PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Riamus said:
Yes, I know it's not a great system but it is what I have.  The game is supposedly better in optimization than A20 so should play better not worse.  And no, I won't be using dynamic resolution.  That has always been more trouble than its worth in my experience.

And yes, I know there are descriptions.  I know what they magazines do.  But trying to keep track of who is reading what isn't a simple thing.  It'll come eventually as you memorize stuff with your group but it's still a pain.  And yes, I know you can read all of the ones you find if you want to.  The magazines are fine.  It's just the number and how they are handled in terms of which magazines do what that gets to be a pain to work with.

...

Other things I've noticed-

  • I died without a bedroll down and drop everything on death.  I did not get an option to spawn at my bag.  It seems like it might be tied to having a bedroll in order to have this option when that should not be necessary.
  • Ferals on day 1 night with normal settings and everyone under level 5 and no feral sense?  Not to mention the big fat guys day 1 night.  Seems a big exaggerated in difficulty from A20.
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I have a nearly identical system to yours and it seems to be running the new alpha fine for me, fps is a solid 60 with my overlay, though radeon reports it averages 120fps. Ryzen 2800, 16GB 2400mhz ram, 570 (8gb version), wd nvme 512gb ssd. I run custom quality preset. I'll just list it here: AA: Temporal, AA Sharping:5%, texture qual: half, texture filter:high, uma: high, reflections: medium, shadows: off, water qual: high, particles: 75%, LOD Distance: 75%, Terrain qual: high, grass dist: high, object qual: high, bloom: on, Depth of Field: on, blur: off, SSAO: on, SS reflections: medium, sun shafts: on. On Display I have VSync: on. I think turning your Depth of Field setting on may help. 

Side note for others, I did a new random gen world and somehow my trader spawned without any town in ~1.5km? I thought with A20 it was changed to always spawn on the edge of towns? Is that something worth reporting or a waste of time to report? Thanks y'all.

 
Belgarion32 said:
I have a nearly identical system to yours and it seems to be running the new alpha fine for me, fps is a solid 60 with my overlay, though radeon reports it averages 120fps. Ryzen 2800, 16GB 2400mhz ram, 570 (8gb version), wd nvme 512gb ssd. I run custom quality preset. I'll just list it here: AA: Temporal, AA Sharping:5%, texture qual: half, texture filter:high, uma: high, reflections: medium, shadows: off, water qual: high, particles: 75%, LOD Distance: 75%, Terrain qual: high, grass dist: high, object qual: high, bloom: on, Depth of Field: on, blur: off, SSAO: on, SS reflections: medium, sun shafts: on. On Display I have VSync: on. I think turning your Depth of Field setting on may help. 

Side note for others, I did a new random gen world and somehow my trader spawned without any town in ~1.5km? I thought with A20 it was changed to always spawn on the edge of towns? Is that something worth reporting or a waste of time to report? Thanks y'all.
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They made traders spawn in wilderness as well as edge of town as well as in districts in A21.

 
meganoth said:
What you seem to propose is balancing it so you can be as effective as a selfish person in a team
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Look, these perfect players that you keep going on about, I'm not sure they even exist outside of vague rumors in chatrooms and message boards. I'm saying that perfectly normal average players are going to be incentivized to read all the books by the sheer volume of books, the longer distances between quests now, and the initial scarcity of food and water, and that it's likely possible to allow stay at home players to be effective without changing game mechanics, without affecting the balance for everyone else, or relying on everyone to suddenly become those legendary perfect teammates.

If for example the exp gain on gathering tasks were bumped up a little, the prices to sell bulk materials were a little better, if the trader carried cheap low tier tools, if tool crafting books in particular were more readily available at the trader specifically. None of that changes game mechanics. or affects the game balance for anyone else, or requires new code and could probably be done in minutes with a few xml tweaks. Ideally you should be able to make it through the first 7 days without having to quest at all as a solo player. You could do it in a20 but then tool upgrades were way too easy to come by in the previous system. They don't need to be that easy for this to be viable.

 

meganoth said:
And since you don't get the tool any earlier when the looter brings back the magazines instead of the ability to craft the better tool, that point is not about magazines at all.
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Thanks for repeating my argument for why looters aren't incentivized to not read all of the books themselves and consequently why your legendary perfect teammate doesn't actually solve the problem. The problem for the stay at home player is ultimately exp gain. Yes, shared exp offsets this somewhat, but because the trader now avoids sending you on duplicate missions and there has been a focus on more wilderness quests, the looter is going to be out of range a lot sooner than you might expect, and even so the exp gain from quest rewards and selling to the trader is still the favor the looter.

