PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

[dcsobral]

The compass direction when choosing trader quests is a really nice touch. So nice that could we please have it on the quest screen as well? Sometimes I'm wondering which quest I'm looking at in the map, but there's too many with about the same distance.

 

[The Gronk]

I like that idea. Might be a good alternative to worrying about the continuation of low-tier quests from the trader.What’s the reward and how would you deliver it to the player in a reasonable way without the need for all these NPCs?

The same way you would safely hand off goods in a dangerous environment, a dead drop.

Have a very simple fetch/buried supplies quest as a way of getting the reward.

You could also have the trader as an intermediary, the trader holds on to the goods and hands them over when the mission is complete.

On the subject of traders... wow, are they waaaaayyyyyy OP. Canned food is sold for a pittance and the quests give far too many dukes as a reward. Where's the logic in having the safe food worth far less than food that can poison you? I'm pretty sure canned food will become far more scarce and valuable when it can no longer be produced.

 

[Lonestarcanuck]

I like that idea. Might be a good alternative to worrying about the continuation of low-tier quests from the trader.What’s the reward and how would you deliver it to the player in a reasonable way without the need for all these NPCs?

like in World of Warcraft - there are job boars in cities or small towns near the Inn/Pub or the Church. you take a job and come back to a town person to turn in.

 

[Chairkicker]

It was never intended to be a single stat build. I diversify into 3+ attributes every game, but always have one main focus. It will give players ability to get some side perks without breaking the bank, and add more 2-3 rank mini perks that are cool. Trying to have 5 meaningful ranks to every perk was a noble idea but we'll be able to do lots of cool stuff throwing that design out the window, like I did with the book perks.
To me scavenging has more opportunity, maybe a 2-3 tier science perk, etc.

Fascinating. I look forward to what you'll come up with. Considering the brilliance of the A18 skill rework, I have faith whatever you come up with will be well-designed. I think we're reaching the point where there's a ton of choices as to how a build can go, instead of just the 5 separate builds. Though admittedly, the int weapons still need some work; I don't think anyone does an int build that actually uses stun batons and junk turrets (besides how useful junk turrets are for base defense, obviously, but a non-int build can make use of that.)

I haven't seen that video in quite some time, and don't recall that. I was animating at the time I don't think I would commit to that. Glory kills could be nice, but we need to save some features for our next games, we can't keep adding stuff forever.

I can't say I'd want to see glory kills in 7 days. I'd hate to see the pace get broken up by having to be stuck in an animation anytime I want a zombie dead, especially when there's multiple enemies around. They get really repetitive, too.

Its a balance between performance and design. More zombies standing around annoying you out in the wild doesn't really add any game play. They can't hurt you unless you let them. Cities are already slow from detailed POIs, so adding more to cities is challenging on older rigs. We don't even have city spawn groups so we can't even say its more busy in cities yet either. The plan is to write some kind of random event manager that populates predicted areas players are moving to with some mini event so everywhere you go there is a chance something big could happen, but not just spawn guys everywhere with no way to despawn them elegantly.

I play with a mod that increases both wilderness spawns and the size (and frequency?) of wandering hordes. My PC isn't that great but it runs quite well. Further, I've found that combined with an increase to zombie sight distance and an increase in day speed to "jog", I'm constantly having to be on my toes, especially in cities. It's incredibly difficult even just on Nomad difficulty, and the increase in tension is palpable. I suppose on default settings increased zombie spawns don't do much, but I feel there's potential in changing the gameplay up. But then, that's a lot of knobs to add, so maybe this is the sort of thing best left to mods.

 

[iamnuff]

I didn't think about this until recently, but renaming bundles of stuff into stacks is an issue because it runs into preexisting terminology.

Someone asks me how much wood i've harvested while I was out cutting trees, I say 'three stacks'

That means i have three inventory-slots of 6000 each. It could also mean I have one inventory slot of 3, which can be broken down into three slots of 6000.

A bundle is functionally a stack, but it can also be stacked with other stuff, because it was bundled.

Basically, 'a stack' is already the name for multiple of the same item contained in the same inventory slot.

A stack of water is 15 jars. A stack of dirty water is... I dunno, like 400?

A stack of shotgun shells is 250. (but a box is only 100) 9mm stacks to 300. 762 stacks to 150.

