PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[Roland]

Or….just lock your server at A20 man. Lock it and say no to Joel. 

 

[Jost Amman]

I mean I can understand to some extent the knee jerk defense of that thing that we all love

Oh, the irony...

 

[Khissi]

You know, I'm pretty old, and change doesn't come easy unless I work at it.  However, the good in this alpha far, far outweighs the problems being shouted here.  I'm playing solo, and I wanted to progress as far as I could before having to wipe for the next build so I gave myself 2 perk points per level, set the xp at 175% and loot at 200%.  With my days on 120, my first horde was about equivalent to a day 21 horde at my normal settings.  Yet, I did just fine.  I created a melee base and used a freaking stone spear which kicked zombie tail (actually beheaded them the way the base is designed), bought enough cement mix from the trader to reinforce the most important parts and things went well.  I'm finding magazines pretty much everywhere and, though some things seem to come faster than others *Lord God farming is DONE and cooking almost done* I'm doing it on a 6k map and have yet to find a single Crack-a-Book. I never use GOD mode, and the only mods I'm using are inventory lock and food/drink UI because I can't freaking see those little line thingies.

*SuperSnip*

Give it all the time you like.

IT'S BEEN TWO DAYS!

Multiplayer will be an issue, that's certain, but I don't think it will be the kind of issue people are so worried about.  The magazines are EVERYWHERE and having the ability to reset entire chunks every few days, well... that's going to take any problems and just shove them off a cliff.  They gave us all these xml files and settings to use to make the game fit OUR playstyle!  Utilize those things and keep tweaking it until you're more comfortable.  Change up the settings on your servers and have your folks let you know how it's working. I feel your pain and I sure as heck wouldn't want to be a server admin with people pulling in all sorts of directions and wanting things THEIR way all the time.  I gave up raiding for this very reason... When the game starts feeling like a job, it's time to quit.  I love being retired. I hope you find an answer other than 'Lock my server to A20'.

 

[Neminsis]

As I said, better to look at ways in which you can suggest tweaks to make it work better without it becoming worse for the majority of players or requesting that new features be removed.

That's the thing though, I've never asked that anything be removed, or for any changes that would be difficult to implement, or would change the balance for any one else, but would broaden the way that players can interact with this 'sandbox' and thus increase the potential player base. 

To reiterate the suggestions that I have made, bump up the exp for resource gathering, the dukes paid for bulk resources, and maybe ensure that tool crafting books are available at the trader during the first 7 days at least to more closely match the conditions present in this build. 

This isn't 'my' playstyle. I play the game a lot of different ways and test it every way I can think of. In fact, I decided to test this in particular because others predicted that it would be an issue when the new system was first announced. I mean, this is still experimental branch and there's going to be a lot of bugs and balance changes that are going to happen before stable. Hell, Faatal just said in a few posts back that he found things to be annoyed with too. I'm just trying to say, make sure this is tested too because it's not likely to be showing up on telemetry.

 

[Old Crow]

Couple of things I've noticed so far:

- When it rains, it gets super dark. Like, nighttime with no lights dark. During the day.
- Seems like my characters gets hungry and thirsty a LOT faster. And I don't mean just a little. I eat/drink, meter goes back to full, then a few minutes later, I'm suffering stamina loss/regen loss because I'm really hungry or thirsty again already.

 

[Philipp]

Can you imagine this in Co-op? You throw some tools together for your buddy and head out to do a PoI, before you know it, teammate is asking you to come home and repair their tools.

I'm thinking loot/trader stage just needs to be nerfed to achieve the similar result of not having gear much better than what you can craft.

Haha thats a good point. 

Dont know a solution for that tbh. But it just feels wrong to find obtain a steel sledgehammer when I can just craft one made out of stone. This rly takes the motivation or happiness of finding more sledgehammer magazines. 

Overall, I for myself think that the game in General should slow done the progress of leveling / crafting / finding good stuff or needs an improved "endgame", because you will reach the point where you got everything you need still kinda fast imo. 

For example, you play from day 0 to 100.

