a lot of casual players.

(Speaking of damage, the gyro seems to take a lot of landing damage and it always seems to need to be repaired.. maybe that can be reduced, its health increased or a shock absorber vehicle mod can be made for it?)

Traders still only seem to be pulling from a small percent of eligible pois for quests... that makes the number of different pois seems smaller than it actually is because you keep getting sent to the same pois over and over again.

Other than rwg and the affore mentioned repetitive quest location issues a18 feels tight

Oh! Also still never seen a demolisher in game.. not sure if I'm lucky or not.

 

[Onarr]

I just disagree that they are better than what we have, they are a small subset. Does a tinkerer practice medicine in your mind? No he works in a shop on.. stuff. Does a miner kick ass with a shotgun? No evidence of that IMO. Its best as is the current names can easily encapsulate all the current perks and future ones, yet "tinkerer" might sound cool but nobody would guess where doctor skills would be with that setup IMO, but anyone who played former RPGs with INT would just know, because it just works, TM.

Ill pitch in, because I like the challenge.

Perception - Scavanger

Strength - Brute

Fortitude - Mountaineer

Agility - Stalker

Inteligence - Scholar

 

[madmole]

BTW - Speaking of Pure Mineral Water...why can't I find it in vending machines? it is exactly the kind of thing I would expect to find in them.

Actual survivors are smart and get water instead of soda. But wait I guess the soda is gone too :/

 

[madmole]

I honestly think a combination of the perk system you have now with LBD would be the best of both worlds.

And I honestly think your thinking is flawed. Lets see to raise your perception skill you have to aim down sights at least 500 hours. To raise your strength you have to find a pre war gym and watch your character do reps on various machines, and constantly be in a surplus of calories. To raise your intellect you have to collect a bunch of books with actual text and 500 pages, and flip through every page and answer a quiz at the end. To raise agility, yeah Oblivion had it right, you sneak for hours in real time by walking into a wall in the corner of a pub, and the other way would be to fall and break your leg repeatedly. If I haven't shown you the error of your LBD ways by now, I'll just show you the door instead.

 

[madmole]

I can only go by my playthrough and what I've seen content creators use. Can food has no negative effects and is plentiful. I have so much canned food stored up I haven't even touched any of the meat I've gotten from animals. I watch a lot of Games4kickz videos since A15 and this is the First Alpha were he said he feels no need to farm.

If the hearty meal recipes gave a timed buff like the books did in A17, I think it would incentivize people to farm ingredients.

We are planning buffs for advanced meals. You must be playing solo with 300% loot or you just sit in your base and don't use any calories. I have to eat at least 6-10 cans a day to keep up with my action heavy play style which is sprinting/punching/mining non stop.

 

[madmole]

Alright, valid point on building back to back. But if you'll recall, I've been pointing out the absolutely ABSURD numbers of Demolishers on low-level Horde Nights since A18 Experimental dropped. I mean, when you've got 4-5 Level 30ish guys and you get FORTY DEMOLISHERS, it's a bit excessive. To be told the solution is build a tower, instead of "well hey, maybe the game shouldn't be kicking the ♥♥♥♥ out of Day 28 players in quantity", especially when it's my preferred defensive style, stings a bit. Sorry for popping off like that.

It is random. If we knee jerk and tone things down from everyone like you who comes in here with an outlier case then guess what? The game is too easy/boring/deleted. Its' fine, deal with it, we have given you 50000 ways to do it its up to you to discover the way that is the right combination of efficient/fun/rewarding to find it.

 

[madmole]

So, I hesitate to suggest this, but I think the Art of Mining full-set bonus may be just a HAIR overpowered when combined with an Auger. I was just able to pull 34,000 lead with 7/7 Art of Mining, 4/5 Motherlode/Miner 69er, and Blackstrap Coffee in what would be just about one night on normal 60-minute days. It was not uncommon for me to hear triple-shot breaks where I one-shot 3 ores in a row (as far as I could tell). It probably works well and feels good with a steel pickaxe or maybe even an iron pickaxe, but the massive number of very small hits that an Auger does seems to really badly ramp up the rewards.
I would be delighted to be told that this is working as intended and will gladly carry on prepping all the materials we need for a horde night in less than three nights of mining, but I figured I should point it out, because it sure as heck feels like it's overpowered.

Late game with 5k rounds needed, do you really want to spend ALL your spare time mining? You do need time to get brass.

 

[madmole]

As I understand it, you are decreasing food loot tables, but honestly I dont think that is the best solution. IMHO food should be valuable trader item, as in zombie apocalypse is highly valued. Being able to trade it for more dukes would be nice, now it just sits in my crate never to be used. Late game I dont really care about wild life.
It would also open possibilities to live as a hunter/farmer - making lot of food and exchanging it for other resources.

If we raise the price, it costs much more to buy and the early game guy starves and the late game farmer profits too much. We're not reducing food, we're reducing EVERYTHING.

 

[meganoth]

... I find agility, int and hell perception mostly useless but I find pistol to be a decently versatile weapon, but its not worth spending all those points in agility just for handgun's when I got no use really for any of the other perks,...

