PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Quantum Blue]

I half agree/disagree with this. I think the balancing on most sliders is pretty genius in that they neither make the game strictly harder nor strictly easier they just change the game in some pretty radical ways. 

...

I have to disagree.  Longer days absolutely make the game easier.  I did some extensive testing on this a couple years back, but started another run of a current A20 game I am playing using 120 min cycles instead of 60.  (Map, all other settings, and playstyle, are exactly the same.)

1. You almost always have a positive net return at the end of any 'cycle'.  (You almost have to - or there would be no 'game'.)  For example:  let's say at the end of 4 standard 60 min day cycles you have netted 10 food and 10 water over and above anything you needed to use.  At 4 90 min days you will have 15 food and 15 water.  And 4 120 min cycles you will have 20 food and 20 water.

2.  While you are correct about buying certain things out at a trader (assuming you use traders) you still net ahead with traders because you will have more tokens and loot to sell so you will be able to get more or better things.  (even things you might not have been able to afford at standard 60 min cycles.)  I just visited the trader early day 4 on 120 min cycle game and had over twice as much (2.6x as much actually) as I did in my 60 min cycle game. 

3.  The extended cycles give a big bonus at the beginning of the game because horde nights are limited.  And it's not just by time.  Normally, 1st and 2nd horde nights are over for me by 1-1:30.  (I usually play nomad/warrior with 12 zombie horde min - when I am not play testing for TFP).  With 120 min cycles, 11:30 is done.  And for almost any game, any boost in the beginning usually gets 'compounded' until the end.

4. My game stage and loot stage are definitely higher at the end of any cycle.  (And while some might argue that that is making the game more difficult, I would disagree.  You have more/better armor, weapons, etc.  And even with tougher/more zombies - the 'net' difference is more positive the longer you play.  That's fairly born out by reading the dev diary for a 'little' while...)  ; - )

 

[Quantum Blue]

TFP:  I mentioned a couple days ago that the RWG cites are incredible.  (I know about the districts, etc.)  I just wanna say the subterranean levels are absolutely fantastic as well.  I understand (Roland) that they are POI based, they are still wonderful, and I am going to keep my fingers crossed that maybe in the not-too-distant-future, there might be some tunnel 'connectors' between POI's as well.  (Especially 'downtown'.)

There's just one little thing - you know how people like to 'discuss' whether or not you 'follow' a POI quest path is a good thing or not?  I've noticed a few poi's that you have no choice but to 'break immersion' by smashing something or 'nerd-cubing' (SORRY ROLAND!) to continue.  I am going to assume that is because there are still going to be tweaks, etc.

Please keep up the astounding work and Happy Holidays.  (Everyone.)

 

[Demonoid74]

Day 51...finally , Trader Jen who I started near had 1 Beaker for sale...bought that sucker as fast as I could lol...
Now just need to find a crucible...

 

[Quantum Blue]

Day 51...finally , Trader Jen who I started near had 1 Beaker for sale...bought that sucker as fast as I could lol...
Now just need to find a crucible...

Congratulations!  (Sorry for 3 messages almost in a row... but I needed to let you know I understand.)

I have had 4 A20 games (usually until level 45ish - not counting the 120 min cycle one I mentioned above).  And in every game I had a beaker by week 2.  1st game I had 3 by day 30.  Which is funny, cuz I could not get a wrench in that game until day 20ish.  (And I know how to get...)

Besides that wrench it's acid for me.  (In each game.  I know where and how to get those too.)  Currently on day 40 in 4th game and 4 acids.  No chem stations at either of 2 traders as well.  (AND, that includes using the nerd goggles 'trick'.)  I was lucky enough to purchase a mini-bike.  (Although I 'wasted' some Int perk points early so I could try and build one...  The joke's on me - rofl!)

(And I tried Snow biome and got 2 bears, 3 mountain lions and 2 wolves (at roughly same time - but no dogs! - but a few lumber jacks that kind of helped as they got attacked as well.  Didn't kill everything - got away on mini-bike with 4 hp left.)