Changing somethingvery similar to have the same term is just going to add confusion when talking to other players, especially when some players have the option to make bundles (with the skillbook that allows it) and others do not.

Hell, trying to differentiate between the two different types of stacks in this post alone required me to use a term that was removed from the game, otherwise it'd be impossible to tell what I was talking about.

Rename them back into bundles or pallets, please.

 

[iamnuff]

I'm loving the new perk trees. I've run through 3 different builds and each one felt like a new experience because I was focusing on different types of weapons and hunting/gathering vs farming/mining.
Perception felt a little weaker than the other trees, especially questing and looting POIs. The spear is a fun new addition, but it's got really low stopping power compared to other weapons (even the perked up fists really let you smack z's around in melee). Sniper rifles are less effective in close quarters, especially when you run into a large group in a small space (like at end of the Shamway factory).

So your main firearm is optimized for single target at long range (and very loud), and when you inevitably get forced into a brawl (like with the huge groups of construction workers) you also have a melee specialization with really low stun chance and no sweep attack.

Would you consider swapping the spear and bladed weapon perks?

Now that bleeds apply a slow it would fit the sniper flavor. If you get caught in close quarters you can give them a quick slice then create some space to line up a shot.

The spear also feels like a really great weapon to sneak up and throw into unsuspecting targets because the throw does so much damage, but I lost a couple of good spears because the target took off running with it. I started putting points into Hidden Strike on my Perception build just because of how bad it was to throw my main weapon into a target and instead of dying it alerted its friends and now I've got 2 other Z's in my face and no spear in hand. The answer to that was to start carrying a secondary weapon or throwing lower level spears, but that starts to eat up your toolbar. If you're going to throw a precious Steel Spear at all you want a massive sneak bonus so the target dies instantly and you can sneak over and pick it up.

Plus, because of the extra reach on the spear, when you're first starting out on a fresh AGI build the extra reach would help you still get those sneaky stabby kills when you only have 1 or 2 points in Ninja Movement and can't get as close without waking the target up. Over all, the spear just feels like it's the optimal melee weapon for stealth kills, and Perception could use a melee weapon that's stronger in a brawl to complement its weaker ranged options indoors.

Just some food for thought.

(I know the simple solution is to just start bringing a shotgun when questing because they're still highly effective even without the perks, but then I found I was never really using the weapons I invested perks into, except on horde night.)

When I really wanted to use my rifle in a POI I'd find a choke point and drop a spike trap in it, then make a bunch of noise. It was a fun game of trying to pick off everything that came running before they broke through, but you'd have to bust it down again before proceeding. I might update the Infiltrator perk so users can pick up any non-powered traps like spikes and mines much earlier in the tree. Then they could set up and take down sniper nests and clear by luring. (Plus I don't think I'll ever take that perk just for the reduced mine damage. Mines are so very rarely an issue unless you accidentally drive over one)

I dunno about swapping perks, but I know that perception seems fun in theory, but was a chore to play.

Spears are great, but I've had spears hit a guy and him get up and keep fighting. Lots of the time you can rip the spear out and finish him off with it, but if you hit an arm, it can be a pain to try to pull it out while he's attacking.

Sometimes you miss entirely and you have to run around him to get your weapon back.

Carrying a backup weapon... I used a club for that, but in the end I just switched to clubs, because it's a better weapon. Carrying multiple spears eats up too much hotbar.

I'd love to be able to stack them. (low stacks, only to 3 or five?) but they'd need to be the same tier, same quality, and it'd probably mess with your durability, too. Mechanically, I don't know how it'd work, but balance wise, it feels fair to me.

In addition, Perception builds REALLY struggle on horde-night specifically, and crowd-fighting in general.

The problem isn't that turning to aim with a rifle is slow (which should be the drawback of using rifles, compared to pistols) but that they all have such a terrible rate of fire.

The hunting rifle has one round, and loads slowly. The marksman rifle holds five rounds but has a terrible rof AND a slow reload.

You just don't shoot fast enough to deal with massive crowds. One/two-shotting normal zombies is nice, but the shotgun does that too, albeit at much shorter ranges, and even the double-barrel holds twice as many rounds as the hunting rifle, with similar stopping power.

