PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[MechanicalLens]

Yes, it would only make sense for bars to be lowered under this system.  They should have less HP than the thicker solid plate they are sitting upon.

I'm surprised that they don't have lower HP right now. What's stopping people from making horde bases consisting almost entirely out of bars? You think the pole defenses of old were effective, this might become the new meta unless TFP...

Not complaining or taking sides on this, just observing.

 

[JCrook1028]

I'm pretty sure "boss horde" is the internal term for the spam of high level sleepers that guard the loot room at the end of a PoI

No, a Boss Horde is a Twitch Integration thing that can be spawned.

 

[Callum123456789]

I just realized it takes over 2 minutes to craft a steel block... Right...

some recipes in the game really makes me miss the quicker crafting perk that was under miscellaneous in the old skill tree that perk was so good for base building.

 

[gpcstargate]

Just a thought ... the Finished product of many hours and Now I will have to rethink it ... if plates stay as they are now.

Everyone Have a Great Weekend ... the Old Gamer .. 

 

[Aldranon]

So...

Should I mention that building a "Cliff Hanging" BM base, against the trader wall below ground, is completely invincible if done correctly?

I do that only if I tire of repairing my "Brute force" base.  Rule of thumb is if it takes a full day to repair then its time to quit or go cliff hanging. 

I don't normally waste ammo on zombies for BM, but the nice loot bags you can get are starting to change my mind.

I know, I'm not doing it "right". 

 

[JCrook1028]

He clearly isn't building with them too much if it's OK with making most of them useless..... Ugly square towers are once again the only viable build. Are you sure y'all aren't members of some weird HOA? All bases/houses MUST be build the same! Any variety or originality MUST be crushed.

Also doesn't change the fact he nerfed/removed a bunch of other things this Alpha because he didn't like that others were using then in a way he didn't like.... I mean he flat out admitted that when people were asking about the farming and workbench changes. He very clearly believes his playstyle, his goals in game and what gives him a sense of satisfaction is the ONLY playstyle/goals/satisfaction. 

He often claims sweeping statements like "players feel X about Y" only to be met with players going "no that's not how we feel" and instead of listening he just tells them they are wrong about how they feel. 

So many this one dumb @$$ change isn't his doing, plenty of others were.

I would expect the game to be developed how the owner of the game wants it to be..... Joel is an owner... Making the game according to the players is a huge mistake.

 

[Mechanimal]

I've personally seen tremendous support for this change from the community, but maybe that's just my experience. The top two arguments I'm seeing is that this is great for immersion and that this change should have been made years ago, while others praise this as the final nail in the coffin for melee and cheese bases alike.

Note: I'm personally not a fan of the change myself. But I doubt TFP will revert it. Tinker with it, absolutely. Balance it, if need be, absolutely. But now, it is what it is, unless you mod the changes out.

I actually buy the realism argument or less mass = less HP, ok. But then I look at the array of ~1400 shapes and think, how are they going to calculate that? Is a one pole piece the same as a 3 pole piece? Are they taking into account angular support? Are they going to just calculate volume on each piece multiplied by a set HP value per cubic meter, etc etc, and so on. That's what I meant by opening Pandoras Box... but I used the wrong box metaphor, this is definitely a Can of Worms situation. We went from smooth and set conditions, that managed taking an enormous library of shapes and presenting them in a surprisingly well working menu system that was even easy to navigate. That alone is hard to do in the first place, but then introduce a "simple" variable like this and... pffft.. there it goes, good luck EVER getting those worms back into that can again. Base building is going to be far more complicated now. Will I hate it? Well if, and I do mean IF, they get these worms back in the can, I might honestly prefer it, because I do like realism... when implemented well.

