PC Alpha 21 Discussion Overflow

[zztong]

Is it me or are the towns full of open spaces? A few parks are fun but there are fewer residential buildings as they seem to be replaced with lakes parks and fields. Also the 1st tier missions seem 90 percent to be passin gas stations. tried 4 world generations and had the same experience

I saw similar in a few test worlds. My guess is it is either a bug or it relates to some kind of limit in RWG. My line of thinking on the matter is that maybe RWG hit some kind of max number of Tiles that it wanted to place of each district and just stopped with a few open spots left.

I think TFP made Pass-n-Gas POIs for each district and settlement, so they're likely to be common. There's another factor at play related to how RWG picks POIs for the markers on the Tiles. They implemented a weights and bias system along with a new algorithm that I think makes it more likely RWG will use more of the POIs. That's going to be complicated by all the districts and the markers available on each Tile, the number of POIs that fit that filter, the weights and biases, restrictions about how close a POI can be to its duplicate, and so forth. With so many different factors it can be hard to put it all together in your mind.

Foremost on my mind is the shortage of Tier 1s in a country town near where I spawned in on the NAGG server. I want to understand what happened there.

 

[Hacka]

Je ne sais pas si c'est intentionnel ou non, mais mon personnage a été réinitialisé au niveau 1 lorsque j'ai chargé mon jeu A21 après la mise à jour vers b317. Je n'étais pas très défoncé, donc ça ne devrait pas être un gros problème, et du bon côté, je ne suis plus infecté à 40 %.

Bonjour, j'ai également eu cette mauvaise surprise...
Vue l'annonce de la mise à jour b317, je pense que nous n'avons pas d'autre choix que de lancer une nouvelle sauvegarde, dommage 

 

[junta]

I am happy to see the critical hits now back in game. Finally dogs and regular zeds easily bring bleeding and others debuffs especially without armor.

But... did you decide to compensate this with ridicilous buff to Healing factor perk? 35sec per 1 hp at first level? And 5 second/1hp at last one??? Is this some kind of MMO or Diablo in zombie setting or what? Why somebody needs to craft (and invest perks/magazines) healings with such robust regeneration outside of pvp? These are rhetorical questions, the perk definitely should be nerfed, unless you are heading to "looter shooter" concept instead of zombie survival.

 

[Lokeus]

Well then... i played for nearly 15 hours now the new alpha and have to say, all in all i am very satisfied when comparing to A20. Yes there is still some polishing needed, but it works very well for me, but yes, difficulty raised markably but do not have a big problem with that as previous version was silly easy, you could play with only melee weapons and a bit support by automat turrets and/or explosion on the highest difficulties. The zeds become a real threat again and you have to watch out for your steps. Also the mechanics for fulfill thirst ... are not logical but it`s a better challenge now to fulfill this need as it was too easy to fulfill it before. The new graphic improvements are very well implemented with a few exceptions (e.g.: new fireplace looks neat but not well fitting into the world with its weird underground and clean stone textures. It should reflect the visuals of collectible stones and should have a neutral burned underground). Was sceptic about disappearing loot piles and bird nests but together with the switching visual state of "untouched" and "empty" it really improve the immersion as you can note only by looking around where you have been and where not. Mentioning bird nests: Very good new balance of finding eggs and potatoes helps to fulfill hunger at the very beginning, missing water pushed me to drink more murky water what results in diarrhea, but you can live and play with this state, or in other words: you are can survive without any problem. Murky water also gets some nice value when you are finally able to cook into clear water and to get even more out of it you will think more about making tea out of it, as you won`t find too much of it. Together with vending machine and water collectors water is nicely limited and a worthy item now, no more inflation, thanks TFP! New map generator is not perfect but though more satisfying as before, started near a trader which was located in the wilderness and rest place with some other cabins around. Very very cool, even though next city wasn`t too hard to find, but it required to make some smart logistically thoughts for my first days, i like that very much. Skills: Better than before as there are much more legitime ways of playing, but though there are some things i still do not like very much. I like lockpicking, but with better opening T1=10%, T2=20%, T3=30% i see still much more better ways to invest. What i DOES like: It make sense now to rely on only one stat, get those weapon and supprt skills and you will get a more unique character specialised in on of those trees. For my first try i specialized in agility as the higher difficulty forced me to play more sneaky than before, so i also skilled bow and pistol. I only wear light armors, skilled also higher sneak damage and better general sneaking together with parcour. I will max out these at first, but also invested into better ressource collecting and lockpick T1. Already now i am very hyped to try another attribute tree, like this mechanic very much. Keep on going! Great job TFP!

