PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[RipClaw]

And just because the new system doesn't work for all players of 7D2D, doesn't mean they have to scrap it.

I didn't write anywhere that they should scrap it. But it has to be considered in the balancing.

 

[Jost Amman]

I didn't write anywhere that they should scrap it. But it has to be considered in the balancing.

How?

 

[RipClaw]

It has been stated by Joel and many others several times already.  Crafting progression is broken (e.g. crafting perks grant specific qualities of all types of items within a category) and largely has been less significant compared to other activities for several alphas now.  With this change, there is a smoother crafting unlock curve AND players can engage in more crafting since now they don't need to have a specific perk just to unlock higher quality crafts.

I didn't consider crafting broken but underutilized and streamlined a bit too much. The fact that you can loot everything you can craft, and usually in better quality, doesn't help.

I'm currently playing the Undead Legacy mod and there is crafing much more important. On the one hand, there are intermediate products that make crafting more interesting and on the other hand, you can upgrade what you loot with crafting. In addition, looting in the mod makes much more sense because really everything is useful. You search through all the trash bags in a POI instead of just going for the main loot.

 

[RipClaw]

How?

For example by adjusting the drop rate of the magazines so that even if you spend half of the week with building of mining you can still keep up with the gamestage. This should work for the majority of players.

 

[Callum123456789]

For example by adjusting the drop rate of the magazines so that even if you spend half of the week with building of mining you can still keep up with the gamestage. This should work for the majority of players.

I know some people get annoyed at this but I'm gonna hop on the mods band wagon and say that there will likely be mods that increase the drop rate of those magazines or their abundance.

 

[RipClaw]

I know some people get annoyed at this but I'm gonna hop on the mods band wagon and say that there will likely be mods that increase the drop rate of those magazines or their abundance.

Quite likely. In addition, you can also increase the drop rate via the loot abundance setting. Or you can decrease it if you feel that it's going too fast. This might be the case if someone is looting 24/7. Extreme play styles are always problematic for balancing.

 

[meganoth]

I hope you realize that was a joke quote from Futurama, I didn't mean it literally.

But also, that response is a "you" problem. It doesn't matter whether the team is willing to take risks and experiment, if the end result is a product that is just as bad as a team that is driven by delivery dates and known mechanics.

An analogy. Let's say developer A works 60 hours per week because they're "crunching" trying to get a game done before its pre-determined ship date. Developer B works 60 hours per week because it's part of the culture to make a game that is as good as possible, regardless of ship dates.

Which developer has a better work environment? Neither. Both are working 60 hours per week, and that's a problem, no matter why they're being told to do it. If a company expects them to work these hours, they should quit.

So it is with game mechanics. Players don't (and shouldn't) care whether a team is willing to take risks and experiment. They care about whether they get a game that is fun to play.

Then players also shouldn't care in which way the team is reaching that goal. But they do. Taking risks and trying out new mechanics is not a choice. It is a necessity as players get used to the same mechanics, Remember how the real-time strategy genre almost went away because there was no innovation anymore and every new RTS game was the same in slightly different graphics?

This change doesn't seem fun to me. Let me ask: What problem is this solving? How is the current game mechanic "broken" in a way that needs to be "fixed?"

Furthermore - if this really is a better game mechanic, then why not use it for everything? Why not get rid of XP and skill points altogether, and make "learning by looting" the only way to progress in anything?

EDIT: I can think of one way in which the current system is broken. Once you spec into a certain skill tree, and can craft higher quality items, you can no longer craft lower quality items (because e.g. you don't have enough resources). I guess this system kind of solves that issue - you can choose to not read the magazines, and just store them up until after you crafted the lower quality item.

You only see half of the brokenness here: In the old crafting system this also meant the progression was in big jumps, part of the progression was never reached. Lets say you can craft a double barrel shotgun of quality 4 soon because you put 3 points into shotguns. Then you put one point into shotguns, get the pump shotgun recipe and immediately the next step is a quality 5 pump shotgun.

So lets assume you have a smooth progression through looting. But here is that big jump that never makes crafting a low quality pump or auto-shotgun possible or necessary. In a well-balanced game there would be a big gap between the time you can craft that q4 double barrel and that q5 pump. And another just as big jump when you find the auto shotgun recipe. I have never ever crafted a quality 1 2 or 3 tier2 or 3 weapon, one reason being I couldn't but the other reason being I wouldn't even if I could because that higher quality tier3 weapon was at worst 1 or 2 loot runs or a trader visit away (for the parts) and most of the time already possible.

I would not consider the whole crafting system broken because of this, but it is certainly a big drawback or fault of that system.

But that's a hell of a big change to solve that issue, especially when it could be solved much easier by just putting a quality selector in the crafting window, needing only a couple UI tweaks and probably a few minor C# changes.