Solution: Search for a good pistol, put only 1 or 2 points into the pistol perk and achieve about 80% of the damage potential of a fully specced agility player. The number is a very rough estimate assuming Gazz was correct about quality and attribute/perks giving roughly the same damage enhancement.

 

[madmole]

Solution: remove armor use as a LBD skill, once clubs are 100, it lets you kill zombies even faster to earn exp faster. Its more I hate the fact weapons are locked to stats, I find agility, int and hell perception mostly useless but I find pistol to be a decently versatile weapon, but its not worth spending all those points in agility just for handgun's when I got no use really for any of the other perks, action skills for each weapon type and mining tools with the perk(s) being based on hitting certan levels in the action skill for its weapon/mining tools would solve this problem. Still keep the stat system, just have weapons/mining tools based on action skills instead of locked to stats. For mining tools miner 69'er and motherload being based on what your mining skill is at. Perks unlock at 0, 20, 40, 60 then 80 skill. Crafting quality is still based on the perks level like in a18.
As for your thing about clubs how is that any different than A18? once you max the perk, you can't get any stronger with it, so that point is completly pointless as both systems end up that way, its just LBD makes more sense as you have to actually USE the weapon or tool to get good at it, instead of just put points into it and magically be good at it.

I just feel a hybrid of the 2 systems with action skills for weapons and mining tools (and their perks like miner 69'er, motherload, pummel pete etc), and the stat system for the rest of the perks would be overall the best system at least imo.

There is no such thing as EXP with LBD. Once your attribute hits 10 you can no longer gain any "anything, xp, skill" from using a club. Skyrim has this same problem, which is why they switched to XP in Fallout. They semi solved it in a patch with dragonborn where you can reset it to 15 and refund all your perks... to grind it up again, but yeah thats like bringing a plastic butter knife to a magical sword fight late game.

Sorry but we're not doing away with attributes or what they gate. An ala carte perk system has no flavor to it, no downsides, no reward its just pure sugar and gravy to appease 8 year olds.

Now enough LBD. We'll be handing out infractions for anyone who talks about this long dead horse.

 

[dcsobral]

Late game with 5k rounds needed, do you really want to spend ALL your spare time mining? You do need time to get brass.

Five, ten minutes mining (auger, all mining books) gets you 50k iron. 50k iron converted into turret ammo and sold to traders get you 50k brass (hearsay -- I haven't done it myself). It's not a lot of time investment.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Ummm how about no Take the roads to the trader quest as close as you can get, then walk the rest of the way, or tell the trader to shove it up his ass, or risk driving there off road. The choice is yours. I used to have 40" monster mudder truck so I know a bit about the topic. Take tools and be prepared to stall in deep water, etc.
Post apocalypse off roading is not the same as modern driving in the ditch a bit or through a farmers fields for the fun of it.

lol! I've gotten stuck in the sand in the desert, in a muddy trench and more.

Say delayed rather than stuck.

Some of the roads themselves need a bit of work too.

Deep water? Ok, if y'all take a wheeled vehicle in there, you deserve to get stuck.

Oh wait, there IS a vehicle that can go through the badlands. Gyrocopter.

Guess I'll have to work on getting one of those in the future, and figuring out the controls.



(and yeah, the trader is gonna get some choice words in the future)

 

[madmole]

so I like the Ore nodes but one thing noticed on an 8K make that with 10-40 players and past day 300 it is hard to find mineral nodes.
Any thoughts on how to deal with that?

Maybe a resource finder mod or trader quest I can purchase that allows me to get a mineral claim?

We don't support more than 8 players so I can't sympathize. I'd just look for holes in the ground or mining lids and raid their mines, or just dig down, literally there is ore everywhere.

 

[madmole]

@Madmole:
Been gone camping for a week (in refreshing 35 degree weather in a tent) and I know you are balancing loot tables, but I've still yet to see the steel arrow schematic in several playthroughs now.

That means stealth playthrough might be nerfed too much because you simply can't do high enough damage with a bow after day 30 or so when zeds get tougher. Maybe its percentage chances of finding need to be increased? (Steel tool parts and schematic seem fine now.)

I'm also swimming in too much ammo and once you get silencers, you can pretty much just run through a quest poi with a silenced pistol. After horde night 28 I still have 8 stacks of 7.62 and 4 stacks of 9mm, with very little ammo crafting.

Vehicle progression feels good now, and not spending any points for vehicles is possible.

Also as far as future vehicle damage is concerned, I truly hate the bumpy terrain now, making off roading a pita. Having them take damage as well and constantly needing repairs might trigger a lot of casual players.

(Speaking of damage, the gyro seems to take a lot of landing damage and it always seems to need to be repaired.. maybe that can be reduced, its health increased or a shock absorber vehicle mod can be made for it?)

Traders still only seem to be pulling from a small percent of eligible pois for quests... that makes the number of different pois seems smaller than it actually is because you keep getting sent to the same pois over and over again.

Other than rwg and the affore mentioned repetitive quest location issues a18 feels tight

Oh! Also still never seen a demolisher in game.. not sure if I'm lucky or not.

