PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Aldranon]

Loot Respawn could be part of the games grander plot AND/OR just a convenient vehicle for endless gameplay.  

If it's part of a multi game plot (two games) this first game (7D2D) the player is hallucinating or dreaming this:

If they choose the White River group, they could wake up in a part 2 with the player the only person immune to the virus!

If they choice the bandits they will die OR possibly wake up as patient Zero, a zombie  in part 2!

The player has to kill one of the two leaders to end the game.

Of course, it's all conjecture but that's how my brain works. 

 

[Nimeni]

Just a small feedback from what i have seen in in some streams.

Food and water is not that hard to get, is definitely more scarce but not what i was expecting.  There was some who were unlucky to find food and water, but they were looking for it in places that was a low chance to find it.

You can drink water from a pond/river with your hand s if you can t find any.

 

[Archer]

Hi, I'm brand new to the forum, can I get a bit of clarification about something? 
My group can run anywhere between 10-30 people, with sometimes almost all 30 of us playing at once together (we have a robust dedicated server with resources that seem to manage this quite well by the way, although the frame rate does drop a bit during blood moons still) but in the 900+ hours I've played, our group always organized itself in such a way that it could cater to a variety of different people's preferences in playstyles.
Some would stay home at the base, and work on building or designing, or upgrading the base. 
Some would stay home and mostly farm, and help stock food to feed such a large crowd. 
Some would go out to hunt, usually pairing off with a partner who tracks. 
Some would go around looting, and either take the lucky looter perk, or the salvage operations perk and eventually they would all end up getting both over time. 
Some liked to go do quests for the trader and climb the rewards tree with them. 
Some honestly were happy just throwing some music on, hopping into a hole in the ground and mining til their hearts were content. 
The question that I have is this: if the individuals who stay at the base and focus on construction have to rely on the folks who go out and do the looting to find the books & magazines they'll need to progress, won't those fall drastically behind in progression rate over time? Because the folks who do most of the looting are spec'd into something that is increasing their odds of finding the books/mags, but people who are working on the base crafting and making bullets, upgrading walls, etc. are going to see the books their looting friends bring back to them in small numbers than their more loot oriented playmates are. The only way around this is to have the guys who go out looting to also spec into the same thing the folks who stay behind to work on the base have spec'd into which seems redundant/unfavorable. 

Am I missing an underlying mechanic, or do the devs just want to force everyone to leave the base and go loot stuff for some reason? Or are they wanting us to shy away from groups where specialized roles exist, because the player base is majority single players perhaps or something? Just wondering what the wisdom is behind the change, I've seen the skilltree go through a lot of iterations but this one just seems perplexing in the motivations to make it the way it is overall. 
Sorry if this has already been asked/answered - I scrolled up a bit through a few pages but didn't see anything exactly on this particular point, just lots of other questions about the skillbooks and magazines. TIA for answers!

 

[Riamus]

The question that I have is this: if the individuals who stay at the base and focus on construction have to rely on the folks who go out and do the looting to find the books & magazines they'll need to progress, won't those fall drastically behind in progression rate over time? Because the folks who do most of the looting are spec'd into something that is increasing their odds of finding the books/mags, but people who are working on the base crafting and making bullets, upgrading walls, etc. are going to see the books their looting friends bring back to them in small numbers than their more loot oriented playmates are. The only way around this is to have the guys who go out looting to also spec into the same thing the folks who stay behind to work on the base have spec'd into which seems redundant/unfavorable. 

Am I missing an underlying mechanic, or do the devs just want to force everyone to leave the base and go loot stuff for some reason? Or are they wanting us to shy away from groups where specialized roles exist, because the player base is majority single players perhaps or something? Just wondering what the wisdom is behind the change, I've seen the skilltree go through a lot of iterations but this one just seems perplexing in the motivations to make it the way it is overall. 
Sorry if this has already been asked/answered - I scrolled up a bit through a few pages but didn't see anything exactly on this particular point, just lots of other questions about the skillbooks and magazines. TIA for answers!