Which is annoying because 'rifle' doesn't just mean sniper rifle.

A rifle can do pretty much a pistol can do, but at longer range and with less manoeuvrability.

I've suggested before that there should be rifles that are equivalent to the basic handgun. Semi-auto, fairly fast, low stopping power and a decent mag-size.

I don't know much about guns, but aren't AR-15's semi-auto as standard? You could base the model on that.

Or one of those varmint rifles that fires 9mm?

Or lower the marksman rifle to tier-2, reduce it's damage, speed it up a little, use that as your 'combat rifle' and for the tier-3, you throw in an elephant gun, that fires .44 but is as slow as the hunting rifle.

It could be interesting to have the same gun for the same tier of rifles and automatics, but one version fires automatically and one fires semi-auto, and you can switch which it is by changing out the trigger-group.

You'd need trigger-groups to not take up mod-slots any longer though, and to switch which perks apply depending on which trigger-group is equipped.

... and for trigger groups not only be equippable on rifles, otherwise the smg and handgun would be in trouble.

 

[Gazz]

In addition, Perception builds REALLY struggle on horde-night specifically, and crowd-fighting in general.

Explosives are under Perception. How is that not good against crowds?

 

[Callum123456789]

Explosives are under Perception. How is that not good against crowds?

I love letting a bunch of grenades into the crowds and if I don't have the resources I will use pipe bombs which also are pretty good when you perk into em

 

[madmole]

Any thoughts about having a Job board in each town/city ? like the hiding citizens are trying to get buildings cleared?

Lets keep this on topic with A18 balance, thanks.

 

[wolfbain5]

I've seen that problem with save upgrades, I assumed it was changing block data.

it was a brand new world and game. this and some poi's are filled with dirt for some odd reason

 

[madmole]

I'm loving the new perk trees. I've run through 3 different builds and each one felt like a new experience because I was focusing on different types of weapons and hunting/gathering vs farming/mining.
Perception felt a little weaker than the other trees, especially questing and looting POIs. The spear is a fun new addition, but it's got really low stopping power compared to other weapons (even the perked up fists really let you smack z's around in melee). Sniper rifles are less effective in close quarters, especially when you run into a large group in a small space (like at end of the Shamway factory).

So your main firearm is optimized for single target at long range (and very loud), and when you inevitably get forced into a brawl (like with the huge groups of construction workers) you also have a melee specialization with really low stun chance and no sweep attack.

Would you consider swapping the spear and bladed weapon perks?

Now that bleeds apply a slow it would fit the sniper flavor. If you get caught in close quarters you can give them a quick slice then create some space to line up a shot.

The spear also feels like a really great weapon to sneak up and throw into unsuspecting targets because the throw does so much damage, but I lost a couple of good spears because the target took off running with it. I started putting points into Hidden Strike on my Perception build just because of how bad it was to throw my main weapon into a target and instead of dying it alerted its friends and now I've got 2 other Z's in my face and no spear in hand. The answer to that was to start carrying a secondary weapon or throwing lower level spears, but that starts to eat up your toolbar. If you're going to throw a precious Steel Spear at all you want a massive sneak bonus so the target dies instantly and you can sneak over and pick it up.

Plus, because of the extra reach on the spear, when you're first starting out on a fresh AGI build the extra reach would help you still get those sneaky stabby kills when you only have 1 or 2 points in Ninja Movement and can't get as close without waking the target up. Over all, the spear just feels like it's the optimal melee weapon for stealth kills, and Perception could use a melee weapon that's stronger in a brawl to complement its weaker ranged options indoors.

Just some food for thought.

(I know the simple solution is to just start bringing a shotgun when questing because they're still highly effective even without the perks, but then I found I was never really using the weapons I invested perks into, except on horde night.)

When I really wanted to use my rifle in a POI I'd find a choke point and drop a spike trap in it, then make a bunch of noise. It was a fun game of trying to pick off everything that came running before they broke through, but you'd have to bust it down again before proceeding. I might update the Infiltrator perk so users can pick up any non-powered traps like spikes and mines much earlier in the tree. Then they could set up and take down sniper nests and clear by luring. (Plus I don't think I'll ever take that perk just for the reduced mine damage. Mines are so very rarely an issue unless you accidentally drive over one)

Perception is about laying down land mines to take care of the zombies you can't kill in time with your rifle. The problem is they don't give XP so nobody wants to use them. You have to use choke points with a perception build too and let them pile up at a framed doorway where you can penetrate several with one shot. That combined with pick up land mines should be pretty fun and effective, and you should get a silencer for your sniper. We have some stealth improvements planned as well so you can get multiple stealth shots off if you are shadowed and hidden at a good distance.

