PC Alpha 18 feedback and balancing thread

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For a developer, reading through a feedback thread, a large post is much more valuable than a small one.You're getting more potentially usable data per line in a single 900 word post than you would in 20 posts that were each 1/10th of the wordcount, because it's dense and usually on all on the same couple of topics.

useful data?

less than a thousand words of willingly provided high-density feedback, then I'm not sure why you're... in a feedback thread.

text.

Read it or ignore it, as is your preference, but don't complain that I've provided too much data.
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Mate, data != huge amounts of feature suggestions/text... If you're going to go near 1000 words worth of things you think would be cool to add, that's something you can make an entire suggestion thread about. Feedback/balancing, not Pimp Dreams. Why they're saying that.

 
Agree, stun batons are cool in theory, but even with points invested pretty underpowered. The stunlock is great 1v1 but add a few more and your mediocre damage quickly gets you eaten unless you flee, maybe allow the glancing blow to apply the stun to a group (whenever it actually works as intended and not just as a zed rage bait to get you murdered)
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Likewise, I can never gel with the batons as they seem just to much fiddle work to get going compared to simple clubs, bam-hit-down like.

 
Sure it is difficult. Setting exp at 200% actually gives you less time to prepare for much more difficult horde nights that ramp up faster because your gamestage goes up faster than normal.
If you don't want to mine you have to get your building resources mainly from cobblestone and cement stacks you find in POI's.
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Makes sense but, mining is mining even if it's a poi.

I just think parts should be smeltable.

Also, the descriptions for level 2 and 3 on demolitions expert are flipped/backwards. TNT unlocks grenades and Explosives unlocks TNT.

 
For a developer, reading through a feedback thread, a large post is much more valuable than a small one.You're getting more potentially usable data per line in a single 900 word post than you would in 20 posts that were each 1/10th of the wordcount, because it's dense and usually on all on the same couple of topics.

Is it useful data? I couldn't say, since I'm not a developer on this game, And neither could madmole, since he didn't read it.
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That is completely subjective. Some developers may love it and get whatever out of it. A lot of developers know what they want and are simply looking for like/dislikes or problems players have. Other developers don't care and read nothing or only read what seems related to their own job.

MM was and I am letting you know that we as a general rule skim or skip over large posts. That lets you know, you can keep writing large posts knowing that we may only read the first paragraph or two or you can put what you care about most, up front in a smaller post, knowing you have a better chance of one or more of us reading it. If I'm posting on a company forum, I would like to know that.

Also, we do only spend x amount of time per day reading these forums. Everything posted is competing for our attention and a lot of it is never read by a dev. You want to get read by a dev, then I would post in a manner that gets their attention in a good way.

 
Great work Pimps! I appreciate the amount of love you have for the game and the fact that you tend to the forums. Happy holidays Pimps and Pimpettes.

 
Been playing without a base with BM nightly. One of these nights, I climbed up on a boulder. The 30 or so zombies all huddled around a different boulder about 8 to 10 meters away and started jumping on it and beating on it. I was able to pick them all off from my boulder without a worry.

Just pointing this out as it seems like an AI flaw.

 
For a developer, reading through a feedback thread, a large post is much more valuable than a small one.You're getting more potentially usable data per line in a single 900 word post than you would in 20 posts that were each 1/10th of the wordcount, because it's dense and usually on all on the same couple of topics.

Is it useful data? I couldn't say, since I'm not a developer on this game, And neither could madmole, since he didn't read it.

Frankly, if you're not willing to put the effort in to read less than a thousand words of willingly provided high-density feedback, then I'm not sure why you're... in a feedback thread.

Like, actually? Why bother?

Also, the comment about time is kind of insulting.

What? You think I just crapped that out? You think it didn't take me time to write it? More time than it'd take you to read it, that's for sure.

But I spent that time, because I was willing to take a couple of minutes to try to provide something that just might be useful for the development of the game, as we all are in this thread.

That's literally why we#re all in here.

Does that obligate anybody to read my posts? No! Of course not!

But at least don't act like i'm at fault for you being intimidated by a moderate amount of text.

Read it or ignore it, as is your preference, but don't complain that I've provided too much data.
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Actually, in many facets in life, not just development, shorter, clearer and more concise communication is more effective. So you shouldnt feel insulted by comments about time. Some game devs dont even reply back to the community...