My understanding is you'll get all magazines but will just have a small increase in the chance of getting what you spec into more often.  They'll still bring back a bunch of magazines your builders would want... assuming you can get them to not read the magazines.  It's one thing to talk someone into bringing back a magazine/book they've already read but since you can read dozens of these, some people may not be very good at bringing them back.  Depends on your group how well that works.

 

[Archer]

My understanding is you'll get all magazines but will just have a small increase in the chance of getting what you spec into more often.  They'll still bring back a bunch of magazines your builders would want... assuming you can get them to not read the magazines.  It's one thing to talk someone into bringing back a magazine/book they've already read but since you can read dozens of these, some people may not be very good at bringing them back.  Depends on your group how well that works.

Edit: Thank you for the reply, by the way!

I'm just wondering if over time, the people who go out to loot all the time will be many levels ahead of the other people who stay behind to work just based solely on the notion that specing into something is supposed to increase the odds that you find it around in the world.

So if looter A is going out to find books for Builder B, whatever Looter A is spec'd into will be what they are more likely to find books/mags for when looting. So as looter A goes around looting all the piles and shelves and so forth, most of the stuff they find, not all, but most, will be primarily *for* them, and not for whatever builder B is spec'd into. 
Thus, over time, builder B, will fall behind the rate of progression of his friend who prefers to loot a lot in the game, since Builder B doesn't loot very often not wanting to put valuable construction perk points into looting, and not wanting to burn valuable time either by going out and looting, when building a base large enough and strong enough to accommodate their group before the next blood moon is obviously a critical thing, and time is of the essence. 

The same would apply for the guys making bullets, running forges, managing the workbench, the chemistry set, upgrading sections of wall, installing spike traps, setting land mines, etc. all back at the base. 

I've genuinely never had a single complaint against a single thing the Fun Pimps have iterated, I don't even care that it's still in early access or any of that it's fun the way it is, but why on Earth is this whole thing being added in I wonder? I'm new on the forums, so I don't know the history here at all but is this a thing people have been asking for? 

 

[Old Crow]

 I'm new on the forums, so I don't know the history here at all but is this a thing people have been asking for? 

I'm pretty sure it's not likely to be something anyone asked for, outside of the Fun Pimps themselves.

 

[Archer]

I'm pretty sure it's not likely to be something anyone asked for, outside of the Fun Pimps themselves.

My guess is, they're possibly diverging away from the game being so focused around building bases and crafting, and they're wanting to push it more into the direction of quests and traveling to places and accomplishing missions and so forth, and they're pushing the player base to explore the world more I my assumption. 

I just think this is a terrible way to do that if that is indeed the idea, because I think more people play this for the crafting/building, they're just listening to the players who go to forums (which I think are usually the most enthusiastic players, but also greatly skew what the general player base wants, because the most enthusiastic players, play the game a *lot* whereas 95% of the player base plays a few weeks every few months or something. This leads to lots of feedback about "not having enough to do" and "feels stale" and so forth, so the devs take that feedback and think the player base wants more of this mission type of stuff, and wants all these constant reworks of core mechanics (like the poor skill tree that's been redone over and over and over again) which keeps them chasing down a goal post the small crowd that provides feedback of *any* kind (good or bad) moves around constantly. 

Devs want to listen to their playerbase, they care what people think of their product. They want to give us a game that we like. 
But at the same time, the other side of that coin is that feedback most of the time is a bad sample of your customer base and a lot of companies, not just game devs, but all types, end up taking a direction, or providing a product, or a change, that nobody likes, because they've essentially gotten bad "data" from the customers they're looking for the feedback from. This may - or may not - be the situation here, but I just can't see why else this change has been brought about and how it pulls the players away from the bases (which is where we *like* to be for a lot of us, it's why we play/bought the game) but I'd still rather this be a game of Crafting/Survival and exploration with a little 'e'. Now it feels like looting/exploring/quests etc. are front and center, and crafting and building are taking a backseat.

 

[Roland]

Hi Archer and welcome to the forum. I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the new progression. The learn by reading has nothing to do with player levels. People who stay home and build will likely continue to level at the fast pace they always have. 
 

