PC Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[Blake_]

Only when @unholyjoe himself is in the water...

In seriousness though, the water voxel overhaul has a narrow and specific scope. Performance, works with terrain and submerged blocks and decorations, doesn't result in holes or Moses partitions, and looks good.

Yeah, but it has HUGE potential for gameplay : underwater zombie fish, sunken POI (that would require a special water-breathing equipment), or floating POI, boats (both wooden and motorized maybe?), underwater/ water quests, underwater resources/loot, underwater player animations, etc etc.

Currently, there is none of that, but I'm a bit hopeful IF the new water is as good as you paint it.

 

[NukemDed]

also... water is still WIP and no there are no fish, no large sea monsters or crocodiles.

small sea monsters confirmed

 

[Neminsis]

What would be the stack size of boiled water and teas then? 1 or 10 like A20?

I think that all the stack sizes for drinks are already fine. I don't think that I've ever even had to use more than 3 drinks a day and it only got that high because of occasionally needing to use painkillers etc. I assume that this is average considering where the production cap on the dew collectors has been set.

The stack sizes for jars and murky water are both 125 presently. Glue and duct tape are both 500. A stack of exploding crossbow bolts is 75. You can go through 4 stacks of crossbow bolts on a horde night. That's going to require 250 glue.  In 7 days time 6 dew collectors will produce 302 water, leaving you 50 for food and drink. One dew collector will produce 50 in that time. Which means that you'd need a minimum of 3 in order to produce a single stack of exploding bolts per week with a little left over for repair kits.

These are really tight margins when you can't even be sure that you can build 6 of them. On a large map you can get all 5 traders so you could get 5 filters as quest rewards guaranteed, but we know this isn't true for the smaller maps, that RNG is a fickle @%$#, and by the time you've mapped out that many traders it's pretty much time to restart.
 

Water sources like sewers are able to keep you hydrated

I was talking about the preferences of my co-players and that they would not simply drink murky water unless that were by far the best option.

Take those statements together and replace "best" for "only" option and you quickly realize that people won't be using those sources beyond emergency situations which reduces their value to nil after the first week since they're very rarely found near useful pois and there's still the risk of dysentery. 

 

 

[Neminsis]

Everyone should. I’ve never claimed to speak for everyone like some around here do…

I do appreciate that greatly, but we're also talking in an atmosphere where some will get super defensive when any criticisms are brought up about the game, and those with the obvious bias of "any change is good change" I mean in the first 24 hours after the announcement I watched two heavily invested modders have their concerns dismissed out of hand because 'they were just mad that it caused more work for them' and then when I try to continue the conversation it gets moved into an out of the way corner so as not to disturb the regular folk. Don't get me wrong, I've found very good conversation here and I feel like my thoughts have more value in that a place was made for the discussion, but it is a tacit admission of the sourness of the main thread. 

So, I guess that's me venting and also saying thanks.

But it happens that the creator of an idea is often too "close" to it to see the drawbacks. 

And the same is true for any developer. This is the whole point of user feedback. 

 

[Roland]

I do appreciate that greatly, but we're also talking in an atmosphere where some will get super defensive when any criticisms are brought up about the game, and those with the obvious bias of "any change is good change" I mean in the first 24 hours after the announcement I watched two heavily invested modders have their concerns dismissed out of hand because 'they were just mad that it caused more work for them' and then when I try to continue the conversation it gets moved into an out of the way corner so as not to disturb the regular folk. Don't get me wrong, I've found very good conversation here and I feel like my thoughts have more value in that a place was made for the discussion, but it is a tacit admission of the sourness of the main thread. 

So, I guess that's me venting and also saying thanks.

If it makes you feel any better, any time long discussions start forming that do not directly involve developers, they get moved out of the dev diary. There were 125 posts moved-- not just your conversation and not because anything is sour. Criticisms are still posted in the dev diary along with expressions of support. Only when long conversations evolve do those things get moved. When things get all hot topic questions get lost in the mix and normal people stop reading after two pages of arguing. 