You will "finish" or achieve everything you can get, within, lets say, the first 35 days for sure. So the days after, in this example, day 35, are not challening anymore. at this point, you do better starting a new world since theres not really a lategame. 

Sure I can make the game harder by myself with challenges Like "not settle down / Zombies always sprinting etc." this maybe slows down the progress but wont change anything in the end. 

Still, the new alpha is fantastic, I love it. The new art assets, POI-updates, just feels right and way more natural to me. The traders also got a very nice overhaul. 

The world feels so more logic to me. It's rly a huge quality of life Update. 

Thanks for that. 

 

[Diragor]

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 >:/

FOR REAL?? Finally that was long needed. Now add them into the Horde Night xD true insanity

 

[ComPage]

Currently on day 7 in Navezgane in my first playthrough of Alpha 21 after only playing Alpha 20 before and I am loving the upgrade.  There are so many improvements it would be misleading to mention only a handful.  I am far from being the quickest player and I'm not very experienced either so this problem could be my fault but I haven't found a wrench and have only found one mechanical part.  I could make a wrench if I could get mechanical parts but can't get them without a wrench.  Ideas?

 

[Kalex]

Second POI I went into had a screamer in it. Scared the crap out of me.

 

[KDK99]

For those of us who play on a server where not everyone always follows the community spirit, could we please have lockable dew collectors? 

 

[NekoPawtato]

When I tracked a recipe and crafted it, the tracking went away.  Were you crafting in a workstation or in your inventory.  In my case, it was in inventory.  I wonder if it just needs to be set up to work when crafting in a workstation?

Interesting, I'll experiment with it more in that case then, thanks! I don't remember where I tracked it from.

 

[Exxodous]

To reiterate the suggestions that I have made, bump up the exp for resource gathering, the dukes paid for bulk resources, and maybe ensure that tool crafting books are available at the trader during the first 7 days at least to more closely match the conditions present in this build. 

 

The first two are easy edits to make in the xml files, not sure about the third, but you could probably add a few books to the starter backpack maybe?

 

[Gamida]

You know, I'm pretty old, and change doesn't come easy unless I work at it.  However, the good in this alpha far, far outweighs the problems being shouted here.  I'm playing solo, and I wanted to progress as far as I could before having to wipe for the next build so I gave myself 2 perk points per level, set the xp at 175% and loot at 200%.  With my days on 120, my first horde was about equivalent to a day 21 horde at my normal settings.  Yet, I did just fine.  I created a melee base and used a freaking stone spear which kicked zombie tail (actually beheaded them the way the base is designed), bought enough cement mix from the trader to reinforce the most important parts and things went well.  I'm finding magazines pretty much everywhere and, though some things seem to come faster than others *Lord God farming is DONE and cooking almost done* I'm doing it on a 6k map and have yet to find a single Crack-a-Book. I never use GOD mode, and the only mods I'm using are inventory lock and food/drink UI because I can't freaking see those little line thingies.

IT'S BEEN TWO DAYS!

Multiplayer will be an issue, that's certain, but I don't think it will be the kind of issue people are so worried about.  The magazines are EVERYWHERE and having the ability to reset entire chunks every few days, well... that's going to take any problems and just shove them off a cliff.  They gave us all these xml files and settings to use to make the game fit OUR playstyle!  Utilize those things and keep tweaking it until you're more comfortable.  Change up the settings on your servers and have your folks let you know how it's working. I feel your pain and I sure as heck wouldn't want to be a server admin with people pulling in all sorts of directions and wanting things THEIR way all the time.  I gave up raiding for this very reason... When the game starts feeling like a job, it's time to quit.  I love being retired. I hope you find an answer other than 'Lock my server to A20'.

I have the same problem. Here is what I did.

I changed these numbers to 11 from what they were, 8's.

You mod so probably can find the file easy enough. It is under Data\Config\XUi

The windows.xml file. You can also see the lines numbers to left if you use Notepad++



it gave me this...

 

[Neminsis]

The first two are easy edits to make in the xml files, not sure about the third, but you could probably add a few books to the starter backpack maybe?