Forget one critic: Please improve the sounds. Some of them aren`t cool and some of them are just much too loud... OUCH

Whoops a random snake in the grass bite me in my feet

 

[meganoth]

I am happy to see the critical hits now back in game. Finally dogs and regular zeds easily bring bleeding and others debuffs especially without armor.

But... did you decide to compensate this with ridicilous buff to Healing factor perk? 35sec per 1 hp at first level? And 5 second/1hp at last one??? Is this some kind of MMO or Diablo in zombie setting or what? Why somebody needs to craft (and invest perks/magazines) healings with such robust regeneration outside of pvp? These are rhetorical questions, the perk definitely should be nerfed, unless you are heading to "looter shooter" concept instead of zombie survival.

There was no change to healing factor compared to previous alphas. Also healing factor does not give hit points for free: You are paying each regained health point with food, i.e. you are actually getting hungry faster if you have healing factor and are below max health.

 

[meganoth]

It interacts with the Strength attribute and every single point in Strength makes the shotgun better. The drone does not interact with the intellect attribute nor the Robotics perk line despite it being the "robotic drone"

Sorry, my mistake. I always misread "drone" as an alias for all the robotic weapons. I actually called up wikipedia just now to educate me what "drone" really means.

Hence, the drone gets literally nothing from the Int tree, where as the Shotgun does get damage directly from the strength tree, as well as having a dedicated perk in the strength line

I mean yeah I covered that in my post in like the third sentence. The point is you should still just have an on attribute weapon for consistency and there's no reason why it shouldn't besides just that it doesn't have one. It obviously wouldn't have to have damage on par with the other tier 3's, but it should still have something you can hold in your hands for ranged combat to round out the attribute

But when that weapon has subpar damage what is the difference to an unperked rifle or shotgun then?

If INT is really underpowered then the perk advantages for the turret should be slowly increased until it fits. 

But I don't think it is. You seem to want that the INT player is on par with other attributes in combat. But that is not the goal for INT: INT plays differently and in most alphas INT was the absolute killer attribute because of the trader perks. INT combat may not be balanced but the attribute as a whole is very much balanced with the other attributes if not actually OP. 

Y'all also ignored the fact that int is also missing it's tier 0 pipe ranged weapon that the others get. There's no reason why it *should* be janky just for the sake of it. ATM it's honestly a noob trap where new players start the game and invest it not realizing you don't even have an early game weapon for the entire first week besides a single melee weapon

 

[Chorsair]

Hello! My friend who is playing with me is getting the error message "object reference not set to an instance of an object..." and cannot connect to my hosted game. We tried it on a generated map and also on the 8k map and at first it works fine, we play for a day and after logging off and when we want to play the next day he cannot join my hosted game while getting this error. This is new since the Alpha 21 with both versions.

Any help pls ?

 

[BFT2020]

Wow! I love the sound of that trader change although I've gotten a bit addicted to the magazine bundle reward so it might sting when I rip off the bandage but I think I really need to rip off that bandage. Link me to that modlet when it's done!

Do you change Daring Adventurer to increase the Dukes reward or just leave it alone emasculated?

I left it alone.  Also didn't boost the overall dukes you get from missions, but that might change as I made a huge lot of changes overall to increase the difficulty by slowing down the traders.  I did increase their ammo stock numbers to compensate for not having them as awards.

Tier completion awards were also removed, though you get dukes as awards instead.

Do you want it now or when A21 goes into stable?  Haven't released any of my modlets yet as I been waiting for stable to drop so I play experimental as vanilla, but for one of my favorite moderators, I might release earlier than planned.

 

[meganoth]

Hello! My friend who is playing with me is getting the error message "object reference not set to an instance of an object..." and cannot connect to my hosted game. We tried it on a generated map and also on the 8k map and at first it works fine, we play for a day and after logging off and when we want to play the next day he cannot join my hosted game while getting this error. This is new since the Alpha 21 with both versions.

Any help pls ?

Help can be found in the "General Support" section. Be sure to read the thread that tells you to read it before posting

 

[sillls]

I have been using a Pregen map. I can see that the map does look much better, but I am having issues objects popping up like ghost. 