Staff read this thread too.

 

[Neminsis]

That's where it is right now and there may be more minor changes by time you get your hands on it but it definitely isn't going to be reversed before the larger population gets it and plays it. The removal of empty jars has literally been years in the works and simply delayed time and time again. That is not likely to change again.

I didn't honestly expect anything to be reversed, at least not until after the testing phase but I wanted to get my thoughts in while they were still fresh, and no, I didn't expect TFP to even listen to what I have to say. I expect that some of it might trickle upward at some point though, especially if it spreads to the larger community. I know that they're going to be paying more attention to telemetry, but I also know that telemetry isn't going to catch the edge cases. They're going to focus on the bog stock average as being the area of greatest appeal and that makes perfect sense.

That said, of course limiting stack size on jars wouldn't solve the problem alone. I'm considering it in conjunction with the changes that are already slated, and perhaps making jars uncraftable as wel,l to give them an actual value. More as a supplementary to the new system rather than a replacement for it. 

Hydration really isn't the issue as much as it is glue, and glue in large enough quantities to handle all of the potential crafting needs. 

 

[Roland]

Hydration really isn't the issue as much as it is glue, and glue in large enough quantities to handle all of the potential crafting needs

And I think your play testing feedback on glue production will be important once you get your hands on it. That could lead to changes like a more efficient version being added higher up in the Forge Ahead ladder or perhaps a mod to add to it that allows for a fourth or fifth slot for water if it turns out the existing collectors just can't support reasonable glue production.

 

[Neminsis]

If it makes you feel any better, any time long discussions start forming that do not directly involve developers, they get moved out of the dev diary.

No, what makes me feel better is that the effort is made to allow the conversation in the first place. 

 

[Jost Amman]

If snowballs ever get removed it's no big loss since we can throw rocks at our friends lol...

Although, I would fully support poop being re added to the game to fling at our friends.  Maybe give it the sticky property like c4....

Hopefully people won't expect to turn poop into murky water > boiled water, etc. for realism sake...

Ehrm... fortunately, you're a gentleman, so my joke just completely passed over your head... now I feel embarrassed.

But for the sake of clarity, I'll explain.

POCKET951 replied to Roland like this:

He is totally aware of the holes left by moving crafting over to magazines. We will have to wait and see how he decides to fill them.

If you say stuff like this you might arouse @SnowDog1942 from his sleep. tread carefully Roland

So, the only way to avoid @SnowDog1942 to become "aroused", is to remove the "snow balls" from the snow dog. (ok, ok, it's a terrible joke I admit...)  out:

 

[Neminsis]

And I think your play testing feedback on glue production will be important once you get your hands on it. That could lead to changes like a more efficient version being added higher up in the Forge Ahead ladder or perhaps a mod to add to it that allows for a fourth or fifth slot for water if it turns out the existing collectors just can't support reasonable glue production.

Now I really like those ideas.

My worry again though is that telemetry isn't going to pick up the edge cases. I mean, what percentage of the user base is even going to want that high of production? As it is you can survive just off looting and the trader for that target 60 hours. You can get an entire horde base worth of concrete blocks in a single air drop. For all the other production stations you can get by comfortably with just one of each and only use them rarely. From what I know of people, they're going to gravitate towards doing the bare minimum while a sparse few will actually attempt to scale things up and go past that first 60 hours. 
 

 

[POCKET951]

Ehrm... fortunately, you're a gentleman, so my joke just completely passed over your head... now I feel embarrassed.

But for the sake of clarity, I'll explain.

POCKET951 replied to Roland like this:

So, the only way to avoid @SnowDog1942 to become "aroused", is to remove the "snow balls" from the snow dog. (ok, ok, it's a terrible joke I admit...)  out:

Ahh some post nut clarity

 

[RipClaw]

Then it was fine tuning and balancing from there. In the first iteration the uncraftable part of the dew collector was a blue barrel but that later changed to a water filter. Other changes that followed were to change loot so that pure water could no longer be found-- only murky water and that a pot was to be required once again to boil murky water into pure water. Finally, the game was reverted once again to allow players to be able to drink water directly from water sources.

