PC Alpha 19 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
Eko said:
Otherwise, we would all play the game in the same way, same gear, same perks. Boring! As I understand it, TFPs are working towards a more versatile game that allows players to choose a specific role in the apocalypse. Hence the perk trees! So yeah, you may have a slight weakness against this new class of zombie, but you can't expect your character to excel at EVERYTHING or else the game will become boring. Welcome the challenge and get creative with your environment/engagement strategies and not just your character build.
Click to expand...
That should be obvious by now. 😃

Due to the cost structure of attributes it is slightly more efficient to favour one attribute but in a longer game this is completely irrelevant and you can simply get them all.

I would go for a more hardcore approach like having one primary attribute and all secondaries cost more... but that's the stuff of mods and super unlikely to be in vanilla.

The only real issue is that there are very few actual "special enemies" by now. They all have hit points, are affected by all weapons equally, have very few special abilities.

(there are minor adjustments for armor which only ranged weapons and spears/clubs have means to deal with)

That is going to get fleshed out. It's part and parcel of the whole Tower Defense bit.

 
I've been playing a lot of A19 and I'm really digging it.  The PoIs look much nicer with the new art assets!  There's many things in A19 that I really like, the hunger/thirst bars were a much-needed addition, however, it's created a sort of guessing game as to how much food I need to eat to top my meters off now.  It's probably been suggested before, but would it be possible to implement a system where health/food/thirst bars are filled in with a lighter shade of red/green/blue whenever we're healing or eating/drinking?  So we know how much of our bar is going to be filled up and know right away if we need to drink or eat more, rather than having to wait for the bar to finish filling! 

It would make sense I think, at least for food/water, I know when I have room for seconds right after eating something!  It'd be a nice QoL improvement if the devs have time to implement it!

 
Okay, I tried out a pure agility build and beat the day 7 horde... and while I thought I understood how it was supposed to work, after doing a quest on business_burnt_02, I don't get it.

First I thought having the sneak skill at level 4 and wearing only light stuff I would be able to sneak around and get mostly sneak kills, but then I noticed during the day time the zombies still seemed to aggro on me at the usual range. 

Then I figured okay, well I can sneak around during quests and can probably clear it out without aggro if I am careful... but then I am doing a quest and the zombies aggro on me while I am in full sneak mode, from a completely different room, with a wall or 2 between us. 

I did the POI twice and they seemed to aggro in the same spots no matter what I did. 

So I am just confused as to how it is supposed to work. 

It seems like, from playing my str/intel build, that the points I put into sneaking do not really do much of anything.  I can straight up just go into sneak mode on a non sneaking build and shoot a radiated zombie with a shotgun, with his buddies in the room, and everyone just keeps sleeping, lol. 

Like in most cases I could just do a POI just as sneaky with a pure str build and a shotgun.  Sleepers do not care, you can shine a light in their faces.  They do not care unless you hit a scripted spot where they wake up, or I guess almost touch them or are super loud. 

Honest question, how is it supposed to work?  If I have 5 ranks in sneaking and hit a forced aggro spot can I just sit there and then they will lose aggro and go back to sleeping?  Should I move away and hide somewhere else and they lose aggro?

I just seemed to have better luck sneaking by playing my str build and going into a building backwards breaking through a wall, cause I seem to bypass the scripted spots, although sometimes they spawn sleeping almost on top of me, lel. 

Now I am not ranting or anything.  I just finished my test run so it is just feedback.  I am curious if there is something I am missing, or if it is not working as intended.  It feels like something is not working right or I am missing something. 

I went pure agility and put all my points in bow, from the shadows and hidden strike.  I finished horde night at level 17. 

 
pregnable said:
Okay, I tried out a pure agility build and beat the day 7 horde... and while I thought I understood how it was supposed to work, after doing a quest on business_burnt_02, I don't get it.

