PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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FileMachete said:
Final bit: I'd prefer to see things balanced to fit TFPs goals food usage goals that also supported 'builders' _not_ spec'ing so heavily into Strength.
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If someone's goal is to have a player-built horde base by Day 7 they can do it. You can mine enough clay and rock or loot enough cobblestone without a heavy investment in Strength.  You also don't need anything fancy for Day 7. I had two-thick cobblestone walls and the Day 7 horde only managed to break one block and damage some others.  

One small clarification. Builders don't need strength. Miners do. If you want to mine for base building materials you will need to invest some points in strength. It doesn't take much. If you aren't investing any points in miner 69er and Sexy-rex as a miner you are unlikely to have a good time. 

 
lord_ahriman said:
Interesting. I hope they changed screamer's behavior as well: in A18, underground mining she could sense and hear me so she would call reinforcements; harvesting my tree farm (6 blocks high), she could sense and hear me, but no reinforcement being called. 
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That hasn't happened to me so far. As an added bonus, the Screamers obviously ragdoll now if they fall into your mine, giving you time to kill her before she gets up and screams.

meganoth said:
You look at sex.rex but in the first week miner69 seems to me the more important perk here. Because miner actually decreases stamina use (and therefore food use) while sex.rex only allows you to expend it faster (AFAIK, I don't have the game near me to check). And in the first week food is a major concern
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No arguments coming from me; my first perks that I spec into are always Miner 69er and Sex Rex.

Kosmic Kerman said:
If someone's goal is to have a player-built horde base by Day 7 they can do it. You can mine enough clay and rock or loot enough cobblestone without a heavy investment in Strength.  You also don't need anything fancy for Day 7. I had two-thick cobblestone walls and the Day 7 horde only managed to break one block and damage some others.  

One small clarification. Builders don't need strength. Miners do. If you want to mine for base building materials you will need to invest some points in strength. It doesn't take much. If you aren't investing any points in miner 69er and Sexy-rex as a miner you are unlikely to have a good time. 
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That depends. If you're into constructing towering, imposing fortresses with tens of thousands of resources poured into them, AND you want that as a horde base? I'd argue that the miner and the builder work in tandem here. (Unless I am simply echoing your original point here, and if I am, I misunderstood your post.)

 
I am at day 8 in A19 and every change from A18 to A19 I have seen during those eight hours so far is an improvement in my opinion. Well done guys!

 
Jost Amman said:
I read people on Steam complaining about the injuries effect duration.

I think they got a point since new players can easily get discouraged if they break a leg and rage-quit asking for a refund.

I was thinking that maybe the duration could scale with the difficulty level. For example when at default difficulty the minor injuries could last around 2 mins, moderate would last 10 mins and major around 20 mins, while if you play on harder settings they could scale +25% per level or something.

What do you think?
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I think the duration of injuries is fine. They ensure that your actions have consequences.  Besides, the duration of Injuries can be shortened with consumables and by spending perk points. The injuries give you a reason not to Rambo zombies in the first week before you've gotten armor, consumables, and perk points. There are always going to be players who would rather eat glass than overcome adversity.  The game shouldn't be balanced around those players. As to new players, this game has always had a steep learning curve. If someone rage quits because of an injury, a survival game is probably just not their cup of tea.

 
Kosmic Kerman said:
If someone's goal is to have a player-built horde base by Day 7 they can do it. You can mine enough clay and rock or loot enough cobblestone without a heavy investment in Strength.  You also don't need anything fancy for Day 7. I had two-thick cobblestone walls and the Day 7 horde only managed to break one block and damage some others.  

One small clarification. Builders don't need strength. Miners do. If you want to mine for base building materials you will need to invest some points in strength. It doesn't take much. If you aren't investing any points in miner 69er and Sexy-rex as a miner you are unlikely to have a good time. 
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Generally I agree. But even if you try to get your materials from building/construction sites you save a lot of time with miner69 because the resource piles have to be mined as well, not looted. Maybe shoveling or axing resource stacks in buildings should use LL boni instead of miner69 boni. Or maybe they already do and I never noticed 😉

 
Kosmic Kerman said:
It's linked in the red area at the top of the forum. It may not show up on mobile and so here is the link: https://community.7daystodie.com/bug-test-1/
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Thank you but the only thing that is linked there for me is "Updating to Alpha 19 instructions". Bug report forum should be accessible via link from "home" landing page and not via direct link only.

