PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

[MechanicalLens]

Why bother building a fort if a bicycle was all you needed to survive the apocalypse? We want players to build a fort. The vulture swarm might be temporary, once vehicle crits are in perhaps hitting a few zombies and your vehicle breaks down, then you are out in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to run, etc. That is the same thing but on top of dying you have to walk to your vehicle after the horde and repair it. Which one seems better? I kind of like the latter because with some skill you might evade them, but it wouldn't be nearly impossible like it is now. At the end of the day it is just a few pre A19 players complaining about it. Had you just picked up the game you'd just accept the fact that vehicles are not a good idea on horde night.

So no more driving around in town or in the country and running zombies over for sport then? 

Seems to me that 7th book in the set is always the rare one.

Especially the final one that is part of that specific melee weapon/gun "class" that you happen to be using in that world. RNG loves to have a laugh.

 

[Demandred1957]

Had you just picked up the game you'd just accept the fact that vehicles are not a good idea on horde night.

No, gotta disagree on that.

As a human, when you are faced with overwhelming danger, your >first< instinct is to run/get away.

And what better to do it than your mechanical steed?

But why force them to build a fort?

Sure perk into running, and have a bunch of stims on your belt is the other option, but that means you only have two ways to survive..

Why not just have a speed/quality aspect to the vehicle escape plan?

Think about this for a second.

As low level players, you are only going to have access to the bicycle and maybe the minibike.

Ok, they are slow, and shouldn't be able to outrun much of anything.

That's where your vultures come in.

But at low levels, you should be able to handle the hordes anyway, and not running away.

But as you grow and get better vehicles that are faster..

Maybe make the motorcycle >just< able to stay ahead of them if you have to bail on a high level horde.. say like the day 35 horde. And only if you don't have to turn, slow down etc..

You might have the motorcycle by then if you are lucky, and the hordes are getting pretty tough..

But for high level players that have ground for all the hours needed to get the 4x4/gyro they should be able to bail, and expect to get away if needed.

That's part of the reward for all the grinding it took to get those things.

Or maybe both to make it really balanced.

You can bail on the top tier rides, but they lose like .5% of their top speed from each hit or something.

Here is my example. This is me fighting the day 126 horde @64 per wave and 2 hr time to give them every advantage.

Then at the time the video starts playing, I had a glitch/problem and fell down into them.

If it starts from the beginning the video time is 22:00 where I am talking about.

Now some people have given me static about "you drove all night" which is not the case. I had been fighting them for hours, and didn't even know morning was so close.

And I came back to finish them off.

This is what I call a balanced back up plan.

That's why I parked the 4x4 close to hand. Because I have living brains instead of zombie mush.

 

[STyK_]

It is fine to further self impose/role play restrictions beyond vanilla, or mod it, or mess with settings but the stock vanilla game should be an increasing challenge to survive each 7 days. Of course we give tools and loot and perks to keep up with or exceed that challenge and a variety of ways to do it. What methods you use are up to your play style and there will always be debates about which are most effective, what feel cheesy, etc.

I couldn't ask for a better intro @madmole thanks, its just missing this: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbyaDG3CK5JvFDsEcAFfrPw?view_as=subscriber

Check out Operation Broken Bow, self imposed/role play restrictions beyond vanilla is all I do, and I do it on the hardest of the hard settings proving it is possible.

This is also the proof so far @madmole, back at the working stiffs, I just need wheels and I could turtle the rest of the game if I wanted to. Not done yet though. First try since the patch dropped.

 

[Kalen]

No we had gun parts and repair used parts to repair and improve each part. On one hero item it probably wasn't horribly tedious. Now take that idea with anything that allows mods, and go wide with it. See how much fun it is swapping 4 mods after hundreds of clicks constantly. It is real easy to test, just don't use a repair kit in  your next game. No mods needed. Use your dead is dead style of self control to implement this. The later your game the worse it is going to feel because when you have 3-4 mods changing an item for a better one gets painful, and we unlikely going to improve that whole experience.

IMO, mods shouldn't be swappable anyway.   Item degradation and locked mods introduces difficult decisions, which is a good thing.   Without item degradation you devalue, to some extent, looting and crafting.... two core aspects to the game.

 

[MechanicalLens]

Has anyone else seen wooden bows in loot? I don't think I have found one in the entirety of A19 EXP so far...

