PC Alpha 21 Dev Diary

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unholyjoe said:
already reported and fixed in a22.

i actually liked it that way... tired of telling team mates to get out of my way. :) ooops
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Speaking of that, sometimes you can walk through another person and sometimes you can't.  It would be nice if you always can.

 
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unholyjoe said:
already reported and fixed in a22.

i actually liked it that way... tired of telling team mates to get out of my way. :) ooops
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The fix wont come until A22?? kinda figured we would see an A21.1 or something. The wife is going to be @%$#ed if I keep throwing her around the room for another year and a half lol.

 
RhinoW said:
Do you play with 300% XP multiplier? Because I do (and 300% block damage) and I noticed that crafting gets thrown back because of how quickly I rise on gamestage. It's a double edged sword, as radiateds and wights are found very early on, but at the same time, the quest rewards and loot are insane. Since the physical time you spend looting gets overshadowed by the gamestage, you are not able to pick up enough magazines to "battle" the loot you are already able to get.

So for loot quality, that's my own "fault". But I do agree 100% with you that ammo is just ridiculous, and it has been ridiculous since A17. Never have I ever stockpiled on so much ammo and used it so needlessly with more to spare. And it was like that since day 1, loot a few buildings and raid a shotgun messiah, and you're already reaching more ammo than you need to use early on, with the ability to actually use that ammo with the pipe weaponry.

However, spending ammo is kinda required, since zombie attack hitboxes and reactions are still buggy, and difficulty comes in the form of bullet sponges and zombie numbers, so run and gun is kind of mandatory. And I'd wager that if I played with no multipliers, and had a steady gamestage, I would have even more ammo to spare, because I wouldnt be facing high tier zombies so early on.

I'll also add explosives and molotovs to the list, as crafting a molotov is wasting fuel, while a quick t1 quest has a high chance to give you 10 for a reward as well as pipebombs and contact grenades.

I'm not complaining though, as the game is quite fun like this, but the fun comes in the form of mowing down big hordes of enemies on bloodmoon, rather than the rest of the game. Clearing PoIs becomes a boring task with very little risk, unless its one of those BS triggers that has been talked about. I'm also going to show my dislike for those end dungeon loot crates that completley destroyed the meaning of scavenging.
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Nope all defaults at 100%. Most of those auto turret bundles give like 150 or 300 9mm ammo or a full stack of shotgun ammo and like 2 of each turret. Not to mention blade trap bundle gives like what 10 blade traps?

 
Exxodous said:
The fix wont come until A22?? kinda figured we would see an A21.1 or something. The wife is going to be @%$#ed if I keep throwing her around the room for another year and a half lol.
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you should be playing on a safer server (where youre wife isnt) and in a different room of the house (especially one with a couch for you to sleep on) leave the dog box alone fido needs his space. :)

 
the_envenom said:
Love the new update, even though I know you're on break, just a small request for next update/alpha. Can you add actual eating animations, anything I eat, blueberry pie, pumpkin pie, sham, can of peas, anything, it's meat in the eating animation always!!!
Same for drinks!! Exact same glass jar.....
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Nah, that's your food wallet.  You store all your food in there.  Silly.  Sheesh.

 
Found a neat book today, The Fireman's Spear Hunter 😆, sounds like an interesting read

2zFwEDo.png


 
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icehot said:
I don't think this is that far unbalanced (maybe a little), like maybe you could spend a bit longer in each tier perhaps to drag the game out a bit longer...  But firstly I'd expect a trader to have better stuff than I can make myself, other people are selling to him and has other suppliers - if you can just make it all, why bother questing or using your dukes for anything?  Imho you want them to be ahead of the curve.

Secondly, after 2 or 3 weeks, I think most players would expect to have some decent weapons by that amount of time - that's like 20 to 30 hours of gameplay, how long do you want it to last before you start getting decent stuff?
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The problem is the trader have better thing than i can craft, in weapons or tools i don't even have points in skills or even learned from magazine.

