PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

Status
Not open for further replies.
Roland said:
Perks now govern the probability of finding like-themed magazines and parts for those recipes. Perk into shotguns and you will notice more shotgun magazines and shotgun parts appearing in the world
Click to expand...
^From Roland's recent update of the first page.^

While I can see this working nicely for solo play, unless the loot table references the perk allocation of others grouped up with the person looting as well as their own perk allocation, this is going to make co-op play a bit more stressful by adding in  "Why the @%$# did you loot that? I needed to check it for (x) mag so I can craft (z) for us." infighting...

Put another way: Needs to reference team members' perk allocations or r.i.p. designated looter and hello "mandatory" Lucky Looter perk point allocations for everyone.

 
RipClaw said:
By unlock I actually mean that I can craft it.

I don't like to buy weapons and tools from the trader and T3 weapons and tools require a high lootstage in A20. But the schematics can sometimes be found early in the game if you are lucky.

In one of my last games in A20, I found the auger schematic and the crucible in the second week of in-game play. This allowed me to skip the steel tools. In the current game, however, I found the steel tool schematics very early but the crucible and auger schematics very late. As a result, I used steel tools instead of the auger, and instead of making steel, I bought it from the trader.
 

Because you find some schematics early and others late or not at all, the gameplay often changes significantly.
Click to expand...
Crafting  is going to be linear within each skill tree. However, gamestage is variable now depending on biome so if you want early big rewards go play in the right biome to get that. 

 
Yesterday I was talking with friends about how broken for the game INT skill tree is (for CO-OP mostly) because of the tech skills.
Today I see this change and I like it.

Are there any estimates for A21 release? I'm dying to play it :(

 
hiemfire said:
^From Roland's recent update of the first page.^

While I can see this working nicely for solo play, unless the loot table references the perk allocation of others grouped up with the person looting as well as their own perk allocation, this is going to make co-op play a bit more stressful by adding in  "Why the @%$# did you loot that? I needed to check it for (x) mag so I can craft (z) for us." infighting...

Put another way: Needs to reference team members' perk allocations or r.i.p. designated looter and hello "mandatory" Lucky Looter perk point allocations for everyone.
Click to expand...
This warms my heart. I hate the idea of designated looters. 

 
hiemfire said:
^From Roland's recent update of the first page.^

While I can see this working nicely for solo play, unless the loot table references the perk allocation of others grouped up with the person looting as well as their own perk allocation, this is going to make co-op play a bit more stressful by adding in  "Why the @%$# did you loot that? I needed to check it for (x) mag so I can craft (z) for us." infighting...

Put another way: Needs to reference team members' perk allocations or r.i.p. designated looter and hello "mandatory" Lucky Looter perk point allocations for everyone.
Click to expand...
I think to add to this, madmole said after you max out that magazine (ex lv 100 on shotguns), that book will stop dropping for you, which is great in solo, but MP means you can't store any excess you come across (via looting at least) to save for someone else to use if you yourself already maxed out that tree.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I used to grind resources in the mine to build an interesting base, and now I will grind books in A21 to build at least some kind of base in between grinding... 

Besides, it will completely kill role-playing with a group of friends, where someone is an engineer and builds a base, two miners extract resources for him, and two or three more people complete quests and loot the world.

*very sad thoughts*

 
NekoPawtato said:
I think to add to this, madmole said after you max out that magazine (ex lv 100 on shotguns), that book will stop dropping for you, which is great in solo, but MP means you can't store any excess you come across (via looting at least) to save for someone else to use if you yourself already maxed out that tree.
Click to expand...
Ugh.  Yeah, with the current set up, when we find books and schematics that have already been read, our group brings them back to base to share with the party.  New-to-server players can get caught up on book sets pretty quickly that way.  Maybe as a compensation for maxed out magazines not dropping any more, once a character hits max, they can craft their own "magazines" (or call 'em "diaries", or "recipes" or "Cliff Notes", or whatevers) that other players can read and learn from?

