PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[toores]

Mostly this is about stupid looking exploits like zombies being permanently stuck running against a waist-high pole block and swinging wildly without a chance to ever actually hit it.
It's perfectly okay to build obstacles for zombies. This is a building, game, duh!

It's not okay if some blocks end up having infinite hit points due to a collision/pathing/AI issue. Issues like that need to be fixed. And yes, I did talk to Fataal about these issues because I know my blocks and which ones zombies... don't like.

Will you find new and other exploits? I have full confidence in you guys! It just won't be as easy as placing a waist-high fence. =)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Finding new exploits is half the fun

But is still have some sympathy for rookies who believe they can destroy stairs and survive on the second floor. Zombies going after walls and collapsing houses will be the biggest suprise IMO.

 

[The Batman]

Keeping it dynamic is fun. Concrete super bunkers on stilts you access by a ramp jump while you shoot the zombies through the iron rails below like fish in a barrel is not.

snip snip

...etc. ...is the way to go.

Zombies that zipline into your base from a nearby tree........

Cough roland lets do this cough

- - - Updated - - -

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. Finding new exploits is half the fun But is still have some sympathy for rookies who believe they can destroy stairs and survive on the second floor. Zombies going after walls and collapsing houses will be the biggest suprise IMO.

I have a picture somewhere of a random house POI with 7 cops spawning inside. GL with not collapsing it

 

[KingSlayerGM]

Yes. It did not work out very well and caused a lot of issues. Gore blocks have been re-designed yet again for a17 already too.

Do you guys remember which alpha it was? I'd like to check it out

 

[The Batman]

Do you guys remember which alpha it was? I'd like to check it out

Alpha 12 or 13 I think?

 

[toores]

Gore blocks have been re-designed yet again for a17 already too.

Care to elaborate?

 

[Jedo]

But is still have some sympathy for rookies who believe they can destroy stairs and survive on the second floor.

In fairness, I didn't know about that until I read about it. I probably would have learned it through playing, but that is to say that the A17 n00bs will learn other means of safety through playing. It shouldn't be that big of a deal.

 

[Gamida]

For the ladder "exploit" what if they weren't stackable?

What if you had to make the ladder in pieces as you do now but you had to combine the amount of pieces to make the length of ladder you wanted and the ladder was a single item that had to start at ground/floor level. If you tried to break the bottom rung you destroyed the whole ladder.

For instance. I have a little horde base I want to use early game. It's 6 blocks high. Instead of being able to make 5 lengths of ladder so it doesn't go all way to ground, I have to make 6 pieces and make them into a 6 block length ladder that I can place on my base. I can't break bottom to keep zombie off base or I break my whole ladder. Now I have to find some way to stop them from climbing on my base. I could box in top of ladder to add a hatch but from what I recall they are going to make zombies able to attack blocks above them. So now I have to actively defend my ladder too.

It would be same for any building. If an apartment building is what I want to climb and it is 40 blocks high I have to make 40 pieces of ladder and find a clear spot on building with no openings or other blocks to stop it to put up my ladder.

This is just something that popped into my head so there may be disadvantages that I haven't thought of but it does seem one way to get around the "exploit" of ladders.

I also have 0 knowledge of how this would be implemented or if it would even be worth the time to do so, so there is also that.

 

[chaosterone]

Its not defined by personal preference though.
Any GOOD game developer HATES to see something exploited to the point of uselessness. Sure it may be fun to the player but a developer sees it very differently. Just because something has been around for so long does not mean it is intended. And making things more difficult to combat is never a bad thing. Im sure fataal and the guys are focusing on closing these exploit gaps as it should be and the game itself will only get stronger for it.

True. But I don't think AI capabilities are yet available to circumvent what players can think up. Fataal and the guys are working hard to get rid of the known "exploits" and I look forward to that. This is a complex game and covering all the gaps will take awhile. I am hopeful they can make this game even better than it is planned and they have my full support in making me change my game style. I just see making the AI creepily smart a difficult task.

 

[SylenThunder]

Care to elaborate?

One of madmoles earlier a17 vids talked about it. They basically turned into suitcases, but it was still a work in progress at that point. I'm not certain where the development ended up going with that, but it is another change to the way things are handled. This will make the 3rd or 4th iteration of corpses. LOL

 

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Great question. I do think I know what you're trying to get across, and I'm happy to offer my perspective.

I think your perspective is very eloquently put, and I agree with most of it, although I disagree in a few places.

For me, balance in this case means insuring that the amount of time & effort you put in is directly related to the amount of payoff you get out. This manifests itself in myriad, often quantifiable ways. If you go mining for ten minutes, you expect a bigger haul than if you'd mined for one minute. A club that cost 600 Dukes should be demonstrably better than a club that cost 300 Dukes. Steel Smithing requires more to unlock than Concrete Mixing, so you expect steel to be better than concrete.
Anything that doesn't follow this relation is a potential cause for concern.

Agreed.

For instance, if an enemy takes extra effort to kill, but doesn't reward you with more experience or better loot, then you'll stick to other enemies if you can avoid that one, and feel ripped off if you can't. Gazz likes to think of this as the player having "no choice" but to go for the other, more lucrative zombies.

