PC Could it be possible to push the experimentals to once per week?

W

willcheat

Member
Currently, with each experimental build, it's necessary to start a new map, otherwise weird stuff happens (too many dogs, not enough zombies, NRE, "stuff").

I'm really happy that we are getting a taste of the new stuff that's being worked on, it's cool to see the new POIs and fixes, but it's been about 4 builds that I haven't gotten to a blood moon, which makes it hard to test anything past the survival of the first few days and the initial scraps you find.

A lot of the changes so far in the experimentals are balancing changes, but those are hard to make an opinion on if we can't see past the first 20 levels before a new wipe is necessary. Could it be possible to limit the experimental updates to once per week? So far B231, B233 and now B238 have been pushed in less than 5 days, all three needing a wipe.

Swinging from no updates in a year to many updates per week takes the pendulum a bit too far in the opposite direction.

Thank you kindly.

Edit : Title should read "Could it be possible to limit the experimentals to once per week", derp

 
Opting out redownloads A16.4. I like A17 and would like to keep trying it out.

I could also make a copy of the game directory, just like the A16.4 mods used to do, but I'm posting this because I just closed my server to drop the quality of the game to medium, booting two of my friends. We went back to start playing again and bam, new update, so we gotta start a new map. That pretty much took the wind outta our sails and we decided to call it quits for tonight. If we know day X is gonna be update day, we can get ready to start a new (or hell, make a copy of the experimental build to have it for later). Surprise updates don't exactly allow this.

 
With the ability to keep your "old" game world throughout the experimental process, I typically only create a new map every couple of builds unless a particular build introduces something pretty significant like b233 did with revamping biome distribution. Yeah, some of the changes take effect, but this way I'm only wiping and starting over every week or so, which is to be expected during experimental. I don't mind, constantly starting new games. Helps me experiment with different tactics and find the current meta more easily before stable is released.

 
Playing B233 on B231 maps made zombie dogs and bears appear everywhere and also caused some weird health healing issues.

Playing B231 on B221 maps gave random NRE issues and other weird stuff

Calling these bugs out is pointless, as the issue is caused by playing an old map with a new build, and is specifically demanded in the bug reporting thread.

I don't mind starting out a new world, but it'd be appreciated if I knew when I'd have to start a new world, and not have it be a bittersweet surprise

 
there have been 4 builds in less than a week. those of us with groups testing and playing 17 cant exactly just upend our life to restart the server every night at midnight 3 nights in a row. i second the weekly wipes and notices too. please either give us a 12 hour notice or do it on a schedule so we can prepare.

 
the point of the experimental builds is to test them....it's kinda what you sign up for when you opt into it in the first place.

I'd much rather they drop a new experimental whenever they need to immediately to make efficient progress towards A17 stable, rather than unnecessarily hold off just so some people who opted into playing the experimental builds can play around in their world a bit longer.

cutting your game short beats delaying the game for everyone. needs of the many and all that

 
I am for the weekly to bi weekly updates.

This is not my first early access game. I am a masochist who loves finding bugs in games and giving feedback. My issue with the constant updates is that i do not get enough time to isolate problems and provide good feedback.

The exception is game breaking things, like absurd hunger(i am cho annoyed with that).

I argue that it takes a week for the community to make an informed decision on a mechanic change. Do we like the new perk system? Do we miss level gates? It is hard to figure these things out with a million changes tossed at us. So a themed change each week, with a focus on our feedback based on each theme would help a lot.

 
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Copy your 7Days installation out of it's Steam folder to anywhere else on your PC and it will never be touched by Steam again.

Other than that, builds get released when they get released, so if you want to play a particular one for a particular length of time, make sure to copy it out.

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Or just disable automatic updates. But it's a vital part of this process... if it didnt go this way, there would just be more broken stuff. It makes complete sense -- saves time for devs and quickens feedback results.

 
The purpose of experimental is to help the developers develop and not to help players play. Sorry. TFP follows one rule and one rule only: It's done when it's done.

Just be glad you are not on the internal testing team. They had to play through all the builds between what you get.

 
The purpose of experimental is to help the developers develop and not to help players play. Sorry. TFP follows one rule and one rule only: It's done when it's done.
Just be glad you are not on the internal testing team. They had to play through all the builds between what you get.
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That's not his point though. He's saying that we don't get time to play and test each build out and report bugs or balance issues if we only get to play the same 6 days over and over.