I do a lot of physical engineering irl, so IF done well I should end up liking this, hopefully. But aside from robots I also worked a ton in natural history, mostly birds and dinosaurs, point being I am very familiar with how the SHAPE of mass contributes to strength, example being bird bones. Far less mass but just as strong, I implemented this many times in irl robot designs(one even ended up in the Smithsonian), so I USED to do a lot of this in my bases, honeycombing and framework, the new pole shapes(corner angles and 3-way) were perfect, preserving strength but increases visibility, and WOULD be strong irl. Now I can't, even though I KNOW it would work irl. This is yet another aspect of what I mean by invoking next level realism being a can of worms. They won't get it right, maybe close, eventually, but it is always going to have flaws, where-as before it just had it's own flavor of physics, as all games inevitably do since they cannot fully embrace reality down to the atoms and quantum field behaviors(mass/gravity, light, etc).

I always try to make my bases look real, structurally sound, but now I can't even do that, because the block HP is "complex generic" in it's distribution, and always will be, now.

I dunno, just sad that it worked as-is and I was on an adventure with it, had a few neat structures built, with a growing plethora of new ideas and plans, then poof, now I have just turned off horde nights altogether and will explore the new cities and POIs until these gatdang worms get the F back in their mf-ing can.

 

[Aldranon]

I would expect the game to be developed how the owner of the game wants it to be..... Joel is an owner... Making the game according to the players is a huge mistake.

So, there is intelligent life here! 

But seriously, the only way a dev can make a fun game is if its fun for them.  Otherwise they're lost.

 

[Jay_ombie]

• Several pipe weapons have random stats. No primitive items should have any. 
  

I find that a little poopy for varied weapon findings. I could find 2/3 same level coloured guns but before they had slightly different stats for comparison this made it fun to still look out for them and find the 'better' one.

 

[Gamida]

...or damsels tied to railroad tracks.

OMG, we are finally getting trains! Toot Toot...all aboard

 

[Aldranon]

OMG, we are finally getting trains! Toot Toot...all aboard

I asked for airships... I get trains.

Hopefully they're at least Maglev trains...

 

[JCrook1028]

Ah yes someone dares disagrees with you better insult their mental health and talk down to them.

When someone posts as a whiny child they get treated as a whiny child.

 

[MechanicalLens]

When someone posts as a whiny child they get treated as a whiny child.

And as the saying goes, "Never say anything you wouldn't want to listen to yourself.", or alternatively, "Never say anything you wouldn't want someone to say to you."

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

nope? Wood frames after upgrade became wood block. so Make rebar was quiet pointless if you wanted to get a lot of exp fast

I don't think TFP needs to buff XP just so people can power level at the same efficiency they used to. You can always turn up the XP slider if you want to level faster. 

I actually buy the realism argument or less mass = less HP, ok. But then I look at the array of ~1400 shapes and think, how are they going to calculate that? Is a one pole piece the same as a 3 pole piece.

I dunno, just sad that it worked as-is and I was on an adventure with it, had a few neat structures built, with a growing plethora of new ideas and plans, then poof, now I have just turned off horde nights altogether and will explore the new cities and POIs until these gatdang worms get the F back in their mf-ing can.

I don't know if you've taken a look at the blocks but they've done a pretty reasonable job separating the full HP blocks from the partial HP blocks (with the exception of the bars I guess).  In terms of being sad that stuff that once worked in an Exp Beta build, no longer work, I would suggest waiting for Stable.  Don't expect any sort of permanence in experimental.

 

[Neminsis]

Just a thought ... the Finished product of many hours and Now I will have to rethink it ... if plates stay as they are now.

Everyone Have a Great Weekend ... the Old Gamer .. 

View attachment 22051

Nice build.

I don't think that you'll have to worry much about those plate supports though as the Z's are more likely to path through that space than attack the blocks themselves and you've got a lot of redundancy in your supports even so.

 

[Roland]

Shame cause the launch of A20 was so smooth, aside from maybe the farming change(I can farm just fine, so twas worry over nothing imho).  Nearly everyone, including myself, seemed so excited... for like a week.

Thats because all of the angry ranting users treat the experimental branch as a stable finished product instead of what it actually is. Occasionally we’ve had folks say that TFP should just regularly update the latest_experimental as they develop so that people can witness all the designs steps and changes as they occur. That would be madness. Too many people just don’t have the patience and temperament for changes. 
 