The third would just be changing the frequency that it appears in traders inventory. For that matter just a broader array of stone tools at the trader would be more affordable and that would be handled similarly, but even though the books are more expensive there's something nice about crafting it yourself. 

I don't think you'd really want to add books to the starter gear because it would affect everyone of every playstyle and throw off the balance.

 

 

[Orake3l]

Can anyone explain where i find the mapinfo.xml in the dedicated server?

 

[Callum123456789]

I've been playing a dedicated server and this update makes it feel great I rarely get hit from too far the zombies glitch much less and overall performance seems a lot better which is pretty great I always strayed away from playing mp due to me being hit a lot from 2.5 to 3 blocks away but now I enjoy it.

Also alpha 21 is feeling great so far the progression of the game is fine tuned in a way players have a choice of what they want eg certain perks to make it faster or don't take them to have the regular progression scale is a nice thing the zombies being more aggressive and attacking quicker is pretty cool they get some good jabs in that surprise me a little.

The art upgrade is really next level stuff I was expecting it to mess with the fps but I'm impressed it's more performant the world feels unique now and highly detailed pois help the immersion of the game.

The magazine change to me personally feels right looting has been a main component for 7 days to die since its beginning and I don't think I've ever felt the excitement of looting before like I do now.

Trader progression and balancing feels awesome now seeing them specialised and get better stock as you progress quest tiers and level up.

RWG is amazing now so many unique pois in the pools to fill the world with a unique variety of places to visit as well as a beautiful terrain map and mountain side pois are good to see the return of.

So far I'm on day 30 and have never felt so much fulfillment from an alpha honestly knocked it out of the park with this release.

Kudos fun pimps!

 

[Raist]

Is there a solid place to directly send feedback?

Because right now, my biggest suggestion is that if I'm going to be bound to the laws of RNG Fickleness for basic survival needs, let me boil my stupid murky water without a gorram Cooking Pot.

 

[v3tro]

Reading few negative comments from others made me want to say that I absolutely love all the changes from A-Z! Great work TFP!

TLR - everything is fine, can`t complain. 

-New magazines/crafting system is amazing, beats LBD and perking into skills by miles. Only negative could be that T1 Q5 is better than T2 Q1-2.. if it`s locked behind progression then I expect my newly unlocked and crafted weapon to be better than last one.

I like how you slowly progress in armor, seeds, tools, food, electricity, workbenches.. everything. Makes you appreciate the little things that you never crafted before because you could skip it in no time. 

Was pleasantly surprised and I like that the books are everywhere, when I perk into skill I can barely notice that I am collecting magazines that I need, but when you actually go and check, then you can notice that magazines in which you spent skill points are a bit more than others. ( especially for weapons, where I have 20-30magazines for spears/rifle while around 5-15 for other weapons) Currently on server day 21(40min) and I am not even half way there.

-Trader rebalance - love it. Always wanted for them to be specialized and for me this is working great. No more 1 trader to rule them all.

I like that the prices have changed and gone up for food/water and especially candy (A20 I bought every single canned food and candy from all vending machines I could find every day without a though, now I don`t have $ and need to think if I really need that candy right now) the 300$ per book is also nice, when before I could do few quests and swim in stacks of 20,000$ now I am constantly running out of money. I do a quest (avg. 3 per day(40min))  and constantly spend the money for something I need be it books, water or simple materials I can get for cheap. Price rebalance is working great, can`t say traders OP because I don`t have $ to buy from them. (must point out that I`m not perked into daring adventure, maybe that changes things) 

As rewards/items in traders - I saw some weapons/tools that were 1 tier up, so if I could make a stone shovel 2-4, I could have bought iron shovel q3.. but it was expensive and was it really worth it? Seems reasonable if someone wants to do 3-5quests just to buy that 1 shovel, he can bypass the progression at the cost of other things he will be missing out. 

I got a nailgun as a reward after T3 quest.. or it was T2-T3 completion. That was a no-brainer considering I needed around 50more magazines to unlock it myself. 

