PC Alpha 20 Dev Diary

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anyone else having issues making a new game?

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i've tried about 3 or 4 times now, and the most recent attempt was after deleting all my old saves...

 
Please be careful about bringing back learn by doing. The original learn by doing system highly encouraged grinding to raise skill points. To the point of unattended bot usage. 

 While learn by doing is more realistic to real life (such a swinging a pickaxe gaining STR), you must make hard decisions outside of a realistic focus  in the name of game play. 

 I despised the grinding requirements in a15, "I.E. Learn by doing".

All said and done, would like to see a limited form of learn by doing as long as grinding is not practical to gain skill from learn by doing. 

 
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I really like the difficulty balancing and customization options that have been progressively happening over time in this game's development. Zombie speed sliders, block damage, exp gain, etc. , feral sense being the latest addition in a long line of things that let the player tweak the settings to play how they enjoy, maybe making things harder in some ways and easier in others. Loot and game stage are now decoupled from the primary difficulty setting, which imo was a good choice. That said, I feel like the next step now is to just do away with the original "difficulty" setting entirely. I get that it is an easy way for noobs to change the difficulty without messing with other settings, but frankly, it now only governs two settings which in my opinion need to be separated from one another anyway. This is how hard zombies hit and how hard players hit back. I usually play with a mod that allows me to simulate a change in one of these two on its own (which I imagine is probably broken now, due to the introduction of zombie health randomization, we'll see), because I dislike either A) having to play with zombies that absorb bullets like an army tank or B) having to play on "easy" mode and not needing to fear the zombies much because they just give little love taps. I want zombies to hit like a mac truck so that the possibility of getting hit is terrifying, but  they should still be satisfyingly easy to kill (because killing zombies is half the fun, isn't it?!). Some people agree with me, there are others who disagree and would rather the zombie do less damage or be tougher to kill than my preference. Separating zombie and player damage into two different settings would be a really good change to further allowing players to tweak settings how they like. Kind of like how we have options for how much damage we or zombies do to blocks, give us the option to control how much damage we do to one another.

(P.S. I also really approve of the change to tie sleeper respawn to loot respawn, but I'm going to keep saying until my face turns blue that we need SOME option to disable it entirely, even if it stays locked unless loot respawn is set to "never".)

TDLR: Gold star for TFP for making so many options to tweak game settings for various play styles. Next step please make zombie to player and player to zombie damage two separate settings (and please let us turn off sleeper respawn if possible!). Thanks!

 
hotpoon said:
@madmole please would you ask Lathan if he gets a chance if he could make it so that the Twitch integrations could be dragged to a different part of the screen. Some streamers have their webcams on the right, so that obscures the integrations. If not draggable, then perhaps be able to choose between left and right of the screen.

Apologies if I'm asking in the wrong place. 
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You already have a few options:

1) mod to move it where you want it

2) move your webcam

3) make your screens/overlays such that the the gameplay is in an inset window(this is my fav option honestly for reasons that some might agree with and some might be @%$#ed off by.  Ask me if you you really want to know)

 
Ok so, weirdest thing just happened... went to log into my solo game as per usual, loaded into the game and it was the same time and day as it have been, but I spawned in as a new player! No levels, none of my stuff, it was like it saw me as a separate person from the one who I logged out with. Gonna go poke around and see if I can figure out wth is going on, I guess... :(

Edit: land claim, bedroll, vehicle, and drone all still exist and recognize me as their master. My map is the same. Just my character themself seems to have been entirely reset. Anyone else had this happen?

 
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Weazelsun said:
Any plans to give the pipe baton a stun effect? Could last for 2 - 4 seconds. Seeing as it is a baton and all. As for an indicator showing the pipe baton is ready to stun, maybe an overhead strike animation or a shove animation with the pipe baton horizontally. Wait or a leg strike as it is done in real life by some officers.
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Second this, I've been asking for this since the streamer weekend lol. The pipe baton working with the stun baton perk tree would make sense, as it currently doesn't scale with it and can't use mods from it, so it's hard to even have enough mods for the pipe baton, and the pipe baton is just a worse club in every possible way besides animations

I'd love if the pipe baton could get some sort of a psuedo stun, and then if we got a t3 steel baton that used the pipe baton animations and stun baton electricity and mods

Kalex said:
It's very disjointing to have a different attack style and animations between the primitive tier and the higher tiers of the same weapon line.
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Go with the pipe baton animations for stun baton imo, and redo stun baton. Pipe baton animations and attack pattern is amazing, and I'm tempted to use it even now with a t6 fully perked out and modded stun baton. The stun baton is just so much less fun to use and does way less damage than it's t0 counterpart. You go from being able to easily kill zombies on your own, to mostly just stagger locking them and then beating on them while they are stunned

fragtzack said:
The original learn by doing system highly encouraged grinding to raise skill points. To the point of unattended bot usage. 
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I mean, rewarding someone for spending hours grinding is fine imo. If someone wants to sit in a mineshaft whacking rocks for 4 hours irl to raise their mining skill then there's no reason to say they can't. Like wise if someone was going to go to the trouble to use a bot to cheat they might as well just use the console to level instead. A big part of the balance philosophy atm seems to be based around players just having an honor system of not making the game unfun for themselves like nerd poling up to the top of a PoI to get the loot. 

