PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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I don't see how you go from here

Barra said:
While Im in no doubt, that these numbers are correct, I want to point out, that even if its "just" 5% of buyers visting the forum, the one that do visit the forum, are the ones most obligated to the game with the most experience, so their feedback IS valuable to improve the gameplay for the whole playerbase.
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to there...

Barra said:
As mentioned before the most buyers that are not visiting the forums are propably the ones that not got "addicted" enough to the game, maybe because of some feedback provided by the forum users was not taken care off by the devs  ;)
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The requests/wishes we get (or more often see ourselves by watching streams and such) from genuine new players tend to be very different from what the die hard fans are asking for.

One example:

How many times have you seen players asking here for making it easier to climb a ladder?

There are cases where this is genuinely difficult if you don't know the secret handshake.

It's quite an important feature, too.

Exactly no one is saying that feedback from the forum is unimportant. It just has to be seen in context.

 
faatal said:
The last time I looked at ECS, It seemed like a complete pain in the butt to use and would require a lot of rewriting of our code. Unity needs to do better than that. I don't want to jump through their hoops. Just like IL2CPP does not work in editor and requires extra build steps. Other engines are doing it better.
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but if you want to improve the performance of this game,i do think the ECS will be the important and necessary part in your plan.and the earlier you change to the ECS,the less of rewriting you guys will do.

by the way,how about the pathfinding algorithm?will you change the astar to the bstar?

 
madmole said:
I'll mine at night on night 2+.
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I'll mine every night get the blacksmith perk and start making iron for repair kits as soon as possible.
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Unload my gear into boxes, then by dark or so I'll mine until dawn, then repeat.
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Is the game now entirely balanced around the expectation that people will spend every night mining like you do? I know that I (and the people I play with) find mining utterly tedious, and the thought of having to spend a quarter to a third of the time we spend playing the game doing it is offputting to say the least.

For example, any vehicles beyond bikes have become a complete waste of time for us in A18 because the fuel consumption was ramped up so high that if we don't mine oil shale we can't run them. I'm not talking about constant driving around either - without mining you don't even find enough gas to support a single drive to the traders and back each week.

 
PandaTea said:
but if you want to improve the performance of this game,i do think the ECS will be the important and necessary part in your plan.and the earlier you change to the ECS,the less of rewriting you guys will do.

by the way,how about the pathfinding algorithm?will you change the astar to the bstar?
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I dont see the Fun Pimps adopting ECS for this game.

I think they are very much getting content in, bug fixes and get the game to gold status.

Anything else I think would be pie in the sky to Quote Joel :)

 
PandaTea said:
but if you want to improve the performance of this game,i do think the ECS will be the important and necessary part in your plan.and the earlier you change to the ECS,the less of rewriting you guys will do.

by the way,how about the pathfinding algorithm?will you change the astar to the bstar?
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The place ECS would be most useful for this game is in terrain generation.  Since, if memory serves, the code for that is a c++ library there would be little point in doing it.

What on earth does calculating the drag coefficient of a satellite have to do with pathfinding?  What is the "B*" algorithm in relation to pathfinding?

 
Gazz said:
I don't see how you go from here

to there...

The requests/wishes we get (or more often see ourselves by watching streams and such) from genuine new players tend to be very different from what the die hard fans are asking for.

One example:

How many times have you seen players asking here for making it easier to climb a ladder?

There are cases where this is genuinely difficult if you don't know the secret handshake.

It's quite an important feature, too.

Exactly no one is saying that feedback from the forum is unimportant. It just has to be seen in context.
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Ok good point, but ;)  I could imagine some users arent even thinking about how to possibly change A to B because they dont care enough (which is totally fine, in the end its "just" a game), they might just consider the game as a one that not fits there interest, without being tempted to claim their "dissatisfaction/feedback" at the forums.

