PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[Roland]

let us know how you like it.

I did let you know. I like it. I played with degradation in earlier alphas and I liked it. I do play delete all on death and I like it.

Doubling the durability of everything and disabling repair might be an interesting idea I'd be willing to try. Throwing away stuff willingly is okay but just like death is death there is a big difference in the feel of it when you know you're not in control. It's not that I can't do it but when the universe created by the game is in charge instead of me it changes it. You must know what I'm talking about since you want to add a death is death option into the game eventually.

I can do all those those things and have done them but I don't need to do them to "see if it's fun". I already know that it is.

Though I do see some irony in a mod maker being a driving force behind the suggestion.

Mod makers need hooks to make the mods-- at least those of us who are limited to xml edits. Modding out is always easier than modding in. I'd rather see an inoccuous version added that isn't offensive to anyone. THEN those who are going to be offended by anything can mod it out and those of us who want it even more impactful CAN mod it to be so. But it sounds like Madmole has categorized the whole idea as sharp sticks. If I'm a driving force behind this suggestion then he is the mass of bloodmoon vultures stopping me in my tracks.

 

[MechanicalLens]

It is just more crap to confuse players with IMO. Not everyone plays the game long games like you guys do, most people wouldn't even notice it because they just upgrade, upgrade, upgrade.... then they are end game and quit or restart. I don't actually repair my stuff that much, I replace it after about 1 or 2 repairs max. I don't know the exact number of times, but most of my repair kits go to items I find and I repair them to sell them for max xp and dukes. I don't think repair comes into play except on horde nights or lengthy mining sessions. Maybe early game that lame stone axe needs repaired often... but I could just as well craft another, and often I do, because I level, and craft all new stone tools, clubs etc. Repair isn't something we actually do that much. By the time my armor is shot, I have new stuff. Repair isn't really a big part of the game, so I don't think it is worth bothering with. It wouldn't really change the experience that much IMO.

 

Agreed, some form of item degradation would be fantastic... as a mod. For vanilla, agreed, it would just be some nonsense fluff for a lot of players. When someone orders a chocolate cake, you don't put some pumpkin-flavored icing on top in the hopes that they'd like that; if they're lucky, they'd be a separate menu for that, if you get my analogy.

 

[Roland]

You sure are jumpy today... did a Dev show you a really good working zipline design and then delete it right in front of you?  lel

No...But we all have those beloved old features that got cut. I was under the impression it might have a chance of returning in some form but alas I'm on the opposite side of Madmole on this one. <shrug> I'll live. I'll take a look at possibly increasing overall durability but disabling repair. Not sure how much of a PITA that would be. I do enjoy Delete All on Death so maybe that will have to be the representation of entropy in the game for me.

 

[JCrook1028]

So I died a bit ago, looting one of the new Shamway buildings. In the main ground floor area there's a wood plank leading to a lift cage with some cement, cross that to some large vats.

I shoveled the cement and the hoist and cage came apart, dropped me and things fell on me wee head and brained me dead.

Not playing permadeath so no biggie. Just mentioning it in case it's not supposed to do that?

And just in case anyone in the know (devs/mods) happens to know, are some of the chain-hoist+platform with cobb/cement supposed to fall apart when the c/c is shoveled? Or should none of them fail & we should report those that do fail..?

The one at the farm does the same. Intended.

 

[Outlaw_187]

Good points on both sides regarding degradation. Like I said, I'm happy with the game either way.

Just please....please....for the love of all that's holy.....leave my zombie stripper in the game!!

 

[Gazz]

How is this for an idea:  The longer you use an item, the BETTER it gets.

Maybe this could be a book capstone or a skill, that whenever you repair an item with 0 durability, there's a chance for it to jump up a level in quality.

There's also the trope from fantasy games of having a powerful weapon be able to gain XP itself and level up.

I'm not sure how I feel about a stone axe that talks smack and judges my performance.

 

[Gazz]

No...But we all have those beloved old features that got cut. I was under the impression it might have a chance of returning in some form but alas I'm on the opposite side of Madmole on this one. <shrug> I'll live. I'll take a look at possibly increasing overall durability but disabling repair. Not sure how much of a PITA that would be. I do enjoy Delete All on Death so maybe that will have to be the representation of entropy in the game for me.

All you need for disabling item repair is to take out the RepairTools but for vehicles you'd have to take out the repair kits.

So I died a bit ago, looting one of the new Shamway buildings. In the main ground floor area there's a wood plank leading to a lift cage with some cement, cross that to some large vats.

I shoveled the cement and the hoist and cage came apart, dropped me and things fell on me wee head and brained me dead.

