PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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Aw, just jumped into my save from 313, back to level 1. No points. But, no starter quests either... 

Just adding my info if it is worth anything to devs (and worth anything to other players contemplating starting a game in experimental).  Not mad - just a little sad (but I understand the risks of experimental)

 
Aw, just jumped into my save from 313, back to level 1. No points. But, no starter quests either... 

Just adding my info if it is worth anything to devs (and worth anything to other players contemplating starting a game in experimental).  Not mad - just a little sad (but I understand the risks of experimental)
it's weird, my save from 313 is still fine. wonder why so many people got wiped and others not.

 
it's weird, my save from 313 is still fine. wonder why so many people got wiped and others not.
Mine seems fine too but I haven't looked too much into it. It seems your character profile can also be half broken. You still have your level and your crafting skills but no point in any perk. Then you have to drink a Fergit'n Elixir and redistribute your points.

 
it's weird, my save from 313 is still fine. wonder why so many people got wiped and others not.
Not sure what the trigger is - maybe certain things unlocked trigger a wipe? 

It would be nice if the starting quests reset too, if that were to happen. But, I just command consoled myself enough XP to get me approximately back to where I was. 

 
Patch notes for 317 just say that they recommend a new save due to potential of being reset to level 1. Certain things being unlocked is a good guess I think.

 
So, after experimentation you can ignore water for several days with the (Vitamin + Dirty Water + 5 first aid bandages) in the desert very easy as I have Jen in the desert, it's totally broken.  

I plan on stopping that horrible [SIZE=14.6px]exploit[/SIZE]... Soon!  :)

 
Can happen when people need to guess. Maybe provide some details:

What day is it in your game? (And are you playing on normal daylength?).

What is the average level of you guys?

What is the highest number of a specific magazine read by anyone of you?

What is the number of magazines read for the respective main melee weapon for each of your 8 guys?

Tell us details and everyone here can either tell you that there is either something bugged, that the game is truely imbalanced or that your expectations are wrong or .... 
I just logged in to actually see what day & skill level everyone was at. 
Still got my inventory. 
0 skills now as if I've never read a magazine and I'm back at level 1. 

Base is still there, inventory still there, and everything physical is still there but my character's skills and everything else are wiped to 0. Nothing is removed from the inventory of my character or from containers, but anything I've read, and everything I'd leveled from XP is wiped. So, I guess I can't tell you the answer now to what level we were, it's day 24 on the server.  (P.S. - Not @%$#ing about it, I understand it's an unstable release)


Right now the forge ahead magazine is by far the rarest, we've found a total of 17 of those, but the medical magazines I think we've recovered like 60-70 of them. 
The 'old school' books and mags that were already in the game seem to spawn at a normal/similar rate as before. 
Lots of 'Tech Junky' magazines are popping up, too, seems to be a disproportionately high amount, I'm at like, level 37 in those? 
Tool mags are spawning in 2nd to 3rd lowest rate which is preventing us from being able to build certain things. 
Over the course of the past three days we've had anywhere between 6 and 22 players on the server at one time, last night was probably our largest crowd (we can't add more than 8 people to a party so we just end up making extras but would really like it if the devs allowed us to make parties larger than just 8 ) 
Bar Brawler, Batter Up, and The Fireman's Almanac seem to be everywhere as well, they're so abundant we also have stacks of them sitting unused. 
The Great Heist, Hunter's Journal, Lucky Looter seem more or less normal rates I guess. 

The problem that keeps happening right now is early 'bottlenecks'. 
We keep needing magazines for another tool or item that we want/need to build in order to make other stuff. 
At the moment - the blood moon isn't actually much of an issue, because we've only played the first 3 of them, so they don't start 'getting hard' usually until a bit later in the game (which to us was normal, and totally fine) 
This forces us to stop working on the base, and go out to help the scavengers. PLEASE NOTE: if this is intended, it's not appreciated. We really did not want to be forced to go out. But the 2 of us (which is a skeleton crew of builders/crafters compared to usual) who are staying behind keep "running out of stuff to do" because we can essentially only do basic tasks with the limited options of tools and recipes available to us, which force us to just go out and look for more of these magazines so we can get back to work.
We always build the baseline outershell first obviously so we don't end up getting a bunch of breaches, but the interior where we organize, build rooms for crafting, storage, and processing materials from one into the next is essentially collecting dust and cobwebs. I can use the forge now which means I can melt stuff down but once that task is done, it's pretty much "whelp, time to go look for magazines" which comprises roughly 80% of the time we have allocated for building stuff, so the base looks like @%$#. It's functional and holds up but it's mostly just empty rooms right now.