You can find quality 5 iron spear, without invest skill points or without learn magazine.

All time invested on searching magazine for knife and points invested in agility and the perk of knife, was useless, the iron spear from trader was better.

So why use skill tree and magazine when trader let you bypass all?

Is a big unbalanced progression problem, because let you skip entire main parts of the game.

A survival game of this type isn't something you should finish in less of few hours.

And if Developers want players to reach this point in few hours then magazine system is bad balanced because is more slow.

Considered the magazine system is their actual line of progression, where a developers said they don't want tiers to overlaps, is more probable traders/quests/loot to have problem of balance progression, because tiers not only overlap, but players can easily skip quality/tiers totally.

Developers should add a sort of system(probably "internal") to have an effect similar of magazine have on crafting progression, but applied to traders/quests/loot.

The actual one not work and create balance problem Developers have fixed with magazine system for crafting.

 
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Sephiroth87xz said:
The problem is the trader have better thing than i can craft, in weapons or tools i don't even have points in skills or even learned from magazine.

You can find quality 5 iron spear, without invest skill points or without learn magazine.

All time invested on searching magazine for knife and points invested in agility and the perk of knife, was useless, the iron spear from trader was better.

So why use skill tree and magazine when trader let you bypass all?

Is a big unbalanced progression problem, because let you skip entire main parts of the game.

A survival game of this type isn't something you should finish in less of few hours.

And if Developers want players to reach this point in few hours then magazine system is bad balanced because is more slow.

Considered the magazine system is their actual line of progression, where a developers said they don't want tiers to overlaps, is more probable traders/quests/loot to have problem of balance progression, because tiers not only overlap, but players can easily skip quality/tiers totally.

Developers should add a sort of system(probably "internal") to have an effect similar of magazine have on crafting progression, but applied to traders/quests/loot.

The actual one not work and create balance problem Developers have fixed with magazine system for crafting.
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From the way you've said this, you make it sound like you expect the trader to ONLY have items for your perk tree - like finding an iron spear made all your points in agility worthless, why does it?  You decided you wanted to use knives, not spears, so who cares what spear he has?  It hasn't stopped you aiming to be able to craft knives.

Also if the trader only has stuff from your perks, to around the level of what you can craft, then there's zero point in traders - why would you bother with them?  You'd just craft the items because it's cheaper to do that than going out of your way to quest and earn money to get decent stuff.

I've just spent the past two hours playing to day 17, in the intellect tree, and the trader has had some ok stuff, but nothing that's made me want to jump trees, I've just ignored those items because I'm focussing on the intellect style.  Rewards and items are also not that amazing that I'm seeing either.

I don't see this as a big problem in the slightest, I've not been skipping parts of the game, I've been doing various bits of crafting, certain mods, some weapons, some armour etc.  I've been looting for some stuff, and buying other things - I've been basing my decisions on my character, and where I can currently get the best items.  Sometimes that's been crafting, other times it's been looting, other times it's been quest rewards, and other times that's been buying from the trader.  I don't see that as unbalanced, as I've been doing all of it.  And I still don't think I have anything really special or anywhere near end game.  He's had a steel club for sale recently, but why would I pick that when I'm playing for the stun baton, and all my skills are in that?

And how do you know the magazine system is the full intended line of progression in terms of time?  You are making an assumption there.  What if it's exactly what I'm doing?,  Where I'm using a mixture of different parts of the game, to get whatever I need/want at that particular time.  I've only just got onto iron tools btw, which I think is reasonable, one I bought, one was a quest reward, and the other one I crafted.

 
icehot said:
Also if the trader only has stuff from your perks, to around the level of what you can craft, then there's zero point in traders - why would you bother with them?  You'd just craft the items because it's cheaper to do that than going out of your way to quest and earn money to get decent stuff.
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Your argument is the same argument he is using for crafting, if he never can craft a better weapon than he has, then there is zero point in buying or searching for magazines. We players get a lot of dukes from quests and there is no "going out of your way" to quest. Quests rewards are so good that there is no **in-game** reason to NOT do them, you have a good chance for OP items for nothing and on top the money to buy sometimes OP items from the trader stock. And with lots of dukes to spend buying is as cheap as crafting a good weapon.