 

[madmole]

Tried editing tools, broke my game. Keeps me stuck in God mode.
Steps:

Started a new game played for a few hours.

Decided to check out the map a little and clicked on editing tools.

Clicked world editor

Clicked "Pregen02"

Flew around a bit, noticed that I was holding all my regular inventory. I thought that was wierd but quit out after I found a trader.

Started up my game again and was stuck in God mode.

I'm kind of sad I could ruin my game like that with no indication that everything would be instantly broken.

TFP any help????

Bug reports, not balance.

 

[madmole]

The same way you would safely hand off goods in a dangerous environment, a dead drop.
Have a very simple fetch/buried supplies quest as a way of getting the reward.

You could also have the trader as an intermediary, the trader holds on to the goods and hands them over when the mission is complete.

On the subject of traders... wow, are they waaaaayyyyyy OP. Canned food is sold for a pittance and the quests give far too many dukes as a reward. Where's the logic in having the safe food worth far less than food that can poison you? I'm pretty sure canned food will become far more scarce and valuable when it can no longer be produced.

The logic is to try food poisoning out without mass edits needed to support it for real. If we keep it like it is, we'll raise the cost.

 

[iamnuff]

Explosives are under Perception. How is that not good against crowds?

I thought explosives were under strength?

Either way, my and my buddy tossed grenades and explosive arrows into the horde over and over, but they barely made a dent.

Simply put, grenades are very expensive for their boom, and we rarely had more than ten each. (it's the springs cost, usually)

We did both stack up on explosive arrows but those mostly seem to knockdown, rarely to kill.

They're fun (though the explosion fx needs work) but they're just too expensive to use as your horde-night workhorse.

We typically both end up with AKs and we go through about five to ten stacks of rifle rounds each.

By horde four or five, we're talking hundreds of irradiated, and maybe a dozen demolishes.

Gamestate ramps up real fast when you have two players, and with the new pathing stuff, to stop you from being able to force them into a bottleneck, you can't rely on traps to do all the work anymore.

As for mines... see the stuff about the bottleneck.

Can you still five-layer concrete walls on three sides of your base to force zombies to come at you from the front?

 

[madmole]

Fascinating. I look forward to what you'll come up with. Considering the brilliance of the A18 skill rework, I have faith whatever you come up with will be well-designed. I think we're reaching the point where there's a ton of choices as to how a build can go, instead of just the 5 separate builds. Though admittedly, the int weapons still need some work; I don't think anyone does an int build that actually uses stun batons and junk turrets (besides how useful junk turrets are for base defense, obviously, but a non-int build can make use of that.)


I can't say I'd want to see glory kills in 7 days. I'd hate to see the pace get broken up by having to be stuck in an animation anytime I want a zombie dead, especially when there's multiple enemies around. They get really repetitive, too.

I play with a mod that increases both wilderness spawns and the size (and frequency?) of wandering hordes. My PC isn't that great but it runs quite well. Further, I've found that combined with an increase to zombie sight distance and an increase in day speed to "jog", I'm constantly having to be on my toes, especially in cities. It's incredibly difficult even just on Nomad difficulty, and the increase in tension is palpable. I suppose on default settings increased zombie spawns don't do much, but I feel there's potential in changing the gameplay up. But then, that's a lot of knobs to add, so maybe this is the sort of thing best left to mods.

Junk turrets will become tier 2 weapons, not available in loot early game. At first you will craft some sort of melee trap turret, like a junk turret with a swinging sledgehammer. Tier 3 might will be some kind of robot that can move and shoot, maybe it can even carry some things for you. So nobody will have a junk turret early game. We might even make them craft only the first half of the game at least.

 

[madmole]

I thought explosives were under strength?
Either way, my and my buddy tossed grenades and explosive arrows into the horde over and over, but they barely made a dent.

