PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

Im sure all this farming problems will disapear with mods being made for it .

i guarantee it.

Isn't there any way to get a good polling of the 7 Days community worldwide to accurately reflect gamers attitudes to recent changes?

I think it would be valuable developer feedback and give us an interesting insight to how the community values these changes.

I would love to see a community influenced vanilla with legit data. I know it's The Fun Pimps' game, but imagine if this was a car and after rolling it out on the production line your customers ripped out the seats, threw a new exhaust on it, altered the suspension and put tech in there that wasn't part of the factory build.. you see where this is going...

Just sad to see that a lot of the enjoyment comes from what the community has made to make up where the developers lack, or to remove things the developers put in and kept in through a mentality of 'since we made good decisions before, future ones will be as good.'

Don't get me wrong, The Pimps are competent and have created an amazing product, and I hope by gold it's not just a skeleton scaffold for modders to make the game something The Fun Pimps couldn't.

Again, just my opinion.

 

[SarkMCPFan]

maybe a21 will see a change to farming since it will be ages for that to release to get a better system going?

I barely farm but i horde seeds i find lol

i hope stable a20 isnt too far off tbh

 

[CoolJ]

If you clear the entire map of super corn then you need to accept a quest to reset one of the Bob's Boars POIs.

If you are already farming it you only need 1 level in the farming perk to make a profit.

Statement 1. False: Not all maps have a Bob's Boars POI. I have had three random maps in A19 that had no such POI. I even looked up the name for it in the wiki and searched for it in the XML. Not there. So you MUST find a seed for super corn in this case.

So you guarantee that there will be a Bob's Boars POI on every single random gen map now?

Statement 2. False: If I only have one seed, and plant it with only one point into LOTL, then I don't get a seed back on harvest, that is not a profit. That is a deficit of one and pretty much no chance to ever find another super corn seed based on the above scenario.

RNG in this case is lazy and frustrating for the player. Why would you intentionally include a frustrating mechanic in your game when you could easily find other ways to accomplish your goal of slowing down farming? There is no benefit in investing a single point into LOTL when one could put that point into the animal spotting perk and pretty much guarantee being fed. Let's just add 50% RNG to everything. Might as well add a 50% chance for the player to just spawn into a game over screen. You could really get that replay stat up with a strategy like that. I know, 50% chance for every round fired from a pipe weapon to blow the weapon up. Forcing you to make another. That sounds like loads of fun. Still better than the chance that you guys will learn how shotguns work, or to realize that there is a reason that you don't see guns with a tube magazine chambered in a caliber that has pointy bullets. In all my years of working around firearms, repairing them and selling them, I have seen exactly one tube mag gun chambered in a caliber that used a pointy bullet. The tube magazine was actually twisted down the long axis to keep the pointy end of one bullet off of the primer of the one in front. Clever design.

 

[POCKET951]

That.... is  almost exactly the same result. While the uselessness of the seeds would remain if you could eventually bypass that situation with armour bonus, it's the same thing with the current design, so it looks like what you are saying is sound..... but

There's also the performance problem. It's better for performance to delete a crop altogether than to maybe delete it or maybe swap models to something planted. 

So I still stand behind the current a20 design. 

How is this exactly the same result?  You are replacing half as many seeds and if you have extra in your storage you can use those instead of recrafting. Looting seeds still seems useful

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

maybe a21 will see a change to farming since it will be ages for that to release to get a better system going?

I barely farm but i horde seeds i find lol

i hope stable a20 isnt too far off tbh

Someone did mention new clothing sets and I think there's a farmer one, and a mining one too...

Some of the other guys on here will be able to set us straight with this because my memory is terrible. But if I do recall correctly, I'm sure there was mention of each set boosting their respective skills (Mining gear -> better mining performance) or something along those lines...

 

[Blake_]

How is this exactly the same result?  You are replacing half as many seeds and if you have extra in your storage you can use those instead of recrafting

True, the fundamental difference is in the beginning and/or the initial amount of produce you have as you say. Long term is the same thing if we are talking about the important thing here, yield that is. That's why I worded it "almost exactly".

 

[POCKET951]

I think alot of people would be happy with A20 farming as is if the supercorn seed recipe was made to 4 supercorn so you wouldn't get shafted if you missed the 50%, everything else is abundant and easy to get going. 

Or because supercorn is incredibly rare and only found in a tier 3 poi. Make it a bit more common to come by so getting shafted isn't a big problem

I'm aware you can get supercorn seeds in farmers bundles. But how often do you get these? I'd they always gave minimum of 2 of whatever seed,supercorn included it would be fine. You'd have 3 attempts to get it going on LOTL 1

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

I just thought of something...

If there is a net gain in the long term with seed returns, then wouldn't this whole change of mechanic inspire in others; as it's already got me, scheming to ironically produce huge farms (something I don't even do in A19) in order to reach the same potential goal of 'Crop hoarding...'

 

[Aldranon]

I just thought of something...

If there is a net gain in the long term with seed returns, then wouldn't this whole change of mechanic inspire in others; as it's already got me, scheming to ironically produce huge farms (something I don't even do in A19) in order to reach the same potential goal of 'Crop hoarding...'

Spoilage is the only real answer.

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

Spoilage is the only real answer.

It seems like a legitimate proposal but would have to be done well. Sort of brings us back to refrigeration and functional refrigerarors/ shop freezers etc which would add immersion, keep us searching for food, and aim for electricity.