(Aldranon/others:  I don't need to play on perma-death to have near-cardiac-arrests or seizures...  ; - )   )

 

[Callum123456789]

Yeah was about to say, stun baton is actually pretty useful in high tier PoI, although I think the repulsor mod is bait that makes the baton worse. I wish there was a mod to do what the Candy does. Other weapons don't require a candy to be good, stuff like skull crushers are just added bonus rather than part of what the weapon is balanced around requiring.

You can  use stun baton without nerd tats, but without them it's definitely pretty meh compared to just using a club

The stun baton is so helpful for hunting in the snow biome just get it out with and shock them untill they can't fight back hell you can even whale on a bear and it can't fight back I love it

 

[MisutoM]

...

I have to disagree.  Longer days absolutely make the game easier.  I did some extensive testing on this a couple years back, but started another run of a current A20 game I am playing using 120 min cycles instead of 60.  (Map, all other settings, and playstyle, are exactly the same.)

1. You almost always have a positive net return at the end of any 'cycle'.  (You almost have to - or there would be no 'game'.)  For example:  let's say at the end of 4 standard 60 min day cycles you have netted 10 food and 10 water over and above anything you needed to use.  At 4 90 min days you will have 15 food and 15 water.  And 4 120 min cycles you will have 20 food and 20 water.

2.  While you are correct about buying certain things out at a trader (assuming you use traders) you still net ahead with traders because you will have more tokens and loot to sell so you will be able to get more or better things.  (even things you might not have been able to afford at standard 60 min cycles.)  I just visited the trader early day 4 on 120 min cycle game and had over twice as much (2.6x as much actually) as I did in my 60 min cycle game. 

3.  The extended cycles give a big bonus at the beginning of the game because horde nights are limited.  And it's not just by time.  Normally, 1st and 2nd horde nights are over for me by 1-1:30.  (I usually play nomad/warrior with 12 zombie horde min - when I am not play testing for TFP).  With 120 min cycles, 11:30 is done.  And for almost any game, any boost in the beginning usually gets 'compounded' until the end.

4. My game stage and loot stage are definitely higher at the end of any cycle.  (And while some might argue that that is making the game more difficult, I would disagree.  You have more/better armor, weapons, etc.  And even with tougher/more zombies - the 'net' difference is more positive the longer you play.  That's fairly born out by reading the dev diary for a 'little' while...)  ; - )

1. Incorrect. You are only looking at one biased metric of an in game "cycle." Of course after 7 in game days you'll be ahead of a one hour day player who is also on day 7 as you've spent 14 human hours to do that compared to them having spent only 7. A more meaningful comparison is to look at day 14 for the 1 hour day player as that using the same real life human metric. You seem to be agreeing with my point about food and water so I'm unsure why you sound like you're trying to disagree. If a player spends twice as many calories per vending machine cycle, they are less able to feed themselves from that singular source of food. Basically, a vending machine will provide X food over an in game day, but with 2 hour days you don't get more inventory in a vending machine, so you are consuming 2x the calories and trying to fill it with the same X calories. Thus, you require more effort and time being spent on other food sources in the early game.

2. Tokens are never a limiting factor outside of the first 5 hours of playing a brand new world. Before day 10 I typically have a few full stacks of tokens rotting in a chest ready to buy a gyro if it gets offered by a trader. So I completely disagree with the assertion that having more tokens is more meaningful than having more options from the traders (via more resets). I near limitless money, but nothing I want to spend it on with longer day cycles. You again point to a comparison of your 2 hour day cycle day 4 vs a standard 1 hour cycle day 4 when you should instead be looking at their day 8. At which point that world would have considerably more money and even have finished a horde for extra free loot and thus increasing their game stage on top of getting an extra trader inventory to check to buy actually useful things. 

