PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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Yes this. At the end of the day new players need to have a chance and with all the new criticals food needs to be a source of healing not another way to die. It didn't make sense that after all the effort preparing a home cooked meal that there was still a random chance you would get sick and lose all your hard work (food) for not doing anything wrong.
MM, can you show us some goodies from a19? 29847569823754 screenshots would suffice. Maybe a short video? 

 
but I feel like modding is how it'll have to be for now. But hey, there's always the possibility you guys add in a server option for it, like "skill points per level up", or a toggleable alternative for single-players where Attributes are replaced with Perks and there are no gates between you and every perk.
Adding 2 points per level is first thing I did in A17. There are modlets you can add for this, but its right at top in progression.xml. tried 3, but seemed to much for my game.

MM stated he did not want Ark setting, which i agree.

 
I just want to put emphasis on the fact that this was a premise in the game's trailer.
Most if not all things in the trailer made it to the game at one point or another. Trouble is that it didn't feel the way they expected and the feedback from users who confirmed that it could use some changes here and there was heard in the end and so they didn't stop there while they could just call it gold many times and they indeed started working on some changes, improvements, upgrades, bug fixes that ultimately led to the current version which many people like more than any of the previous versions. I'm glad that they decided to improve the game and go beyond the original development goals, but it also means that they must rework many systems and features in the game and it will take some time to find the right balance again. Just like in every Alpha in the past, nothing is really set in stone...

 
I encourage you take another look (vanilla).  As some have stated, animals are not as common as most think.  Last time I looked at the vanilla spawning code, friendly animal spawns were like on a 21 day respawn cycle per chunk.  That is hardly droves in my opinion.  At the end of the day, once balance becomes a larger focus, those types of concerns can be easily tweaked and confident will be tweaked.

edit:

<biome name="pine_forest">
<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="3" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />
<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="4" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />
<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="14" time="Any" entitygroup="EnemyAnimalsForest" spawnDeadChance="0" />
<spawn maxcount="1" respawndelay="21" time="Any" entitygroup="FriendlyAnimalsForest" spawnDeadChance="0" />
</biome>

He probably plays SP which is completely easy compared to MP where there is a massive meat shortage.

 
No, I specifically said "meat delivery systems", so that means boars, wolves and bears.  And considering how small a chunk is, these "meat delivery services" are found often.

 
He probably plays SP which is completely easy compared to MP where there is a massive meat shortage.


I thought primary balancing was single player and small group of 2 or 3 people.  When did balancing start to be around a modded server with 64 people running around? hmmmmmmmm :)  ??

 
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I thought primary balancing was single player and small group of 2 or 3 people.  When did balancing start to be around a modded server with 64 people running around? hmmmmmmmm :)  ??
XD. Imma call u Mr. trigger. But you can't argue with facts, so I will enlighten you in the hopes you understand what he meant.

1 player: food ok. Maybe too much meat and a bit too many cans.

2 players: Food ok, meat not extremely abundant but enough. Might get into a bit of trouble the first few days if nobody invests in food related perks.

5 players: Food extremely scarce the first days. Meat too. Even buying all the cans every day from a couple of traders might get the team in trouble. Food related perks are a must and an obligation within a compelling urge : eat. So IF nobody goes for food perks = trouble. Veteran players? Meh, they can eat sand with pipe bombs like Snowdog all day all night.

Now, try ...

8 players : Food is a problem the first few days even with some investing in perks. 

All of those cases can be overcomed with a bit of perk investing and by just being a veteran and eating yuccas and goldenrod tea for days LOL .

But the balance problem of food with the supported 8 players is a fairly big problem if you are "not-too-noob" to 7days.

 
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No, I specifically said "meat delivery systems", so that means boars, wolves and bears.  And considering how small a chunk is, these "meat delivery services" are found often.
I dont want the whole game to run over food and how I get it, it is such a small thing to me in 7D2D.

I positively hate games that force me to hunt for food all the time and eat and drink all the time, Its not fun.

I am far more interested in new zombies, new radiation levels, new building blocks, the ISS system and more.

Also all systems are in development currently so what Mad Mole and co do in the long run  we dont have a clue.

I would rather keep the even the current food system instead of a complete change of it,if it meant getting the game to Gold status.

 
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I dont want the whole game to run over food and how I get it, it is such a small thing to me in 7D2D.

I positively hate games that force me to hunt for food all the time and eat and drink all the time, Its not fun.

I am far more interested in new zombies, new radiation levels, new building blocks, the ISS system and more.

Also all systems are in development currently so what Mad Mole and co do in the long run  we dont have a clue.

I would rather keep the even the current food system instead of a complete change of it,if it meant getting the game to Gold status.
Forgive me for this, but that's what a survival game is. The point is to find food to sustain yourself, and is also a main premise of this game in particular. It seems you're more into looter shooter games like STALKER, which is fine, but for a survival game such as this one it would be a bit of a downer, especially for the survival enthusiasts (one of the main target audience), to see the basics of the survival aspect dumbed down in the final product.