 

[WhiteLion]

@faatal in my opinion the biggest disadvantage is the multiplayer sync problem. As soon as I play with 3 or people on a privat server and some more zombies are spawned in the attacking movements of the zeds get out of sync. The zed beat animation is before or after the hit will occur  - with a [SIZE=14.6px]noticeable[/SIZE] delay / a-sync. We do not have any potato as clients nor the server is a potato. - Will there be fixes for this in A21 or in future?

 

[Doomofman]

The zombies hitting at weird points of the animation happens in single player too, I guess it'd be made worse by MP though

 

[Roland]

@faatal in my opinion the biggest disadvantage is the multiplayer sync problem. As soon as I play with 3 or people on a privat server and some more zombies are spawned in the attacking movements of the zeds get out of sync. The zed beat animation is before or after the hit will occur  - with a [SIZE=14.6px]noticeable[/SIZE] delay / a-sync. We do not have any potato as clients nor the server is a potato. - Will there be fixes for this in A21 or in future?

When you say "private server" are you talking about a dedicated server that is password protected to keep it private or are you talking about one person hosting the others on their own personal rig while they are playing as well? There is a huge difference in required specs to be able to host others on your own computer. It would be great for them to be able to improve things to the point that person to person multiplayer could work buttery smooth but it may end up being something not recommended for more than two players.

There are four of us who play on a dedicated server and we never suffer those delays. But if even just two of us decide to play directly hosted by the other then the client almost always suffers from those types of delays. Adding more players would make it worse.

 

[RipClaw]

I have never ever crafted a quality 1 2 or 3 tier2 or 3 weapon, one reason being I couldn't but the other reason being I wouldn't even if I could because that higher quality tier3 weapon was at worst 1 or 2 loot runs or a trader visit away (for the parts) and most of the time already possible.

There is another reason why you don't want to build a Q3 weapon. You often only have enough parts for one weapon and don't want to risk that you won't find enough parts later to build the higher quality weapon. So you save the parts for the Q5 gun. Q4 makes no sense anyway because the number of modslots is identical to Q3 and the additional damage is negligible most of the time.

 

[meganoth]

There is another reason why you don't want to build a Q3 weapon. You often only have enough parts for one weapon and don't want to risk that you won't find enough parts later to build the higher quality weapon. So you save the parts for the Q5 gun. Q4 makes no sense anyway because the number of modslots is identical to Q3 and the additional damage is negligible most of the time.

Yes. A big improvement to the progression could be to increase the damage jump between Q3 and Q4 and decrease or even remove the damage jump from Q4 to Q5 (likewise for the other quality level jumps). I wouldn't be surprised if this were either already implemented or on a to-do list of the developers. Before it made almost no difference as you didn't craft most weapons but just used what dropped in a POI, but in A21 those jumps in progression would be more noticable due to a smoother progression overall and more crafting.

 

[Dimasic-Colbasic]

Dear developers, I beg you to add the possibility to have a time wolf, as you wanted to do before. Please guys, I was really looking forward to this pet system. I was dreaming about my four-legged companion. Please, I am ready to buy 10 copies of the games on different accounts or give them to you personally, if only you guys add the ability to tame a wolf or a dog

 

[Laz Man]

I know some people get annoyed at this but I'm gonna hop on the mods band wagon and say that there will likely be mods that increase the drop rate of those magazines or their abundance.

Once the dust settles, I think most will like the crafting magazine system.  It will also be moddable so I am sure modders will enjoy thinking of new ways to use it as well to enhance their sensibilities.

Some of the first mods will most likely those that increase/decrease thresholds for unlocks.

 

[Space4Ace]

Dear developers, I beg you to add the possibility to have a time wolf, as you wanted to do before. Please guys, I was really looking forward to this pet system. I was dreaming about my four-legged companion. Please, I am ready to buy 10 copies of the games on different accounts or give them to you personally, if only you guys add the ability to tame a wolf or a dog

I don't think it will ever happen. We have the drone as a "pet". The drone follows you and helps you (and even gets in the way sometimes), like any tamed pets would do.

Roland can probably answer this better than I can; but if my memory recalls correctly, it's not planned anymore.

 

[Roland]

I don't think it will ever happen. We have the drone as a "pet". The drone follows you and helps you (and even gets in the way sometimes), like any tamed pets would do.

Roland can probably answer this better than I can; but if my memory recalls correctly, it's not planned anymore.

I already offered to buy 20 copies of the game on different accounts and give them to the devs and their children and grandchildren if they would only add ziplines so the line starts behind me...

 

[RipClaw]

Before it made almost no difference as you didn't craft most weapons but just used what dropped in a POI, but in A21 those jumps in progression would be more noticable due to a smoother progression overall and more crafting.

I hope we can find enough parts for it. An upgrade system similar to the one in Undead Legacy would also be nice.

