Now that its possbile to attack through the holes in doors i would love to see special doors that have openable slots on them that you can close or open as the door owner or ally to enhance defendability of doors(sorry if this is a thing already havent looks) but i think being able to have a door that you can defend from behind without windows would be awesome and for balancing you could make shots throw that open slot slightly less efffective or however you guys see fit or even limit what kind of weapons cant hit through it for example stabbing s pear through that small slot would work better than trying to swing an axe at something through it.
PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary
- Thread starter Roland
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Roland
Moderator
If it helps at all I’ve never been close to having any of the vehicles blow up. It’s just too easy to repair them long before the risk occurs. I guess if you forgot or never noticed it could happen but as soon as you started seeing smoke you could just quickly repair. It’s practically instantaneous to do. None of us are going to play like we saw them do in the stream and so the damage builds up quite a bit slower.
Old Crow
Well-known member
I certainly hope so. I just don't see the reason to set the amount of damage taken that high to begin with.
bdubyah
Well-known member
I'd imagine it's so vehicles dont make you feel as invincible as they do now. Yes you can take some damage but it usually isn't a lot and I've played for a while with the same vehicle and you never have to repair them unless you go out of your way to damage them. As it stands in a20 and before, vehicles may as well not have health as it never comes into play. That means some changes are needed. And they have talked about vehicle damage changing for a while now. Good to see it finally happening.
Old Crow
Well-known member
I don't know if I'd agree that it was "needed" per se. A happy medium would be okay though. At the very least I could do without the random chance of "guess what, your stuff's gone and you have to build a new minibike now" once it reaches 0. I guess we'll see how it feels once we get A21.
Question though - I do love your vehicle mod pack. Will you be changing the vehicle damage on yours? And if so, would it based on the vehicle type?
Riamus
Well-known member
I agree that damage was too low before. You never had to repair unless you went crazy. But now it seems like I'll repair every day or two. I don't use roads except when necessary and I'll plow through the wasteland. I'll break through wood fences that are in the way. I'll mow down zombies for fun. This doesn't even take into account running into stuff by accident like rocks hidden by trees and since I'm always at full speed, this means tons of damage. Setting damage to around 5% per hit as maximum would work best, imo. 20% max per hit as it looks like it's rather excessive.
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bdubyah
Well-known member
And that is exactly what they are trying to stop. Lol. You don't see a problem with being able to do that? You brought up realism earlier, well, how many fences could your car run through before the radiator gets smashed and your engine overheats and kills itself? There needs to be consequences. And I'm sure they exaggerated it a bit for the stream. I'm sure they will make adjustments if they feel it is needed.
I'll just have to see how they do it. If it is adjustable I'll likely have the bigger vehicles be much more resistant to damage.
Riamus
Well-known member
And the question is... why? What is wrong with driving where you want instead of staying on roads? Does it in any way whatsoever hurt anyone if someone does that? In what way does preventing it help anyone? Does it have to be realistic? No. Should it be realistic? No. This isn't a sim. It isn't a racing game where damage is an important part of the game. This is a game where the focus isn't on driving but on killing things, questing, building, etc. As such, forcing people to drive a certain way isn't of any value. I'd be very interested in seeing an explanation of how this is actually valuable. And that doesn't mean saying that it prevents you from driving all over the place or that it's more realistic because neither of those things actually offer any value. They don't improve the game in a way that increases playability or enjoyment. Is anyone complaining that they can drive wherever they want? Or that they are upset that they don't have to repair their vehicle constantly? Yes, as I said, the damage was too low. You rarely had to do any repairs. That needed to change and I supported that when it was first announced. I still think it should be higher than A20 levels. But at 20% per max speed hit (I saw about 18% in the stream, so I'm guessing 20% is the max value and they just weren't at max speed or the right angle or whatever), it is far too high. I would have considered just adjusting the values if it was just damage but with the destruction element also added, I'll just end up removing it altogether.
Space4Ace
Well-known member
No big deal. I'm so used to it, I also call him Nathan by mistake in chat. Fun times!
But with Doctor Jen, no worries!but feel free to test it when a21 experimental drops for yourself... and then come back with your findings.
oh and make sure your doctor is on alert status.
Old Crow
Well-known member
If it helps, the dune buggy's probably already in a good place. I love driving that thing but golly, it is fragile. Which makes sense, as I don't think real-world dune buggies are paragons of durability either.
Roland
Moderator
All this boils down to is just annoyance at having to pay for something that used to be free...