I will be on my bicycle looking for birds nest and they don't show up until after I passed them. I am not even going full speed. 

One time I heard rather than seen a bunch of small concreate blocks as I hit them. They appeared after I stopped. 

Other small objects are acting the same way. 

Sometimes the game has problems with bigger objects as well. Like grocery carts, cars and even tractor trailers. They just don't show up till you get close to them. They seem to show up like ghost. 

Shadows also don't show up till I get close but that is an old issue. 

Not sure if Navezgane map is any different in this regard as I have not played it since Alpha-21 experimental dropped. 

Is there some setting that I can change to make this issue go away? 

Thanks. 

 

[Khalagar]

But when that weapon has subpar damage what is the difference to an unperked rifle or shotgun then?

A couple of things actually

1. It feels better when your perk points are actually affecting your gameplay. Currently if you walk into 7 days all bright eyed and busy tailed and spend your first 5 points in the intellect attribute, that gets you a whopping . . . nothing the first week besides some pipe baton damage, with the pipe baton still being one of the weakest melee weapons. The other attributes will all increase the damage of your primary weapons and  give you some gain for your investment. Int doesn't do that, it is a weird delayed pay off where you get basically nothing early game and not a ton for late game when it gets out shined by other options
   
2. It would give you something that actually increases your loot draw chances. The robotics line doesn't say anything about making it more likely to find robotics parts and magazines in loot, and in my current A21 I can't tell that I'm finding anything int related in loot more often at all besides pipe batons. The other ranged weapons don't mention it either, so it could just be a text saving thing, but the issue is still that because there's no T0 robotics stuff it means you just outright *can't* find stuff relating to it until your game stage is high enough to start dropping t1 items
   
3. It wouldn't have to be as subpar as a completely unperked weapon, it just wouldn't have to be as strong as a fully perked T3 weapon on it's own.
   
4. The suggested Pipe Baton change is so that the steel variant pipe baton actually benefits from it's own perk. The pipe baton can't stun, so all those perks to increase stun chance are completely useless on it and it's late game damage is nowhere near enough to use it over a real late game melee weapon. If there was a steel variant that had better damage than the laughably low stun baton damage + the ability to stun then it would make it so your perk investments aren't wasted on affects that the weapon can't use. It's very, very weird that a weapon doesn't even benefit from the main feature of it's own perk line
   

I still like the blow pipe idea for a ranged weapon, they could even take that all the way to t3 with a primitive wooden one, an iron one, and a steel one. Rather than outright direct damage on par with an M60, it could just have some utility like a poison damage DoT similar to bleed, or ability to craft various ammo types similar to the bow and let it do fire damage, or a chance to sleep on hit similar to a stun etc.

Sleep darts making use of aloe + turret ammo or something could give it a pretty neat niche to stall zombies until they are damaged, and let it help support the whole "set up a mobile bunker" play style

Stuff like that perfectly fits the Int play style while also making the attribute less of a noob trap for the early game and less meh for late game. Especially now that Robotic Turrets take lead for ammo. I have no clue what the goal of that change was, and didn't even see that listed in the patch notes, but it's a weird one imo. Late game when the junk turrets are very very casually chewing through 2,000+ ammo on a single small PoI that's a freaking LOT of lead

It's not even fully about making Int better, although IMO it is pretty weak over all for the amount of investment needed compared to just using a shotgun or pipe bomb to clear a room of zombies faster, easier, and cheaper. A lot of my issues with it is that the perk line is just not cohesive and is confusing to new players who will invest in it not realizing that it's not really a full self contained attribute like the others are, and that it's not very good at all for the first week or so because you won't get anything for your investment

 

[Roland]

I left it alone.  Also didn't boost the overall dukes you get from missions, but that might change as I made a huge lot of changes overall to increase the difficulty by slowing down the traders.  I did increase their ammo stock numbers to compensate for not having them as awards.

Tier completion awards were also removed, though you get dukes as awards instead.

Do you want it now or when A21 goes into stable?  Haven't released any of my modlets yet as I been waiting for stable to drop so I play experimental as vanilla, but for one of my favorite moderators, I might release earlier than planned.

No let’s wait until stable. But drop me a pm when you publish it. 