I'm on the same boat. My group only gets to play on weekends and we've missed 2 builds.

 
That's not his point though. He's saying that we don't get time to play and test each build out and report bugs or balance issues if we only get to play the same 6 days over and over.
I'm on the same boat. My group only gets to play on weekends and we've missed 2 builds.
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I mean they can't wait on everyone to have time to test and report. If they did it would be a month between each release. Again, negating the whole reason for a public unstable build release. They;ve gotten feedback from people doing decent time at it. Last few quick builds had a lot in them, so just test em all out lol.

 
That's not his point though. He's saying that we don't get time to play and test each build out and report bugs or balance issues if we only get to play the same 6 days over and over.
I'm on the same boat. My group only gets to play on weekends and we've missed 2 builds.
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That is a good point. But remember that long term gameplay feedback is going to be able to be collected once A17 is stable-- and those fixes and balances will come in 17.1, 17.2, and so on. Experimental is to get the game initially stable so it can go out to everyone who will also add their feedback.

In my opinion they really just need to get the Mac version sorted out and come up with a decent solution for RWG and then they can go stable which will probably give more like 3-4 weeks between the 17.x for plenty of people to get to really late game and report. Playing the game in Navezgane is great presently.

 
there have been 4 builds in less than a week. those of us with groups testing and playing 17 cant exactly just upend our life to restart the server every night at midnight 3 nights in a row. i second the weekly wipes and notices too. please either give us a 12 hour notice or do it on a schedule so we can prepare.
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Then quite frankly Experimental isn't for you. Id suggest waiting for Stable. Testers sometimes have to start over daily to test new things.

When I was developing Ravenhearst I had to drop people from my test team because some of them started grumbling about having to wipe all the time when I added new content. Testing is not for long term playing, unless a developer specifically requests you go long on a game to get a feel for late game balance.

In Experimental or as a tester in any project you are at the mercy of the projects needs first and foremost.

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That's not his point though. He's saying that we don't get time to play and test each build out and report bugs or balance issues if we only get to play the same 6 days over and over.
I'm on the same boat. My group only gets to play on weekends and we've missed 2 builds.
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This is also true. On the flipside of things tweaking things like player gating, skill point amounts and gamestages can not effectively be done if players are being asked to wipe several times a week.

Im actually all for more frequent updates. I never really expected this many builds but i do appreciate the work that goes into getting them to us. Maybe now we can have a chance to get to mid game a bit further with the holidays coming and all.

 
Then quite frankly Experimental isn't for you. Id suggest waiting for Stable. Testers sometimes have to start over daily to test new things.
When I was developing Ravenhearst I had to drop people from my test team because some of them started grumbling about having to wipe all the time when I added new content. Testing is not for long term playing, unless a developer specifically requests you go long on a game to get a feel for late game balance.
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Just a preface, thank you so much for Ravenhearst. I hope it'll one day come to A17, although I understand that would be a pretty big task.

That said, if TFP asked people playing the experimental to simply pop into dev mode and test all the blocks / pathing / mechanics / whatnot by making a wall of chairs and seeing how the zombies react / driving every vehicule on a drive-track made of every material to see if they act correctly / making sure they didn't accidently give steel the defensive strength of cardboard / generating RWs to see if the algorithm isn't going too wonky, I'd agree with you, and that's what dedicated testers should be doing with every build (preferably with a little checkbox, or even more preferably with actual coded tests).

But the last few builds have been made to balance how the game plays (lvl gating VS skill point cost, food usage, vendor prices, exp gain), which you can't reasonably test by the above test method. You need to sink some time in a game, see if a certain part is way is too easy/too hard and how you can tweak it.

If these experimental aren't for changing the balance of the game, but fixing in-game bugs in order to get the game stable and good to go, then sure, I understand more than one build per week, but then why also change the balancing? If balancing the game is included in the experimental mandate, a week would help with feedback much more and TFP can still work on certain bugs that have been hopping builds (double swing, ammo in nail gun, charismatic nature are some that come to mind).

That said, if the stable build does come out early January, then it'd likely be more trouble to implement this with the whole coding team for 3-4 weeks, in which case yeah, it'd be pointless to change how it is right now, but I can't help but feel as though that 3 - 4 week might be more around 2 - 3 months (Really hope that feeling of mine is wrong).

 
i guess the point the OP is trying to make is how can we tell TFP what the balances are doing to late game if no1 can get past week 1 and lvl 20 i think we can all agree there :)

 
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