<snip>
Click to expand...
Yeah, the stealth system is currently pretty messed up... hope they fix it in A20/21/22 or a mod does it.  :ohwell:

 
pregnable said:
Okay, I tried out a pure agility build and beat the day 7 horde... and while I thought I understood how it was supposed to work, after doing a quest on business_burnt_02, I don't get it.

First I thought having the sneak skill at level 4 and wearing only light stuff I would be able to sneak around and get mostly sneak kills, but then I noticed during the day time the zombies still seemed to aggro on me at the usual range. 

Then I figured okay, well I can sneak around during quests and can probably clear it out without aggro if I am careful... but then I am doing a quest and the zombies aggro on me while I am in full sneak mode, from a completely different room, with a wall or 2 between us. 

I did the POI twice and they seemed to aggro in the same spots no matter what I did. 

So I am just confused as to how it is supposed to work. 

It seems like, from playing my str/intel build, that the points I put into sneaking do not really do much of anything.  I can straight up just go into sneak mode on a non sneaking build and shoot a radiated zombie with a shotgun, with his buddies in the room, and everyone just keeps sleeping, lol. 

Like in most cases I could just do a POI just as sneaky with a pure str build and a shotgun.  Sleepers do not care, you can shine a light in their faces.  They do not care unless you hit a scripted spot where they wake up, or I guess almost touch them or are super loud. 

Honest question, how is it supposed to work?  If I have 5 ranks in sneaking and hit a forced aggro spot can I just sit there and then they will lose aggro and go back to sleeping?  Should I move away and hide somewhere else and they lose aggro?

I just seemed to have better luck sneaking by playing my str build and going into a building backwards breaking through a wall, cause I seem to bypass the scripted spots, although sometimes they spawn sleeping almost on top of me, lel. 

Now I am not ranting or anything.  I just finished my test run so it is just feedback.  I am curious if there is something I am missing, or if it is not working as intended.  It feels like something is not working right or I am missing something. 

I went pure agility and put all my points in bow, from the shadows and hidden strike.  I finished horde night at level 17.
Click to expand...
are you walking on trash? trash is like an alarm for sleepers to come and attack you, i think you can clear the trash silently with an axe, or you can get the perk that makes walking over trash silent from a combat manual, but otherwise avoid trash (its everywhere in PoIs) and you should do a lot better.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
bloodmoth13 said:
are you walking on trash? trash is like an alarm for sleepers to come and attack you, i think you can clear the trash silently with an axe, or you can get the perk that makes walking over trash silent from a combat manual, but otherwise avoid trash (its everywhere in PoIs) and you should do a lot better.
Click to expand...
Yeah, sure... he's always walking on trash! Why didn't I think about it! Silly me!  :frusty:

Except you completely ignored most of what he said.

 
Jost Amman said:
Yeah, sure... he's always walking on trash! Why didn't I think about it! Silly me!  :frusty:

Except you completely ignored most of what he said.
Click to expand...
From the sounds of things he was walking on trash, he mentioned the zombies woke up every time he stood on a particular spot and spots that were scripted. I didnt ignore most of what he said, i did skim through it, but i got the impression that he was walking on trash spots that wake every zombie up in a large area.

He is talking about scripted spots, that is basically what trash is, if you step on it without the perk it doesnt matter how many sneak skills you have, you will wake everything up.

 
madmole said:
If you want night vision you have to give up something else.
Click to expand...
Give up my faster crafting plus 10% XP Nerdy glasses?  I only switch them out to Lucky Looter goggles after I clear a POI.  It's be nice to take advantage of some of the other eyewear but they are mostly redundant next to Nerdy's.  Strength doesn't even have an eyewear buffer, though the Cigar goes nicely with the Nerd glasses to double dip and get +1 Strength and +1 Intelligence along with the bartering., crafting and XP bonuses.  I have to think all of the eye/face wear will get a polish at some point.  At least give Strength some eyewear and move the XP buff to the facial piercings or something.  Mods maybe.

 
bloodmoth13 said:
From the sounds of things he was walking on trash, he mentioned the zombies woke up every time he stood on a particular spot and spots that were scripted. I didnt ignore most of what he said, i did skim through it, but i got the impression that he was walking on trash spots that wake every zombie up in a large area.