The learn by reading system is for gaining crafting recipes. With 30 of you, all you need to do is decide among you who will be in charge of what and then get the appropriate magazines into their hands. It doesn’t matter if they loot, farm, build, mine, or run around killing chickens. If that person is in charge of crafting tools then everyone in the group needs to feed that player tool crafting mags and let that guy craft tools for everyone. 
 

It is foolish to have five guys each read three tool crafting mags rather than having one guy read 15. It’s hard to fathom that based on past experience with books and how leveling up was tied to learning new recipes but it is all different now. 
 

You gain xp through actions you enjoy doing and that levels you up. Completely separate from that you read magazines to learn better and better recipes. You can be level 200 but still only craft burnt meat If you never read a single cooking magazine. But if someone else on your team read them all and makes stew for everyone then it’s no big deal that you can’t cook the good stuff and that doesn’t leave you behind in leveling up. 
 

Hope that clarifies and I know the lightbulb will click fully on as you play it for yourself as I’ve been witnessing all weekend with the streamers. The changes really enhance teamwork and group dynamics. 

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Welcome Archer; as a visual to understand what Roland posted take a peep at
Neebs Gamining, They work mostly as a cooperative. Although they act hapless
much of the time that is mostly for entertainment value. Look at the black
and white of it and it should give a decent idea of Roland's post and TFP's
attempted approach.

If it works out the only thing that will need to be adjusted are the average
gen values. But that will be tested and proven After playing for a bit.

PS. Please don't Nuke the residential mail boxes. That's how I get most of my books now.

 

[khzmusik]

All containers that didn’t poof or change to an empty/open state respawned their loot when I went back. [...]
 

The only lootables that went poof were things like garbage bags, piles of clothes, stacks of ammo, duffel bags, etc. containers like shelves, medicine cabinets, cupboards, carts, garbage cans, etc did not go poof but did just become blocks in an open/empty state and no longer functioned as containers. Already existing open/empty “containers” are not containers at all and are just blocks that can be destroyed but not filled with loot. 

Now that you explained how it works in detail, I think I understand the problem that others were talking about.

When loot respawns, the containers that used to be lootable do not go back to a lootable state. The remain in the open/empty state, and those are not containers, just destructible blocks.

And from the looks of things, this is the majority of containers in the game: fridges, freezers, ovens, stoves, cabinets, store shelves, book shelves, and so on. It looks like it might even apply to the boxes that you get when you break open crates (from Shamway, Mo' Power Electronics, Working Stiffs, etc).

So no matter what your loot respawn setting, they will never respawn loot. This makes the loot respawn setting almost useless, since it pretty much only affects the loot room containers.

Incidentally - this never mattered to me that much, because the default loot respawn time is 7 days, and - unlike zombie respawns - those have to be 7 continuous days where the player doesn't touch any chunk that the container is in. I tend to stay in one place (the city around my base), so I rarely encounter POIs that I have looted but not gone near in a week. It's much more common for me to re-enter the POI a couple of days later and encounter respawned zombies but no respawned loot.

So this affects me less than it would other people, but I can understand where they're coming from.

 

[Roland]

Now that you explained how it works in detail, I think I understand the problem that others were talking about.

When loot respawns, the containers that used to be lootable do not go back to a lootable state. The remain in the open/empty state, and those are not containers, just destructible blocks.

And from the looks of things, this is the majority of containers in the game: fridges, freezers, ovens, stoves, cabinets, store shelves, book shelves, and so on. It looks like it might even apply to the boxes that you get when you break open crates (from Shamway, Mo' Power Electronics, Working Stiffs, etc).

So no matter what your loot respawn setting, they will never respawn loot. This makes the loot respawn setting almost useless, since it pretty much only affects the loot room containers.

Incidentally - this never mattered to me that much, because the default loot respawn time is 7 days, and - unlike zombie respawns - those have to be 7 continuous days where the player doesn't touch any chunk that the container is in. I tend to stay in one place (the city around my base), so I rarely encounter POIs that I have looted but not gone near in a week. It's much more common for me to re-enter the POI a couple of days later and encounter respawned zombies but no respawned loot.