 

meganoth said:
Ah, so what you really want to say is that you are missing the progression shortcut
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Not at all, it really doesn't need to be as mind numbingly easy as it was in previous versions and I'm not seeking any shortcuts. If you think it's taking the easy route try putting a point into better barter, miner 69er, motherload, salvage operations and then see how well you can lvl without questing at all. That's pretty much the optimal build for it. If it helps you get into the right mindset, pump it up to Insane so that you're incentivized to avoid the majority of fights until you've crafted better equipment, and are limited to grabbing what you can off the streets. 

This is essentially what it's like for a lot of players and why many opt to stay at the base soaking up shared exp until they've leveled high enough, and are equipped enough to survive tier 1 quests without dying. I'm not suggesting any shortcuts to progression at all, just giving a certain subset of players more options and agency without having to rely entirely on handouts. It really doesn't serve team building to have some players advance faster than others, does it?

 
GoofMcGee said:
Starving, finally killed a deer just after nightfall.  Lois jambly sprinted over and ate most of it before I could bounce her.  Nice change.  Dangit.  

:D
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I love this behavior!

I was hunting a group of rabbits who were chilling on the road, when a Moe silently tumbled down the steep slope from above me. He landed at my feet, but instead of attacking my surprised face, Moe immediately got down on all fours and ate the rest of the bunny I was skinning.

THEN he stood up, said, "Bleaarrh!" and punched me.

 
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Some questions about magazine / container looting in multiplayer:

Does it depend who opens which container in a POI? What I mean:

- Is the chance of getting cooking magazines higher if a player who spent points in cooking loots the kitchen of a house instead of other players?

- Or can anybody loot the kitchen and still finds the cooking books (due to the cooking skill in the party) to give them to the "cooking" player?

 
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Thaledwyn said:
Some questions about magazine / container looting in multiplayer:

Does it depend who opens which container in a POI? What I mean:

- Is the chance of getting cooking magazines higher if a player who spent points in cooking loots the kitchen of a house instead of other players?

- Or can anybody loot the kitchen and still finds the cooking books (due to the cooking skill in the party) to give them to the "cooking" player?
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-yes

-no

 
So messing around on A21 and its feeling great, though i have not found how to craft 1 thing for decoration, those signs everywhere, like the violators will be shot and prosecuted after and such, can we craft those?

When generating a world i found my game froze doing the old way, the advanced generation allowed me to create an 8k map in no time flat, worth giving a shot

 
Loving all the new assets, but the permanently open and therefor unusable containers, like fridges, stoves, etc... hate it. Like why not just reclose the door if we put stuff in it instead of turning everything into an un-interactable prop? I'd always setup in kitchens for example, putting food in the empty fridge, campfire on stovetop with storage in stove... ugh, as much as I want to play A21 it has already ruined my motivation to continue at all. Noticed the Neebs crew are also not big fans of the change in their video. Guess I'll wait and see if anyone fixes it with mods before I play again.

 
kudos fun pimps!

loving the new alpha!

thought i was pretty handy at this game, but you have handed me a bit of a schooling for sure.

still alive, barely, and staring down the day 7 horde (vanilla settings with 200% xp just to hurry things along a little) badly under equipped and under prepared. should be interesting.

is it just me or do i get busted up more than before? seem to be always dealing with sprains and breaks.

the food and water struggle for me is real early on, and i suppose leads to running out of stamina, which leads to getting walloped and therefore busted up more. frustrating to be sure, but it is meant to be a challenge 🙂 finally got 2 dew collectors so can shift the emphasis from stamina to glue/cooking.  
thank god for jen and 3x antibiotics or i would have been utterly screwed. had to take a risk and save $$ and complete reckts quests to get bike and hope next trader had them. luckily it was her and she did have enough.

too much, i need a lie down

 
Really enjoying A21 so far, here's some initial impressions.
 - Love the new art assets, the way the doors break, and the zombie jibs.

 - Trader is feeling really, really strong. I hope nerfs are considered, I think they'd be warranted.

 - Spawn by backpack needs some work- my friend fell through the world several times and respawned on barbed wire another time, I get that the respawning on traps may not be so easy, but hopefully the falling through the world part can be figured out.

 - another friend critiques the game needs to do a better job warning you you're about to leave your quest zone and fail.

 - It might be because I was playing with friends all evening, but progression was feeling like it should be slowed down a bit more

 - Are there more hazards on T1 PoIs? I feel like I ended up in more spikes and barbedwire than usual.