The only disadvantage of boosting crafting may be that the progression there is less random than loot and trader, so it might make sense to have it slightly trailing the others in progression. But at the moment it isn't slightly for weapon crafting even if you have not seen in in your own game.

There are some "easy" adjustments that would balance the game better:

1) Decrease the money you get from quests is one of the easiest. Even better if some of those dukes removed from quest rewards would be distributed into POI chests because this is one reason why MP players advance so much faster than SP players. 

2) Prevent higher tier quests from giving out items far above your progression. Those quests still can give you more valuable stuff (bigger stacks of ammo for example) and more dukes than lower tier quests but the item tier and quality should not invalidate your normal progression. The mistake of giving much better weapons for higher tier quests is that higher tier quests are only moderately more difficult than lower tier quests and often just take longer. But the quest reward seems to be as if the difficulty steps between different skull amounts were as steep as biome diffficulty in Valheim or quest difficulty in World of Warcraft.

 
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Regarding the current discussion about balancing: Possibly more weapons should be added besides adjusting how items are acquired and when.  The same also applies to a larger number of more dangerous zombies and animals.  If I have more weapons / zombies available I can balance the game more.  At the moment there seems to be a quick jump from "beginning" to "endgame".  The Gyrocopter serves as an example: it is actually "Endgame" and can be reached late.  But I couldn't think of anything that is as difficult and late to reach as the gyrocopter in the game

 
meganoth said:
if he never can craft a better weapon than he has, then there is zero point in buying or searching for magazines.
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Speaking of zero point:

My main weapons are both ones from the trader, because they are better than the crafted ones.

My quality4 compound bow which I got as a reward from a trader quite some time ago, has slightly better damage and the same amount of mod slots than the quality5 one I was finally able to craft, after finding the necessary magazines.

Not the greatest moment I had in the game 😐

Btw is the amount of modslots in weapons and armor a fixed value for each item?

Can anybody provide a list where I can look up how many there can be for each weapon/armor type and quality?

Couldn't yet figure out any consistent logic behind it.

 
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meilodasreh said:
Speaking of zero point:

My main weapons are both ones from the trader, because they are better than the crafted ones.

My quality4 compound bow which I got as a reward from a trader quite some time ago, has slightly better damage and the same amount of mod slots than the quality5 one I was finally able to craft, after finding the necessary magazines.

Not the greatest moment I had in the game 😐

Btw is the amount of modslots in weapons and armor a fixed value for each item?

Can anybody provide a list where I can look up how many there can be for each weapon/armor type and quality?

Couldn't yet figure out any consistent logic behind it.
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Number of mod slots were changed with the latest patch and if you started your game before you will have a mix of older and newer items, with the older items unchanged. Thus you would see inconsistent results.

Also TFP seems to have made a mistake so that tier3 weapons do not have uniform mod slots at the moment.

Philipp said:
Regarding the current discussion about balancing: Possibly more weapons should be added besides adjusting how items are acquired and when.  The same also applies to a larger number of more dangerous zombies and animals.  If I have more weapons / zombies available I can balance the game more.  At the moment there seems to be a quick jump from "beginning" to "endgame".  The Gyrocopter serves as an example: it is actually "Endgame" and can be reached late.  But I couldn't think of anything that is as difficult and late to reach as the gyrocopter in the game
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Effort to implement:

Balance magazine frequency: *

Balance the trader:  **

Add new zombies:  ************************

Add new weapons: ************************

😉

 
Late feedback...

Bicycle coasting....perfect!

Bicylce and minibike damage seem appropriate. Definitely makes me think twice about plowing through the Wasteland.

