PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

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MechanicalLens said:
Yes, but the warning I was giving is that would create a very narrow, tunnel vision system. Instead of increasing your damage with headshots +20% per rank of the weapon of your choosing, it would just create a cookie cutter system of, "Forget Pain Tolerance, forget Living off the Land, forget Advanced Engineering, I'm going under this one size fits all perk to increase my headshot damage.

Regardless if I agree or disagree that every gun should have their own perk attached to it, that's what TFP have gone for and I don't see them overhauling it again. Instead, I'm taking a flawed system and suggesting some minor meaningful tweaks that could realistically be considered by TFP.
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Oh yeah, the current system is good, it just needs some tweaks (moving things adding some new ones) and mostly buffs to some insignificant perks (like The Infiltrator). I personally love the current class system in multiplayer. I usually play with 2 other friends, and we always go PER, STR and INT, meaning all tasks are divided and we do them in the most efficient way possible (strength mines natural resources, i loot the end chests and my other friends crafts all the good stuff). I believe the Fortitude and Agility tree shouldn't be main tress on their own, they should act more like a subtree to change your playstyle. 

For example, a strength build can go with a tank slow approach (str + fortitude) or a melee kiting one (str + agility) and same goes for the rest of the builds. I don't know if TFP realize this, but they actually turned a fallout inspired perk system, into your 3 class RPG system (mage, archer and warrior), without you actually noticing it. Their focus is obvious with the perk system, and I believe they are also going in the right track to make things feel more dynamic :)

 
Bhaaltazar said:
Well I just made an examples which can be tuned down after testing.
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I respectfully disagree. In this circumstance, I personally believe it would be in the game's best interests if TFP started small and worked their way up from there, instead of shooting it to the moon and having to tug it back down after. If the benefits weren't worth it in the eyes of many, then they could be adjusted, but if the benefits were too overpowered, that could ruin the experience for some, and some might even skip that phase of development entirely.

 
To end my thoughts on the additional passive attribute bonus discussion for today, I will deliver my summarized thoughts on the matter. In my opinion, those attribute bonuses should remain just that - bonuses - and should not shunt their way forward into the spotlight. In other words, the player should not be encouraged or feel forced to spend skill points into an attribute to gain that universal benefit and in their mind the perks come second, but the attribute bonus should remain solely as an afterthought, but a meaningful one at that, no matter how small. Again, this is all my opinion.

 
Khalagar said:
Huh? That's not what I was getting at, at least. Builds are great, the issue with wasted points is that  general use perks are locked behind things that don't make sense and are very, very build specific.  Gating a chef perk behind shotgun damage or a doctor perk behind stun baton damage just doesn't make sense. It LIMITS build options because it encourages you to use Dev decided weapons for specific builds.
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Of course it limits you.

There wouldn't be much of a decision if everything was cheap and a-la-carte without having to specialise in anything. That really is the whole point.

 
Pertaining to points and perks, with power players and passive people pushing their paradigms...

Its all absolute elsewhere.

TFP should do what they find fun and would be absolutely foolish to make anything they don't find fun.

 
  • Tech 2/3 guns are not autounlocked by the weapon perk. Go find yourself a schematic. 
Does that mean that by spending skill points on the club in strength tree I won't be able anymore to automatically craft better clubs? Right now if you have skilled to level 2 you can craft a level 2 club.

  • Chainsaw and auger are not unlocked by perkAdvancedEngineering 
Same here. If I want to craft chainsaw / auger now I can only do that if I find the schematic?

Do I understand that correct?

Btw I love most of those new changes 🙂

 
PoloPoPo said:
  • Tech 2/3 guns are not autounlocked by the weapon perk. Go find yourself a schematic. 
Does that mean that by spending skill points on the club in strength tree I won't be able anymore to automatically craft better clubs? Right now if you have skilled to level 2 you can craft a level 2 club.

  • Chainsaw and auger are not unlocked by perkAdvancedEngineering 
Same here. If I want to craft chainsaw / auger now I can only do that if I find the schematic?

Do I understand that correct?

Btw I love most of those new changes 🙂
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U can craft better t2/t3 IF you found the schematics is how I understand it.  Sounds like their making the t2/t3s more challenging to obtain which makes sense.

 
faatal said:
We do care about it. I never want to see stuff added to the game that ends up being useless, because then it was waste of time and we only have so much of that. There was not enough time before experimental to make the sledge better, but this week I finally had the chance to get the ragdoll effect working, add knock backs and fix bugs I saw (range, targeting and attack delay). It now works well and could be an insane monster if we wanted by changing speed, knock backs/ragdolls and damage.
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Nice to hear. I am hoping the junk sledge works out to being something useful at least early game. 