 - Has bleed chance been increased? - It sure feels like it, but maybe that's because I'd been in steel armor in A20 for so long. .. Either way, I like it, It was terrorfying and it had me keeping bandages on my hotbar and scrapping clothing because I was afraid I would bleed out on my next sloppy fight, this ties in with.

 - Spear feels really strong early game. Being able to stay at range is so powerful, and the damage on it is good as well- Got myself into a couple dumb, bad fights with it and I survived when honestly, I don't think I should have. I'm not specced into them, it's just very very strong from the baseline, like the club. .. Are the leather knucklewraps and bone knife this satisfying to use early on?

.. Thank you for all the work you've put into bringing this to us, Pimps. I can tell it will once again bring many dozens of hours of enjoyment!

 
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Didn't have much time to play A21... but so far I'm impressed by the new graphic assets, the improved performance and, in general, by the huge amount of quality of life improvements to the game!  :thumb:   :whoo:

Of course there's too much to list, but those were the "eye-catchers" to me.

Congrats to the dev team @TFP for setting the quality bar even higher than before. :)  

 
jdifran said:
On both Wayward Eko's and Guns, Nerds, and Steel's multiplayer streams, they were getting quality 3 and 4 end-game loot (comp xbows, steel clubs, etc.) as quest rewards before day 7.  Granted, they were playing efficiently, but that needs serious balancing.
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Thats what I am thinking. 

Even if I dont rush, and do many quest. I cant imagine that I can, for example craft a Steel sledgehammer by myself before I find one out there. 

So I guess in the most cases I will find tools / weapons which exceed my crafting skills. That makes the collecting of magazines trivial at some point / gamestage, whats very sad because I really like the concept of collecting magazines and climing up the tech ladder. 

The game-mechanic that says "if you cant craft it - you cant repair it" is more logical to me. 

Maybe theres a mod coming for it... Or maybe the developers can just add an option for it. Cant imagine its hard to do so. 

But before im complaining too much, I will play the alpha by myself today and See how it feels. However, with or without the Mechanic, I love the game. 

 
Thaledwyn said:
Some questions about magazine / container looting in multiplayer:

Does it depend who opens which container in a POI? What I mean:

- Is the chance of getting cooking magazines higher if a player who spent points in cooking loots the kitchen of a house instead of other players?

- Or can anybody loot the kitchen and still finds the cooking books (due to the cooking skill in the party) to give them to the "cooking" player?
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Forgotten Memes said:
-yes

-no 
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Not with the same bonus but still may find them. I think you'll probably have more luck in the Shamway crates.

 
been playing for a few hours now in a random gen and all I have to ask is if y'all are going to pay my hospital bills, because my heart just literally fell out of my butt!! (/j)

YOU GUYS ADDED SCREAMERS TO THE POTENTIAL SLEEPER ZOMBIE SPAWNS?! EVIL!! ABSOLUTELY EVIL!!! I jumped so hard I alt-tabbed and now my armpits are itchy >:/

anyway this alpha is going great so far, everything looks so good and crisp and clean!! nothing to report apart from weird town/city generation (the town I'm in right now is one town, but none of the roads are actually connected when they look like they should be; but road generation is in the bug pool document thing so I don't know whether to report it or not). and kudos to whoever made the calendars (not those ones), i noticed the 2034 one is accurate to real life, that's such a small, yet awesome detail lol

oh, and that new fun pimps intro logo is great, way better than the static one!

edit: god yeah the performance upgrade is insane too, this is the first time on my hardware I've ever been able to play a 6K world at Full graphics resolution without getting worried I'll max out my VRAM. It's been steady 60 frames too, which is insane (on an RX580 and ryzen 5 3600x no less! not the best hardware but damn!). and all the new assets, everyone has already said just about everything about them but I could literally cry with the new doors and decoration items. just wish more were craft-able, but I'm sure someone will end up modding most of the new stuff in that hasn't been added already!

 
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Did almost 11 hours of gameplay, I might need a priest. Or a bed. Not both, definitely not at the same time.

This alpha is just better. Well done Pimps, appreciate the time you gave for everything so far, can`t wait for more of course. 

*passing out on the floo

 
I'm enjoying this alpha a ton minus some balancing stuff (which I make a separate topic about) and performance could be better (feels like a bit of a wash between the optimizations and new art stuff), but really it feels more polished than its ever been and the new art and everything is great.  Combat feels a bit more weighty too, seems like zombies get hit on their ass faster.

 
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