Sounds like a rusty chain.

I mean... did that really look trustworthy to you?

 

[Tete1805]

Roland, I like the idea Madmole came up with.

We could remove the repair kit's recipe in the xml.

You would still find some in loot or at the traders, but you'd think twice about repairing something now.

You can fine tune it by making it more or less scarce and/or expensive.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

For me I like simplification of the Assets in games. Permanent degradation then break would be one thing plus
No repair. But ite would also need a balance or compliment, Similar to Crysis 3. As you fight Npcs have vaiable
vaiable weapons pre-equipped with custom mods already installed. All you do is add bullets and attitude.

The only part that ever seemed out of place was and is the ego additive. An AK is an AK, The grains are still
the same, the things that change the ability of the weapon are the mods. The color coding should only regulate
the amount of possible mods added, and the use quality. Ive always been contemt finding a weapon period. "In a
survival game" the rest is superfluous.

I find or make a club, thats better than my hands, then i find or make a bow thats has the advantage of distance,
the compound has the advantage of strength but uses more stamina as a tradeoff. A pistol has power but attracts
attention. Rifle types have range and auto re-fire. ETC.

The zombies don't increase in strength just in quantity of spawn rate, the balance is pema deg and an it is what
it is weapon. You scavenge with you 30% weapon, and save your 100% for the horde. When it gets low it becomes your
scavenge weapon the other is scrapped or sold, and you hunt for another high durability horde weapon.

"Monkey Wrench additive" would be the durability bar is invisble and the title is Ak47, That would definitely
tighten the sphincter when playing.

References COD Zombie each weapon has its own attribute but is limited use, Crysis 3 premodded weapons abound,
Pre 19 7dtd, club iron spiked barbed club, Dying Light Crazy specialty perma mods quick degradation avter the
first few upgrades no anguish just play.

Fortunately these changes are still allowed for personal satisfaction. You can Negan up the traders a bit, to
increase the game survival factor, EX: quests: you need to get them inordinate amounts of clothes food weapons
etc. Within a time limit say 6 days, or Luceal speaks up. You can make your own bullets, well Neganistic Joel
needs a ton.

 

[caatalyst]

We have talked about perma degradation but I'm not sure it would be fun replacing your gear constantly (which means swapping all your mods, dye), and when you finally got a legendary purple when those come out, to see it degrade away and become useless over time might suck. Imagine spending 90k dukes on a gyro and then you have to buy another one because it cannot be repaired any more times.

I sort of touched on this in another thread but it would be a shame to write off item degradation because it creates a bit of an end game loop that could encourage the player to go out and explore the world and loot long term.

If your gear doesn't sustain it's Q6 status then players will always be actively looking to find replacements, whether it's the item itself or parts or both depending on the system and how it works. Either that or a system that allows you to upgrade your gear to a higher quality level if it does degrade. This could have been expanded with books and schematics that maybe taught you to do a better job of it and allowed you to reach better quality levels or that allowed you to repair for longer without losing quality. 

 

[Kattla]

Turning off the horde doesn't solve it for those who want a challenge, but don't have the self control to stay off the motorcycle. And they shouldn't have to use self control the game should just murder them in every cheap scenario, until they decide its too much and change the options.

Players would find riding out the horde night to not be a challenge, and try out another way the next time. Players who genuinly want a challenge will find it, be it by method, option or mod/modlet. For players wanting a challenge, riding out the horde night was never a problem, since they'd choose more challenging methods in the first place.

Beeing chased up on a rooftop and quit the game because a simple trick fooled the zombies. And afterwards introduce a system that makes the zombies ten times easier to fool around, not to mention making every POI like a fortified gun, tool and food store. And very often place those high value items high up.. Perhaps it was not a lack of challenge that caused the flying Dumbos, hmmm?

Well, that explain why someone said the reason for flying Dumbos was the some of the devs having a problem. My apology to that person, i think i might have overlooked his deeper logic. I apology, Jax. And no, i am neutral on the vultures attacking player-ridden vehicles on horde night, i just did not see a logic in it.

I think i gonna let this dead horse rest though. Much funnier beating (un)dead bears.

 

[Crater Creator]

For brevity, I'll forego quoting 15 posts.

I'm with @Roland. I'm a big fan of item degradation.  I would favor a system where, when you repair an item, it simply degrades in quality by 1 level.  So your Q6 iron axe turns into a Q5 iron axe when you repair it.  "Gah, that's such a severe loss to be occurring all the time!" I imagine some saying.  Except you can still have fine control over how severe this is, by adjusting the durability.  Some have said they don't want to have to replace their stuff every horde night, or every few days.  And I wouldn't have it that way, either.  I'd adjust durability as needed so that a Q6 item lasts for a reasonable amount of time with typical use.