Pretty hard for the devs to regulate a mostly single player / coop PVE game if a player wants to be a try hard to optimize for the top 1%

Learn by doing is better for a dedicated player, while just instantly getting stronger for points is better for a casual player, but TFP will probably go for a system between the two. Judging by Madmole mentioning 25 in shotgun crafting skill / shotgun skill, we might see something like a level 100 cap on skills and you get X points per level you can allocate w/e you want. Having more than 5 levels to a skill will let you express it way more and have more nuanced builds, which I'm all for

 
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I Have been playing and following 7dtd for quite a while and I have to say BRAVO to everyone involved with this update! I started 7dtd since it was 1st put on steam. It was alot of alphas ago lol. A20 update is by far the best I have ever experienced! I have been modding and following modders since I owned this game because I need it to be the way I can always have fun! I cannot thank the Fun Pimps enough for letting us toy with all of this along this ride so far and cannot thank modders enough for everything they did to make the game better when it wasn't the greatest lmao :)  . ! I mod XML stuff only so people don't have to download anything special on my server. That being said this update is the most satisfying I have ever experienced in 7dtd! I feel I don't have to mod nearly as much! I think that should be the whole point behind a game. The Fun Pimps and the people helping them are making this game EPIC!!!! This last update is absolutely a win for everyone! Yes I have serious performance issues with my Ryzen x5800 in some POI's lmao :)  . That being said I have experienced massive gains in some performance when things should have tanked! Thankyou to all involved in bettering 7dtd!!!

 
My first death in A20 just went down. I was creeping around a house in the dead of night - the one with the graves in the basement and the zombies rising out of them. I was expecting some standard zombies, but instead I was greeted with a rad biker, two rad darlenes, and some regular zombies. They crawled through the opening in between the jail doors and the first hit on me broke both my leg and my arm, and my character flinched so much they were temporarily looking up at the ceiling, so I was helpless as they slaughtered me a couple moments later. I didn't manage to get a single shot off, but it wouldn't have mattered. All I had to my name was a T6 pistol (not speced into) and a T3 hunting rifle.

I respawned at home on my bedroll just as the morning piano chimed. I hastily made my way back to my death backpack, reequipped my gear, and played it more cautiously this time. Knowing what I was up against, I performed a sneak attack on the sleeping rad biker with my hunting rifle and I bolted for the nearby iron door back where I came. Once the zombies busted through I unloaded on them with my pistol and I got a few lucky headshots, killing two of the rads instantly, including the biker. The final rad darlene and the normal zombies were easy pickings afterwards.

I made my way past the gravestones and into the main loot room. Upon seeing the hardened chest, I instantly understood why I got such tough spawns. This house was a T3 back in A19, but it's now a T4.

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Alright, so I am still fully engulfed in A20, and already the hype for the new A21 crafting systems is in full swing.  I can only hope that this is LBD getting it's foot in the door for a major come back. 

 
madmole said:
We might have to completely rebalance weapon parts for 21 because of the new crafting system I'm working on. The system will make crafting more granular so you craft many ranges of weapons (crafting a blue pipe shotgun at skill level 25 or so, lets you craft a brown double barrel at that skill level.). Even an increase of 1 will allow you to potentially craft a little bit better weapon, so I can see players frequently re-crafting weapons in a long game to get the micro improvements as their skill goes up.
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This is amazing news! Fantastic! Sounds exactly like the kind of changes I'll enjoy.

I'm hoping as part of your work you're revisiting the 'cannot craft level 6' design decision.  I know it might not even be relevant with legendaries coming and other changes, but although I think I understand the rationale, it is a decision that always seemed a real shame to me.

I can see a viewpoint that level 6 crafting allows someone to craft top level gear while 'sitting in safety' by buying and scrapping lower level weapons, and I'm pretty sure 'sitting in safety' goes against the game design intent, but:

  • 10 points in an attribute is a hell of an investment (to get level 5 weapon skill that would be required for level 6 crafting)
  • Relying on trader buys when you need something like 30 weapon parts for a craft isn't very viable - you would still HAVE to loot to get scrappable weapons.  Hell there's no reason the parts progression has to be linear.  Level 6 crafts could be 40 or 50 parts.
  • Currently once I have a level 6 weapon, I get little joy out of any find except another tier 6 that might have better stats.  If I could craft, every weapon of the right type is a valuable find because it's progression towards crafting and getting another 'roll of the dice' on my weapon stats.  Equally all weapon parts become disappointing loot once I have a level 6 weapon.
  • Because of the way equipment tiers overlap, I find myself frequently disappointed by level 5 top tier gear by the time I can craft it.  I get all excited that I can now craft say level 5 military armour because I've finally managed to acquire the perks and the schematics and the armour parts and the military fiber and.... I realise the level 6 cloth and leather pieces I already have are better than what I can craft.  And then I'm sad...  I realise changes to armour are going to probably (hopefully) make this go away, at least.
 