It's not that your feedback is not valuable, rather time is always limited and frankly trying to shuffle through all of the subjective feedback on the forums is alot of the time like finding a needle in a hay stack.

I recommend bullet points and shorter and more concise feedback at a better chance at getting a response.

 
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Balance question (forumites dont shoot me..😂)

I just realized placing a mod in an item greatly increases its sell value versus selling the mod by itself. Is this intended? I think I have 1 point into better barter and the cigar as reference... (Stable 18.1)

I even noticed kage in one of his videos buying all the mods from the trader just to install them in items for resell. Seemed slightly OP.

 
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I'm having an issue that's just popped up since I started playing after the last patch, whenever I am using flaming arrows with my bow, I am suddenly catching on fire when I hit a zombie. The zombies are a good distance away.

 
I stopped reading here because you need to respect my time and limit forum conversations to something most people can digest. A hammer would have some knockdown capability which as an INT guy that would be the most valuable. A bleeding zombie is still a dangerous one, so if you were smart (INT) you would want something that slows them or incapacitates them IMO.
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Damn (n-word-wtih-the-a-at-the-end), that was kinda rude. You don't have to read everything all at once, just either ignore it or make a mental note to come back to it. (n-word-wtih-the-a-at-the-end) was just trying to be helpful.

 
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.
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You might want to move the 'pick up mines' perk lower in the tree then. Right now it's at tier 5 of The Infiltrator which takes a long time to get (and the first 4 levels of that perk aren't very interesting).

I like the idea of the careful sniper laying down mines as insurance, but then if you don't miss any shots you have a bunch of mines in your way unless you're very leveled up (10 PER + level 5 perk).

Edit: Had a thought. Caltrops. Made from iron without a workbench. You can place them on the ground and pick them back up with E. If anything steps on them they break and cause a bleed. Bleeds cause a slow so you've got a simple level 1 'mine' you could perk early in that playstyle.

 
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Random stats and quality stats on armor is bonkers, and I don't know a single person outside these forums who doesn't think so. What I think would make sense, and still be close to how it's presently implemented, would this:

* Armor ratings be spaced out by at least 2, and random stats be a fixed +/- 1, instead of percentage. So good iron armor can equal bad steel armor, for example, but no armor can beat the protection rating of the next tier of armor. Or, have it go from -2 to +2, so a good ones can beat bad ones, but still with armor rating spaced out by 2, so scrap iron can never be better than steel.

* Have quality influence effect resistance, mobility, stamina and noise, since good fitting would improve all these things in real life, so it makes sense, and it makes quality more relevant without changing the armor rating itself.

 
You might want to move the 'pick up mines' perk lower in the tree then. Right now it's at tier 5 of The Infiltrator which takes a long time to get (and the first 4 levels of that perk aren't very interesting).
I like the idea of the careful sniper laying down mines as insurance, but then if you don't miss any shots you have a bunch of mines in your way unless you're very leveled up (10 PER + level 5 perk).

Edit: Had a thought. Caltrops. Made from iron without a workbench. You can place them on the ground and pick them back up with E. If anything steps on them they break and cause a bleed. Bleeds cause a slow so you've got a simple level 1 'mine' you could perk early in that playstyle.
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That would actually be really cool.

You can technically use spikes for this, but zombies path around them and removing them afterwards is a pain because they have four(?) stages of health, so you need four hits, even with top-level tools.

There's a barbed-wire item in game (barbed wire over wood), and there used to be one that was flat like a glass pane, but I think that was removed.

Frankly, the one that's still in, is just an inferior wooden spike. Having it be place/pick-up like a chair, but only have one hit-point as a trade-off could make for a trap that's useful out in the field.

Or like a roll of razerwire. have it drop in a line 3 blocks across by one block thick.

Each square of it has separate hp but it can't be picked up (because picking it up when it's half-destroyed wouldn't make sense)

That'd be useful for blocking off corridors in a hurry.

The Light-Foot perk that lets you walk over mines without setting them off should make you immune to it too, so you can walk over your own traps.

Plus, unlike mines or caltrops, it wouldn't be very easily to lose in the grass and then step on without noticing.