I wonder if adding a step to the water purification process would not have had the same effect?

For example, a workstation that filters muddy water instead of collecting clean water. You would then have muddy water, which was collected from a lake or pond and must first be filtered to get water in which there are still microorganisms that you kill by boiling the water.

 

[meganoth]

I think that all the stack sizes for drinks are already fine. I don't think that I've ever even had to use more than 3 drinks a day and it only got that high because of occasionally needing to use painkillers etc. I assume that this is average considering where the production cap on the dew collectors has been set.

Ok, but then I really don't see how your proposed system can have a similar result of water being scarce at the beginning of the game than the A21 changes. As Roland said a long time ago, find a few jars and thirst in the first few days is already a non-problem. You may have to walk to a water source a bit more often than you want but with say 3 drinks per day and say 6 jars one walk to the water source keeps you hydrated for 2 days.

The stack sizes for jars and murky water are both 125 presently. Glue and duct tape are both 500. A stack of exploding crossbow bolts is 75. You can go through 4 stacks of crossbow bolts on a horde night. That's going to require 250 glue.  In 7 days time 6 dew collectors will produce 302 water, leaving you 50 for food and drink. One dew collector will produce 50 in that time. Which means that you'd need a minimum of 3 in order to produce a single stack of exploding bolts per week with a little left over for repair kits.

These are really tight margins when you can't even be sure that you can build 6 of them. On a large map you can get all 5 traders so you could get 5 filters as quest rewards guaranteed, but we know this isn't true for the smaller maps, that RNG is a fickle @%$#, and by the time you've mapped out that many traders it's pretty much time to restart.

But this game has a lot of mechanisms without guarantees, that is part of almost any survival game. If you want to be safe that anything you plan will work then you have to play a deterministic game. The task of a game developer is not to solve your problems but to put you in front of interesting problems, like "Where can I find another filter, I need one more" or "I don't have enough expl. bolts for horde night, what weapon do I use for the rest of the night or do I invest in more traps?"

So it isn't guaranteed that you can produce 75 expl. crossbows a week? Well, adapt. From past experiences I would guess that the game will be balanced so that new players will get hardly enough of those collectors and experienced players will complain about finding too many in the game too early, making it trivial.

Sure, it is possible that they botch the balance, even with a handful of testers already providing feedback, but that is where the EA players come into play and give additional feedback.

Take those statements together and replace "best" for "only" option and you quickly realize that people won't be using those sources beyond emergency situations which reduces their value to nil after the first week since they're very rarely found near useful pois and there's still the risk of dysentery.

Sure, but the first few days WILL be an emergency situation (if Roland account of his play is to be believed). In the later game you might have a water purifier mod and maybe found too few filters so you want to keep most of the dew water for glue and exploding crossbows.

In the paragraph above you fear you get too few dew collectors for your setup, here you promise me water value will be nil after the first week. That can't be both true. Is that fear of the unexpected?

 

[meganoth]

And the same is true for any developer. This is the whole point of user feedback. 

Oh yes. Undoubtedly they also make mistakes and there even have been developers who objectively destroyed a game completely with wrong decisions. But normally a developer will at least do 2 things: Discuss changes in a group, more eyes spot more problems. And let it get tested, either by internal testers or in EA additionally by thousands of players.

What we do now is no testing. What we do is theorizing (the same that is done in the internal group meeting). It has some value, but the real testing can only start once A21 has gone experimental.

And at this time the developer is not looking for alternative ways to solve what he wants to be solved, as he has already implemented one solution he thinks can handle it and wants this tried out before dropping it.