I was maybe wrong about the ammo spawns being WAY too high. I played a20 with a friend yesterday and honestly it was super epic. Although I changed the ammo in zombie loot bags to be the medium ammo spawn group instead of large ammo spawn group (in the loot.xml), and lowered the amount of ammo we would get from trader rewards, it was very balanced this way. Played on loot abundance 100%, and we had a constant struggle of not starving the first 4 days but we finally got some food and crops going now (it is cool to have that survival aspect of finding food).

Also, I thought the pipe guns would be OP to have so early in game, but I LOVE that they are definitely weaker than their real gun counterparts. For example the reloading taking longer, and a lower clip capacity, which is a great way to balance it

It was a VERY big mistake to try to run outside in the middle of the night with feral sense set to nighttime; we thought we could make it to another building by sprinting over there, well... that went wrong LOL.

Overall, amazing update, just like everyone else has said already. But I do think that there needs to be a little nerf in some ammo in loot, but not as much as I thought earlier

 
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Burrfly said:
I was maybe wrong about the ammo spawns being WAY too high. I played a20 with a friend yesterday and honestly it was super epic. Although I changed the ammo in zombie loot bags to be the medium ammo spawn group instead of large ammo spawn group (in the loot.xml), and lowered the amount of ammo we would get from trader rewards, it was very balanced this way. Played on loot abundance 100%, and we had a constant struggle of not starving the first 4 days but we finally got some food and crops going now (it is cool to have that survival aspect of finding food).

Also, I thought the pipe guns would be OP to have so early in game, but I LOVE that they are definitely weaker than their real gun counterparts. For example the reloading taking longer, and a lower clip capacity, which is a great way to balance it

It was a VERY big mistake to try to run outside in the middle of the night with feral sense set to nighttime; we thought we could make it to another building by sprinting over there, well... that went wrong LOL.

Overall, amazing update, just like everyone else has said already. But I do think that there needs to be a little nerf in some ammo in loot, but not as much as I thought earlier
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I'm on day 7 on my nomad 100% loot server and I only have 20 shotgun shells and 30 pistol rounds. I also have been choosing books over ammo in trader quest rewards. I would say ammo has been scarce for me and fairly balanced. It definitley hasn't been over abundant. If all I did was use guns instead of my lvl6 prim bow I'd be out of ammo.

I'm conserving ammo and I'm barely finding any

Granted I've spent about 15 shotgun shells and 70 pistol shots with the pipe weapons

I think  @MisutoM got really lucky with how much ammo he was finding. And as much of a bad shot he claims to be, I watched his stream and he is pretty effficent with his smg shots, def more proficient than  most players

 
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madmole said:
Just use some self restraint and don't do any repeat quests. Turn off loot respawn. It's not perfect but role playing through self restraint can solve problems. Its a multiplayer game we can't not reset POIs for new players to experience it.
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Self restraint while playing a game? The point of a game is the opposite in my opinion: to release your inner self and enjoy that time no matter what.

That said, resetting the POI and doing it twice just happens once. From then on, it's just the one time forever. The horde night duration sounds like a feature that Everybody would want, like:

Horde duration: Short, Default, All night.

. About pipe weapons: a chance for weapon jamming would solve the balance problems making them unreliable enough (like 1-2% chance to jam every shot), something like in Fallout New Vegas.That's "Oh shift! " moments everywhere.

 
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JaxTeller718 said:
I'm personally all for harsher death penalties. I had an awesome experience yesterday while infected and hungry. Wandering horde was on top of me trying to get to me at night. When I died I was fine and it took all the fun and excitement away from the experience knowing that i can just die to fix it all. The XP penalty isn't large enough to really care as with a few zombie kills I was right back where I needed to be.

I did make a modlet for anyone who wants to test out what harsher death penalties would be like. It halves the food and water on respawn to 50 percent of your max, it  keeps infection and broken arms and legs on respawn but will clear infection when it reaches 100 percent and you die, and it raises the limit on XP deficit from 50 percent max deficit to 100 percent max so if you die 4 times it will no longer accumulate deficit.

I find this is harsher but not too harsh like it used to be in A17.

You can find it here  Jax Death Modlets Among Others

That said A20 has been amazing in my opinion. The sense of fear is back and I am not looking to mod things as fast as in other Alphas. This is a home run imo and the pois and danger present are amazing. Great work Mad Mole and the team! This is a huge step in the right direction!

PS - I love the farming now. It means something and it is not easy mode. You have to WORK to get a farm up and it feels like an accomplishment so put me in the camo of being a fan of the changes.

PPS - Yuck on the image with the link can we make it so theres no image?
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I'm using the harsher death penalties from this mod now, that seems like a good system tbh - I hate the backpack staying where you died as you can end up with nothing but have to fight through a tough POI and travel miles potentially to go get it - it's just a chore, so I tend to turn that off, but these seem like a much better death penalty.

 
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