My 1st trader happened to be rekt, so I am in luck with food, but everything else is lacking and I like that I need to go out and loot specific POI or drive to another trader to get what I need (had to drive to Bob to buy mechanical parts for my wrench so I can get mechanical parts lol). Distances from trader to trader are around 1.5km( seems reasonable). I also like that traders spawn randomly not on the edge of city.

-water/food - so far seems great. Never ever have I "struggled" so much for food/drink. I am a veteran player so I am not dying of it but it`s noticeably harder.. I have around 150meat in storage, but what good is it if I cant make it properly and the time it takes to cook makes it more difficult to just spamcraft food and forget about it. The long cooking time is probably one of the main reasons why this works so great.

I made 2 dew collectors but water still is relevant issue. I am not dying of it, but from time to time you notice that you are running out and you need to refill up. Also I was forced to buy food/water from traders which is nice.

Had to cancel, ahem, run for my dear life to base to get some water when I was flashing red at 0 while digging up the damn T2 digging quest and I was down to like last 3 possible blocks that treasure could be in (hella unlucky to not find it sooner, spent whole day digging it (around 30min)) what a disaster that was, but the excitement.. love this alpha. 

Not missing empty cans/jars for a single second, glad that they are gone. 

Loot containers - I like this change a lot. All the trash and birds nests destroying themselves - just beautiful. At first I thought that I would not like this change because I used to destroy them myself for additional resources but now playing couple hours with it.. what a QoL gem. 

The containers that change to "empty" are also nice, had to get used to not being able to use them as storage but quickly adapted. Just make storage chest and done, don`t understand people who complain about this issue. Cupboards need to change to empty as well, I think they are bugged or just not implemented in yet.. hopefully soon.

Performance - Can`t really remember what I was getting in A20, but this seems better. I have ryzen 9 3900x, 2070super, 32gb ddr4 and I am playing on custom ultra/high settings 1440p - getting 60-100fps, usually 80. can`t complain, especially in horde nights when I used to drop down to like 5 or 15, even if it was for split second, it was terrible.. Now horde nights goes smoothly, fps hasn't dropped below 50 once.

Art is just getting better and better with each alpha, nothing much to say, love all the new decors, cars, poi. Amazing work guys!

All in all I know that TFP doesn`t knee jerk, but reading few negative feedbacks I wanted to write my own positive so not everyone is unhappy as people tend to be vocal only about things they dislike, lol. Thanks for the amazing update!

 

[zztong]

I'm finding time to play on a server. I started with a 1.5km hike to the trader, and I loved it. I like cross-country survival as an aspect. It makes the food/water shortage at the beginning more acute.

I'm aware other players don't care for that. This has me wondering if it might be a configurable RWG setting. "Starting Distance to Trader" and then have it affect where RWG puts the starting points. I realize with the new trader locations, that might mean folks start inside a settlement, which probably isn't desired either. Hmm: Maybe scale the starting food/water based on the distance to the Trader?

The settlement in which I found the first trader appeared to only have a single T1 POI, so after doing that and doing a buried treasure quest, I was left with missions that were all in another settlement 1.4km away. I do like travel, so 1.4km is okay with me, but I was in a pretty big bind. The other players on the server had picked places clean. I had not yet found a cooking pot. I had lots of meat from chickens, water from ditches. No real income from the trader after those two missions and the Dukes went for food and water.

I had meat, eggs and access to water in a ditch, but no way to cook. Being cutoff from missions and having all of the POIs picked over meant I wasn't finding magazines either. I had taken a point in Master Chef but was getting nothing from it.

I did eventually find a cooking pot, but those first couple of days were tough. Once I got enough food and water, I made the 4.1km trek to get to the other players, which was more like 7km given I needed to go around a central wasteland.

Summary: I loved the survival treks. It was a great challenge. The map has a big effect on starting player opportunities. The assumption that starting players would have a selection of low-tier POIs to get started didn't seem to hold in this case of server play. I found myself in higher tier POIs right off the bat because I needed a cooking pot.

 

[meganoth]

I'm not misrepresenting your opinion I'm emphasizing my own that perfectly ordinary players aren't incentivized to play cooperatively as has been argued previously.