 
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Rotting flesh and raw meat lower your health and can cause dysentery which shafts your stamina for a bit. Still balancing stuff but I think it will be fine. I'm looking forward to the max stamina boost good foods give so I can mine longer without gassing out.
What if we had a slightly more comprehensive 'illness' bar that combines dysentry, infection and food poisoning so that bad food/water and zombie bites just increases infection rate by a fixed amount (5%), and when reaching certain thresholds you get (25%) dyssentry, (50%) barf or (75%) a fever (dehydrates you rapidly) or at each threshold you get one effect at random.

I never liked food poisoning since often you could be punished harshly for doing nothing wrong or not punished at all for doing everything wrong, but this would give some wriggle room where you can eat a sham sandwich in a pinch, or even rotten flesh but if you get close to an illness threshold you know you need to stop, and since you can get sick from zombie attacks then there is a high chance if you are near a threshold and you get hit you will barf in combat, which would be very dangerous. Alternatively if you have a lot of medicine but no food you can just power through the bad food and take antibiotics to counteract it

 
I thought primary balancing was single player and small group of 2 or 3 people.  When did balancing start to be around a modded server with 64 people running around? hmmmmmmmm :)  ??
Probably when we hired more testers. I think even 4-5 people can chew through all the meat in no time, these guys are like rambo savages. I hopped on one time half an hour after they got started and every nest and POI was picked clean and not a single animal seen by me.

 
I'm not sure if TFP have touched it for A19, but I haven't seen any indication of it yet. There's a trick with an often forgotten (even by TFP) resource that completely trivializes the food system. At this point I'm most interested in seeing how long it goes undiscovered.

 
Just my .02 cents but while I like complexity & difficulty, for them to be enjoyable, to me, they need to make sense.

So I'd be all for food being a lot tougher, but only if things like chicken coops, rat farms, fishing & 1 deer kill equaling a couple weeks of meat were in.

Have amount of canned food found in loot reduce x% per day so that by day 21 it's be really rare to find any.

Farms would be required for long term survival, could be somewhat offset by trader.

But all of that is a -lot- of work for what it would possibly add.

So the current, & likely future, 'food mechanic' 7dtd has, while not terribly immersive, at least isn't a constant pita; which I'd muy pronto mod out.

Edit: that came out a bit harsh. I think the current setup is enough so that it can be balanced to make food a challenge for the early part of the game, which is good, and also 'get out of it's own way' later on so we're not constantly having to micro mange it. Having to balance for both SP & MP, in this, means default vanilla will likely always see SP food being too easy for lots of veterns. Perfect for a mod to address if the Gold ver doesn't wind up with seperate SP/MP configs.

 
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A potential way to address the food abundance problem is to add an increased-metabolism status effect for some drinks/items. Like coffee buzz causes you to lose the food bar quicker in addition to the increased stamina regeneration.

That way, players struggling for food won't have any harder of a time, but players who had more than they need will have a use for all the extra calories

 
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A potential way to address the food abundance problem is to add an increased-metabolism status effect for some drinks/items.
maybe a setting for single player. Scarcity mode. where animals, food and items are much harder to find, even with the loot settings up!

i don't this would be a thing though lol

 
I dont want the whole game to run over food and how I get it, it is such a small thing to me in 7D2D.

I positively hate games that force me to hunt for food all the time and eat and drink all the time, Its not fun.

I am far more interested in new zombies, new radiation levels, new building blocks, the ISS system and more.

Also all systems are in development currently so what Mad Mole and co do in the long run  we dont have a clue.

I would rather keep the even the current food system instead of a complete change of it,if it meant getting the game to Gold status.
This is how TFP feels pretty much. Food is a day 1-2 problem and beyond that as long as you kill everything you see and loot or farm it should be a short lived problem. Its just a lot more interesting to figure out how to stop a new special infected from ruining your base, or figure out how to deal with bandits, not be wasting TFP's time on something that needs to be solved by noobs because noobs have to deal with food survival the first hour of game play. It cannot be overly hard or punishing. Its an entry level game mechanic. However the current system has deep rewards now for cooking we feel the new system is better for the game. We'll balance it if it feels too easy.

I'm not sure if TFP have touched it for A19, but I haven't seen any indication of it yet. There's a trick with an often forgotten (even by TFP) resource that completely trivializes the food system. At this point I'm most interested in seeing how long it goes undiscovered.
Only me and Roland get to play that game. Spit it out or off with your head! :D

For me food has always been trivial. Even when we had a bug that made consumption 5x faster I still managed and had fun with it. But I'm pretty hardcore and like a challenge, where most people do not.

 
When I play maybe I think food is scarcer than it is. With food being directly tied to your stamina I feel I have to eat constantly to keep my food at at least 100% to do my daily chores, gathering resources, running around etc. Before it was, I think I wouldn't mind so much if my food dropped down to say 30 or even 20%. Now I try to keep eating to keep it so high as I can so I don't run out of stamina when that bear is chasing me... :D

 
I play with my husband and we don't have too much trouble with food. Early on it can be tough but that is what makes the game interesting. I love getting into cooking and making up what i harvest from the gardens. Looking forward to seeing the new foods.

 
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