PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

[zicky]

I have enjoyed A21 so far.  In fact, I finally found the water purifier mod to be useful.  I never used it before because, honestly, there was no need.  Now it is my go to mod, second only to the helmet light mod.  With four dew collectors working I now have enough water to cook with and prepare glue.   Not sure why the price was increased on the water filter, though, since you really do need a minimum of two or, at least, that's my take on it.

I am on day 32 and I've maxed out the seed, food and forge magazines with my specialties of spears and bows soon to follow.  At first I noticed that the magazines were falling about evenly; but, after I perked at least two on my specialties, they started falling regularly.  

I do have one question, though.  This is supposed to be set in Arizona, right.  By all that's holy, why does it rain more in the game than it does where I live in Louisiana.

 

[Old Crow]

 This is supposed to be set in Arizona, right.  By all that's holy, why does it rain more in the game than it does where I live in Louisiana.

Yup. Yet somehow water is a problem. XD

 

[Jost Amman]

This is supposed to be set in Arizona, right.  By all that's holy, why does it rain more in the game than it does where I live in Louisiana.

That's not the current Arizona, it's the post-apoc Arizona!  :nerd:

 

[meganoth]

One more time, this isn't 'my' playstyle, this is something that affects multiple playstyles. This isn't about narrowing the balance for my particular playstyle as the half dozen people on this board that have implied otherwise have suggested. In fact, it's not even something that would affect them at all, and yet they're all up in arms about even the suggestion of it. 

First of all it would affect them. And it seems you are all up in arms as well because even people who just want to discuss it and present their differing oppinions are met with rather hostile replies. I see nothing in BFT's post that warants your insulting sarkasm at the end.

Nothing I've suggested would change the game in the slightest way for the people that are content with how it is presently. not one tiny bit. So what is it do you suppose

that makes veteran players not want to have the game be more accessible for new players, to have the game be more attractive to a wider audience? 

No change I have seen you propose was without side effects for normal players. For example, if I remember correctly you proposed the trader offer more forge ahead (and maybe tools?) books. If the trader does this, normal players will have access to those books as well and can advance faster on the workstation track.

 

[RhinoW]

Magazine weapon tiers

Aight lads just came here to leave my two cents. The new magazine system seems pretty decent so far, it's a mix of old school blueprints and a learn by reading instead of learn by doing sort of progression. However, I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one that thinks weapon tiers (not levels) shouldn't be this sequencial.

What do I mean exactly?

Well, you see, the wooden bow is unlocked after I'm able to craft a level 3 primitive bow (or 4? can't recall), but the problem is, it is far weaker than the tier 3 primitive bow, and once I reach level 5 primitive bow, only the level 3 wooden bow actually makes a difference, both fully modded (and even then it is still just +0.1 in damage difference, but the durability and projectile speed is far better by default).

So there's a stagnation period, as well as weapons we will straight up never use as they are simply inferior. Not to mention the wooden bow already requires bow parts that you have to find through RNG.

And this is just one example, I'm fairly certain it's the same for other weapon types.

I would suggest maybe separating quality and tiers from the magazines, or simply having the next tier unlock earlier so it can rival the previous one, otherwise there's no point in being able to craft lvl 1 and lvl 2 weapons of the next tier for most weapons. (Exceptions would be the pump shotgun as it functions very differently than the double barrel, and will always have a higher DPS since it can shoot more than 2 times before reloading, the mp5, and perhaps the iron crossbow).

TLR : Weapon tiers should be unlocked earlier in the magazines as there is a stagnation period where the previous tier is constantly superior and is only outshined when the following tier reaches lvl 3-4 (and the previous one remains at 5), meaning lvls 1-2(3) are completely useless.

Magazine Looting

So, the magazine loot chances are tied to a specific perk that influences loot when the player opens a container. This is a great addition for singleplayer, where everything is for them, but somewhat of a problem in multiplayer for obvious reasons.

Anyone who doesn't loot is missing out on his own progression, because he might be harvesting resources or base building rather than looting. But, you see, that has always been the strength in grouping up, being able to split tasks and work for different goals, covering more terrain. Having this individual and artificial loot manipulation detracts from the experience and kinda forces player to have to take turns in looting, which is ridiculous as the loot should be the same there no matter what.