I can't think of them all off the top of my head now but overall, each day I play this update I like it less and less. Some of the looters/scavengers in the group were also mentioning that they didn't really care for the 'skulls' system actually, it kind of takes away some of the surprise of 'finding out' just how dangerous an area is before they go in, and now it's as though their character psychically knows how bad the monsters down in the cave/basement/wherever are before they go in. 

The graphics changes made are awesome in the update, love the new forge/workbench models for sure, haven't seen the chemistry station yet except on streams and that looks great, but pretty much everything else, especially all of the 're-works' are an emphatic thumbs down, with the magazine 'system' being front and center of that negative response. Balancing this out for a group of people just seems impossible, I don't know how they would ever adjust loot rates and spawn rates to respond to a # of people on a server. 

And because the moderator on here keeps implying I'm either lying or we're just bumbling through like we've been caught in a '90s infomercial doing a simple task of some kind, I've started streaming/recording our game sessions now and can share a link to the twitch, or if want/need be I'll take the time to upload a video onto YouTube or something of it (I don't stream/record regularly or anything) and to triple iterate this because this seems to be the go-to response to every post that suggests there's a possible flaw in the system: THE LOOTERS ARE NOT READING THE MAGAZINES FFS. THEY BRING THEM *ALL* BACK TO BASE AND WE SORT THROUGH THEM. 
I'm one of the looters MYSELF now, unfortunately. Air Drops are bringing in tons of magazines, in fact they're almost the best place to get them at this point but more often than not it's crap we don't need.


 

 
I just logged in to actually see what day & skill level everyone was at. 
Still got my inventory. 
0 skills now as if I've never read a magazine and I'm back at level 1. 

Base is still there, inventory still there, and everything physical is still there but my character's skills and everything else are wiped to 0. Nothing is removed from the inventory of my character or from containers, but anything I've read, and everything I'd leveled from XP is wiped. So, I guess I can't tell you the answer now to what level we were, it's day 24 on the server.  (P.S. - Not @%$#ing about it, I understand it's an unstable release)


Right now the forge ahead magazine is by far the rarest, we've found a total of 17 of those, but the medical magazines I think we've recovered like 60-70 of them. 
The 'old school' books and mags that were already in the game seem to spawn at a normal/similar rate as before. 
Lots of 'Tech Junky' magazines are popping up, too, seems to be a disproportionately high amount, I'm at like, level 37 in those? 
Tool mags are spawning in 2nd to 3rd lowest rate which is preventing us from being able to build certain things. 
Over the course of the past three days we've had anywhere between 6 and 22 players on the server at one time, last night was probably our largest crowd (we can't add more than 8 people to a party so we just end up making extras but would really like it if the devs allowed us to make parties larger than just 8 ) 
Bar Brawler, Batter Up, and The Fireman's Almanac seem to be everywhere as well, they're so abundant we also have stacks of them sitting unused. 
The Great Heist, Hunter's Journal, Lucky Looter seem more or less normal rates I guess. 

