PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary
- Thread starter madmole
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BFT2020
Well-known member
bachgaman
New member
Then why are there loot and experience settings there? The "difficulty" parameter is also rather strange. It has little effect on the game. It is unlikely that a parameter that affects only the relative health of the zombie and the player can be fully considered a difficulty setting in such a multifaceted game.
The world settings menu looks incomplete right now. You can turn on 25% of the loot, but you cannot make it so that the trader does not give you 200 bullets on the first day for the quest in which you killed 2 zombies. This is very bad.
Setting the level of the merchant's rewards is on a par with setting the amount of loot, because if you are playing with 25% of the loot, then the current merchant rewards becomes incredibly OP.
Do you understand how ridiculous it looks? Anyone who asks why there is no option in the settings gets an answer like “go to the xml files”, “generate the world in kinggen”, “install the mod”, “ignore this opportunity”, etc. There is a request in community for the "1 life mode", for the trader's settings, for the quest settings, for the settings of number of zombies and others. I don't understand why absolutely no attention is paid to this, especially considering that all of you unanimously say that this is a sandbox, but why the player should find out about this only after he thinks of entering this forum and creating a topic in response to which he will receive a link in which talks about how to manipulate xml files?
I believe that the current game settings menu (when creating a world) should be significantly improved and reworked. And I also think it should be possible to fixate the world settings so that they cannot be changed during the game
Answered above. It's just that I get the impression that developers are in a hurry to try everything new that comes to their minds, but they don't want to improve the old one, even if it's not worth the significant effort (like pulling sliders from xml files into the world creation interface)
faatal
Fun Pimps Staff
I'm fine with how it is for now. Someday we might even make it better to us. You may still hate it.
You could go make your own game or a mod. Then you can do it exactly as you like and avoid all those horrible bad decisions we made.
bachgaman
New member
I think I presented a rather constructive criticism, and not just "hate", sorry if it was rude
Falcon197
New member
Rule number one for projects like this: you can't please all the people all the time.
While some critics make noise on the forums, the greater player community will vote with their feet, so to speak. Everyone I know who plays 7DTD is hyped for A20 and happy to wait for it, as there's plenty of other stuff to play in the meantime. The new alpha looks solid and is worth waiting on.
Although, one thing I'm still having a tough time comprehending is the decision to simplify the material upgrade chain by removing rcon, metal, cobble, and some of the other mats. Pulling out rcon in particular was a real gut-shot for me, but I'm willing to wait and experiment with the new system before leveling judgments on it.
Can someone answer whether the addition of all the new block shapes influenced the mats change for performance reasons, or was it done purely to reduce the number of building materials?
I don't get the impressions you are making any concessions for the game still being in development. The 200 bullets quest reward was acknowledged to be a bug months ago and is supposedly fixed in A20.
I agree that the difficulty setting should include some further changes, but adding to it and balancing it when the game isn't feature-complete is possibly premature. While we players can give suggestions it is the advantage of being a developer to be able to decide on what work needs to be done now. In the meantime the game is working well enough.
You were warned that EA is not without downsides, weren't you? Play something else and wait for this game to be released if you want to play a finished game
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Astronomical
New member
Roland
Moderator
Its only ridiculous if you think they are finished and the options that are currently being offered is all that will ever be offered. You are told to go to the xml files and use mods to get what you want by helpful people as an interim solution if you cannot wait for when the developers decide to shift from the work they are doing to filling out the options menu with additional switches. There is no guarantee that all the switches you want will every be included but the fact that they are missing right now isn't a statement that they are against including them in the game. It simply is that their priorities are pointed elsewhere which is perfectly reasonable and not ridiculous at all seeing as how they are the developers of the game.
Its also perfectly reasonable for someone such as yourself to not necessarily be happy with the desync between YOUR priorities and THEIR priorities. But hopefully you understand now that the game is not finished and there is still a year or so of future development and the options page may yet change in ways that will be more to your liking.
But first....Twitch Integration and Drones.
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Jost Amman
Well-known member
hwell: 
danielspoa
New member
and zip l.. oh
anyone that watched today's stream, did they give any update on how its progressing?
anyone that watched today's stream, did they give any update on how its progressing?