3. Correct, this is why I specifically qualified my statement with a critical phrase: "A 2 hour day means a 30 minute potential horde night if you play long enough." In my most recently finished survivalist world, I only barely finished the day 70 horde before 4am. Had I continued that world for longer, that was functionally the max difficulty that could possibly spawn as there is no extra time for the night to drag on and zombies to continue spawning. After 77+ hours in a world with 2 hour nights though, there is still another 15 minutes of horde night that could keep happening, so my base and supplies would still need to expand to account for these extra zombies. In reality though, it takes far less than 77 hours for most people to hit that break point, I am just extremely good at killing zombies fast with a base designed around explosives, so most players will hit this far sooner in their playthrough.

4. Again, it is meaningless to compare an in game cycle. This statement is similar to saying that an average 10 year old is smarter than an average 5 year old. Yes, you're correct, but it's not a meaningful sentence as one has had double the real life time. If you compare your day 7 (14 real life human hours) to a 1 hour day length day 14 (also 14 hours real life human hours) you'll see that it tends to favor the 1 hour cycle in terms of gear as you'll have twice as many trader resets to check which is where the best loot is right now. RNG can lean either 1 so it's not really a compare one world to one world situation, but once you get a few thousands of hours of play time under you belt you really see the differences pile up over time and can gauge these things more intuitively. 

 

[Callum123456789]

1. Incorrect. You are only looking at one biased metric of an in game "cycle." Of course after 7 in game days you'll be ahead of a one hour day player who is also on day 7 as you've spent 14 human hours to do that compared to them having spent only 7. A more meaningful comparison is to look at day 14 for the 1 hour day player as that using the same real life human metric. You seem to be agreeing with my point about food and water so I'm unsure why you sound like you're trying to disagree. If a player spends twice as many calories per vending machine cycle, they are less able to feed themselves from that singular source of food. Basically, a vending machine will provide X food over an in game day, but with 2 hour days you don't get more inventory in a vending machine, so you are consuming 2x the calories and trying to fill it with the same X calories. Thus, you require more effort and time being spent on other food sources in the early game.

2. Tokens are never a limiting factor outside of the first 5 hours of playing a brand new world. Before day 10 I typically have a few full stacks of tokens rotting in a chest ready to buy a gyro if it gets offered by a trader. So I completely disagree with the assertion that having more tokens is more meaningful than having more options from the traders (via more resets). I near limitless money, but nothing I want to spend it on with longer day cycles. You again point to a comparison of your 2 hour day cycle day 4 vs a standard 1 hour cycle day 4 when you should instead be looking at their day 8. At which point that world would have considerably more money and even have finished a horde for extra free loot and thus increasing their game stage on top of getting an extra trader inventory to check to buy actually useful things. 

3. Correct, this is why I specifically qualified my statement with a critical phrase: "A 2 hour day means a 30 minute potential horde night if you play long enough." In my most recently finished survivalist world, I only barely finished the day 70 horde before 4am. Had I continued that world for longer, that was functionally the max difficulty that could possibly spawn as there is no extra time for the night to drag on and zombies to continue spawning. After 77+ hours in a world with 2 hour nights though, there is still another 15 minutes of horde night that could keep happening, so my base and supplies would still need to expand to account for these extra zombies. In reality though, it takes far less than 77 hours for most people to hit that break point, I am just extremely good at killing zombies fast with a base designed around explosives, so most players will hit this far sooner in their playthrough.

4. Again, it is meaningless to compare an in game cycle. This statement is similar to saying that an average 10 year old is smarter than an average 5 year old. Yes, you're correct, but it's not a meaningful sentence as one has had double the real life time. If you compare your day 7 (14 real life human hours) to a 1 hour day length day 14 (also 14 hours real life human hours) you'll see that it tends to favor the 1 hour cycle in terms of gear as you'll have twice as many trader resets to check which is where the best loot is right now. RNG can lean either 1 so it's not really a compare one world to one world situation, but once you get a few thousands of hours of play time under you belt you really see the differences pile up over time and can gauge these things more intuitively. 