 

[Trankitas]

Is A22 planned to be a short one? Or we are talking about a 1 year+ build

 

[Riamus]

There was no change to healing factor compared to previous alphas. Also healing factor does not give hit points for free: You are paying each regained health point with food, i.e. you are actually getting hungry faster if you have healing factor and are below max health.

That's not correct.  Level 1 was 1 HP per 90 seconds and the max was 1 HP per 6 seconds.  Now, those are 1 per 35s and 1 per 5s respectively.  When I saw that, I was surprised by the change.  I don't mind it and it does turn it into a perk you might consider using for a change but it has definitely changed.  And free or not, that healing can be very useful and by the time you're using the max perk of it, your food situation is probably stable so you the food cost doesn't matter.

Is A22 planned to be a short one? Or we are talking about a 1 year+ build

They said it would be shorter.  Roland estimated a year even with what they said.  We'll just have to wait and see.  I don't think you can trust their estimated timelines.

 

[Khalagar]

Am I crazy, or are there not several changes that weren't in the patch notes? So far I've noticed Junk turret ammo now uses lead for some reason, and the physician perk now allows a 10% chance instant death per hit with batons which is neat but I don't remember ever being on that perk. I don't remember either of those being in the patch notes lol

Not complaining, but I feel like I'm being gas lit when I read something and then fry my brain trying to remember if that was a thing before

 

[meganoth]

A couple of things actually

1. It feels better when your perk points are actually affecting your gameplay. Currently if you walk into 7 days all bright eyed and busy tailed and spend your first 5 points in the intellect attribute, that gets you a whopping . . . nothing the first week besides some pipe baton damage, with the pipe baton still being one of the weakest melee weapons. The other attributes will all increase the damage of your primary weapons and  give you some gain for your investment. Int doesn't do that, it is a weird delayed pay off where you get basically nothing early game and not a ton for late game when it gets out shined by other options
   

Since INT (AFAIK) was designed to be not a combat centric atttribute it rewards players by investing in utility or money-centric perks first. I am not surprised.

You think players will feel their perk points affecting their game play when they can buy the water filter earlier than other players because they simply get more money out of the quests?

1. It would give you something that actually increases your loot draw chances. The robotics line doesn't say anything about making it more likely to find robotics parts and magazines in loot, and in my current A21 I can't tell that I'm finding anything int related in loot more often at all besides pipe batons. The other ranged weapons don't mention it either, so it could just be a text saving thing, but the issue is still that because there's no T0 robotics stuff it means you just outright *can't* find stuff relating to it until your game stage is high enough to start dropping t1 items
   
2. It wouldn't have to be as subpar as a completely unperked weapon, it just wouldn't have to be as strong as a fully perked T3 weapon on it's own.
   

It doesn't need to be as subpar, but what is the reason for it to be stronger?

I mean, TFP would need to design a complete new weapon line for a weapon whose damage or effectivity at killing zombies has to be less than (effectivity T3 weapon - effectivity 1 turret). I don't think that can be very far from an unperked weapon, if it is stronger at all.

1. The suggested Pipe Baton change is so that the steel variant pipe baton actually benefits from it's own perk. The pipe baton can't stun, so all those perks to increase stun chance are completely useless on it and it's late game damage is nowhere near enough to use it over a real late game melee weapon. If there was a steel variant that had better damage than the laughably low stun baton damage + the ability to stun then it would make it so your perk investments aren't wasted on affects that the weapon can't use. It's very, very weird that a weapon doesn't even benefit from the main feature of it's own perk line
   

I still like the blow pipe idea for a ranged weapon, they could even take that all the way to t3 with a primitive wooden one, an iron one, and a steel one. Rather than outright direct damage on par with an M60, it could just have some utility like a poison damage DoT similar to bleed, or ability to craft various ammo types similar to the bow and let it do fire damage, or a chance to sleep on hit similar to a stun etc.

Sleep darts making use of aloe + turret ammo or something could give it a pretty neat niche to stall zombies until they are damaged, and let it help support the whole "set up a mobile bunker" play style

Stuff like that perfectly fits the Int play style while also making the attribute less of a noob trap for the early game and less meh for late game. Especially now that Robotic Turrets take lead for ammo. I have no clue what the goal of that change was, and didn't even see that listed in the patch notes, but it's a weird one imo. Late game when the junk turrets are very very casually chewing through 2,000+ ammo on a single small PoI that's a freaking LOT of lead

It's not even fully about making Int better, although IMO it is pretty weak over all for the amount of investment needed compared to just using a shotgun or pipe bomb to clear a room of zombies faster, easier, and cheaper.