POCKET951
New member
As far as I know there's still the same number of different materials. as for concrete, they removed Rcon but concrete got buffed to be as strong as Rcon. also when building horde bases it means no longer waiting for concrete to dry which was time consuming and unpredictable, and was a huge inconvenience in proper building that forced me to often layer concrete and just in general made building a time consuming pain in the ass.
the new system will be far more seamless and quick, and overall a huge QOL improvement for building.
Its Particle board>wood>cobble>concrete>Steel
They wanted to streamline the building/upgrading process, which also introduces much QOL also.
another aspect was that before alpha 20, certain materials would have access to a particular set of shapes or blocks and it was also super convoluted and confusing.
with the new shape menu, everything will exist in every material.
POCKET951
New member
what do you mean by break? even if you fully min max bartering you will never ever sell for more than the cost to buy, if you could achieve that then it would be actually broken.
I also don't see how the trade/bartering perks are broken because they require a considerable amount of skill point investment to fully unlock and utilize.
maybe traders inventories shouldn't be unlocked by perks and it should have some kind of favor/rep system where you unlock by completing quest and bartering with them
Idk.. as I said I don't think its busted. by the time I am swimming in oodles of tokens from min maxing bartering, I have already trivialized the rest of the game by that point and already have tonnes of mined materials to make all the ammo and food and everything else I already need.
At that point the trader just gives me a bit of extra ductape or glue every once in awhile and traders are just so hit and miss with what they sell and they aren't really essential
now if the trader reliably sold quality 6 weapons and armor, that would be busted
it would be okay though if you could get quality 6 stuff as quest rewards on rare occasions
so what is so broken/busted about the trader system atm?
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Khalagar
Active member
I know the pain, I make sardonic jokes with over the top sarcastic emojis and Ironic Trademark Symbols™ and people still think I'm srs
Mostly just that they added nothing of value and were just confusing to new players / casual players. I think a lot of posters here miss the unstated (sometimes stated by Madmole actually) fact that TFP are trying to look at things from a new player perspective rather than from people with 1,000+ hours in the game perspective. You and I already bought the game years ago on sale for $7 and have got our money's worth out of it, and we don't make TFP a single penny because we aren't buying anything or spending money on a game we already bought. If anything, we costing them money by posting on the forums and trying to weedle minor changes into the game from the devs
TFP look at what new players don't like and what they stumble over, and are trying to fix those things, as to, y'know, survive as a company, they need to make money by having those new players buy the game and not refund it after they play for an hour and hate it. Things like the crafting system having 12 superfluous extra materials didn't really add anything of value because veteran players just skipped past the random useless stages like Scrap Iron and went Wood -> Cobble -> Concrete, and new players didn't understand the system at all.
I've got a friend with 500+ hours in the game who almost certainly *still* can't actually build a building out of concrete and wouldn't even know how to make rebar frames in the forge, as he plays the game like how most casual players do. He picks up a weapon and runs into buildings and dies to zombies and loses all his crap, or limps back home to drop it off in the unorganized storage box he stuck in a PoI he cleared.
Those kinds of players as well as new players with under 100 hours in the game will find the new block system a lot easier to understand and more approachable, and they won't know or care about the removed building tiers. For players like us who actually know how to play the game and are bored of the basic mats, that's where mods come in
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Vlinch
New member
I disagree with calling it a QOL upgrade. To me, you said it was better because now it plays more like Minecraft or Legos, just place the block and it's ready to go. But for me, I liked the intricacies of setting up the rebar and then having to fill it with concrete. The "random" drying never bothered me because real concrete doesn't dry uniformly either. We went from having different blocks that utilize different mechanics in a (somewhat and relative) complex system, to just copy/paste blocks that have different stats in an idiot-proof environment. "Its Particle board>wood>cobble>concrete>Steel" Bam, done, ez, I'm great, next.