Vehicles need risk and downsides so we're willing to trigger lots of tears to introduce a proper damage/repair system which also solves blood moon driving exploits. You must be a horrible driver (no offense) to cause damage to the gyro, its so forgiving. Try Rust's gyro lol it takes a ton of practice to master but it is rewarding once you do.

 

[madmole]

Ill pitch in, because I like the challenge.
Perception - Scavanger

Strength - Brute

Fortitude - Mountaineer

Agility - Stalker

Inteligence - Scholar

Those are actually pretty good but we just sent of localization to 984 languages so we're not touching anything right now.

 

[Gareee]

@Madmole

And of course as soon as I mention never finding the steel arrow schematic, I finally find one...AND the compound crossbow.

A few more observations:

The rotor rotation on the gyro looks way too slow and clunky. Can someone look at prop animation in other games and find something that looks better?

An auto level key for the gyro might be nice, since there is no screen hud info. For controllers, it could be bound to R3.

I'm not sure what additional mods you are working on for weapons, but something to speed up the crossbow would be nice. It just seems way slow after using the compound bow. (Maybe I need to perk into archery more to speed that up?)

I'm trying using the gyro for quests, and I'm liking it more 5han the motorcycle now because I don't have to deal with the bumpy terrain. Could the bigger tank mods for the motorized tools be repurposed as a mod that also works in the gyro to give it a larger tank?

And I must have hit something with the gyro...a hour using it since and I'm only seeing 1% damage on it. (Might have been when a back wheel was stuck on something and I couldn't get it off without emptying it and manually picking it up and replacing it down.)

It could use more backup speed for ground manuvering.

I like vehicle damage coming back, but the bumpy terrain is just a pain. Maybe that splat could be used less or be limited and used more often on higher elevations?

 

[madmole]

Five, ten minutes mining (auger, all mining books) gets you 50k iron. 50k iron converted into turret ammo and sold to traders get you 50k brass (hearsay -- I haven't done it myself). It's not a lot of time investment.

That seems highly unlikely without 300% block damage and you were stoned at the time so an hour went by and it felt like 5 minutes. On my last guy I mined from dark to dawn in a normal game 60 minutes days, so that had to have been 20 minutes and I got 3k or so. I wasn't maxed out yet, but had at least 3 - 4 ranks of both mining perks and an auger. It typically takes me about 3-5 nights a week to get barely enough mats to make 5k rounds of 762.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

I approve of MM's statement.

I seriously either play completely bad, possible, or I just don't know enough of the shortcuts, but I am barely keeping up with the horde nights.

I just perked into Int so i can make a workbench since the trader I am by only has had one workbench that I bought.

I have not found an auger, and i just got the ability to do Steel ax.

I do have an awesome rifle, and an M60, but again, bullet making has been limited, so tons of time prepping for the 7th day.

Brass, man i don’t know how i get brass from doors or sinks but I just get wood, scrap, and pipes.

Have a motorcycle, that does seem pretty invincible, but I use the roads, and then run to where I need to go.

I love finding a mine where i get coal, iron, and lead.... JUST AWESOME!

I think the Zeds are fine and i am at 8.

I have not seen a demolisher but based on my last post, i am good at demolishing without their help.

So i hear peoples feedback but my playthrough is not theirs that is for sure.

To me, as a casual player it feels right with default and 8 alive.

75% block damage to the Zeds, and everything else on default..

60 min days.

So for me its fun, and i wish there was more food, less infection, and more brass , again... could be my playstyle.

Oh, I am at day 70

Semper Fi

 

[dcsobral]

That seems highly unlikely without 300% block damage and you were stoned at the time so an hour went by and it felt like 5 minutes. On my last guy I mined from dark to dawn in a normal game 60 minutes days, so that had to have been 20 minutes and I got 3k or so. I wasn't maxed out yet, but had at least 3 - 4 ranks of both mining perks and an auger. It typically takes me about 3-5 nights a week to get barely enough mats to make 5k rounds of 762.

No, that part checks out for me -- the 5 minutes stat is from the person I was talking to about this. I'd say more like 10 minutes, but, yeah, you can definitely do that. I take about 20, 30 minutes, real time, to gather 90k iron (enough to refill all my three forges). Level 4 in Miner and Mother, purple auger (decent random stats too) with breaker, buster, digger and diamond, drinking coffee, all mining magazines. Having all mining magazines is the main thing, since you can one-shot iron ore like crazy with it. For me, it happens every three or four seconds, but when it does it hits two or three blocks in a row. Since I've finished playing that world, I can log in, find a new iron mine (the one I had was exhausted), and time it.

 

[Thecolours]

We are planning buffs for advanced meals. You must be playing solo with 300% loot or you just sit in your base and don't use any calories. I have to eat at least 6-10 cans a day to keep up with my action heavy play style which is sprinting/punching/mining non stop.

I have 5/5 in lucky looter. I haven't touched loot%. The shamway recipe has given me 100's of canned food. I would say my playstyle is similar to yours. I also always buy up the food everytime I visit a trader.