all i can say is both ways of playing make the game easier and harder in ways for a short example longer days= a longer time to do trader quests which in turn means more dukes and xp from quests but on the other hand the trader inventory would take 2x the amount of time ti would normally take for the traders stock to reset and of course horde nights are very long and if you are a high enough game stage you will be killing for a whole hour straight almost which if you use lots of bullets that can really eat through ammo

in total all i have to say is we all play the game how we want easier or harder it doesnt matter as long as you are having fun thats the goal here nothing else i often play on either nomad or warrior with 90 min days then everything else default 

Day 51...finally , Trader Jen who I started near had 1 Beaker for sale...bought that sucker as fast as I could lol...
Now just need to find a crucible...

you seem to be getting really unlucky with your loot damn i could probably recommend cycling through the trader untill one has a crucible because crucibles as a whole cant be found anymore you have to find the schematic get the intellect needed or buy it of course

 

[MisutoM]

all i can say is both ways of playing make the game easier and harder in ways for a short example longer days= a longer time to do trader quests which in turn means more dukes and xp from quests but on the other hand the trader inventory would take 2x the amount of time ti would normally take for the traders stock to reset and of course horde nights are very long and if you are a high enough game stage you will be killing for a whole hour straight almost which if you use lots of bullets that can really eat through ammo

in total all i have to say is we all play the game how we want easier or harder it doesnt matter as long as you are having fun thats the goal here nothing else i often play on either nomad or warrior with 90 min days then everything else default 

I agree, this is why my first post began by stating that the settings do not strictly make the game easier or harder, it just makes the game different. In some ways it can be easier but in other ways it is harder. All I set out to do was explain some of the ways it can be considered more difficult as many people think that longer days or increased XP strictly make the game easier when they instead have very interesting effects on how we view and play the game which can't really be qualified with a simple harder/easier metric. That's the genius behind the design of most of the sliders that I love so much. Thank you for coming around. Fun is always the goal.

Now if only we could get the funpimps to give us separate sliders for zombie health and damage. 250% hp zombies on insane are just too bullet spongey early game for me to enjoy, but 250% damage feels like a fun and challenging breakpoint (a feral zombie 2HKOs a freshly spawned in player for instance). Feels bad that two separate settings are controlled by one slider while others are properly split up.

 

[Callum123456789]

interesting model here this must be the low poly version of the new miner guy design or something for a21? also dont mind the joels im just testing some stuff 

 

[Callum123456789]

another thing id like to say is does anyone else think that the 3rd person view model sort of looks like an mg42 to an extent i know its random but thats what i see with it

 

[Aldranon]

When loot respawns, I would like it if the entire POI gets reset as well.

I just started looking at POI's I already looted as someone mentioned something about respawn of loot.

Sure enough the loot was there and some of the zombies but all my ladders and wood frames were stuck around and I often got to the main loot without a fight.

That just cant be how its suppose to be!  But if it is, I guess the "No Loot respawn" option is mandatory for me.

Now if this is part of the plot arc showing up (player is in a coma?) then I accept that, but will still stop loot from respawning for me.  Way too easy.

 

[Quantum Blue]

"RNG can lean either 1 so it's not really a compare one world to one world situation, but once you get a few thousands of hours of play time under you belt you really see the differences pile up over time and can gauge these things more intuitively. "

Ah.  That explains it.  I only have 10000+ hours of 7D2D under my belt.

I see your point about 'real game hours' vs 'in game day cycles'.  But, I believe that explains why 120 min is easier.  120 min cycles is very similar to setting 14 day hordes.  You have twice as much time to gather useful things and prepare.  It's why my base is almost all concrete on my 2nd horde in my 120 min cycle game vs cobblestone for my 2nd horde in my 60 min cycle game.  Note: I am not comparing different gaming styles; I am playing both the same.  (Meaning: not rushing to get concrete, etc.)  (In general I also have better weapons and more ammo).

Yes, the cobblestone represents 14 hours real life game time vs 28 hours for the stone, but the hordes were easier.