The problem that keeps happening right now is early 'bottlenecks'. 
We keep needing magazines for another tool or item that we want/need to build in order to make other stuff. 
At the moment - the blood moon isn't actually much of an issue, because we've only played the first 3 of them, so they don't start 'getting hard' usually until a bit later in the game (which to us was normal, and totally fine) 
This forces us to stop working on the base, and go out to help the scavengers. PLEASE NOTE: if this is intended, it's not appreciated. We really did not want to be forced to go out. But the 2 of us (which is a skeleton crew of builders/crafters compared to usual) who are staying behind keep "running out of stuff to do" because we can essentially only do basic tasks with the limited options of tools and recipes available to us, which force us to just go out and look for more of these magazines so we can get back to work.
We always build the baseline outershell first obviously so we don't end up getting a bunch of breaches, but the interior where we organize, build rooms for crafting, storage, and processing materials from one into the next is essentially collecting dust and cobwebs. I can use the forge now which means I can melt stuff down but once that task is done, it's pretty much "whelp, time to go look for magazines" which comprises roughly 80% of the time we have allocated for building stuff, so the base looks like @%$#. It's functional and holds up but it's mostly just empty rooms right now.





I can't think of them all off the top of my head now but overall, each day I play this update I like it less and less. Some of the looters/scavengers in the group were also mentioning that they didn't really care for the 'skulls' system actually, it kind of takes away some of the surprise of 'finding out' just how dangerous an area is before they go in, and now it's as though their character psychically knows how bad the monsters down in the cave/basement/wherever are before they go in. 

The graphics changes made are awesome in the update, love the new forge/workbench models for sure, haven't seen the chemistry station yet except on streams and that looks great, but pretty much everything else, especially all of the 're-works' are an emphatic thumbs down, with the magazine 'system' being front and center of that negative response. Balancing this out for a group of people just seems impossible, I don't know how they would ever adjust loot rates and spawn rates to respond to a # of people on a server. 

And because the moderator on here keeps implying I'm either lying or we're just bumbling through like we've been caught in a '90s infomercial doing a simple task of some kind, I've started streaming/recording our game sessions now and can share a link to the twitch, or if want/need be I'll take the time to upload a video onto YouTube or something of it (I don't stream/record regularly or anything) and to triple iterate this because this seems to be the go-to response to every post that suggests there's a possible flaw in the system: THE LOOTERS ARE NOT READING THE MAGAZINES FFS. THEY BRING THEM *ALL* BACK TO BASE AND WE SORT THROUGH THEM. 
I'm one of the looters MYSELF now, unfortunately. Air Drops are bringing in tons of magazines, in fact they're almost the best place to get them at this point but more often than not it's crap we don't need.


 
Thanks for the details. You’re quite off on your assumption about my motives. This is the first time you’ve described exactly what you’re doing as a team. We do appreciate detailed and descriptive criticism that is courteously given so thank you. 

 
Buenas . en mi humilde opinión es un juegazo , habra cosas que corregir , pero para eso esta la beta , para ver en que se puede mejorar , en cualquier caso sabiendo que habra actualizaciones que corregiran cosas , no hay que frustrarse . siempre las críticas constructivas ayudan mas que las negativas, el estilo de juego es muy particular en cada persona , no todos piensan igual y por supuesto no actuan de la misma manera.

 
Just wanted to throw out a positive to this alpha (I took a week off work to play this, and have gotten to day 35 btw, so played a lot this week), just because I think a lot of people are complaining about the magazines predominantly... I've definitely come across bugs for sure, but it's experimental, and tbh for experimental, there's a lot fewer bugs than I thought there'd be, it's good!

The graphics are incredible, the new stations, trader compounds, the POI's, yes the doors too lol.. and the RWG is all amazing!

I also like that food/water survival is much harder, with water being scarcer, and cooking taking more realistic times, the early game was definitely a struggle.

What I really wanted to talk about though was the magazines, and I wanted to throw out a positive comment for it.  I think it's good, it definitely helps with wanting to quest.  What I like about it, is that you know at some point you WILL get the recipes you want to craft the next thing, it also really paces the game out, and I think a lot of people being negative are perhaps just wanting to rush things along, and have augers by day 7 or something.

I like to think about the character you're playing, like you're a survivalist, a bit of a camper or bear grylls type of guy, maybe have been in the SAS or something, and knows how to survive, and happened to have the right genetics to not get the zombie virus.  But beyond that, you're not going to know most things, even as someone into all that most people won't know how to craft IRL any of this stuff.  If this were a simulation of R/L then if you had those skills, you would still need to learn a hell of a lot to craft an AK47 or an Auger.  My first stop might be the local library in such a R/L situation.  But there'd be a tonne of books and info, that might not all be relevant.  You also would have zero idea of what you're going to find there, you'd just hope there might be something useful to help you out especially now there's no internet around.