Here's the first place where I think we disagree. This is supposed to be a survival game, not a hunt the zombies for XP and loot game (at least by my understanding of the game - sometimes what we get from the devs is rather confused and seems like they want the game to be all things to all people).

So to my mind we shouldn't be being rewarded for killing zombies at all, other than the "reward" of still being alive. Actually fighting zombies should be an activity of last resort, because you failed to avoid them and ended up putting yourself at risk. So I would suggest that you shouldn't be getting loot or XP from killing zombies because that perversely incentivises you to go after them when you should be hiding/fleeing from them.

The loot and xp should be got from building and scavenging, and the zombies should be an obstacle to doing that. The only reason to fight a zombie other than in self defence should be because it's preventing you from building or scavenging - in which case the "reward" for killing it is that you get to do the activity that it was preventing you from doing.

So it is with the tower defense part of the game. If you or I ever reach a point where zombies can never reach us, we have acquired an infinite amount of safety for a finite amount of effort. In the case of breaking a ladder, the time & effort put in for that infinite payoff is very small indeed. Your ladder+ramp technique takes a little more time & resources to make, but again, it sounds like something you can make once, and then never have to expend any more effort again. The output can't be reconciled with the input.

I agree with that with one caveat - the tower defense part of the game should apply to horde night only. It should be possible to hide from the zombies in such a way that (outside of horde night) they can't get to you because they can't find you. But on horde night - when the zombies always know where you are and stealth is useless - there should always be a way for zombies to get to you.

Before something can be balanced, it needs to be balance-able in the first place. Gazz can change the price of a club or the requirements for a perk, but there's nothing he can tune to make a broken ladder 10% less effective. Broken ladders exist outside the set of balance-able parameters, and that's not good.
Now, when I say that, some people think I mean ideal balance is when the player "loses all the time," but that's not it at all. First, broken ladders have to be brought into the set of balance-able things. That means it has to be possible for the zombies to overcome them. Then they can be balanced, by adjusting the frequency with which zombies grab chest-high ladders, or the speed at which they do so, or the types of zombies that can do this, like I said in the previous post. But everything needs to get in that set of balance-able things first, before the game can be balanced, which means the zombies have to be able to overcome everything.

Agreed.

I agree with the idea of winning some and losing some. The right amount of prep time required to survive past the next horde night might be one hour, six days, or somewhere in between. That's a debate we can have. But my argument is at no point should that time & effort fall to zero. Wherever that happens, we have an un-balance-able situation. An out of bounds situation. An exploit.
Lastly, it's worth pointing out tower defense is only part of the game. You're framing it as either your base isn't breached, or you lose the night. But the close-quarters combat that ensues after that first breach is fun, too. I'd like to see that phase of the game become more recoverable, instead of the all or nothing, unscathed or death-loop-until-morning we get now.

There definitely needs to be some work done on the death-loop-until-morning problem. As I say above, I think getting to the point where you're actually fighting zombies should be a failure state rather than the aim of the game (whatever blend of tower defence, survival horror, sandbox, and rpg the game is it definitely isn't an fps!) but even so, part of the balance should be addressing what happens when you are forced into that situation. The death-loop-till-morning result is far from ideal.

 

[Kimo Sabi]

So speaking of ladders, goreblocks, and zombies. In any tower defense game there has been one type of character to bring ladders or similar to battle and help troops over the wall. If I recall correctly stronghold and total war had these characters. In theory we could have a special zombie that is either taller or shorter than the rest. They would standout and have the ability to turn into a ladder of gore that the other zombies would climb up. So when you spot them you would take your resources and focus on them. Who knows, maybe this is a suprise already waiting in a17.

 

[Rusrec00]

I still remember that very first night. I spent the whole night crouched and cowering in the corner of a half burnt out old house staring at the door all night; afraid to even move because something was prowling and hissing around just outside.

this is NOT my idea of fun...the "sitting the whole night crouched in a corner" game does not sound fun at all. I remember that first night too, we all had them. While it was indeed tense, after a bit we thought, "Well, just sitting here waiting for the timer to expire is lame, I'm gonna go do something." From that point on you realized you needed to take risks, and that's where I think this game shines. The balance is important as many have stated, but there needs to be some other things for a game to be fun too: risk vs. reward, sense of accomplishment, creative building options, tailored playstyles, narrow victories and those "I almost had it" moments. This is, I believe, the balance they are going for.

 

[The Batman]

Minecraft day 1. Dig a hole of 4 blocks. Place torch inside, close of hole.

edit: Sorry Roland, I'm sleepy today :')

 

[wolfbain5]

OK, as I was typing this, I realized some people will want to come up with their own ideas.

Spoiler

I think A17 is designed for mobile defenses over static, like the changes in warfare between WW1 and WW2. Late game viable jeep runs on horde nights might be the thing.

Of course until late game, I am going to have a hard time trying figuring out what works well, above ground. I can't justify role-playing digging down with out at least one death. Then I will imagine my character hear the trader say: "Run silent, run deep, boy, if you want to live".