Simply put, grenades are very expensive for their boom, and we rarely had more than ten each. (it's the springs cost, usually)

We did both stack up on explosive arrows but those mostly seem to knockdown, rarely to kill.

They're fun (though the explosion fx needs work) but they're just too expensive to use as your horde-night workhorse.

We typically both end up with AKs and we go through about five to ten stacks of rifle rounds each.

By horde four or five, we're talking hundreds of irradiated, and maybe a dozen demolishes.

Gamestate ramps up real fast when you have two players, and with the new pathing stuff, to stop you from being able to force them into a bottleneck, you can't rely on traps to do all the work anymore.

As for mines... see the stuff about the bottleneck.

Can you still five-layer three sides of your base to force zombies to come at you from the front?

I have no problem crafting a stack of grenades for each horde. Harvest every bed. If you are spec'd into perception you can get 2x the harvest by perking into scavenger, which makes it even easier to get springs by the 1000's.

 

[Gareee]

The compass direction when choosing trader quests is a really nice touch. So nice that could we please have it on the quest screen as well? Sometimes I'm wondering which quest I'm looking at in the map, but there's too many with about the same distance.

I've thought the same thing several times as well. The code could probably be cut and pasted in if its in the xml.

 

[iamnuff]

I have no problem crafting a stack of grenades for each horde. Harvest every bed. If you are spec'd into perception you can get 2x the harvest by perking into scavenger, which makes it even easier to get springs by the 1000's.

the problem isn't that grenades are so hard to make, the problem is that a stack of grenades simply isn't enough.

I had 15 contact grenades, 20 molotovs and a box of explosive crossbow bolts (do those benefit from explosive perks?) but even if I was hitting three-to-five zombies per blast, I could spend all but the arrows in the first hour of the horde.

By horde four, the zombies don't stop coming until sunrise. 22:00 to 4:00

... we might have had zombies-per-player turned up, I dunno, I wasn't the host.

How much multiplayer do you play? I remember reading somewhere that you do a lot of your test-games solo, right?

Two or three people on horde 4 is a constant tide of zombies, alternating which direction they come from, for like four in-game hours. You'd need four or five stacks of grenades just to have enough to last until morning, and finding opertunities to use them is an issue too, because you can't throw them through iron bars (which we were both shooting through)

I considered trying to install a door horizontally, so I could open it up and toss grenades though without letting zombies in, but I never attempted it.

Tossing them from the roof only works until they're directly under you, at which point you can't throw them straight down without risking clipping the platform you're standing on, and blowing yourself up.

I'd really like a 4x4 hatch. Maybe with a sliding lid, like the rolling garage door, so we could install it into the floor or halfway up a wall and toss things through it.

Throwing grenades directly at the bars inside your base to kill zombies on the other side... works, but it's tricky in multiplayer, because people like to press their faces against the bars as they aim, and people don't really hear 'get away from the bars, i'm throwing grenades' over the loud-ass noises of a zombie getting fried by an electric fence.

More than anything, for a sniper-build, I want to be able to reinforce three sets of walls to force zombies to come at me from one direction, so i can use them as a shooting range, and get the most out of my mines.

... I don't use mines at all until I get the skillbook that makes you immune to them though. Too risky to leave unexploded ordinance laying around outside my base.

If I'm playing multiplayer, we ALL need to have it. I don't want to be blowing my friends up either.

 

[meganoth]

I had 15 contact grenades, 20 molotovs and a box of explosive crossbow bolts (do those benefit from explosive perks?) but even if I was hitting three-to-five zombies per blast, I could spend all but the arrows in the first hour of the horde.

Three zombies is not really a crowd. You are wasting your crowd-pleaser weapons

 

[iamnuff]

Junk turrets will become tier 2 weapons, not available in loot early game. At first you will craft some sort of melee trap turret, like a junk turret with a swinging sledgehammer. Tier 3 might will be some kind of robot that can move and shoot, maybe it can even carry some things for you. So nobody will have a junk turret early game. We might even make them craft only the first half of the game at least.

The melee trap sounds good, but rather than a hammer, a swinging blade might seem more useable? Not unlike the blade-traps we have, but with just one blade, and like... hand-cranked, or something? How would it be used while held, though?

Wouldn't it just be a pre-existing melee-weapon like a sledgehammer or a blade? Except it'd scale off int, instead of your melee-skill.