Okay. accepted. It may be more accurately described as hyperbole. You could have used words like good, veteran, excellent, experienced, intelligent, .... But perfection is according to wikipedia "a state, variously, of completeness, flawlessness, or supreme excellence." Sorry, I can't  bring myself to accept the term perfection for people bringing back magazines.

But let me ask you: If bringing back magazines is such an advantageous method in the game that you call it perfect play or the player a perfect player then isn't that proof that there is an incentive to doing it?

And here you go on to reiterate my point.
 

If your point is that there is no direct incentive to bring back **tools** magazines then we are agreed. Case closed, there is no incentive to bring back tools magazines for the builder because there is no gameplay advantage for the builder to learn them. I as looter would still bring them back if the builder asked me because I am a nice person, but there is no real need for it. And then there is also no need for TFP to rebalance anything because it works well that way and the builder has no disadvantage, neither in the items he gets nor in XP gaining. I explained why and I assume you never contesting me on it means we are agreed.

If you still think there is an issue here, please answer this question: Exactly which magazines does a builder need to read for himself in your opinion?

Which is the entire point of bringing this up in the first place. You might've noticed that I rarely talk around here unless it's about some edge case that might've gotten overlooked in the rush. 

Right now we all are just guessing like we have done for months before the alpha came out. TFP will not act on speculation and backseat analysis, they have said multiple times that they want feedback from actually playing the game.

Yes, and every change that I've suggested could be modded in minutes, but not one bit of that matters to first time players who you want to have good first impressions. This is why the default settings are so easy and veteran players roll their eyes at them.

My example was restricted to the first 7 days where it's an issue. Moving the goal posts to level 35 would be considered a strawman.

Strange. I was talking about "PartySharedKillRange" because you said "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,". So who was moving the goal posts to level 35 exactly?

It was also borderline ad hominem.

Oh, come on, is this a contest now where we have to try to find more rhetorical strategies/fallacies than the other?

Calling a way of playing "easy mode" is not even borderline ad hominem. It may be correct or wrong but it definitely is not a direct attack on the personality of someone.

Again, this only matters if you're doing a no quest start solo or if you're doing 2 players with a non quester or similar looter to stay at home ratio, and it's probably only critical over the first 7 days, but the initial tool progression is much slower even in the best case for the stay at home in either of those conditions and it ties directly to their experience gain and early character development. 

Have you tried this with A21? How often? Did you adapt to the new conditions after the first one or two games and the progression was still bad for the builder? How many hours have you already sunk in this? Our role in EA besides spectator is tester, not analyst.

You can tell that some thought has been put into accomodating these playstyles by allowing things like bulk materials and stone arrows to be sold at the trader, it's just not quite there yet.
 

Except that you don't make enough dukes farming wood, stone, clay, picking tea and cotton to take advantage of the trader with level 1 stone tools. Overall, I'd agree that the traders are probably still OP but I think that's more related to better barter/daring adventurer strategies, and quest rewards in comparison to other strategies and quality levels in loot. 

Yes. This is very difficult to balance. Someone here said he has done 10 tier1 quests on the first day. Even if that was boasting and he only did 5 that is still double of what I could do. In our current first game it was actually 0 on the first day. It isn't surprising that he may experience the trader as totally OP while normal players will see a relatively balanced play most of the time.

If you want to level fast it's still the same route as in a20 just focus on questing and build the very bare minimum you need to survive the first couple of weeks. Rinse and repeat.

Also, just increasing the share exp range doesn't really solve the problem either because the quest reward exp and selling exp when the looter returns to the trader will still outpace the stay at homes exp gain. 

In our games the miner usually advanced faster than the others but he went on quests as well. Upgrading blocks seemed a big source of XP as well and was sometimes used specifically to get levels. Low level dig quests are also something a miner/builder might do for the combined stone/clay/XP.

Sure, it is still possible that someone would utilize all this and still fall behind. I am not claiming anything here, I am just expressing my doubt that there are no ways for a pure builder to level adequately. And even if he falls back a little in the first seven days it could mean nothing if his leveling speed picks up after that.

It just needs tested and some minor tweaks. That's all.

Yes, it needs tested, and maybe tweaks.