Removing one of the installed mods that the item can no longer support because its quality is reduced is an issue, but it's not an insurmountable one.  In spite of @Pegasus's claim, I don't think the game's ever had both degradation and mod slots determined by quality.  Even if it did, we've seen a lot of changes since then.  Significantly, a Q1 gun doesn't suck the way it used to.  I may be sad I don't have something better, but a Q1 pistol is still useful to me.  So a Q6 item can last you a long time, even if only part of its lifetime is as Q6.  And importantly, I would have a Q1 item stay a Q1 item after repair.  So no worries about your weapon breaking beyond repair at a bad time, or ever.  You could always repair it with a repair kit, as you can now.  Then it wouldn't affect the early game at all, and it would play differently than 'delete all on death'.

Also, it doesn't have to be permanent degradation.  Building on @Adam the Waster and @Morloc's points, you could use extra parts to improve the quality of an item (this could be gated).  This could scratch an itch for people like me, that thought the workbench's combine feature was great but just needed fleshing out.  It's also in line with the rest of the game, where higher quality items already require more parts to craft.  In fact since degradation means using more resources overall, the extra parts required to craft higher quality items could be nerfed to compensate.  That's something I'd like to see anyway, since it sucks to spend a skill point and price yourself out of being able to craft the item at all.

Advantages of this design:

• Makes what you can craft matter more.  Because currently, if you find a high quality widget, you never have to worry about finding the schematic to make another one.
  
  
• Makes your tool crafting quality matter more.  Because you would have a reason to learn to craft Q4 widgets, even after you'd looted a Q4 widget.
  
  
• Makes late game looting matter more.  Because the need for replacements would be an incentive to keep looting & doing quests.  Call it a burden or a loot treadmill if you want, but isn't the game better when there are more practical reasons to do quests over the whole course of your game?
  
  
• Makes finding duplicates matter more.  Because currently, duplicates for high quality items are useless. You pawn them straight off to the trader, or you throw them in a chest if you're a hoarder.
  
  
• Makes durability more meaningful.  Because currently, there's no thought involved once you're out of the early game and repair kits are plentiful.  Repairing just means click a button, with no consequences.
  
  
• Potentially lessens the need for higher quality crafting to require more parts.  Because you'd be using more parts to restore/improve the quality of your existing items instead. 
  
  
• Potentially lessens the need to enforce a primitive age where higher tier/higher quality items are unattainable.  Because it's more feasible to find good things early, if they'll only buoy you above your level temporarily.
  
  
  

And finally, to the 'if you don't like it don't do it' crowd... No!  It's a survival game.  It's even a survival game first according to @madmole today (thanks for clarifying that).  Self-imposed restrictions in-game, like throwing things away or pretending certain advantages don't exist, are luxuries: luxuries which ruin the sense that you are trying to survive.  And it'd be nice if you could mod in degradation, but I don't think you could - not with xml modding anyway.  I'm not aware of any hooks to set a change in quality when the repair is performed.

 

[caatalyst]

For brevity, I'll forego quoting 15 posts.

I'm with @Roland. I'm a big fan of item degradation.  I would favor a system where, when you repair an item, it simply degrades in quality by 1 level.  So your Q6 iron axe turns into a Q5 iron axe when you repair it.  "Gah, that's such a severe loss to be occurring all the time!" I imagine some saying.  Except you can still have fine control over how severe this is, by adjusting the durability.  Some have said they don't want to have to replace their stuff every horde night, or every few days.  And I wouldn't have it that way, either.  I'd adjust durability as needed so that a Q6 item lasts for a reasonable amount of time with typical use.

Removing one of the installed mods that the item can no longer support because its quality is reduced is an issue, but it's not an insurmountable one.  In spite of @Pegasus's claim, I don't think the game's ever had both degradation and mod slots determined by quality.  Even if it did, we've seen a lot of changes since then.  Significantly, a Q1 gun doesn't suck the way it used to.  I may be sad I don't have something better, but a Q1 pistol is still useful to me.  So a Q6 item can last you a long time, even if only part of its lifetime is as Q6.  And importantly, I would have a Q1 item stay a Q1 item after repair.  So no worries about your weapon breaking beyond repair at a bad time, or ever.  You could always repair it with a repair kit, as you can now.  Then it wouldn't affect the early game at all, and it would play differently than 'delete all on death'.