I also see your point about tokens and traders.  We seem to be talking about different points in the game and/or playstyles.  I do not have stacks of tokens.  I suspect that if I were to get to late game stage, I will experience what you are talking about.  But, I am only experiencing a little over 30 hours in my 120 min cycle game so far.  And I know I was able to procure better and more things than I did in my 60 min cycle game.  At the beginning of a game, it helps a lot.

I had started this discussion because of a comment Khalagar made to Callum123456789 about having steel tools etc. at a certain day.  He guessed that Callum wasn't using standard 60 min cycles and he was right.  (and that is not saying anything Callum is doing is wrong.)  But, it does point out why there seems to be some 'confusion' when comments include the in game 'day'.  (or screenshots that show day)  It could help if when people post something concerning in game days, that including cycle times would help clarify things for others.

 

[Quantum Blue]

Now if this is part of the plot arc showing up (player is in a coma?) then I accept that, but will still stop loot from respawning for me.  Way too easy.

How come the loot/z's respawning - but not your changes - not make sense?

Other people found the poi (with your helpful access and changes) and stayed there.  But other z's found the same thing and took care of the people.  Hence more z's and loot.

?

 

[MechanicalLens]

When loot respawns, I would like it if the entire POI gets reset as well.

I just started looking at POI's I already looted as someone mentioned something about respawn of loot.

Sure enough the loot was there and some of the zombies but all my ladders and wood frames were stuck around and I often got to the main loot without a fight.

That just cant be how its suppose to be!  But if it is, I guess the "No Loot respawn" option is mandatory for me.

Now if this is part of the plot arc showing up (player is in a coma?) then I accept that, but will still stop loot from respawning for me.  Way too easy.

I severely disagree with this. I convert POI's to horde bases all the time, sometimes multiple ones, and doing so would be infeasible for me if every 30 days all of my hard work and effort vanished right before my very eyes.

 

[Aldranon]

I severely disagree with this. I convert POI's to horde bases all the time, sometimes multiple ones, and doing so would be infeasible for me if every 30 days all of my hard work and effort vanished right before my very eyes.

Good point!  So no loot respawn for me.

How come the loot/z's respawning - but not your changes - not make sense?

Other people found the poi (with your helpful access and changes) and stayed there.  But other z's found the same thing and took care of the people.  Hence more z's and loot.

?

Yes, that is within the realm of possibility (we just don't see the NPC because of performance issues? Something like that). 

 

[Annihilatorza]

@faatal @madmole

Are there any plans to fix the loads and loads of floating bases I am seeing posted all over net.

I get that the idea is to play the game any which way you want but to me when the zombies can never ever hit you, what's the point of playing.

You are exploiting the game and not using  clever mechanics to kill the zombies.

I am loving A20 it's simply the best alpha to date, I can't wait to see what else to you guys bring.

 

[Reckis]

@faatal @madmole

Are there any plans to fix the loads and loads of floating bases I am seeing posted all over net.

I get that the idea is to play the game any which way you want but to me when the zombies can never ever hit you, what's the point of playing.

You are exploiting the game and not using  clever mechanics to kill the zombies.

I am loving A20 it's simply the best alpha to date, I can't wait to see what else to you guys bring.

So, because YOU don't agree with the play style you think the developers should remove it from the game?

How would you like it if someone looked at YOUR play style and decided they didn't like some key element of it and the devs removed it?

 

[Callum123456789]

So, because YOU don't agree with the play style you think the developers should remove it from the game?

How would you like it if someone looked at YOUR play style and decided they didn't like some key element of it and the devs removed it?

to be fair though they have changed how blocks pathing works and im sure before gold releases they will most definitely fix this

 

[JCrook1028]

Loot respawn is not a POI respawn. A quest start does reset the POI tho.

 

[palikkamaa]

On 12/27/2021 at 12:00 AM, Victor.19 said:

I think this video better illustrates the problem.

I don't get how he got so bad performance on rtx 3080 1080p. I have 2070s /9600k /16gb ram and I'm matching/exceeding his performance at 1440p.