Again there are other posters here on the forum already claiming INT to be the new meta. Someone even calls it the new baseline to just go with better barter and daring adventurer as fast as you can. INT was never weak, it was just slightly weaker in combat.

You want INT to be like all the others. I don't want that. I want INT to be special.

A lot of my issues with it is that the perk line is just not cohesive and is confusing to new players who will invest in it not realizing that it's not really a full self contained attribute like the others are, and that it's not very good at all for the first week or so because you won't get anything for your investment

 

[Apocalipservice]

Sorry if it's been brought up but are cooking pots rare in the wilderness POIs including cabins? My partner and I were separated by a few KMs and hit around a dozen POIs apart and together but no pots. Loved all the POIs along the long roads - really impressed by some and even the plain cabins look great inside now. So dunno if it was bad luck, cabins don' have pots, or what. [Brutal first game w/ my first "purposeful" dysentery but it was fun.]

 

[BFT2020]

Sorry if it's been brought up but are cooking pots rare in the wilderness POIs including cabins? My partner and I were separated by a few KMs and hit around a dozen POIs apart and together but no pots. Loved all the POIs along the long roads - really impressed by some and even the plain cabins look great inside now. So dunno if it was bad luck, cabins don' have pots, or what. [Brutal first game w/ my first "purposeful" dysentery but it was fun.]

Yes, I found something like 5 or 6 pots in wilderness POIs in my first playthrough before I found the nearest town/city

 

[Apocalipservice]

Yes, I found something like 5 or 6 pots in wilderness POIs in my first playthrough before I found the nearest town/city

Ah, Ok - dayum that was some brutal RNG. Cool, I like starting out in "the wilderness" and glad I don't have to rush to a town. 

 

[iamnuff]

The removal of glass jars is nice, and it actually makes water-gathering feel like something that matters, instead of just churning out 50 stacks of dirty water whenever you want out of nothing but sand and a lake... but it does feel kinda weird. 

I'm currently holed up in The Harrison Residence POI, and i'm strapping dew collectors onto the roof to collect water so I don't die of thirst, but there's a whole swimming pool just outside of the house that I have no way of bottling. 

Like, I can boil dirty water to make clean water (and most of my dirty water seems to be found bafflingly pre-bottled inside toilets) but I have no way to harvest water from my swimming pool, or the lake? 

It's weird. I don't even have a suggestion on how to change it. If we could collect it, then water would be unlimited again, but since we can't, it feels weird. 

The water is right there, but i'm not allowed to use it. 

Speaking of Int-weapons, I agree that they need rounding out with more options. I don't see the need for a whole other weapon-type of blowguns, but the baton needs a Steel Tier

Honestly, the pipe-baton is so much cooler than the stun baton in literally every way, I hope that they replace the iron-tier with something that shares the baton-moveset, instead of being a glorified club with a stun-module on the end. 

As for the Robotic-Turret weapon... You currently have the sledge and the gun-turret. They could do scrap-turret/iron-turret/steet-turret, but I like them all having diffrent uses. Maybe... sledge, blade and gun? With the blade-turret slicing zombie limbs instead of knocking them down? Like a one-armed blade-trap that you carry in your arms?

Or Sledge, Gun and Shotgun? 

Honestly, you could remove craftable shotgun and SMG turrets and have the Int-based Robotic Turret Weapons replace them.

The simplest way to do it, I think, would be to make the Robotic Sledge a 'pipe' quality weapon, make the gun-turret an 'iron' quality weapon and then make the Robotic Drone a 'steel' quality weapon. 

But that only works if you give the Robot Drone a gun. 

Maybe a nailgun? Load nails into it as ammo? Or have it use Dart-trap darts? 

... Actually, a full-auto version of the robotic turret that fires darts as projectiles would be really cool. Especially if you can fire it from your hands as well as deployed in drone-mode. 

Edit: Make the nailgun an int-weapon, boost it's damage to make it combat-worthy. 

It's a steel-tier tool anyway, so by the time you get one it won't be too unbalanced to have a gun that shoots non-bullet ammo and can kill zombos.

Basically like the junk-turret, actually, but without a sentry-mode.