Although it would beg the preservation question regarding tinned goods.

Seems a lot better than aiming a gattling nerf gun at everything and turning melting the barrels

 

[Blake_]

I think alot of people would be happy with A20 farming as is if the supercorn seed recipe was made to 4 supercorn so you wouldn't get shafted if you missed the 50%, everything else is abundant and easy to get going. 

Or because supercorn is incredibly rare and only found in a tier 3 poi. Make it a bit more common to come by so getting shafted isn't a big problem

I'm aware you can get supercorn seeds in farmers bundles. But how often do you get these? I'd they always gave minimum of 2 of whatever seed,supercorn included it would be fine. You'd have 3 attempts to get it going on LOTL 1

I like the 4 supercorns per seed idea. The more seed yield is a no from me though, for the reasons I stated before.

Bones, lots of bones and murky water everywhere. Supercorn is little more than a very nice mid/late game commodity.

 

[Aldranon]

It seems like a legitimate proposal but would have to be dome well. Sort of brings us back to refrigeration and functional refrigerarors/ shop freezers etc which would add immersion, keep us searching for food, and aim for electricity.

Although it would beg the preservation question regarding tinned goods.

Seems a lot better than aiming a gattling nerf gun at everything amd turning melting the barrels

Players could preserve food in jars.

I understand what TFP are trying to do:  Keep food a challenge. 

 

[Khalagar]

I feel like farming talk is played out, it's probably already been tweaked since we know they have been taking feed back into consideration and literally every streamer I've seen has been negative on the change, as well as nearly every person on the forums etc.  Even if it stays, we'll have to just test it and see or not use farming and shrug and get a mod to revert

 

[Beelzebubs Ghost]

I feel like farming talk is played out, it's probably already been tweaked since we know they have been taking feed back into consideration and literally every streamer I've seen has been negative on the change, as well as nearly every person on the forums etc.  Even if it stays, we'll have to just test it and see or not use farming and shrug and get a mod to revert

Yaps.

We will all have it later so lets catch up after having a chance to test it. Take it easy everyone

 

[Blake_]

They might be releasing it soon. Like 12 hours from now . Putting aside the WIP dismemberment... it's quite polished for an Experimental.

 

[icehot]

The only real issue I've noticed so far watching youtube and the streams is the weird AI pathing, but that might already be fixed (or perhaps it's intentional but it looks bugged to me).

 

[Neminsis]

I think the tedium concern of having to replant comes from prior experience of having horrible hitboxes on plants and picking up seedlings by mistake. With an added bit of lag that was an obnoxious loop to get caught in.  It's not just an added click, it's opening your inventory, scanning through it, and dragging the seed back to the toolbar and then targeting that sometimes elusive hitbox. Even with the improved hitboxes this is a bunch of added steps when a lot of people have trouble finding particular items in their inventories.

I understand the reasoning behind the design change that it makes seeds more valuable, and farming itself, because of the recipes that now require super corn, but it's not really going to affect anyone's ability to stockpile massive amounts of food since merely doubling the number of farm plots nets you the same output regardless of whether you lose half your seeds, or half your harvest, or if your food spoils. 

Except in the edge case where there is no Bob's boars on the map, and/or you become dependent on RNG to either provide a quest to reset, or get the all important super corn in a seed pack as a reward, the only net effects are that it makes that first point into Living off the Land mandatory to start farming, and the extra steps of replanting inevitable. 

Now, I'm not privy to the actual metrics, but from my experience most people already either skip farming, or do as little as possible, and/or skip using super corn, and/or skip producing any of Grandpa's recipes themselves as well as the higher tier foods. This change isn't going to affect me much at all since I habitually toss a point into Living off the Land before I make the first farm plot, make way more farm plots than I absolutely need, and will max out every perk anyway, but it's also not going to make farming more popular with the average player who is more focused on increasing their dps than anything else. 

What it will do though, and I think this is the actual point, is that it'll force more hunting, which in turn will force more exploration, specifically into the winter biome, more points spent into Iron Gut, Well Insulated, and Fortitude in general, and increase the value of golden rod tea in order to eat the now plentiful sham sandwiches without consequence. 

Oh, and add all those extra steps for those that actually like farming...

 

[Marinxar]

I think the farming changes is bit too much.

So, you put a lot of work and time in building plots and gathering seeds and creating a farm. The reward being, you have a lot of food. That seems like a system working as intended. Making  it ultimately unrewarding to go through the effort of making a farm, is just forcing everyone to play a different way. It is not making things more challenging, but taking fun out of the game . 

 

[Blake_]

The only real issue I've noticed so far watching youtube and the streams is the weird AI pathing, but that might already be fixed (or perhaps it's intentional but it looks bugged to me).

Oh, dear. It's just @faatal's AI bitting the dust against the unfathomable amount of new shapes. I'm afraid that 1 block pathing and >1 block pathing isn't the only thing that entities need.

They need better pathing "around" thin blocks, better pathing awareness/disengagement from focusing on a block in order to better detect a player that just moved to their behinds and of course their raycasts need to target thin blocks better. All the thin blocks. That's a good amount of work.

Right now, and as Todd Howard would say: It just works.

 

[Doomofman]

I've seen some worrying performance drops in the cities from the streams/videos I've watched over the weekend. I know there's a trade off in performance for the complexity/density of the new city/town layout but I'm concerned that trade off has gone a little too far