Also, it doesn't have to be permanent degradation.  Building on @Adam the Waster and @Morloc's points, you could use extra parts to improve the quality of an item (this could be gated).  This could scratch an itch for people like me, that thought the workbench's combine feature was great but just needed fleshing out.  It's also in line with the rest of the game, where higher quality items already require more parts to craft.  In fact since degradation means using more resources overall, the extra parts required to craft higher quality items could be nerfed to compensate.  That's something I'd like to see anyway, since it sucks to spend a skill point and price yourself out of being able to craft the item at all.

Advantages of this design:

• Makes what you can craft matter more.  Because currently, if you find a high quality widget, you never have to worry about finding the schematic to make another one.
  
• Makes your tool crafting quality matter more.  Because you would have a reason to learn to craft Q4 widgets, even after you'd looted a Q4 widget.
  
• Makes late game looting matter more.  Because the need for replacements would be an incentive to keep looting & doing quests.  Call it a burden or a loot treadmill if you want, but isn't the game better when there are more practical reasons to do quests over the whole course of your game?
  
• Makes finding duplicates matter more.  Because currently, duplicates for high quality items are useless. You pawn them straight off to the trader, or you throw them in a chest if you're a hoarder.
  
• Makes durability more meaningful.  Because currently, there's no thought involved once you're out of the early game and repair kits are plentiful.  Repairing just means click a button, with no consequences.
  
• Potentially lessens the need for higher quality crafting to require more parts.  Because you'd be using more parts to restore/improve the quality of your existing items instead. 
  
• Potentially lessens the need to enforce a primitive age where higher tier/higher quality items are unattainable.  Because it's more feasible to find good things early, if they'll only buoy you above your level temporarily.
   
  

And finally, to the 'if you don't like it don't do it' crowd... No!  It's a survival game.  It's even a survival game first according to @madmole today (thanks for clarifying that).  Self-imposed restrictions in-game, like throwing things away or pretending certain advantages don't exist, are luxuries: luxuries which ruin the sense that you are trying to survive.  And it'd be nice if you could mod in degradation, but I don't think you could - not with xml modding anyway.  I'm not aware of any hooks to set a change in quality when the repair is performed.

If this doesn't sell item degradation then I don't know what will. In particular the fact that this introduces an end game loop and activity should be enough to make it worth implementing.

Items don't even need to degrade in quality after a single repair. Maybe they last 2-3 repair kits before losing a quality level. Level 1 items could break entirely. Schematics or perks could also impact how quickly something degrades in quality.

Of course It would be much better if you got better at repairing the more you did it using an LBD system rather than perks but that's a hot topic for another day

 

[Crater Creator]

If this doesn't sell item degradation then I don't know what will. In particular the fact that this introduces an end game loop and activity should be enough to make it worth implementing.

Items don't even need to degrade in quality after a single repair. Schematics or perks could also impact how quickly something degrades in quality.

Of course It would be much better if you got better at repairing the more you did it using an LBD system rather than perks but that's a hot topic for another day

Thanks, but you just haaaad to poison it with LBD, didn't you.

 

[caatalyst]

Thanks, but you just haaaad to poison it with LBD, didn't you.

 

[Gazz]

Well, just skip to the next post when LBD comes up.

 

[FileMachete]

I'm not sure how I feel about a stone axe that talks smack and judges my performance.

well... could put a wig & lipstick on it, might make it more familar...

(hehehehe sry! jking!! :biggrin1: )

 

[PoloPoPo]

Item degradation sounds like an attempt to keep the game interesting in the very long term and very late game. However, I am sure there are other possibilities of even better contents that could be added for players having to do something past day 40.

Having to look for the same tool over and over again does not sound fun to me. Rather make repairing more expensive as it is a breeze to stack up 100 repair kits. Or allow repair kits only to repair the item to some degree leaving it with some flaws (decreased damage, range whatever) but still usable and make a full repair more expensive (different items and tool parts / workbench etc. needed).

 

[FileMachete]

Wacky idea.

A new Candy, "That all ya got?!" when eaten it adds 10 to your gamestage.

Sure, already doable via the console, but only talking an Icon and a bit of xml. Would offer a vanilla way to bump GS for any that find things too easy, or don't really like the slower start.

The 'too easy' is not about Difficulty, more for when you get a lucky drop or are on a flat spot wanting the next lvl zeds.

 

[Jost Amman]

Wacky idea.

A new Candy, "That all ya got?!" when eaten it adds 10 to your gamestage.

Sure, already doable via the console, but only talking an Icon and a bit of xml. Would offer a vanilla way to bump GS for any that find things too easy, or don't really like the slower start.

The 'too easy' is not about Difficulty, more for when you get a lucky drop or are on a flat spot wanting the next lvl zeds.

That could be easily abused to also get better loot and kind of skip stone age earlier.