 
I don't see the problem.  These magazines just make it possible to craft higher quality/tier gear.  A new comer to a server can just get the good stuff from other players without having to find all the magazines.  They can still perk into the same skills to get the bonus.  As far as books I think they still drop randomly, I think Madmole just said the magazines will stop dropping for you when you max out a certain magazine.

 
madmole said:
Hi all!
We're very busy on Alpha 21 but I thought I would share the new crafting system and looting changes with you.

There are now tons of new skills that govern unlocking and the quality of items in the game.

A few examples of crafting skills are shotguns, pistols, cooking, armorer, medical, etc.

Perks no longer unlock recipes or govern crafting skills. Many perks are being reworked to add value where before the main value was a recipe unlock.

Books no longer unlock recipes. The ones that did unlock items are being reworked to do something else.

Crafting skill is improved by finding magazines in the game. Mailboxes, file cabinets, book shelves etc can all contain various magazines that improve your skill.

Perking into shotguns for example, increases the odds of finding shotgun magazines, shotgun parts, and shotguns in loot. This makes early specialization work, and you are no longer at the will of the random numbers to find what you are looking for. There is still a chance to find other stuff, but you won't be level 100 and still using a brown double barrel because of random drops. Everything is weighted that you perk into. Once you find all 100 shotgun magazines, you will stop finding shotgun magazines so stuff that is still valuable to you will be found instead.

Skill ranges represent their unlocks. Some skills go to 100, others stop at 50, so they require less magazines read to max out.

All crafting ranges now do not overlap. For example with shotguns, skill 0 to 20 allows you to craft a brown to a blue pipe shotgun. Skill level 21-40 unlocks brown to blue double barrels. Skill level 41-75 unlocks brown to blue pump shotguns. 76-100 unlocks brown to blue auto shotguns. These numbers are just examples, I don't know the actual ranges, but now you don't just craft blue everything.

There is a new skill menu that has a few pages of skills that tracks what skill level you are at and shows what the skill unlocks.

How does it play?
Everyone on the team loves it. The search for technology is fun and you are always finding magazines and unlocking stuff every day. The magazines are useful for a very long time too, where before once you read a single schematic finding another was a disappointment. Now you always find useful magazines.

I found myself crafting nearly every range of pipe shotgun, stone axes etc. Even iron I would craft through most of the range. I would find some stuff and skip crafting for a bit, then when my skill superseded my item,  I'd be crafting again. I've never crafted so much stuff in years and it felt really great. You can no longer just sit around in your cave mining and level up and be crafting the best mining tools. You'll need to get out of the cave and search. However teams can still cooperate and share magazines with a dedicated crafter.

Traders sell magazines and offer magazines as rewards. I find myself taking those rewards quite often because it feels very rewarding to unlock things and level up your crafting skills.

Personally I love the new system. I've never seen a crafting system quite like this before, nor an intelligent loot system with deterministic random. It is playing very nice, and I'm really enjoying a long game. I like it because it feels realistic to read something and learn from it and the player can move through all the ranges of crafting and be making that choice... should I use my parts and craft a new gun, or wait another level? Personally I've always had enough parts to craft what I want because I find the parts for what I'm looking for instead of spear parts or whatever. So the new system weights the loot to what the player needs and it feels very rewarding and enjoyable to me and the testers.


View attachment 24892View attachment 24893


 
Click to expand...
Do Steel parts for steel tools like steel pickaxe still exist?

 
madmole said:
t is playing very nice, and I'm really enjoying a long game. I like it because it feels realistic to read something and learn from it and the player can move through all the ranges of crafting and be making that choice... should I use my parts and craft a new gun, or wait another level? 

 
Click to expand...
With all respect Madmole but... : This can be nice or be realistic. 

I will tell a story .  In my country it was so hard to buy computer so one newsspaper decided to print how to make your own pc - well it was possible to made but magasine was rly hard to get so - you lack one of them? bye bye computer. And it was hard to find materials. So if you want to make realitic --> magasine should be extreme rare and to make 1 gun you need at least few diffrents number -  for example part 1 , part 2 part 3 for pipe shotgun , 4 5 6 for double barrel shotgun etc.

And honestly this change will make int even more underpower. Because only reason will be invest enough points to make workbench. Even investing points in barter and quest will be pointeless because traders will be nerfed xd

 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top