It just makes sense that you'd be learning what you can, but you'd be out there trying to find stuff to help you learn, and just hoping the right things come your way.  It's not some magical land where a postman delivers everything you ever needed to know about surviving the zombie apocalypse.

I was quite sceptical about that system before I played it, but thinking about it along those lines, what do people expect?  Sit inside like a hermit all your life and in a world with no internet you wont learn anything.

Other than some bugs and balancing things, I don't think I have a single complaint to make.  Imo, the game as it stands right now, makes a huge amount of sense.

 
Also, for note: Not a fan of the changes to water. 
Our rooftop is usually a place where we grow crops on our bases, and now it's got 11 dew collectors on it, and doing quests or going to different traders to get the water filters is another thing that isn't exactly 'fun' to keep up with the demand on trying to hydrate close to a couple dozen people. Am I mistaken in that the only way we can drink from rivers, streams, and lakes now is with our hands, and if we do it that way, we end up with a % chance of getting diarrhea? 

Maybe instead of this bulky, huge, ugly Dew Collector thing, you guys make us possibly filter out the water before we boil it which takes a certain amount of time rather than this system of running around from trader to trader to build them? Make it a step with a countdown on it or something - pour water into a single large item like the Dew Collector, let it filter down - then out of it comes 'filtered but not sterile' which we then boil like we used to? 

People have (both in game, and in real life) been building settlements and cities on the edges of bodies of water for a long time for a lot of good reasons, and while transport may not be a factor here, having access to potable water has always been one of them. If nothing else just keep the dew collector in game as an *option* for people who would rather base themselves away from bodies of water. Build closer to one, you have easier access to it, although you still have to filter and boil it or something. 

Just a suggestion.
 

 
The problem that keeps happening right now is early 'bottlenecks'. 
We keep needing magazines for another tool or item that we want/need to build in order to make other stuff. 
At the moment - the blood moon isn't actually much of an issue, because we've only played the first 3 of them, so they don't start 'getting hard' usually until a bit later in the game (which to us was normal, and totally fine) 
This forces us to stop working on the base, and go out to help the scavengers. PLEASE NOTE: if this is intended, it's not appreciated. We really did not want to be forced to go out. But the 2 of us (which is a skeleton crew of builders/crafters compared to usual) who are staying behind keep "running out of stuff to do" because we can essentially only do basic tasks with the limited options of tools and recipes available to us, which force us to just go out and look for more of these magazines so we can get back to work.
We always build the baseline outershell first obviously so we don't end up getting a bunch of breaches, but the interior where we organize, build rooms for crafting, storage, and processing materials from one into the next is essentially collecting dust and cobwebs. I can use the forge now which means I can melt stuff down but once that task is done, it's pretty much "whelp, time to go look for magazines" which comprises roughly 80% of the time we have allocated for building stuff, so the base looks like @%$#. It's functional and holds up but it's mostly just empty rooms right now.
If I may this is prolly part of the core issue.  In early alphas of the game you had to go out and scavenge alot to get key bottlenecking items and its only really the last couple updates in which that has not been the case.  I think during that 1 1/2 years alot of people got used to being able to just build and farm and do almost nothing else but with the game returning to its roots and making scavenging important again and not something you can just ignore by farming/building harder and using trader people who got used to not scavenging are now being forced to go out and scavenge again.

Personally I think this is a good thing and that the ability to be almost pure builder/farmer was never intended but rather was a balance issue contingent on further refinements (which we've just received) to fix.  And trust me, I'm a builder/farmer too.  Here's my A17 Day 7 base with 4 block thick cobblestone walls on day 7.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzzzZRluIjg That's 7 days straight of solid farming to make that and I make tons of bases.   There is no magical I can do anything via exp and then, for niceties, you drive around on a motorcycle and hit crack a books.  Now we must scavenge too.