Its a good change. If it had been this way from the start you wouldn't even bat an eyelash. Everyone always ends up with stacks of repair kits. Adding new risks to this type of game is always a win.
bdubyah
Well-known member
So do you want realism or not? You can't seem to make up your mind. You used realism to argue for your points earlier, now you're saying it doesn't need to be realistic. I think you mean to say it needs to be realistic, but only where you want it to be.
Vehicles are fairly fragile. You can't just go barreling through things. You especially wouldn't do that in an apocalyptic situation like the game presents. Even if there are tons of vehicles around, I'd bet you'd take better care of it than what you describe that you do in the game. And besides, I'm sure you can mod it out if you dont like it. But as Roland said, it's a good change.
Old Crow
Well-known member
The problem is, The Fun Pimps will argue against realism in some cases and for it in others - and the "for" cases tend to be when it negatively affects the players in some way. So a better question would be "Do the Fun Pimps want realism or not?"
vergilsparda
Active member
Watching the stream from last night back now, and I'm only so far through it (hazmat dismemberment shenanigans), so I figured I'd ask about something that may or may not have been answered, and I'll post them all here in one question and anybody can answer them as they see fit, or not at all! I'm just curious about everything lol:
- Mr. Robert Dishong was talking about the way that POIs now have not only a world-wide grid system for placement (making wilderness POIs more spread out and cities and towns far more cohesive, which @%$#ing incredible job that's so cool!), but also there is now a scoring system built into the code that will allow a POI's spawn rate to be dynamically lowered or raised depending on [insert factors here, I do not know if the factors were talked about]. What I was wondering, at least for right now, is that is this the system that was talked about way back when that will cause less repeated POIs in cities and towns? As in, house_modular_04 won't spawn in again once an instance of it has been placed until the game goes through the list of available POIs and is absolutely certain there is no other unique POI that could be placed down in what would be its second place?
- With the new vehicle damage system, has anything been changed or put into place to prevent vehicles from taking damage when going up and over overpasses in towns and cities (or in general). I find that often when going up that ramp bit, because it's not smooth, the vehicle hit noise plays—mostly everything but the 4x4 (as in the stream the 4x4 went over the bridge/small overpass very easily) does this. And judging by the fact that any hit seems to cause vehicle damage, doing that would cause damage; unless it doesn't anymore. I've explained that poorly but I hope I explained it somewhat well enough that I made sense here lol
- It was a little unclear in the stream as Lathan was still somewhat driving, but when vehicles are completely broken, will they be unable to be driven? Steve's explanation of certain visual items disappearing (the bike chain on the bike) and others creating sparks (the crank shaft) made it seem like when a vehicle hits 0% it will just stop working entirely.
- And third, will armor plating mods, or perhaps a new type of plating mod, be added to vehicle mods in order to lower the amount of damage any given vehicle takes (perhaps a new mod, a vehicle armor plating mod of some kind, or some sort of actual plow mod that will take no damage from zombies lol)?
- Are you going to allow streamers to change the command that shows their channel points... it's bad enough I have to spell out Compo Pack, and Combat Points in Resident Evil... but man, using the hash tag command for channel points like on Lathan's twitch is freaky lol. It's a very unfortunate combination of letters and I'm not the only one uncomfortable with using those two specific letters together given what else it can stand for (obviously a non-issue to most people but it is still unfortunate, it was very weird seeing everyone in chat replay checking their Channel Points
)
- And last: any chance, once the dev streams are done (I think this newest one is the last?) we can get a full image of all the new art assets and design assets, either on Twitter or in a spoiler here?
Aldranon
New member
Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
I like to think we strive for "Believability" rather than "Realism" as long as it doesn't get in the way of good gameplay.
Riamus
Well-known member
I didn't say I wanted realism. I said that it wasn't realistic, meaning that you can't even use that as an excuse. If it was realistic, then at least there's an excuse to have that even if I wouldn't like it. That doesn't mean that I'm advocating for more realism.
I still disagree that so much additional damage is a good thing. Everyone can have their own opinions on it and I'll keep mine as well. As I said, I would mod it out. I was interested in higher damage but this is too much. If a game causes frustration or annoyance or anger at how it does things, then that's not a good thing. Losing your stuff isn't challenging and isn't enjoyable. Sure, I can hit repair whenever I hit something and never have to worry about it but that's not exactly enjoyable either. As I had said, I don't believe there is any actual value in making your vehicle be completely destroyed due to zombies hitting it. Does it make you create tons of repair kits? Sure, but so what? That's not challenging and doesn't improve the game. You already require extra repair kits to fully repair a vehicle, so that's covered without destroying the vehicle. Is there value in preventing people from driving all over? No. Is it more realistic? Sure. Is that necessary for a game that isn't realistic in the first place? No. Very little in this game is even remotely realistic and that is not a negative.