 
Khalagar said:
Builds are great, the issue with wasted points is that  general use perks are locked behind things that don't make sense and are very, very build specific.  Gating a chef perk behind shotgun damage or a doctor perk behind stun baton damage just doesn't make sense.
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While you may not agree with them, they make sense to TFP in general and Mad Mole specifically. A while back Mad Mole explained his thought process behind each class and why perks were in certain classes in response to multiple comments like the excerpt I quoted above. MM had specific  reasons for why the classes were designed as they are. The perks were not randomly put in trees and were instead distributed based on a holistic appraisal of each class. Even if you didn't agree with MM's decisions, it was clear he had a reason for the placement of each perk.  For example, the strength class got master chef for healing and stamina usage.  Whether you agree with it or not, this is a reason that "makes sense" for strength characters. 

PoloPoPo said:
  • Tech 2/3 guns are not autounlocked by the weapon perk. Go find yourself a schematic. 
Does that mean that by spending skill points on the club in strength tree I won't be able anymore to automatically craft better clubs? Right now if you have skilled to level 2 you can craft a level 2 club.

  • Chainsaw and auger are not unlocked by perkAdvancedEngineering 
Same here. If I want to craft chainsaw / auger now I can only do that if I find the schematic?

Do I understand that correct?

Btw I love most of those new changes 🙂
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Quality is different from Tier. Quality is color. Tier is type of weapon. For shotguns:  T0 Blunderbuss, T1 Doublebarrel, T2 Pump Shotgun, T3 Auto (Combat) Shotgun

 
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Gazz said:
It really comes down to players not wanting to make choices.

They want the path to their preferred combination of perks all highlighted and linear with zero points "wasted" on something they consider non-essential.

There are 2 problems with that.

1. The gameplay of this game's skill system is based on making choices.

2. It's not going to change.

It's not even a problem of them being "locked out" of certain perks. You can get over 300 skill points. Their problem is that they want easy access to a very specific set of perks that makes their particular play style easier.

Putting together a new attribute for the purpose of maximum OP with least skill points invested is good material for a mod, not the vanilla game.
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Glad to see you guys stick up for the vision of your game. No wonder it's as great as it is now.

MechanicalLens said:
The problem there is we would end up with a system where players would feel forced, or at least highly encouraged, to go under an attribute just for the passive benefit that that attribute provides alone. If every rank into Perception increased your chance of headshot decapitations by 10% per rank, then why wouldn't you go under Perception solely for that benefit? It would create a very rigid and restricting system. To each their own though, but I think that these bonuses should be small enough that players don't think of going under those trees just for the attribute bonus alone, but not insignificant enough that they can't look back and said, "that was worth it".
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The problem is even small bonuses will add up greatly, TFP had a great idea making it mostly just affect headshots with a specific weapon type. Obscure enough that it never feels like you must go into a certain attribute to use a certain weapon. From what I understand the design philosophy is you go into attributes for perks you want, attributes simply buffer the cost and give you a small headshot bonus for certain weapon types as the "small bonus" you mentioned. Having each attribute give universal bonuses will give rise to optimal builds too often.

 
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Well this update was no joke, loaded into my world and ran into 2 direwolves and a bear straight up, the animal increase is very noticed right away, i like it

 
Gazz said:
Of course it limits you.

There wouldn't be much of a decision if everything was cheap and a-la-carte without having to specialise in anything. That really is the whole point.
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But it's a forced limit and a fair question.

In the quest to simplify perks you have actually complicated them.

There is no real reason why miners must spec shotguns. Weapon classes and survival classes could be separate thus giving players an actual build and choice they seek.

If I wanted to excel at gardening I would not all of a sudden toss my knowledge in snipers away to learn a new damage.

The way perks work now is the very definition of forced and cookie cutter. So let's say I take shotguns due to mining but find sweet pistols. Now I should spec in pistols. But by abandoning shotguns I now lose my mining progression. So I don't use the pistol.

That seems more like a waste of time to me.

 
unlike them said:
I didn't play much, but I like the food changes, I enjoy stone age, I like the music, even the infamous battle theme, I like the new graphics, but sometimes my fps drops to 10-20 and I can't figure out what causes it.
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We are loading too much data up front, so texture use is very high. I'm working on that now to try and bring it down. Hopefully will have it sorted out next week.

 
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