Moreover, that means my topic in the "old" bug report forum from yesterday does not exist anymore? Oh well... not gonna take those screenshots again.

 
meganoth said:
Generally I agree. But even if you try to get your materials from building/construction sites you save a lot of time with miner69 because the resource piles have to be mined as well, not looted. Maybe shoveling or axing resource stacks in buildings should use LL boni instead of miner69 boni. Or maybe they already do and I never noticed 😉
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I agree with that. It's just a matter of priorities. Personally, I think miner 69er is important because it saves you time breaking blocks. If your goal is to have a Day 7 Horde base instead of using a POI, I think you should be spending points in miner 69er, mother lode, and sexy-rex. 1 point in each is sufficient. I don't consider that a "heavy" investment. 

 
We had our first horde night in A19 and it ended in less than an hour and a half. In past alphas this was how it was when you killed enough zombies but in A18 they would come all night long. Are there supposed to be a finite amount of zombies or is it a bug or was A18 a bug?

 
Will the ability to change terrain ever be restored?  I hate that if I dig up a patch of grass to place asphalt it scripts it as asphalt, but displays it as grass and vice versa.

 
bjurney said:
We had our first horde night in A19 and it ended in less than an hour and a half. In past alphas this was how it was when you killed enough zombies but in A18 they would come all night long. Are there supposed to be a finite amount of zombies or is it a bug or was A18 a bug?
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It's been this way for awhile. There are X amount of zombies that will spawn based on your gamestage. If you kill them all, no more BM zombies spawn. There used to be trickle zombies that would send 1-2 zombies until 4am but that was removed at some point. You may have been using a modified gamestages file in A18 or earlier (these were pretty popular) or you may have forgotten how easy early hordes are. The other thing to keep in mind is that gamestage progresses slower than in earlier alphas and that difficulty level no longer has a gamestage modifier. Consequently, BM hordes will ramp up slower than in previous alphas.

 
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Kosmic Kerman said:
It's been this way for awhile. There are X amount of zombies that will spawn based on your gamestage. If you kill them all, no more BM zombies spawn. There used to be trickle zombies that would send 1-2 zombies until 4am but that was removed at some point. You may have been using a modified gamestages file in A18 or earlier (these were pretty popular) or you may have forgotten how easy early hordes are. The other thing to keep in mind is that gamestage progresses slower than in early alphas and that difficulty level no longer has a gamestage modifier. Consequently, BM hordes will ramp up slower than in previous alphas.
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Thanks, I am fairly certain I didn’t have a mod for gamestage, not unless it got snuck in with something completely unrelated, but I don’t think that’s the case. Mostly wanted to make sure it was running as intended and not a bug since it was so different than how A18 used to run. However, maybe it wasn’t running as intended in A18 though, I’m unsure at this point. 

 
Kosmic Kerman said:
I think the duration of injuries is fine. They ensure that your actions have consequences.  Besides, the duration of Injuries can be shortened with consumables and by spending perk points. The injuries give you a reason not to Rambo zombies in the first week before you've gotten armor, consumables, and perk points. There are always going to be players who would rather eat glass than overcome adversity.  The game shouldn't be balanced around those players. As to new players, this game has always had a steep learning curve. If someone rage quits because of an injury, a survival game is probably just not their cup of tea.
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I didn't ask what YOU think of the duration of injuries... personally I do like the new injury system and I know all the reasons why it is great.

That's not my point.

I was trying to see it from a new player perspective. This could potentially be a pitfall.

Sure, we already know how to play the game, we also aren't in TFP's shoes, so we couldn't care less if they lose customers or get bad reviews because of this.