I already had problems with lucky looter because of this, I think those kind of buffs usually just make everything too damn controlled in order to not miss out. I'm damn glad it got nerfed.

I don't think this loot manipulation is necessary in the slightest, there are so many containers, so many PoIs, so much focus on biome and PoI tier. A balanced loot pool can easily be arranged through thematic, container type and difficulty tier. Hell, I would even say that magazine levels could even be reduced to make them rarer but more valuable, not requiring frequent spawning in order to make use of them, allowing other magazines to take its place.

However, I would 100% agree that for quest rewards, the magazines should suit the player needs.

TLR : Magazine loot shouldn't be tied to a perk imo, and should rather be more focused on container type, difficulty tier (PoI+biome) and thematic (medical, military, food), with the exception of quest rewards.

 

[Ralathar44]

To be absolutely clear, because I've long grown tired of this conversation, I like the new system and I absolutely do understand the design logic behind it. I'm not suggesting a reversion to any old system, new code, or that development be slowed in any way. I'm merely suggesting a quick balance pass be made on some existing values on existing systems that wouldn't have any effect on the primary game loop other than to minorly offset the bias towards the intellect tree and allow players some leeway in when and how they interact with the main game loop, and that it would go a long way in smoothing over a lot of complaints from more casual players. Literally, nothing that would have and effect on anyone that's so kindly decided to gatekeep me for even bringing it up. 

Considering the disagreements Ive seen you have with others I think my earlier suggestion for giving small amounts of knowledge progression via attributes + perks and an additional minor amount of magazine chance weighting via attributes is about the best you're gonna get lol.  Most people don't seem to be interested in the trader being made strong enough to be able to ignore scavenging and already consider the quest rewards it has to be too strong. (outside of the obviously bugged ones)

Source of the suggestion I'm mentioning: 

 

[Riamus]

I do have one question, though.  This is supposed to be set in Arizona, right.  By all that's holy, why does it rain more in the game than it does where I live in Louisiana.

Not to mention, all the license plates are from Texas.  I guess Texas annexed Arizona?

 

[Gamida]

Have seen a lot of back and forth about magazines. Some talk about wanting to be the home builder and take care of base. Some talk of looters who read all the magazines because they eventually take up too many slots and it may be time consuming to have to keep running back to base to drop them off.

I was thinking of a sort of compromise. It would need to have to wait until you have a vehicle, preferable at least a minibike.

What if in each town the looters dropped a crate or 2. They could mark it for all to see and looters could throw extra magazines in them and then later a home base person could jump on a vehicle, drive around and collect them up to bring

back to be sorted amongst whoever is home.

Takes care of the looters storage problem and the base builders don't have to do a lot of looting.

This of course also depends on if the chunk reset option is chosen.

Anyway that was just a thought that popped in my head. My help or may just be a pile of doo doo. (Yes, I said doo doo)

 

[Wulf]

About magazines.

Suppose you run a coop game with 2 players. You want to play together and do quests together. Basically everything you would do solo except side by side. (i've done this in previous alpha's).

You don't loot more than if you were by yourself because you're running the same POI's with the same lootcontainers (except double quest rewards). Constantly keeping track what magazines you loot and who gets what seems much more tedious to me than it was in A20 (for example). There, we basically decided how we were gonna build or characters and who would spec into what. And that was it.

This new way seems to way too tedious for me. It's fine for when i play singleplayer though. Edit: Also, total team progression isn't faster in coop this way and would probably be slower compared to singleplayer (because of how looting works)

Am i alone in this? (This is besides having different playstyles trying to work together as described above where 1 player stays home - that has it's own problems like Gamida adressed)

 

[meganoth]

Magazine weapon tiers

Aight lads just came here to leave my two cents. The new magazine system seems pretty decent so far, it's a mix of old school blueprints and a learn by reading instead of learn by doing sort of progression. However, I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one that thinks weapon tiers (not levels) shouldn't be this sequencial.

What do I mean exactly?

Well, you see, the wooden bow is unlocked after I'm able to craft a level 3 primitive bow (or 4? can't recall), but the problem is, it is far weaker than the tier 3 primitive bow, and once I reach level 5 primitive bow, only the level 3 wooden bow actually makes a difference, both fully modded (and even then it is still just +0.1 in damage difference, but the durability and projectile speed is far better by default).