So while 14hrs average playtime in total, seems quite a lot compared to an average game like an storyline shooter, it seems not very much for a survival game with endless replay possibilities. (Maybe there is a feature gap around this time that leads the player to "quit" the game)

[SIZE=1.4rem]So I could also imagine, that it should be a development goal to extend this average total playtime for a playerbase, as big as possible. [/SIZE]

So a question would be, how much users frequently visit the forums compared to how much users are indeed playing the game frequently, I would suspect then we will have a much higher percentage.

I know you care about our feedback, you had proofen it often enough :)

But in the last time Im reading the forum and Im aware of the fact that the developing cycle had to come to an end relativly soon, but maybe because of the language barrier (Im german), I could/had read the statements as kind of an excuse, like: OK we had your feedback and we will for sure not add any unspoken features till now (or at any given moment) and now additional feedback does not matter because its "just" related to the hc-players and they are such a few  percentage that they could be neglected from now on.

In other words: The more Im "sucked" into the game and the more possibilities I have, the more Im willing to replay the game and the more Im willing to pay for additional content (DLC etc.)

Im writing these because of a not exactly perfect fitting example: more paint textures, Im very sure even if the new players doesnt have it in mind at first, that it could be an issue when the player after 14hrs had played the game, built his base etc. and then the player recognizes: "ok there is no (not enough) option  to personalize my base, ok Im done, I "owned" the game, lets go one to the next one!", while it MIGHT be extending the average total playtime when the player finds out: "Oh nice there is so much stuff I could also do even when I thought technically I already beat the game!"

At the end, its no rant, its importent for me to mention this fact. You guys are grown up professionals and Im sure I dont have to hint you to such a thinking but I just wanted to express it on my own ;)  Numbers are a tricky thing you can make them fit in anyway YOU want to, they can even change its state just by reformulazting the question.

 
A Nice Cup of Tea said:
(snip)

For example, any vehicles beyond bikes have become a complete waste of time for us in A18 because the fuel consumption was ramped up so high that if we don't mine oil shale we can't run them. I'm not talking about constant driving around either - without mining you don't even find enough gas to support a single drive to the traders and back each week.
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Do you hold shift (sprint) while you drive? THAT is a complete waste of gas. I don't know what the rate is, but it feels like triple the gas consumption. The speed boost you get from holding shift is definitely not worth it. I drive without holding shift, you can nearly fly from one end of Navezgane to the other and back on a single gyro tank. Additionally, you can let off the gas and then hold shift to coast down hills (just like with the bike, wouldn't recommend this with the gyro though 🙂).

I do wish that vehicles could gain (more) speed when you coast on downhills. Right now it more or less maintains speed, or even ever so slightly starts to slow down.

Anyone notice that you can still drive forward (albeit VERY slowly) on an empty tank?

 
I think once @madmole claims "release the kraken " the forum will explode. 

I am just excited to get my hands on it. Save any and all criticism or complaints for once I put some hours into the game. I have a feeling it will be much better. TFP have put in a lot of work and I personally can't wait to give it a go. 

 
A Nice Cup of Tea said:
Is the game now entirely balanced around the expectation that people will spend every night mining like you do? I know that I (and the people I play with) find mining utterly tedious, and the thought of having to spend a quarter to a third of the time we spend playing the game doing it is offputting to say the least.

For example, any vehicles beyond bikes have become a complete waste of time for us in A18 because the fuel consumption was ramped up so high that if we don't mine oil shale we can't run them. I'm not talking about constant driving around either - without mining you don't even find enough gas to support a single drive to the traders and back each week.
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Mining isnt my favorite activity either and will normally will do whatever I can to avoid it.  In A18 I am able to get by with minimal mining.  (Buying resources from traders, looting POI pallets)

However, gas is more scare outside of mining which usually leads me to mine shale at least once a week or so.  Although it would be nice to obtain more gas without mining, doing so may make mining 100% optional which I dont think is good for the game overall.

 
A Nice Cup of Tea said:
Is the game now entirely balanced around the expectation that people will spend every night mining like you do? I know that I (and the people I play with) find mining utterly tedious, and the thought of having to spend a quarter to a third of the time we spend playing the game doing it is offputting to say the least.