There were so many changes like this one implemented and then reverted or fine tuned over the past year and a half that the QA team tested and dealt with that if some of you had experienced would have resulted in weekly forum blood moons. 
 

when a change happens the QA team does not rant based on the change log and what they suspect will be the result. They test and give evidence in data, screenshots, and video. They don’t immediately revert those changes and play it how they want. They experiment with it and report their results. 
 

I see a lot of hypotheticals based on worry and fear and not a lot of evidence to back up whether your base designs are actually no longer viable. I watched one video that was provided of Kage and it seemed like he coped just fine. 
 

Despite the assumption that TFP changes things due to complaints, I can assure you that they change things due to compelling evidential feedback. 
 

Interestingly, the evidential feedback being given presently is a very compelling argument to nerf bars to match the plates and pole HP. Red’s screenshots show a very clear picture and the several posts stating that bars can be placed back to back for 2x HP just like plates is a powerful  point that I’m sure the devs will consider if bars actually were an oversight. 

 

[Mechanimal]

I don't think TFP needs to buff XP just so people can power level at the same efficiency they used to. You can always turn up the XP slider if you want to level faster. 

I don't know if you've taken a look at the blocks but they've done a pretty reasonable job separating the full HP blocks from the partial HP blocks (with the exception of the bars I guess).  In terms of being sad that stuff that once worked in an Exp Beta build, no longer work, I would suggest waiting for Stable.  Don't expect any sort of permanence in experimental.

Ok you're right, this is experimental. Changes are made and feedback is given. This is my feedback, I think it was fine, good even, as it was. Although I do prefer realism, I also have much higher expectations of it. For example, now a single pole, triple pole, and triple pole with 2x support beams, all have the same HP... which is a NOPE from me. Before I just knew they were all the same. It's a "simple generic" vs "complex generic" change in variables, the latter of which is a never-ending nightmare of inconsistent and irregular variables, and uses, and strong opinions, etc. 

So, my feedback to devs is this:

- As it was, with all blocks having the same HP, it was fine. Really greased creative gears, and was straightforward to deal with.

- Now, with variable HP, I have very high expectations that you get it right, and I doubt you ever will. 

I think this is an ATTEMPT at more realism, and I do not think it will go well. I would love to be proven wrong, if this works out then I will be happy. But I feel obligated to let them know that the way it was on release was especially awesome.

Aside from the random weirdos that for some reason care way too much about how other people play/build, and derive pleasure from their suffering(get help, seriously), I heard not a soul complain about all blocks having equal HP per cubic meter/material.

That being said, if they DO somehow pull this off realistically, I will be happy. But without adding yet another layer of complex structural geometry analysis, and part volume calculation, I don't see how that can ever happen. But again I'd love to be proven wrong, seriously, good luck hashing this one out

 

[Red Eagle LXIX]

Interestingly, the evidential feedback being given presently is a very compelling argument to nerf bars to match the plates and pole HP. Red’s screenshots show a very clear picture and the several posts stating that bars can be placed back to back for 2x HP just like plates is a powerful  point that I’m sure the devs will consider if bars actually were an oversight. 

Besides the Bars block and variant another block to consider is the Stair Spiral Pillar and the variants with rails which also retained full HP.

SSP can have all 4 blocks occupy the same physical space because it is corner based (as long as you don't mind z-buffer fighting {ugh}).

 

[Aldranon]

Solution for the building problem:

I forget if I already posted this or was still kicking it around my head.  Here it is:

Each and any shape can have a precise and different amount of that material type needed and any amount of HP for it.

The generic cube used for building, just has the raw materials.

Once you try to right click to build a block, the game attempts to subtract the raw materials needed. 

If there's not enough material, some error sound occurs.  Otherwise you build that shape.  

 

[Roland]

I think the other compelling feedback that I’ve read is the testing that was done by some to see if zombies still did 6x damage vs poles. This was good information to bring up just in case TFP hadn’t considered it. Hopefully, it wasn’t just buried in all of the less helpful emotional posts…