So there's a stagnation period, as well as weapons we will straight up never use as they are simply inferior. Not to mention the wooden bow already requires bow parts that you have to find through RNG.

And this is just one example, I'm fairly certain it's the same for other weapon types.

I would suggest maybe separating quality and tiers from the magazines, or simply having the next tier unlock earlier so it can rival the previous one, otherwise there's no point in being able to craft lvl 1 and lvl 2 weapons of the next tier for most weapons. (Exceptions would be the pump shotgun as it functions very differently than the double barrel, and will always have a higher DPS since it can shoot more than 2 times before reloading, the mp5, and perhaps the iron crossbow).

TLR : Weapon tiers should be unlocked earlier in the magazines as there is a stagnation period where the previous tier is constantly superior and is only outshined when the following tier reaches lvl 3-4 (and the previous one remains at 5), meaning lvls 1-2(3) are completely useless.

Magazine Looting

So, the magazine loot chances are tied to a specific perk that influences loot when the player opens a container. This is a great addition for singleplayer, where everything is for them, but somewhat of a problem in multiplayer for obvious reasons.

Anyone who doesn't loot is missing out on his own progression, because he might be harvesting resources or base building rather than looting. But, you see, that has always been the strength in grouping up, being able to split tasks and work for different goals, covering more terrain. Having this individual and artificial loot manipulation detracts from the experience and kinda forces player to have to take turns in looting, which is ridiculous as the loot should be the same there no matter what.

I already had problems with lucky looter because of this, I think those kind of buffs usually just make everything too damn controlled in order to not miss out. I'm damn glad it got nerfed.

I don't think this loot manipulation is necessary in the slightest, there are so many containers, so many PoIs, so much focus on biome and PoI tier. A balanced loot pool can easily be arranged through thematic, container type and difficulty tier. Hell, I would even say that magazine levels could even be reduced to make them rarer but more valuable, not requiring frequent spawning in order to make use of them, allowing other magazines to take its place.

However, I would 100% agree that for quest rewards, the magazines should suit the player needs.

TLR : Magazine loot shouldn't be tied to a perk imo, and should rather be more focused on container type, difficulty tier (PoI+biome) and thematic (medical, military, food), with the exception of quest rewards.

Seeing how the loot bonus is skewing everyone's expectation and the usual misconceptions about randomness emerging, I fully agree with you (at the moment ). 

The loot bonus is meant as a safety net, but due to randomness is also only randomly a safety-net. And since the bonus is always there it isn't really a safety net but a bonus that directly influences the balance of how many magazines drop. 

I.e. if TFP wants the games progression to last until day 50, they have to space out the 100 shotgun recipes over those 50 days, but they have to include the safety-net bonus in the calculation because a shotgun player will normally get that bonus.

So without that bonus each of the magazines would drop twice a day on average. Because of the bonus now perked magazines have to drop twice a day while all other magazines drop less than twice a day because the bonus is missing. In effect it seems more like a nerf for all other magazines.

Now surely TFP could also say, nah, we want the progression nominally until day 50, but we are ok with the progression of perked items being over early. No matter, it doesn't really feel like a safety-net looking at it this way, more like a fast-track.

 

[meganoth]

About magazines.

Suppose you run a coop game with 2 players. You want to play together and do quests together. Basically everything you would do solo except side by side. (i've done this in previous alpha's).

You don't loot more than if you were by yourself because you're running the same POI's with the same lootcontainers (except double quest rewards). Constantly keeping track what magazines you loot and who gets what seems much more tedious to me than it was in A20 (for example). There, we basically decided how we were gonna build or characters and who would spec into what. And that was it.

This isn't different from tracking which books (like Urban Combat books, Spear books) everyone wants and saving them up. Usually with two players you have about 4-5 magazines you want to read yourself anyway (2 of them weapon books, 2-3 utility), 6 magazines are for weapons nobody uses, and only 5 magazines you have to remember to give to the other. I play in a group of 4 players and in the first 3 days there were a lot of questions of the type "Who needs ... again?", but I feel that has died down.

I would suggest putting a chest on the street in front of POIs you loot. That was a good idea previously and it is even better now. Drop magazines you don't read yourself into it as well as any stuff clogging your inventory and whatever the other player wants he will read automatically. 