 

[ArakATK]

What I've thought would be cool from the start of hearing about learn by reading, is if, say, the last magazine in the Shotguns category allowed you to, at great cost, create Shotgun Parts, allowing you to make more of those shotguns. Might solve some of those issues ... might even be easier to control since the magazines will be gating steel also, so even if you gave the ability earlier, it'd still be wildly expensive to craft if you haven't progressed enough along both Shotguns and forging to be able to make it.

 

[khzmusik]

It has been stated by Joel and many others several times already.  Crafting progression is broken (e.g. crafting perks grant specific qualities of all types of items within a category) and largely has been less significant compared to other activities for several alphas now.  With this change, there is a smoother crafting unlock curve AND players can engage in more crafting since now they don't need to have a specific perk just to unlock higher quality crafts.

I do remember seeing some of this, thanks for reminding me.  @meganothand @Roland also brought up some good points, including the "jump" in crafting level.

But, I never thought "they don't need to have a specific perk" was a flaw, I thought it was a feature, because that's the entire point of skill trees. You have to put points into a "branch" skill in order to gain abilities in the "leaves." Otherwise 7D2D wouldn't have attributes at all, and all the perks would be on one screen. It was a form of artificial scarcity that forced the player into making choices.

And, in the end, that's what really upsets me about this change. It takes the choice out of players' hands. Their crafting skills are going to be dependent upon RWG instead. Having anything depend solely upon RWG is never as much fun as being able to make a choice - even if it's a bad choice.

EDIT: As an example - there are mods out there which separate crafting into a different skill tree. You have to spend more skill points to craft items, but they balance that by making skill points a bit easier to come by. I would prefer something like this rather than being forced to rely on looting.

Plus, it actually exacerbates what I think is the real reason players didn't craft very much: by the time they could craft a high (or even medium) tier item, they were already finding higher quality items in loot. For instance, I don't know if I ever put a point into armor, because I was finding Tier 6 cloth armor in loot before I even had a skill point to spare. This, to me, is a much larger issue than any of the others that have been raised.

For this reason, the crafting skills usually became a kind of "backup" in case RWG failed you. Put a point into (say) pistols so you craft a Tier 2 pipe pistol to hold you over until you inevitably found a Tier 6 pipe pistol in loot.

Now, by making crafting depend upon looting, it seems like you're making this situation worse. Will you find enough magazines to craft a Tier 5 pipe pistol before you start finding Tier 5 pipe pistols in loot (including quest loot)? Or will you have even more of a chance to find a Tier 5 pipe pistol, because the game is forcing you to do more looting?

...But I probably won't change anyone's mind now, and I've made my point, so after this post I'll drop it.

 

[meganoth]

I do remember seeing some of this, thanks for reminding me.  @meganothand @Roland also brought up some good points, including the "jump" in crafting level.

But, I never thought "they don't need to have a specific perk" was a flaw, I thought it was a feature, because that's the entire point of skill trees. You have to put points into a "branch" skill in order to gain abilities in the "leaves." Otherwise 7D2D wouldn't have attributes at all, and all the perks would be on one screen. It was a form of artificial scarcity that forced the player into making choices.

One flaw of the perk scheme I can think of is the double buff. You put a point into pistols. That buffs your damage but ALSO buffs your crafting of pistols giving you potentially a better pistol as well, buffing your damage. It makes no sense for one perk giving you two different effects that both essentially do the same, increasing your damage and handling, Thereby doubling the progression each point into the perk gives you.

Didn't matter in A20 because crafting was seldom usable but imagine a better balanced crafting in the game and it would be a real flaw.

And, in the end, that's what really upsets me about this change. It takes the choice out of players' hands. Their crafting skills are going to be dependent upon RWG instead. Having anything depend solely upon RWG is never as much fun as being able to make a choice - even if it's a bad choice.

EDIT: As an example - there are mods out there which separate crafting into a different skill tree. You have to spend more skill points to craft items, but they balance that by making skill points a bit easier to come by. I would prefer something like this rather than being forced to rely on looting.

Plus, it actually exacerbates what I think is the real reason players didn't craft very much: by the time they could craft a high (or even medium) tier item, they were already finding higher quality items in loot. For instance, I don't know if I ever put a point into armor, because I was finding Tier 6 cloth armor in loot before I even had a skill point to spare. This, to me, is a much larger issue than any of the others that have been raised.

For this reason, the crafting skills usually became a kind of "backup" in case RWG failed you. Put a point into (say) pistols so you craft a Tier 2 pipe pistol to hold you over until you inevitably found a Tier 6 pipe pistol in loot.

Now, by making crafting depend upon looting, it seems like you're making this situation worse. Will you find enough magazines to craft a Tier 5 pipe pistol before you start finding Tier 5 pipe pistols in loot (including quest loot)? Or will you have even more of a chance to find a Tier 5 pipe pistol, because the game is forcing you to do more looting?

...But I probably won't change anyone's mind now, and I've made my point, so after this post I'll drop it.