 

[Adam the Waster]

Has anyone else seen wooden bows in loot? I don't think I have found one in the entirety of A19 EXP so far...

i have but arrows are invisible  

 

[Callum123456789]

Has anyone else seen wooden bows in loot? I don't think I have found one in the entirety of A19 EXP so far...

oh i've found like 10 roughly  mostly tier 3-5 but i found one tier 6 they seem more rare in loot than in a18

 

[Trekkan]

Has anyone else seen wooden bows in loot? I don't think I have found one in the entirety of A19 EXP so far...

Only primitive, not any wooden.

 

[Laz Man]

IMO, mods shouldn't be swappable anyway.   Item degradation and locked mods introduces difficult decisions, which is a good thing.   Without item degradation you devalue, to some extent, looting and crafting.... two core aspects to the game.

I agree with this point to some degree.  It kinda sucks that once you craft/find a really good mod you don't need another one of its kind anymore aside from convenience.

Their are a few exceptions to this like pocket mods.

On the flip side, it wouldnt make much sense if mods like extended magazines or silencers and scopes couldn't be removed.

Another variant of dead is dead could be inventory/equipment destroyed on death....(i.e. lost/partially destroyed bag)  that would give more value to looting/crafting more equipment.

If thats too severe, maybe the player's dropped bag would only have a fraction of their dropped items to simulate lost/destroyed loot.

 

[Kalen]

On the flip side, it wouldnt make much sense if mods like extended magazines or silencers and scopes couldn't be removed.

True, but it also doesn't make sense that those mods fit on any kind of firearm.  Since both situations don't make sense, I'd rather they be locked in place for the reasons I mentioned.

 

[EmpV]

Can the devs share what the intentions are for looting vs crafting balance come final game release?  
Since alpha 18, with the addition of parts to recipes and tier 6 being loot only, there seems to be a shift in preference to looting. This may be just testing and balancing new systems as part of the alpha process, but I am wondering if crafting weapons/tools/armor is intended to be a comparable choice to looting or trading to acquire the same items?  

I expect that looting/traders will still be sources of some materials or parts needed for crafting. 

 

[lug]

Can the devs share what the intentions are for looting vs crafting balance come final game release?  
Since alpha 18, with the addition of parts to recipes and tier 6 being loot only, there seems to be a shift in preference to looting. This may be just testing and balancing new systems as part of the alpha process, but I am wondering if crafting weapons/tools/armor is intended to be a comparable choice to looting or trading to acquire the same items?  

I expect that looting/traders will still be sources of some materials or parts needed for crafting. 

MadMole has said in the recent past that his design is that the best gear should be looted, not craftable. as for the future...

 

[pregnable]

Buzzards are kinda great. 

I think everyone kinda hates them which shows how great they are.  I kinda like them attacking vehicles, but whatever solution you guys go with is probably fine. 

In a game not long ago I got lowish health near our trader, and this was only a few days into the game, and a swarm of buzzards started attacking me. 

I have no idea where they came from, I am guessing a poi nearby and they all flocked to my low health.  They came like 1 or 2 at a time over a few minutes and finally I was like wtf and just ran in my base for a minute lel. 

It was annoying and kinda perfect to be honest. 

 

[Noctoras]

It is a problem for those who want a real challenge (probably a fair amount if not majority of players) and being easily safe with exploits removes the incentive to keep playing. I recall playing A16 and was having fun until I was looting too late and had no choice but to sit on a roof top. I threw some spikes down to clog up the stair well and thought I'd be dead for sure, but all they did was spin circles and break a few blocks and make some noise. I quit playing, I thought why would I build a great fort if all you need to do is sit on a roof of an old crusty building. No challenge = no fun for me in any game.

I understand this reasoning and thus I wonder, if the demolisher can be adjusted (if it has been with the new update, I'm sorry, currently didn't face demos yet in my playthrough).

Back in A18 when building a fort I noticed demos pretty quickly smash it with their explosions. It wasn't really cool, but that was the new world. Whem a demo at one point smashed the ground beneath me, I dropped to the floor into the horde and expected my end between demos and radiated. But to the contrary. A chill run down the road all the while shooting the horde proved pretty easy. The demos actually regularly took part of the horde with it when detonating. 

Ofc with this new "strategy" there was no point in building stuff which needs endless repairs, so for quite a while I stopped building horde bases. 

I don't necessarily think the self detonation idea is bad (although I would have preferred a suicide bomber with suicide vests also players can use ), but damage and damage radius is just way over the top in my opinion, making building a horde base a net loss each horde night.