 

[RipClaw]

What we do now is no testing. What we do is theorizing (the same that is done in the internal group meeting). It has some value, but the real testing can only start once A21 has gone experimental.

Well, that's the only thing we can do as ordinary players right now. And since we don't know what was discussed in the team meetings, and what ramifications were discussed or perhaps forgotten, all we can really do is have the exact same discussion again, even though it might be annoying for those who were at the team meetings.

 

[meganoth]

I do appreciate that greatly, but we're also talking in an atmosphere where some will get super defensive when any criticisms are brought up about the game, and those with the obvious bias of "any change is good change" I mean in the first 24 hours after the announcement I watched two heavily invested modders have their concerns dismissed out of hand because 'they were just mad that it caused more work for them'

So lets be clear, the ones with the obvious bias have brought no arguments and just dismissed the modders?

Should the modders opinion get no scrutiny? Is their opinion better than the one of other players? Do we have to adress them as "Your Majesty" ?

Should anyone here really accept Guppycur's silly argument that this was done because of console just because he is an excellent modder? He made that argument just to provoke a reaction, by the way. 

Interestingly the modders are in the same place as the developers when it comes to their own mod. Have you tried to argue with one of them that his newest change isn't a good idea and proposed your own solution? I don't think he would throw away his work immediately and use a different method without any discussion about merits of the solutions. He might actually recommend to first play the mod with the new changes and then provide feedback?

and then when I try to continue the conversation it gets moved into an out of the way corner so as not to disturb the regular folk. Don't get me wrong, I've found very good conversation here and I feel like my thoughts have more value in that a place was made for the discussion, but it is a tacit admission of the sourness of the main thread. 

So, I guess that's me venting and also saying thanks.

And the same is true for any developer. This is the whole point of user feedback. 

Well, that's the only thing we can do as ordinary players right now. And since we don't know what was discussed in the team meetings, and what ramifications were discussed or perhaps forgotten, all we can really do is have the exact same discussion again, even though it might be annoying for those who were at the team meetings.

Yes. It would have been much better in my opinion if some dev or Roland had immediately posted a summary of how such a change was decided and especially what the reasons were for it. (And for bonus points even some other solutions discussed and why they were not taken)

Imagine Roland had posted that at the time the change was revealed:

 

[Uncle Al]

Now I really like those ideas.

My worry again though is that telemetry isn't going to pick up the edge cases. I mean, what percentage of the user base is even going to want that high of production? As it is you can survive just off looting and the trader for that target 60 hours. You can get an entire horde base worth of concrete blocks in a single air drop. For all the other production stations you can get by comfortably with just one of each and only use them rarely. From what I know of people, they're going to gravitate towards doing the bare minimum while a sparse few will actually attempt to scale things up and go past that first 60 hours. 
 

This is a fair point because heavy use of exploding arrows/bolts skews your glue consumption like nothing else in the game.  In playthroughs I use them, I have to actively manage my glue supplies even in late game.  In any other playstyle, glue becomes inconsequential towards the end of your early game at worst.

If the new paradigm is going to make water, and thus glue, consequential up to late midgame, there's a risk exploding missiles become untenable until very late game, if even then.

Neminsis is correct that analytics might not show what's happening as from everything I've seen explosive archery is not a very popular option, despite being an excellent way of making archery viable for hordes.

Frankly it's probably better to remove the duct tape requirement from explosive missiles as part of the new water paradigm.  Otherwise you're trying to balance water to make it at the desired level of scarcity for two groups of people who have insanely different water requirements.  Everyone using water at roughly comparable rates (hydration and repair kits mostly) except for dedicated archers who use about six times as much is very, very hard to balance.  The most likely outcome is regular explosive bolt/arrow use becomes unviable, and that would be a shame.

 

[meganoth]

This is a fair point because heavy use of exploding arrows/bolts skews your glue consumption like nothing else in the game.  In playthroughs I use them, I have to actively manage my glue supplies even in late game.  In any other playstyle, glue becomes inconsequential towards the end of your early game at worst.