Frankly, I'd be happy to trade out a tier of landmines for that. We don't need four(?) different kinds of landmines.

 
That is completely subjective. Some developers may love it and get whatever out of it. A lot of developers know what they want and are simply looking for like/dislikes or problems players have. Other developers don't care and read nothing or only read what seems related to their own job.
MM was and I am letting you know that we as a general rule skim or skip over large posts. That lets you know, you can keep writing large posts knowing that we may only read the first paragraph or two or you can put what you care about most, up front in a smaller post, knowing you have a better chance of one or more of us reading it. If I'm posting on a company forum, I would like to know that.

Also, we do only spend x amount of time per day reading these forums. Everything posted is competing for our attention and a lot of it is never read by a dev. You want to get read by a dev, then I would post in a manner that gets their attention in a good way.
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I can make one big post that gets straight to the point, or lots of little posts that say the same thing but in twice as many words, because I need to keep stopping/starting over and over again.

Sure, you could read five small posts in the time it takes to read one large one. So what? Does that mean that the five smaller posts are more worthwhile to read than the large one?

Depends what those posts contain, obviously, but you can't know what they'll contain before you read them.

You can say that the 'value' of a post is subjective, but unless you're running a poll with a simple thumb-up/thumb-down binary answer, then bigger is better, because more information = more useful, in almost 100% of cases.

Even that is missing the point though. You don't have to read the post. Like I said, there's no obligation here. He could have just skimmed over and ignored it.

Like you said, not all posts get read on this forums, because it's luck of the draw what catches the developer's eye. That's an unspoken agreement that you sign up for when you decide to spend your time trying to make useful posts in a place like this.

There's no call to be rude though.

Wasted effort is one thing, belittled effort is another.

 
I can make one big post that gets straight to the point, or lots of little posts that say the same thing but in twice as many words, because I need to keep stopping/starting over and over again.
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The main problem with a feature that is presented in "a long post" is that it's usually way too complicated and over-designed to be of any use.

 
The main problem with a feature that is presented in "a long post" is that it's usually way too complicated and over-designed to be of any use.
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.. Like the current hunger/health/thirst/stamina system?

 
.. Like the current hunger/health/thirst/stamina system?
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I don't see how the system is overdesigned. Plays fluid to me.

Less HP?Medicine.

Less Stamina? Eat.

Water drop? Drink.

That's really the basic gist of the mechanic. All what is needed to know.

 
questing

Hey guys!
This is our feedback thread, please post suggestions and feedback on A18 in this thread.

For ideas outside of balancing please visit our dev diary.

For any bug reports and the latest known issues please visit our bug report thread.

Find the A18 Release notes on our official website.

We hope you guys enjoy Alpha 18!
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questing in alpha 18 is really bad the rewards suck the xp sucks even more now that is the only complaint i have besides the trees having 1 hitpoint on accasion and popping in out of no where.

other than those two complaints i'm loving alpha 18 over all.

 
I can make one big post that gets straight to the point, or lots of little posts that say the same thing but in twice as many words, because I need to keep stopping/starting over and over again.
Sure, you could read five small posts in the time it takes to read one large one. So what? Does that mean that the five smaller posts are more worthwhile to read than the large one?

Depends what those posts contain, obviously, but you can't know what they'll contain before you read them.

You can say that the 'value' of a post is subjective, but unless you're running a poll with a simple thumb-up/thumb-down binary answer, then bigger is better, because more information = more useful, in almost 100% of cases.

Even that is missing the point though. You don't have to read the post. Like I said, there's no obligation here. He could have just skimmed over and ignored it.

Like you said, not all posts get read on this forums, because it's luck of the draw what catches the developer's eye. That's an unspoken agreement that you sign up for when you decide to spend your time trying to make useful posts in a place like this.

There's no call to be rude though.

Wasted effort is one thing, belittled effort is another.
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I think you missed my main point. It does not matter how you or your friends or the president would want to read something. You want to get read by devs? Do it in a way they will most likely read.

If I say I only read blue text, then you best be posting in blue text or it is not getting read.

Yes, we should all try to not be rude, but we all need to remember that we all have bad days (sick, tired, frustrated, the crap of life....).

 
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