As for the vultures, the idea again is good, but as you already hinted, vehicle breakdown possibility or something similar sounds more appealing to me than F35 stealth vultures with supercruise  So I hope for another solution for this as well. 

 

[Noctoras]

Legendary will be sort of like finding another tier, or be how a pink stone axe is compared to a brown iron pick. You might see a yellow legendary Iron pick that is arguably better than a pink steel pick. A choice!

I'd hope they will be more outstanding than "just" one more tier basically. I remember this Indian stone axe from back then, which lacked a real incentive to use, since a bad iron fireaxe was easily better. 

I'd rather the legendaries were super super rare (i.e. within 100 player hours you shouldn't count on finding a legendary), but hugely superior in stats. In my opinion, it should be an item to tell your friends about, not "hey, I found the level 7 steel sledge"). I don't see this really disrupting game balance. But that's just my thoughts.

The grind to get the vehicles is itself the "preparation" for the horde..

Also parking it nearby full of gas, and fully repaired.

All of those things take time, and should not be trivialized.

I honestly wonder whether that one is serious - no offence, but do you usually have your vehicle out of gas? and even if it was on little gas, you could drive some hundred meters, slowly refuel, get back on and chill your life. No, just as with underground bases, the decision to close the super easy loopholes is good.

Discussing the implementations is another story (see vultures), but the idea sure is right. 

Another example: If you are able to nerd pole without any effort to a POI's main loot that is game changing as well and should not be possible from a game design's perspective. 

I don't know if a random placement of loot is possible, but the idea has been brought up by some people already. It kind of defeats the "dungeon design" of many POIs, but that would be a small price to pay in my opinion. 

 

[madmole]

So no more driving around in town or in the country and running zombies over for sport then? 

Especially the final one that is part of that specific melee weapon/gun "class" that you happen to be using in that world. RNG loves to have a laugh.

Not without risk of getting a critical on your vehicle. It might be similar to the current system, where you can take a few hits but multiple in a row will lead to catastrophe.

 

[Tmodloader]

My take on recent topics: 
Item Degradation: Just play with item loss on death instead, item degradation adds some extra annoying micromanagement and doesn't really reward playing well
Not being able to cheese horde nights by driving around in a vehicle is pretty undeniably a good thing, not sure why anyone would say otherwise. Game literally says "Tower Defense" in the descriptions, building a fort for horde night is fun and definitely the intention, then spending a week exploring/rebuilding/reinforcing ect
Legendary Items: Should certainly be rare but not overwhelmingly so, should definitely have an impact when you find them, I would say whoever's suggestion of "probably not finding one in 100hrs" is a bad thing but maybe 24-50hrs on average, of course GS calculations would come into play. If anything it should certainly not be timelocked or else you'll have people afking for days to find one.

Overall I really like most of the game design philosophy of TFP. 

Another thing I will never understand is why people would want zombie ai to be exploitable. Anyway thanks for doing your best to make it not exploitable as much as possible while keeping building a well designed base important.

 

[Tmodloader]

Wonder if we're getting close to A19 Stable, seems like last patch note was significantly less than the rest.  A good sign. Not that I don't want more content but just good that stuff might be stable.

If you guys do another patch for Junk Drones during A19 would new world creation be required again? I am unfamiliar with how the A18-A18.4 cycle was

 

[Toban]

Can the devs share what the intentions are for looting vs crafting balance come final game release?  
Since alpha 18, with the addition of parts to recipes and tier 6 being loot only, there seems to be a shift in preference to looting. This may be just testing and balancing new systems as part of the alpha process, but I am wondering if crafting weapons/tools/armor is intended to be a comparable choice to looting or trading to acquire the same items?  

I expect that looting/traders will still be sources of some materials or parts needed for crafting. 

I look at it like this: Crafting = Convenience. Looting = Reward for effort when you get the lvl 6.

I think it kinda makes sense because you can have pretty decent gear without having to hope you get that awesome item. Breaking most of the rubbish ones you find will make you a decent weapon/tool until you find the awesome one you want.

 

[Laynie]

Easy, the same way it did before.  Pop out one of the mods at random and then you'd have to go back in and reset it how you wanted it.  And if your inventory was full when it happened it'd fall on the floor and disappear forever if you were unlucky.  And then you'd come here and complain like holy hell because it happened to your legendary club of doom and how it completely ruined the game for you and you were never going to play again.

Like I said, this was already in the game and people hated it like poison on a cracker.

I too remember those effin days! I hated it  If I find an awesome item, I want it to stay that way.