So this affects me less than it would other people, but I can understand where they're coming from.

so far, the crates from shotgun messiah, shamway, etc DO remain as containers after you loot them. They remain as cardboard boxes and don’t get recovered in plywood but they do respawn loot. 

 

[Noctoras]

Coool, I like the idea of scarcer loot and not everyone having everything, especially just by coming back to the same place 5 days later. 

I also appreciate the learning by magazines, it's just so much more realistic. 

The streamlining/reducing different stuff in loot variance, well, I was never a friend of that, but I guess, I can deal with it, given all the other positive developments

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

If that is the case, I think a lot of single players will be disappointed.

I am actually curious, about the water resources, I don't think it will make much of a difference for me.

I have edited out terrain water since A15, and have only gotten mine from scavenging. toilets, and water

towers. 

This may only be a secondary source that cuts out the middle man if the water is already clean.

 

[Archer]

Hi Archer and welcome to the forum. I think you are fundamentally misunderstanding the new progression. The learn by reading has nothing to do with player levels. People who stay home and build will likely continue to level at the fast pace they always have. 
 

The learn by reading system is for gaining crafting recipes. With 30 of you, all you need to do is decide among you who will be in charge of what and then get the appropriate magazines into their hands. It doesn’t matter if they loot, farm, build, mine, or run around killing chickens. If that person is in charge of crafting tools then everyone in the group needs to feed that player tool crafting mags and let that guy craft tools for everyone. 
 

It is foolish to have five guys each read three tool crafting mags rather than having one guy read 15. It’s hard to fathom that based on past experience with books and how leveling up was tied to learning new recipes but it is all different now. 
 

You gain xp through actions you enjoy doing and that levels you up. Completely separate from that you read magazines to learn better and better recipes. You can be level 200 but still only craft burnt meat If you never read a single cooking magazine. But if someone else on your team read them all and makes stew for everyone then it’s no big deal that you can’t cook the good stuff and that doesn’t leave you behind in leveling up. 
 

Hope that clarifies and I know the lightbulb will click fully on as you play it for yourself as I’ve been witnessing all weekend with the streamers. The changes really enhance teamwork and group dynamics. 

Hi Roland, thanks for answering my question.
So, the magazines/books unlock tools and crafting abilities - not levels. Got that. 
That still means that the books/magazines that people who aren't looting and are busy building/crafting are still going to be getting those recipes at a lower pace, even if people are diligently saving those for that individual, than the people who are looting get their particular magazines for their particular spec, because the mechanic is that the person who is doing the looting is the one who gets the perk to have an increased chance of getting that particular spec's recipes dropped if I understand this correctly, right? 
The RNG works in favor of the person doing the looting - and unless the person doing the looting is spec'd into the same thing the person back at the base building is spec'd into, their odds of getting that drop are lower than the looting person who has the increased chances for their particular spec - is that correct?

 

[RipClaw]

If that person is in charge of crafting tools then everyone in the group needs to feed that player tool crafting mags and let that guy craft tools for everyone. 

The disadvantage of such a specialization is that you have to rely on this person. If the person is not online, then you can collect all the magazines you want, but no one will be able to make better tools for the group.
 

The RNG works in favor of the person doing the looting - and unless the person doing the looting is spec'd into the same thing the person back at the base building is spec'd into, their odds of getting that drop are lower than the looting person who has the increased chances for their particular spec - is that correct?

In theory, the person doing the looting should also find other magazines, but in the streams I've seen that the boost from the perks is more noticeable than expected.
 

 

[Roland]

Hi Roland, thanks for answering my question.
So, the magazines/books unlock tools and crafting abilities - not levels. Got that. 
That still means that the books/magazines that people who aren't looting and are busy building/crafting are still going to be getting those recipes at a lower pace than the people who are looting because the mechanic is that the person who is doing the looting is the one who gets the perk to have an increased chance of getting them dropped if I understand this correctly, right? 
The RNG works in favor of the person doing the looting - and unless the person doing the looting is spec'd into the same thing the person back at the base building is spec'd into, their odds of getting that drop are lower than the looting person who has the increased chances for their particular spec - is that correct?