Loot container changes...great! This does indeed boost immersion. Small request...currently, when you loot one side in a aisle of shelves or some bookcases, you also loot the opposite side (same in the previous alpha) That feels weird. If changing that would mean too much loot, just reduce the percentage of shelves populated with loot to balance.

Also...given that we're on a never-ending quest for literature, it'd be good to update the old bookcase containers to clear their shelves when looted (or is this intentional to allow some loot respawn?).

Your new POI's and overhauls look sweet. It feels different out there!

Even playing with 25% loot, zombie drops have the possibility of being amazing. It's not overkill, but when a bag does drop, there's a feeling of glee!

-Arch Necromancer Morloc 💀
 

 
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meganoth said:
Your argument is the same argument he is using for crafting, if he never can craft a better weapon than he has, then there is zero point in buying or searching for magazines. We players get a lot of dukes from quests and there is no "going out of your way" to quest. Quests rewards are so good that there is no **in-game** reason to NOT do them, you have a good chance for OP items for nothing and on top the money to buy sometimes OP items from the trader stock. And with lots of dukes to spend buying is as cheap as crafting a good weapon.
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Yes I can see the comparison you're making there, but I would add to it, by saying that I do think the trader should be able to offer better things than you can craft - bear in mind, that you can craft whatever you want, whenever you like, dependant only really on your resources (which aren't difficult to get, wrench a few cars, loot magazines, do some mining - all very easy tasks)... Questing is more of a challenge, you are spending ammo, risking your life, taking time out of the day, and obviously getting paid for it, but you can still only select one loot reward for each quest (or two when a tier is completed - which btw I do think should be extended out, like a week of tier 1 or something - if they're aiming for around 4 weeks plus, then 1 tier per week makes some sort of sense with the tier 6 being the hardcore endgame to do after that time), and you're still limited to what you can buy from the trader either having it in stock, and the amount of dukes you've saved up, and perhaps some perks and other items to help make things more affordable.  So there's far more investment in that, so you'd expect something better.

Now just to be clear, I'm not saying it's not unbalanced at all, all I'm saying is that it's not as dramatic as people are making out, I think it's more of a slight issue than a major one.  I'm also trying to give a counter balance to the argument, cos we've all seen it before, where some loud voices speak up in the forums, then something gets nerfed to hell lol.

 
icehot said:
I do think the trader should be able to offer better things than you can craft
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I agree on this. Its much more believable that a trader (in a compound) will have all sorts of shiny things you could possibly not be near able to craft. Imagine going to a car lot when you're still riding a bicycle and all they sell is bicycles. You expect them to have cars and some you cannot afford, not "come back next week and its all motorcycles and a few super bicycles... all at reasonable prices for you!"

in a way, to me its the "game economy" that would be better served by balancing things out.  If you want a high tier uncraftable item in the first few days youre gonna need to work a lot of jobs to get the dukes to pay for it.

Someone on here mentioned a system where you cannot repair anything you cant craft, and that seems like an added bonus of balancing, should you get/buy/find a really cool higher tier item. Sure: use it for a bit and then its done *until* you can repair it or sell it. Having "1 repair kit for almost everything" is kinda OP as well for balancing IMHO (though i haven't looked at the repair kits/parts/mechanics of weapons/vehicles in a21 yet, i think even if you have a proper repair kit, if its above your craft level too much you cannot repair it even with repair kits/parts)

if the repair kits hobbled you for high tier item "forever use" and economy were balanced a bit more (high tier items super high prices, low at reasonable prices), then you can have the "I found a t6 machine gun!" On day 1 and its ok because its not your "forever i have this working t6 machine gun" all game long.

Sure, in MP (joining an existing server) anyone can just hand you OP items, but as long as everyone starts in day 1, if someone can craft and repair high tier machine guns (as example) then cool, you have to beg, barter,or befriend them to get that bonus for yourself as they hand/repair/sell you higher things (like a personal trader :)  else loot or work with the vanilla traders.

 
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