If the new paradigm is going to make water, and thus glue, consequential up to late midgame, there's a risk exploding missiles become untenable until very late game, if even then.

Neminsis is correct that analytics might not show what's happening as from everything I've seen explosive archery is not a very popular option, despite being an excellent way of making archery viable for hordes.

Frankly it's probably better to remove the duct tape requirement from explosive missiles as part of the new water paradigm.  Otherwise you're trying to balance water to make it at the desired level of scarcity for two groups of people who have insanely different water requirements.  Everyone using water at roughly comparable rates (hydration and repair kits mostly) except for dedicated archers who use about six times as much is very, very hard to balance.  The most likely outcome is regular explosive bolt/arrow use becomes unviable, and that would be a shame.

A friend of mine is heavily critizising the direction of 7D2D because he feels that (random) looting is just too central to the game now. The disadvantage being that the player ultimately has no meaningful decisions anymore. He has to take what he finds.

That you can find fitting magazines and parts in specific POIs is one important step to give the player some control back. I hope the same happens with the dew collector, i.e. there should be specific but maybe hard to find places where you can find filters (or just a lot of water) much more frequently. This would give anyone wanting a lot of water a strategy to follow.

 

[Matt115]

Oh yes. Undoubtedly they also make mistakes and there even have been developers who objectively destroyed a game completely with wrong decisions. But normally a developer will at least do 2 things: Discuss changes in a group, more eyes spot more problems. And let it get tested, either by internal testers or in EA additionally by thousands of players.

What we do now is no testing. What we do is theorizing (the same that is done in the internal group meeting). It has some value, but the real testing can only start once A21 has gone experimental.

And at this time the developer is not looking for alternative ways to solve what he wants to be solved, as he has already implemented one solution he thinks can handle it and wants this tried out before dropping it.

Well : theorizing is good because well some decision are just bad before even testing.  Well everything depends on idea. Some of them are worthy to check some of them sounds too bad

A friend of mine is heavily critizising the direction of 7D2D because he feels that (random) looting is just too central to the game now. The disadvantage being that the player ultimately has no meaningful decisions anymore. He has to take what he finds.

That you can find fitting magazines and parts in specific POIs is one important step to give the player some control back. I hope the same happens with the dew collector, i.e. there should be specific but maybe hard to find places where you can find filters (or just a lot of water) much more frequently. This would give anyone wanting a lot of water a strategy to follow.

Because he is right. And wrong in this same time. looting is too central to the game now - because is not rewarding anymore.

Then: oh maybe in this backpack is pistol... oo nice AK.  I will check this cabin. Yep few junks maybe next time will be better

Now: i have this and this gamestage so i will get again another hunting rifle. whatever. Why i should check X if i know what i will probably get?

Plus

 then : i found iron! okay now i will mine a lot to make steel items

now: now i have iron... yeah at least i can make door because making tools is pointless now because i have steel parts only to find not craftable. so why i would sit in mine if i can do traders quest

 

[Uncle Al]

A friend of mine is heavily critizising the direction of 7D2D because he feels that (random) looting is just too central to the game now. The disadvantage being that the player ultimately has no meaningful decisions anymore. He has to take what he finds.

That you can find fitting magazines and parts in specific POIs is one important step to give the player some control back. I hope the same happens with the dew collector, i.e. there should be specific but maybe hard to find places where you can find filters (or just a lot of water) much more frequently. This would give anyone wanting a lot of water a strategy to follow.

Very good point.  The ability to target looting is crucial to player agency.

I believe the original 'rare' part for the dew collector was going to be a plastic barrel - presumably an intact one would have been a rare drop from the water barrels scattered around.  That would have made targetting warehouses a viable 'get a lot of water' strategy.  I'm hopeful there's a logical, targettable loot container for decent water filter drop chances.  Water coolers don't really work as they're not concentrated in any particular POI type.