But if the injury time is perceived as a punishment and "boring gameplay" from the new players then I think something should be done about it... isn't experimental precisely for that? Some people, for example, are just suiciding after a bad injury because it's simpler and they get bored waiting to heal because they can't come up with something "fun" to do while they wait (they can't run, they can't jump and so on...).

Isn't the name of the devs "The Fun Pimps" after all? 😁

 
Jost Amman said:
I didn't ask what YOU think of the duration of injuries... personally I do like the new injury system and I know all the reasons why it is great.

That's not my point.

I was trying to see it from a new player perspective. This could potentially be a pitfall.

Sure, we already know how to play the game, we also aren't in TFP's shoes, so we couldn't care less if they lose customers or get bad reviews because of this.

But if the injury time is perceived as a punishment and "boring gameplay" from the new players then I think something should be done about it... isn't experimental precisely for that? Some people, for example, are just suiciding after a bad injury because it's simpler and they get bored waiting to heal because they can't come up with something "fun" to do while they wait (they can't run, they can't jump and so on...).

Isn't the name of the devs "The Fun Pimps" after all? 😁
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I was thinking about ALL players in my post. I also still vividly remember my experience as a new player in 7dtd.  As I said, there are some people who don't like dealing with adversity and don't feel satisfied in overcoming it. Those players, new or old, won't have "fun" if the game throws adversity at them. There would inevitably be SOME  players, new and old, that perceive injuries as "boring gameplay." That doesn't mean that the injury duration needs to change for "new players." A new player who doesn't like dealing with stamina, inventory/encumbrance, or injuries is probably not playing the right game. This is not solely a zombie horde or building game. It is also a RPG survival game.  You start weak and you grow strong through equipment, consumables, and skills.   Injuries are intended to affect game play. To do so they need a sufficiently long duration. Reducing injury duration so that injuries can simply be ignored renders them pointless. Is getting a broken leg a pain? Absolutely. But that means its working as intended because it encourages you not to get a broken leg in the future. 

 
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Kosmic Kerman said:
I was thinking about ALL players in my post. I also still vividly remember my experience as a new player in 7dtd.  As I said, there are some people who don't like dealing with adversity and don't feel satisfied in overcoming it. Those players, new or old, won't have "fun" if the game throws adversity at them. There were inevitably be SOME  players, new and old, that perceive injuries as "boring gameplay." That doesn't mean that the injury duration needs to change for "new players." A new player who doesn't like dealing with stamina, inventory/encumbrance, or injuries is probably not playing the right game. This is not solely a zombie horde or building game. It is also a RPG survival game.  You start weak and you grow strong through equipment, consumables, and skills.   Injuries are intended to affect game play. To do so they need a sufficiently long duration. Reducing injury duration so that injuries can simply be ignored renders them pointless. Is getting a broken leg a pain? Absolutely. But that means its working as intended because it encourages you not to get a broken leg in the future. 
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*Sits in the back of the room whistling all innocent like and twiddling my thumbs, not knowing what critical hits are like since I've yet to experience once since I'm so awesome at this game* 😜

 
ive heard this come up every now and then about the stone age but idrk what it is. Im playing experimental right now and i guess its just early levels? Ive only found stone tools and blunderbi. Can anybody give my ignorant @%$*#! a little run down about what it exactly is and how it works?

 
CholulaSouls said:
ive heard this come up every now and then about the stone age but idrk what it is. Im playing experimental right now and i guess its just early levels? Ive only found stone tools and blunderbi. Can anybody give my ignorant @%$*#! a little run down about what it exactly is and how it works?
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It's in the patch notes which can be found here:https://7daystodie.com/a19-official-release-notes/. The top part of the notes explains the major changes. Give it a read.

Here's an excerpt on leveled loot: 

  • Tech 0 (GS 1-11) – Primitive tools, weapons and armor including a bow and the blunderbuss.
  • Tech 1 (GS 12) – Iron or similar melee items and armor and and the first proper firearms like a pistol or double barrel shotgun.
  • Tech 2 (GS 50) – The best melee items, bows and armor and mid range firearms like a pump-action shotgun.
  • Tech 3 (GS 91) – The most advanced firearms like an M60 or the Sniper Rifle
 
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