This new way seems to way too tedious for me. It's fine for when i play singleplayer though. Edit: Also, total team progression isn't faster in coop this way and would probably be slower compared to singleplayer (because of how looting works)

Total team progression is faster. Because you are faster looting POIs as a team you can loot more POIs in a day. And you get a multiple of the magazines from quest rewards. But always only one in a team needs to progress in a magazine series for everyone getting the benefit. 

In other words, N co-op players will only need 100 magazines of a type same as 1 player, but they obviously loot more and get more quest rewards than a single player.

Am i alone in this? (This is besides having different playstyles trying to work together as described above where 1 player stays home - that has it's own problems like Gamida adressed)

My group seems to like the team aspect of collecting magazines and giving them to the other players.

 

[Wulf]

Yes, there are ways to deal with this ingame, i understand that. But the bottom line is that it is not fun to deal with this for me. That is the feedback i can offer.

It was ok with books, but the huge number of different magazines added, makes a game element, that is typically not the focus point for fun in most games, namely inventory management, spill over into multiplayer.

I'll just stick with singleplayer where i can focus on the gameplay that is fun for me.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

Yes, there are ways to deal with this ingame, i understand that. But the bottom line is that it is not fun to deal with this for me. That is the feedback i can offer.

It was ok with books, but the huge number of different magazines added, makes a game element, that is typically not the focus point for fun in most games, namely inventory management, spill over into multiplayer.

I'll just stick with singleplayer where i can focus on the gameplay that is fun for me.

There’s definitely more to manage now with the sheer amount of magazines. However, once you become more familiar with the names and magazine art I think it will become easier. Right now it’s just a massive info dump with a lot of extra things for your brain to process. Another way to approach it would be to focus solely on separating the most important magazines: forge ahead, food, tools, vehicles, and seeds and not worry about the rest as much.  And even then you probably only need to really focus on forge ahead and food in the first couple of days. 

 

[Skippy5]

Is the goal of the new system to standardize and flatten the progression through day 50? I came here and read for about 1.5 hours trying to understand to vision, so I can provide some input (it seems to have been appreciated in the past). I know I play different than others and don't expect for the game to be developed for my playstyle (I will use mods for that later). I have played HC for some time (if I die, I reset). I typically make it to day 60 before I get bored and force a reset anyway. After upgrading to A21 and now my fourth death (two because I am a dingbat and two of which I think were bugs, as I just randomly died and the log said <playername> died), I have decided to just play for a while, not reset, and wait for mods or a future update to play again. This is because the new system feels very standardized with much less replayablilty (at least for me). It used to be starting over was exciting. The loot, recipe drops, etc made the play different each time. With the current system, it is very much the same with each reset. This is fine if the goal is to slow down progression, standardize, etc so that the eventual story can be added with the game. Making it move of a single play through game. However, if that is not the goal, then I think there need to be changes and would be happy to share my experiences. 

 

[fragtzack]

I have enjoyed A21 so far.  In fact, I finally found the water purifier mod to be useful.  I never used it before because, honestly, there was no need.  Now it is my go to mod, second only to the helmet light mod.  With four dew collectors working I now have enough water to cook with and prepare glue.   Not sure why the price was increased on the water filter, though, since you really do need a minimum of two or, at least, that's my take on it.

I

Completely agree with all these statements !

 

[meganoth]

Is the goal of the new system to standardize and flatten the progression through day 50?

I can only say the number 50 was just an example invented by me to have an easy calculation. I have heard them say they have an idea/notion/maybe even a design target of how many days a game should go, but I don't know anything about how much this influences the design.

I came here and read for about 1.5 hours trying to understand to vision, so I can provide some input (it seems to have been appreciated in the past). I know I play different than others and don't expect for the game to be developed for my playstyle (I will use mods for that later). I have played HC for some time (if I die, I reset). I typically make it to day 60 before I get bored and force a reset anyway. After upgrading to A21 and now my fourth death (two because I am a dingbat and two of which I think were bugs, as I just randomly died and the log said <playername> died), I have decided to just play for a while, not reset, and wait for mods or a future update to play again. This is because the new system feels very standardized with much less replayablilty (at least for me). It used to be starting over was exciting. The loot, recipe drops, etc made the play different each time. With the current system, it is very much the same with each reset. This is fine if the goal is to slow down progression, standardize, etc so that the eventual story can be added with the game. Making it move of a single play through game. However, if that is not the goal, then I think there need to be changes and would be happy to share my experiences. 