BUT TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES you'll want someone spec'd at least 2 points into miner69er and someone spec'd at least 2 points into advanced engineering and lockpicking and someone spec'd at least 2 points into grease monkey on your main loot crew.  Grease Monkey dood gets looiting priority at gas stations and vehicle shops, miner69er and advanced engineering + lockingpicking gets looting priority at working stiffs and construction sites.  Funnel all the magazines for vehicles to one person and all the magazines for forge ahead to 1 person.  You only need 1 person who can make the station or vehicles for the entire group, spreading out the magazines would just slow things down.

 
If I may this is prolly part of the core issue.  In early alphas of the game you had to go out and scavenge alot to get key bottlenecking items and its only really the last couple updates in which that has not been the case.  I think during that 1 1/2 years alot of people got used to being able to just build and farm and do almost nothing else but with the game returning to its roots and making scavenging important again and not something you can just ignore by farming/building harder and using trader people who got used to not scavenging are now being forced to go out and scavenge again.

Personally I think this is a good thing and that the ability to be almost pure builder/farmer was never intended but rather was a balance issue contingent on further refinements (which we've just received) to fix.  And trust me, I'm a builder/farmer too.  Here's my A17 Day 7 base with 4 block thick cobblestone walls on day 7.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzzzZRluIjg That's 7 days straight of solid farming to make that and I make tons of bases.   There is no magical I can do anything via exp and then, for niceties, you drive around on a motorcycle and hit crack a books.  Now we must scavenge too.


BUT TO IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES you'll want someone spec'd at least 2 points into miner69er and someone spec'd at least 2 points into advanced engineering and lockpicking and someone spec'd at least 2 points into grease monkey on your main loot crew.  Grease Monkey dood gets looiting priority at gas stations and vehicle shops, miner69er and advanced engineering + lockingpicking gets looting priority at working stiffs and construction sites.  Funnel all the magazines for vehicles to one person and all the magazines for forge ahead to 1 person.  You only need 1 person who can make the station or vehicles for the entire group, spreading out the magazines would just slow things down.
I just fundamentally disagree with this. 
If you're playing by yourself - sure. 
If you're playing with one or two people - sure. 
But with a group of our size it's just not *possible* to sustain ourselves in the mid to late game like that which is why we specialize like we do. 
In some of the other comments people are talking about how the magazine system makes teams have to rely on each other more and we have to be more specialized in order to get by. 
In yours you seem to be suggesting that specialization into roles shouldn't be as important and this forces us 'back to our roots' which I think is just absurd. We've literally been playing this way - the same way - for almost a decade. There's always been crafters, looters, scavengers, farmers/hunters and everything else, and I don't think that ever needed to change at all. We didn't have to constantly scavenge in A20, we didn't have to constantly scavenge 3 years ago, or 5, or 8 or whatever. 

It just hasn't been that way ever, at least for us. 

 
Also, for note: Not a fan of the changes to water. 
Our rooftop is usually a place where we grow crops on our bases, and now it's got 11 dew collectors on it, and doing quests or going to different traders to get the water filters is another thing that isn't exactly 'fun' to keep up with the demand on trying to hydrate close to a couple dozen people. Am I mistaken in that the only way we can drink from rivers, streams, and lakes now is with our hands, and if we do it that way, we end up with a % chance of getting diarrhea? 

Maybe instead of this bulky, huge, ugly Dew Collector thing, you guys make us possibly filter out the water before we boil it which takes a certain amount of time rather than this system of running around from trader to trader to build them? Make it a step with a countdown on it or something - pour water into a single large item like the Dew Collector, let it filter down - then out of it comes 'filtered but not sterile' which we then boil like we used to? 

People have (both in game, and in real life) been building settlements and cities on the edges of bodies of water for a long time for a lot of good reasons, and while transport may not be a factor here, having access to potable water has always been one of them. If nothing else just keep the dew collector in game as an *option* for people who would rather base themselves away from bodies of water. Build closer to one, you have easier access to it, although you still have to filter and boil it or something. 