POCKET951
New member
As someone with almost 1000 hours in this game I liked the nuance of the system at first, but as started to build more bigger and complex bases and buildings, or if I wanted to finish upgrading a horde base before a deadline, It just became stressful and tedious and superfluous and annoying to deal with blocks that have RNG and invariable drying time. if I wanted to make a solid structure I would have to build in layers to make sure everything was reinforced concrete and it just sucks sitting there waiting for all the concrete to dry before you can move on to the next step of the project. and it isn't like you can drive away and it will dry on its own. you have to be in the area and if it's a horde base and I am waiting on concrete to dry and have nothing else to work on all I can do is wait or punch grass?
It just results in unnecessary tedious waiting and time wasting. I would much rather have a finished product quicker because my time is valuable and I have other things I want to do
My time is far more valuable, and if there making a change that gives me more time at the cost of a bit of complexity or nuance, I won't complain about it
They are also adding corner Bars/blocks which I am really happy about because it will save me alot of time making cages, instead of having to use advanced rotation and super finnicky placement of bars on the inside edge of an adjacent block to make corners in the current system.(It is tedious and it sucks)
building in general will just be so much faster and more intuitive and I won't have to use as many Structural integrity gimmicks
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Burrfly
New member
It's impossible to make a game where everyone likes all of it. Some people really like the new building system, while some people will prefer the current (in A19) (I personally do as well prefer the A19 building system with the wet concrete).
But it's totally okay. TFP are making a very epic game, and a lot of other cool things are coming which overal improves the game a lot (from as far as I've seen; A20 looks amazing - it's the most exciting I've been for a game (even though this is 'only' an update)).
They even interact with their player base. I've said it before but will say it again: The Fun Pimps are doing better than larger companies like Bethesda and WildCard. ARK Survival isn't even finished yet with the countless gamebreaking bugs, but WildCard only makes DLC's for money now. 7 Days to Die is more finished in alpha state than ARK Survival is in released state XD. (Although ARK can be a really great game, tho, I just hate that the devs don't focus on fixing and balancing the main game.)
So, thank you, TFP
But it's totally okay. TFP are making a very epic game, and a lot of other cool things are coming which overal improves the game a lot (from as far as I've seen; A20 looks amazing - it's the most exciting I've been for a game (even though this is 'only' an update)).
They even interact with their player base. I've said it before but will say it again: The Fun Pimps are doing better than larger companies like Bethesda and WildCard. ARK Survival isn't even finished yet with the countless gamebreaking bugs, but WildCard only makes DLC's for money now. 7 Days to Die is more finished in alpha state than ARK Survival is in released state XD. (Although ARK can be a really great game, tho, I just hate that the devs don't focus on fixing and balancing the main game.)
So, thank you, TFP
danielspoa
New member
Thats for sure. Impossible to appeal to everyone, they are doing great on whats possible. My only complaint ever was removing something that we couldnt implement back - and that wasnt a performance issue -.
About traders I do think it gives too much to the player without major consequences, I personally edited a lot of stuff on my server. Maybe gonna release it as a mod once A20 is around. Thats part of whats easily modifiable so I dont think its a real issue for the devs to work on. There's no right or wrong there.
About traders I do think it gives too much to the player without major consequences, I personally edited a lot of stuff on my server. Maybe gonna release it as a mod once A20 is around. Thats part of whats easily modifiable so I dont think its a real issue for the devs to work on. There's no right or wrong there.
mstdv inc
New member
You didn't write this in all seriousness, did you?
Is it possible to survive without traders at all? Of course you can.
Is it possible to play 70 hours in one world and not complete more than one task? Of course, yes.
The beauty of playing now is that you have a choice.
or or or.
You can find an item, or craft an item, or buy an item, with rare exceptions, but we'll skip that for now.
Everyone will choose an interesting path of development for themselves.
There is no difficulty in adding missing crafting recipes and items to loot.
And if in the future there will be a binding of development to the trader, we will get a game, each survival in which will go on rails.
At this stage, you will only need to find, at this only craft, and at this point only buy. It's terrible.
Trader should remain an alternative, but not a duty.
POCKET951
New member
what if they had an engineer trader? his specialty would schematics/recipes for things and building materials/supplies and maybe even mods for things
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