 

[Neminsis]

First of all it would affect them. And it seems you are all up in arms as well because even people who just want to discuss it and present their differing oppinions are met with rather hostile replies. I see nothing in BFT's post that warants your insulting sarkasm at the end.

No, it really wouldn't but do explain how you think it would.

No, they don't discuss it, they want to shut down discussion of it. 
 

but expect the game to be balanced towards those playstyles.

it is not up to TFP to change the game to meet your playstyle,

I'm sorry but I do find that fundamentally misstating my position and therefore impugning my intentions and character after I've repeatedly explained otherwise is offensive, and that my sarcasm is warranted after literally everyone that's brought up balance issues here has been treated poorly for it and since I've dutifully answered every reply I've caught more of it than is anywhere near necessary. To be clear, I didn't start this conversation in a hostile manner, but yes, I have been aggravated by the hostile responses I've gotten since then. 
 

No change I have seen you propose was without side effects for normal players. For example, if I remember correctly you proposed the trader offer more forge ahead (and maybe tools?) books. If the trader does this, normal players will have access to those books as well and can advance faster on the workstation track.

Alright, if you actually want to discuss it, in order of importance,

So how would slightly bumping up the exp gain from gathering affect "normal players"? If you think that you can level up through gathering at anywhere near the rate of a questing player even considering building exp, you'd be mistaken. Don't expect players to all of a sudden not want to quest any more because chopping trees is faster exp.

How would slightly improving the prices of bulk materials affect "normal players"? This is only to make it possible to buy what is necessary from traders and balance the difficulty between wilderness, Navezgane, and city spawns. And do please take into account that resources from pois are already balanced and limited to provide just enough to be able to build a base without having to gather manually.

As for increasing the availability of "tool magazines" at the trader specifically this doesn't favor the "normal players" because those tools aren't critical to their experience gain rate at all.

And for the "forge ahead" magazines the idea isn't to speed up crafting progression but to insure a minimum floor. Questing players are going to collect a lot more books from pois, the 1-2 available at the trader are just not going to make that much difference. Also, take note that because engineering and lockpicking affect the drop rate of the forge books doing so would also help to offset the imbalance in the Intellect tree.

Of all four of those ideas, only the first two could be considered critical, the third's necessity depends on the first two and whether higher quality tools would be needed to synergize with the gathering perks to the same effect, and the fourth is a throw away as it doesn't address the main problem but instead is aimed more at overall balance between the trees. 

 

 

[fragtzack]

Trader helicopter pads:

Obviously there is a plan for late game instant travel between trader outposts. <applaud> Well needed!

However, helicopter fast travel is so pedestrian and done by many games.  

 Human cannonball travel + parachute would be so much more fun and unique!

Human cannonball - Wikipedia

 

[Mister Forgash]

 Human cannonball travel + parachute would be so much more fun and unique!

No Parachute, just remember to buy your Oh-shiz drops.

 

[Riamus]

About magazines.

Suppose you run a coop game with 2 players. You want to play together and do quests together. Basically everything you would do solo except side by side. (i've done this in previous alpha's).

You don't loot more than if you were by yourself because you're running the same POI's with the same lootcontainers (except double quest rewards). Constantly keeping track what magazines you loot and who gets what seems much more tedious to me than it was in A20 (for example). There, we basically decided how we were gonna build or characters and who would spec into what. And that was it.

This new way seems to way too tedious for me. It's fine for when i play singleplayer though. Edit: Also, total team progression isn't faster in coop this way and would probably be slower compared to singleplayer (because of how looting works)

Am i alone in this? (This is besides having different playstyles trying to work together as described above where 1 player stays home - that has it's own problems like Gamida adressed)

Most my play is with one other person and magazines aren't really a big deal.  At first, you have trouble remembering who is reading what but it doesn't take all that long for that to end and both remember what the other is reading.

We loot faster and complete quests faster than I do in single player.  It isn't twice as fast but it is a lot faster.