Anyhow, I clearly am not going to change anyone's mind and no one will change mine, so there's not any reason to continue debating it. I've stated what I thought of it and others have stated theirs, so I'll just leave it at that.
Is "fun" gameplay "good"? I'd say it is. And fun is driving all over the place for me and I think many others. Limiting that option without some value to offset it isn't good for a game.
Blake_
Captain Obvious
Speaking of gameplay, I have a question about POI design limits for Level designers:
Tier 1 POI Clear quests have around 9 zds, Infestation around 15-18 zds, sooo
How many Zds is your design limit for Tier 5 Infestation quests?
Laz Man
Fun Pimps Staff
I like the change to vehicle damage. It's a great compromise that adds gameplay and decision making and is potentially scalable.
In A20, It sucked so much that you could run over a zombie a million times and not kill them, nor would you ever really have to repair your vehicle.
In A21, your vehicle can be used as a weapon again but at a cost a player can plan around (e.g. repair kits, perk, etc.) Also encourages the use of roads which is a great tie in for the new roadside content that was added.
If the damage is too harsh, I'm sure it can be balanced multiple different ways, just needs feedback.
In A20, It sucked so much that you could run over a zombie a million times and not kill them, nor would you ever really have to repair your vehicle.
In A21, your vehicle can be used as a weapon again but at a cost a player can plan around (e.g. repair kits, perk, etc.) Also encourages the use of roads which is a great tie in for the new roadside content that was added.
If the damage is too harsh, I'm sure it can be balanced multiple different ways, just needs feedback.
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Riamus
Well-known member
I can't answer all, but here are a couple of answers.Watching the stream from last night back now, and I'm only so far through it (hazmat dismemberment shenanigans), so I figured I'd ask about something that may or may not have been answered, and I'll post them all here in one question and anybody can answer them as they see fit, or not at all! I'm just curious about everything lol:
I think that's all the questions I have from this stream that weren't answered/glossed over so yeah!! sorry for the length of the post I'm just very excited about A21 and I can't get enough information about it fast enough
- Mr. Robert Dishong was talking about the way that POIs now have not only a world-wide grid system for placement (making wilderness POIs more spread out and cities and towns far more cohesive, which @%$#ing incredible job that's so cool!), but also there is now a scoring system built into the code that will allow a POI's spawn rate to be dynamically lowered or raised depending on [insert factors here, I do not know if the factors were talked about]. What I was wondering, at least for right now, is that is this the system that was talked about way back when that will cause less repeated POIs in cities and towns? As in, house_modular_04 won't spawn in again once an instance of it has been placed until the game goes through the list of available POIs and is absolutely certain there is no other unique POI that could be placed down in what would be its second place?
- With the new vehicle damage system, has anything been changed or put into place to prevent vehicles from taking damage when going up and over overpasses in towns and cities (or in general). I find that often when going up that ramp bit, because it's not smooth, the vehicle hit noise plays—mostly everything but the 4x4 (as in the stream the 4x4 went over the bridge/small overpass very easily) does this. And judging by the fact that any hit seems to cause vehicle damage, doing that would cause damage; unless it doesn't anymore. I've explained that poorly but I hope I explained it somewhat well enough that I made sense here lol
- It was a little unclear in the stream as Lathan was still somewhat driving, but when vehicles are completely broken, will they be unable to be driven? Steve's explanation of certain visual items disappearing (the bike chain on the bike) and others creating sparks (the crank shaft) made it seem like when a vehicle hits 0% it will just stop working entirely.
- And third, will armor plating mods, or perhaps a new type of plating mod, be added to vehicle mods in order to lower the amount of damage any given vehicle takes (perhaps a new mod, a vehicle armor plating mod of some kind, or some sort of actual plow mod that will take no damage from zombies lol)?
- Are you going to allow streamers to change the command that shows their channel points... it's bad enough I have to spell out Compo Pack, and Combat Points in Resident Evil... but man, using the hash tag command for channel points like on Lathan's twitch is freaky lol. It's a very unfortunate combination of letters and I'm not the only one uncomfortable with using those two specific letters together given what else it can stand for (obviously a non-issue to most people but it is still unfortunate, it was very weird seeing everyone in chat replay checking their Channel Points
- And last: any chance, once the dev streams are done (I think this newest one is the last?) we can get a full image of all the new art assets and design assets, either on Twitter or in a spoiler here?
- Broken down vehicles are not drivable, though they appear to have the same inching along movement that a vehicle without gas does. That doesn't make it drivable as it's far too slow but there is some movement.
- I believe he said that the twitch integrations can be used with buttons rather than typing the hashtags into chat. But I don't know the details or if that works for channel points.
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