The meta up to now is to read every book you find because it doesn’t matter if you and I both read the same books. That is different in A21. It actually hurts the group for looters to read everything they find. Best is to assign people to be craftsmen of specific things and then feed them books.

So if I loot all the time but am assigned to craft wrenches I should only read those mags and take the rest back to base for others to read and while back at base read any wrench mags others might have brought back. 
 

It just depends on what you specifically want to craft. If you don’t care about crafting at all then you don’t need any mags. Just find out who in your group is reading hammers and such and ask them to keep you supplied with the best building tools they can make. 

 

[Archer]

The disadvantage of such a specialization is that you have to rely on this person. If the person is not online, then you can collect all the magazines you want, but no one will be able to make better tools for the group.
 

In theory, the person doing the looting should also find other magazines, but in the streams I've seen that the boost from the perks is more noticeable than expected.
 

Yeah, we're OK with having a couple of redundancies in the team so that in case one person is offline, we have a backup cook/hunter/farmer/builder/miner/crafter etc. What I'm concerned with is that most of the looting team we have never actually crafts - well, anything for the most part. Most of the actual building is done by the home base team, thus, home base team are the ones who need the abilities to build tools/craft items. However the ones who are now most likely to get the magazines or books or whatever that drops and unlocks more items for them to craft, are essentially *primarily* funneling into individuals who aren't going to be having much to actually craft. We normally gave individuals their roles based off of what was in the skill tree. So if for instance, you're spec'd into strength, you'll mine a bunch, then come back to base for a break from the mines, whip up some food, then go back to mining. If you're spec'd into intel, you'd run the crafting rooms, building tons of stuff. The looters generally put all their points into stuff that is to benefit them being more...whatever, agile, quiet, whatever they use to survive during loot runs, and such.

 

[khzmusik]

so far, the crates from shotgun messiah, shamway, etc DO remain as containers after you loot them. They remain as cardboard boxes and don’t get recovered in plywood but they do respawn loot. 

Well, that's a step in the right direction. I'm still hoping it's relatively trivial to mod this out (like, just remove their "looted block" reference in XML or something). I guess we'll find out on Monday.

 

[Archer]

The meta up to now is to read every book you find because it doesn’t matter if you and I both read the same books. That is different in A21. It actually hurts the group for looters to read everything they find. Best is to assign people to be craftsmen of specific things and then feed them books.

So if I loot all the time but am assigned to craft wrenches I should only read those mags and take the rest back to base for others to read and while back at base read any wrench mags others might have brought back. 
 

It just depends on what you specifically want to craft. If you don’t care about crafting at all then you don’t need any mags. Just find out who in your group is reading hammers and such and ask them to keep you supplied with the best building tools they can make. 

Honestly, we never did read every book we've always been good at funneling those to the right person, none of us just read books we picked up, we even had crates dedicated just to books based on the specialized role they had in the group for what they did. 
The problem is that certain things now look like they're going to take longer to get to the people who need them. 
Someone who loots is rarely the same person who crafts tools and items. 
However, the person looting gets the increased odds of a thing they spec'd into dropping a corresponding mag/book. 
Which sounds like the people back at base - who need the recipes the most to be able to build better tools or whatever - are going to be the last in line to getting the stuff they need, unless that person doing the looting is also spec'd into building the better tools like the person back at base waiting on a magazine/book if I'm understanding the new system correctly

 

[Blake_]

so far, the crates from shotgun messiah, shamway, etc DO remain as containers after you loot them. They remain as cardboard boxes and don’t get recovered in plywood but they do respawn loot. 

Most cabinets and sink cabinets do not open after looting them despite already having open versions made for them. I've seen it in all the streams (I watched like 7 different ones already? lol) in every gameplay mode, so I believe devs know? If not, they do now?