He is talking about scripted spots, that is basically what trash is, if you step on it without the perk it doesnt matter how many sneak skills you have, you will wake everything up.
Click to expand...
It doesn't have anything to do with trash. Sleepers work in a weird way that you can sometimes empty a full clip of your M60 in the doorway and not wake up anyone, but then you silently crouch into their detection range and they wake up for some reason.

It was made for gameplay reasons (not waking up the whole building and fighting them outside) but it makes being sneaky basically useless (or better said, it doesn't matter if you try to be sneaky or not, what matters is you crossing certain "wake-up checkpoints" or not)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
It also has to do with the fact that most of the zombies in POIs do not exist until you enter the POI and get near their spawn point. At which point the game spawns them in and some of the zombie spawn points are configured to spawn them as actively aggro to the player. Which defeats the point of stealth when that happens but in stealth's defense all it takes it breaking eye contact with them for how many second it takes them to forget you based on your From the Shadows perk. Then you can circle back and sneak attack them to your hearts content. A helpful trick is to throw rocks while sneaking and out of the zombies line of sight as they will forget about you quicker to focus on where you tossed the rock.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Ezed said:
Give up my faster crafting plus 10% XP Nerdy glasses?  I only switch them out to Lucky Looter goggles after I clear a POI.  It's be nice to take advantage of some of the other eyewear but they are mostly redundant next to Nerdy's.  Strength doesn't even have an eyewear buffer, though the Cigar goes nicely with the Nerd glasses to double dip and get +1 Strength and +1 Intelligence along with the bartering., crafting and XP bonuses.  I have to think all of the eye/face wear will get a polish at some point.  At least give Strength some eyewear and move the XP buff to the facial piercings or something.  Mods maybe.
Click to expand...


So STR has the absolutely fantastic cigar that lets you double dip and you are complaining?

beHypE said:
It doesn't have anything to do with trash. Sleepers work in a weird way that you can sometimes empty a full clip of your M60 in the doorway and not wake up anyone, but then you silently crouch into their detection range and they wake up for some reason.

It was made for gameplay reasons (not waking up the whole building and fighting them outside) but it makes being sneaky basically useless (or better said, it doesn't matter if you try to be sneaky or not, what matters is you crossing certain "wake-up checkpoints" or not)
Click to expand...


How can everyone of you be so sure it isn't the trash or just the one script event that is in a few pois ? If pregnable had posted a video (or at least a few relevant pictures with descriptions) we could maybe say with certainty "this thing is broken" or "you made a boo boo here".

His description had not a lot of exact information (like which room in which poi, was his head lamp on, what was his actual stealth level when the zombies woke up, frequency of those events...) and it seems to me you are all inserting your own preconceptions into his words.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Could we please try to add actual models to the food items? Like for a can of chili, have it show an actual can of chili when its equipped, or stuff like that. I mean its a small detail, but it feels off having just a piece of meat in your guys hand.

 
CXGenesis said:
Could we please try to add actual models to the food items? Like for a can of chili, have it show an actual can of chili when its equipped, or stuff like that. I mean its a small detail, but it feels off having just a piece of meat in your guys hand.
Click to expand...
i think some items could get unique models while some can stay the same!
example


Canned goods would have a Can as the model, no label just CAN! 

Soup/stews could have a Bowl model with a Chunks of god know what

Drinks would look the same but some would have different colors or looks, (like beer is Carbonated, Mega crush would have a Orange sports drink color, Yucca juice is green, ETC)
Meat would just be A chunk of meat and would look different depending on how you made it!

while very unique food would have its own model, like Corn dog, corn, blueberries etc 

Roland said:
Reaction limits per day have been upped to 50
Click to expand...
STilL nOt eNoUgH lOl


JK thats just fine! good job to whoever did that!

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top