I has a plan. will require centered poles, and barbwire at head level. make a sort of hedge maze. first to go through will be dogs and crawlers, kill them first, then do head shots on the ones standing. will be first horde night, cheap and easy to build

 

[Roland]

Minecraft day 1. Dig a hole of 4 blocks. Place torch inside, close of hole.

7 Days to Die (*approximately Alpha 12 - Alpha 16): Day 1. Dig a hole of 4 blocks. Place torch inside, close of hole.

*I really can't remember exactly when they removed digging zombies...

 

[Jedo]

For the ladder "exploit" what if they weren't stackable?What if you had to make the ladder in pieces as you do now but you had to combine the amount of pieces to make the length of ladder you wanted and the ladder was a single item that had to start at ground/floor level. If you tried to break the bottom rung you destroyed the whole ladder.

I like this. Maybe just a check when placing a ladder piece: "Is there a ladder piece below?" and "Is there a ladder piece connecting with a block underneath it?" I'm no coder, but that seems easy enough. Almost like a ladder-SI check.

The problem would be those times when you want to build a ladder down a wall. Your solution makes sense, but I'm not sure how feasible it is coding-wise. Solution: retractable ladders. :cocksure:

 

[wolfbain5]

For the ladder "exploit" what if they weren't stackable?What if you had to make the ladder in pieces as you do now but you had to combine the amount of pieces to make the length of ladder you wanted and the ladder was a single item that had to start at ground/floor level. If you tried to break the bottom rung you destroyed the whole ladder.

For instance. I have a little horde base I want to use early game. It's 6 blocks high. Instead of being able to make 5 lengths of ladder so it doesn't go all way to ground, I have to make 6 pieces and make them into a 6 block length ladder that I can place on my base. I can't break bottom to keep zombie off base or I break my whole ladder. Now I have to find some way to stop them from climbing on my base. I could box in top of ladder to add a hatch but from what I recall they are going to make zombies able to attack blocks above them. So now I have to actively defend my ladder too.

It would be same for any building. If an apartment building is what I want to climb and it is 40 blocks high I have to make 40 pieces of ladder and find a clear spot on building with no openings or other blocks to stop it to put up my ladder.

This is just something that popped into my head so there may be disadvantages that I haven't thought of but it does seem one way to get around the "exploit" of ladders.

I also have 0 knowledge of how this would be implemented or if it would even be worth the time to do so, so there is also that.

mostly, cause a metal ladder anchored at the top would support the weight of the ladder and a person even suspended into the air. look at fire escapes.

 

[Roland]

Here's the first place where I think we disagree. This is supposed to be a survival game, not a hunt the zombies for XP and loot game (at least by my understanding of the game - sometimes what we get from the devs is rather confused and seems like they want the game to be all things to all people).

So to my mind we shouldn't be being rewarded for killing zombies at all, other than the "reward" of still being alive. Actually fighting zombies should be an activity of last resort, because you failed to avoid them and ended up putting yourself at risk. So I would suggest that you shouldn't be getting loot or XP from killing zombies because that perversely incentivises you to go after them when you should be hiding/fleeing from them.

The loot and xp should be got from building and scavenging, and the zombies should be an obstacle to doing that. The only reason to fight a zombie other than in self defence should be because it's preventing you from building or scavenging - in which case the "reward" for killing it is that you get to do the activity that it was preventing you from doing.

Agreed. Unfortunately this is one of those area's where fun factor may trump realism once again. It would be an interesting mod to try and see whether getting zero xp and zero loot from zombies would make the game more or less of a fun and rewarding experience. It would certainly make bloodmoon horde nights something to truly dread rather than something to look forward to.

 

[wolfbain5]

Here's the first place where I think we disagree. This is supposed to be a survival game, not a hunt the zombies for XP and loot game (at least by my understanding of the game - sometimes what we get from the devs is rather confused and seems like they want the game to be all things to all people).

So to my mind we shouldn't be being rewarded for killing zombies at all, other than the "reward" of still being alive. Actually fighting zombies should be an activity of last resort, because you failed to avoid them and ended up putting yourself at risk. So I would suggest that you shouldn't be getting loot or XP from killing zombies because that perversely incentivises you to go after them when you should be hiding/fleeing from them.

The loot and xp should be got from building and scavenging, and the zombies should be an obstacle to doing that. The only reason to fight a zombie other than in self defence should be because it's preventing you from building or scavenging - in which case the "reward" for killing it is that you get to do the activity that it was preventing you from doing.

I am not much of a modder. I barely make stack size edits and borrow code from others. but this seems like an interesting mod idea. no zombie loot, or at least, minimal, junk, scrap, clothes, coins, maybe a canned good. a nurse with some aspirin. but beef up the percent chances on poi loot. locked safes always having decent loot, getting rid of it's junk. this way it rewards the exploration.

the reward for killing zombies will still be the xp tho after all, you are skilling up your weapons and activity gives xp. and perhaps a bit of xp for each new poi discovered. to reward exploration?

 

[kamer1337]

zombie AI exploit is fixed on drawbridge and ramp? zombies are in loop walking the ramp because they think drawbridge is open