For example, any vehicles beyond bikes have become a complete waste of time for us in A18 because the fuel consumption was ramped up so high that if we don't mine oil shale we can't run them. I'm not talking about constant driving around either - without mining you don't even find enough gas to support a single drive to the traders and back each week.
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I use a minibike in my SP game. I'm on day ~60, have never mined a single oil shale (as far as I remember) and drive around constantly with it. The minibike has very low consumption while anything above drains oil very fast.

I'm not exactly sure where I get all that fuel. Probably looting any cas cans I see and wrenching lots of cars (maybe you should invest in bad mechanic early if you want to avoid mining)

In my game I also have lots of ammo and no need to do mining every night. Madmole prefers shooting anything that moves and his playstyle is probably very ammo-intensive. I play agility AND even on horde night kill a lot of zombies with a machete (they need a lot of time to get through two blocks of concrete or steel, especially when constantly interrupted by a machete swipe).

 
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Khalagar said:
Holy crap, I can see why loot is getting nerfed a bit early game. On my current A18.4 character on Warrior with some run happy zombies,  by the end of day 1 I already had an AK, Shotgun with 120+ shells, 70 9mm bullets, an iron spear (which promptly flew into the void never to be found), some iron armor etc.

This is from the morning of day 5, and is after I lost an entire day on day 4 due to a broken leg and 18 over encumbrance requiring me to limp back to camp ridiculously slowly so I could splint it. By Day 2 or 3 I was already getting steel tools and chainsaws, all I need now is an auger or steel pick to have the full set by the end of day 5.  Not pictured - An almost complete motorcycle in the box, waiting for the last couple of parts I'm about to buy, and tons of brass and iron tools and weapons I need to sell



Honestly, I think a lot of current loot issues on A18 isn't even (just) the spawning, it's the vendors. I always think the Lucky Looter perk is over rated and go for the Quest Reward perk instead. So my first 4 points go to raising the Quest Reward thing to level 2 so I get way more dukes and better reward options, then just spam buried supplies quests because they are fast and give food and plans.

I know madmole has mentioned that in A19 the traders are still a bit out of line with the rest of the loot drops, so I'll probably have to self limit by not going for my usual Quest Reward perk. I just thought of what Mad Mole was saying about the carrot and stick when I went from the initial "AW YEAH! A Steel fire-axe!!!" to just auto scrapping all the iron ones I proceeded to find. I've basically already skipped completely past the primitive age within a single day, and hit the end levels of mid tier already within about 4 days of actual play time and nearly 20 hours in game spent limping home with an unsplinted broken leg while over encumbered

So the logic for A19 seems to be, you might have level 1 military leg armor, but a level 4+ scrap armor and use it instead because it's higher level, but that's never really been a thing for me early game because mods are so rare in the early levels. I rarely ever have enough mods to even fill all my level 1-2 gear for the first few days / week. Are mods going to be more common? Or will the loot have more differences between levels now besides just mod slots?
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Purple stats aren't bad, I found scrap purple armor that was better than Q1 brown iron.

 
Operator_Death said:
I think once @madmole claims "release the kraken " the forum will explode. 

I am just excited to get my hands on it. Save any and all criticism or complaints for once I put some hours into the game. I have a feeling it will be much better. TFP have put in a lot of work and I personally can't wait to give it a go. 
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I think A19 is a good step in the right direction from the sound of things.

That initial struggle to survive being stretched out is good news for me.

Finding multiple AK-47's by day 2 was actually anti-fun for me.

Looking forward to the first "TFP Let's Play".

 
madmole said:
Eye candy gives +50 to loot stage which is very significant. I take one to the top of the teir 5's to the loot room get a big loot bonus on every chest I open, then pop an oh @%$*#!z and jump down 200 meters and I'm out of there. Not to mention the health bars are amazing and boost max HP 25 plus give you faster crit healing,etc. They might not be everyone's cup of tea but for 100 dukes its a no brainer to me. Oh and one helps you get a nice barter boost too.
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...and that doesn't feel like a cheap mechanic when you do that? 

 
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