Just a suggestion.
 
Honestly im kinda baffled at people coming out of the woodwork with 10+ people to a base.  I don't even know what you'd do with more than 4-6 people in a base haha.  I'd have figured for larger groups you'd end up with multiple mid to large sized bases rather than 1 based crammed full of people like sardines :D.  For a variety of reasons.  Storage space, crafting space, farm space, POI coverage, creating safe travel routes, multiple trader coverage, etc.

And dew collectors definitely work for 4-6 people bases.  But these 10+ people megabases, I dunno if the game is even designed for them.  Heck I dunno if a blood moon could scale properly to threaten 10+ people without destroying the server lol.


A note for people and potable water though: Boiling water was not as common as you think.  Not only did people often not do it bag in ye olden times but even if they knew they often simply didn't have enough fuel to burn to do so because the average person is super wealthy today compared to people at most times and history.  Often all they could do is strain water through cloth.  Also, quite frankly, people didnt used to know what germs were.  So if the water looked fine they usually just assumed it was fine.  It would only be noticeably contaminated stuff you'd consider cleaning.  ALOT of people died or got sick in ye olden ages due to bad water.  But we assume people knew better and did things closer to what we do today.

In yours you seem to be suggesting that specialization into roles shouldn't be as important and this forces us 'back to our roots' which I think is just absurd. We've literally been playing this way - the same way - for almost a decade. There's always been crafters, looters, scavengers, farmers/hunters and everything else, and I don't think that ever needed to change at all. We didn't have to constantly scavenge in A20, we didn't have to constantly scavenge 3 years ago, or 5, or 8 or whatever. 

It just hasn't been that way ever, at least for us. 
That is literally the opposite of what I suggested.  I suggested pretty strong specialization quite literally in the same comment you responded to.  Literally designating people for forge building, for vehicle building, and for looting and changing who looted what POIs depending on their specialization.  As such I apologize but I'm going to dismiss your umbrage at my comment as its not accurately targeted but instead a misunderstanding on your part.

I do however talk about huge group issues in my next comment just above (already made before yours was posted) and IMO the game has always been broken for groups over 4-6 people.  It's just been broken in your favor since there is no way Blood moon hordes can scale to threaten that many people appropriately.  A single experienced player can build a base and hold 32/64 zombie bloodmoons on warrior.  What could you possibly do to threaten a commune of 10+ people without turning the enemies into some walking bullshiet, bullet sponge heck, or spawning more enemies than the game can handle performance wise?  Honestly even infested POIs prolly lose their teeth when you can potentially have as many players there fighting the zombies as active zombies lol.

 
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Is the remade Navezgane map supposed to always spawn you in the middle of nowhere and the trader is always Joel who is also in the middle of nowhere?


In my RWG it's only trader Jens so far - granted, I only know three traders on my maps, so it might be the odd one out, but copycat traders seems to be a trend ;)

 
Right now the forge ahead magazine is by far the rarest, we've found a total of 17 of those, but the medical magazines I think we've recovered like 60-70 of them. 
The 'old school' books and mags that were already in the game seem to spawn at a normal/similar rate as before. 
Lots of 'Tech Junky' magazines are popping up, too, seems to be a disproportionately high amount, I'm at like, level 37 in those? 
Tool mags are spawning in 2nd to 3rd lowest rate which is preventing us from being able to build certain things. 
Over the course of the past three days we've had anywhere between 6 and 22 players on the server at one time, last night was probably our largest crowd (we can't add more than 8 people to a party so we just end up making extras but would really like it if the devs allowed us to make parties larger than just 8 ) 
Bar Brawler, Batter Up, and The Fireman's Almanac seem to be everywhere as well, they're so abundant we also have stacks of them sitting unused. 
The Great Heist, Hunter's Journal, Lucky Looter seem more or less normal rates I guess. 




 
That's interesting.  My wife and I play coop and we're on day 7.  I think she already has 15 forge ahead books and probably 20 tool mags.   I'm not even perked into them and I probably gave her 8 forge ahead books.  Are you guys only looting food trucks lol (joking)

 
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