Also, Since int already has a melee weapon with the stun-baton, and turrets are it's designated 'intelligence gun' it kinda feels like they should remain a gun throughout each of their tiers.

Not sure what the 'stone' tier of that weapon could be, to be honest though. Maybe some sort of slingshot or mini-catapult that fires rocks?

To be honest the junk turret being automated never made a lot of sense, since building a 'real' turret requires electricity and a targeting sensor, and such. It's also stepping on the toes of actual turrets that you can build with the engineering skill-tree.

Having it be placed like a turret, but still needing a player to manually aim and fire it would put it more in-line with the weapons available to other stats. Just have the placed version fire a lot faster than the hand-held version, to make up for the lost mobility (and it being mounted on a tripod would negate recoil, or something)

For the lvl5 perk, where you can place two, you can still place two, and someone else can use the second one, but both turrets still benifit from your skills, because you're the one who placed it.

... or give junk-turrets a unique mod-slot where you can plug a motion sensor in, to make them automated like they are now.

That said, I'd love it if you brought the blunderbuss back as the t1 junk turret. It's kind of overshadowed by the double-barrel shotgun, so it's not really doing well in the shotguns skill-tree, but it's clearly 'junk-made' and it's powerful enough as a t1 weapon in it's own right.

Slow firing, short range, cheap ammo, knock dudes on their arses. Make it placeable and automatable and it'd do really well as an Int-weapon.

Then the junk turret as-is is T2, so the T3 version would be ???

Like some sort of portable electric fence? Or a Spinning-blade-trap with a standard junk-turret sat on top of it, so it can shoot dudes and chop up anyone who tries to attack it?

I don't really know what a high-level intelligence weapon would be, to be honest.

Most things i'd mention are already covered by traps.

Maybe just a real gun on a turret mount, like a rifle or something, but on a proper swivel mount, so it can turn 360 degrees without you needing to pick it up?

Or like... a junk-gun that looks and behaves comparable to a real gun? The carried turret is pretty good, but it's hard to aim and kind of bulky.

Some sort of bolted together bunch of metal plates and tubes that works as good as an actual AK?

Maybe a nailgun that actually works as a firearm, firing nails so it doesn't need brass or gunpowder, but it still does damage comparable with 9mm?

Oh... a railway rifle, like from fallout? Something that shoots massive metal spikes pnumatically?

Dunno if you could get a 'nail zombies to walls' mechanic in this game, but impaling someone with huge metal spikes could still be fun.

Edit: You mentioned a robot.

That... I never would have concidered that because it's too cool.

Man a robot would be really really awesome. Especially if you can use it like a pack-mule (not unlike loading things into your car)

Would it be a melee robot (use the zombie's AI to attack?) or a gun robot?

A big robot dog would be nice. Slap some saddlebags on (share mods with the motorscycle?) to let it carry more, give it sawbade teeth.

Or like.. a person-robot, like the big clunky ones from fallout, with a gun built into it's arm.

Or like a big spider-leg robot with a gun for a head, that just walks around and shoots people?

Man, a robot. That'd be awesome.

Only thing I'm worried about is whether it deactivates when you get too far away (like the current junk turrets) but doesn't walk fast enough to keep up with you.

I foresee a situation where i load it up with loot, and then hop on my bike to drive back to base, but it can't keep up so it just shuts down, and I have to walk it back to base at slow-speed.

... I assume that you wouldn't be able to pick it up when it's full of loot, same as the vehicles?

Man. Robots.

That's dope.

Problem is that if they're lootable, then everyone will have one eventually, regardless of whether they invest in int or not. Even without the bonuses from the int-perk, having one would still be better than not having one, and it doesn't seem like there's be any reason not to.

... unless it runs on gas, or batteries or something, and you need to keep it topped up.

I know Madmole goes for a scavenge-heavy mindset, but if intelligence weapons are meant to be based on the player-character's own brains/engineering ability, they might be better off if they're craft only.

There being lots of guns around makes sense from before the bombs fell.

There being lots of homemade turrets and badass robots?

Not so much.

Finding lots of parts for them would make sense though, since a 'junk turret part' isn't a piece of a junk turret, but a pile of junk that you could use to make a turret.