PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Aldranon]

I don't think we'll ever get that back. Cause we already complained and begged for that quite a bit.

I think it was ignored due to things not being optimized so well. But now things are improved I heard, so I would like at least an option for that.

It was scarier than any horde night ever was, except for two times, one that turned out to be a bug and the other when we had gore blocks and they made it to the top of my base!

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It had something to work up to. Not just being able to run into a town now and pretty much win the game. I miss the danger that the towns and cities used to have, along with the atmosphere. There must be a way to bring that back and have wandering zeds with sleepers?

I think they can, and I bet in A18 they will as it was THE adrenaline rush that is so fun for many people, sometimes.

 

[Crater Creator]

One thing that I worry about with the changes to AI is how it will affect the wandering hordes. They're not difficult to deal with (except the occasional Surprise Dogs!) but when they get thrown at your base every single day and night you end up spending all your time repairing the defences they damaged, and that's just tedious.

From what faatal has relayed, it sure sounds like wandering zombies will go around instead of through now.

In multiplayer games you can [sit on the respawn screen], although it can get a bit boring waiting for morning before deciding to respawn on or near your bed. Even just being able to do that in single player games would help, but currently single player games pause while waiting for you to decide.

Are you sure? I’m sure I’ve waited out horde nights after dying, in single player, by sitting on the respawn screen until I hear the morning stinger before. Super cheesy, I know, which is why I’d like to see the game improved in this area.

 

[Hodenkobold]

As CPU core counts go up it opens up the opportunity for many things you just can't do on a quad core, if you want the toys you gotta upgrade fellas, I wouldn't recommend anything less than a 8-core CPU if you are going to build a new computer, my 10 core i9 7900 wrecks anything I can throw at it.

Are real tests out there about the CPU power needs of 7DTD?

Last time i played fps dropped hard while having 30 or 50 Zombies raging outside the base.

By dropping hard i mean like 3fps so playing horde night like a slideshow wasn't that much fun.

After playing around with the Settings (no solution) we built a new base which did not have Spikes outside the walls and the fps were fine.

So we guess there is massive bottleneck when calculating the damage or movement of 30-50 Zombies attacking / walking on Spikes.

 

[Crater Creator]

Playing catchup...

This isn't about taking away all loot.It's just the clickedyclick to get through 400 or whatever corpses and sort everything into boxes.

A handful of zombies can still carry more noticeable amounts of resources.

With dye options we also don't have to drop tons of different clothing items for someone to get a matching set together.

Overall I think it would be an improvement over clicking 1500+ times.

(even though I'm aware that games like Cookie Clicker exist)

Part of the tedium could be addressed by adjusting the range of quantities one finds, rather than the quality. Finding one feather, cloth fragment, or wooden frame is burdensome clutter. But (rarely) finding a stack of fifty can be enough to consider changing your plans or priorities, even though it's still junk. I hate finding a single nail in a trash bag, but I want to find a handful of nails instead, not a scope.

 

[Crater Creator]

@guppy:I don't think, we would make thinks worse by giving the user more, but smaller slots. Currently you can build a whole base with 2 slots of wood. But how would building a base look like, if you had 100 slots instead of 40, but each provides just 100 wood, for example? Much more decision need to be made, how much of what do you need.

Looting would be great on the other hand. Here a few bullets, there another type of bullets, then 5 brass, some gunpowder and a blueprint. Here 2 bottles, there a cool looking hat,... But you can't have much of all. You won't disassemble 10 cars and carry the whole iron with you, but you would have space for some leather instead you might otherwise leave behind.

The stack sizes are balanced for gameplay, not realism, e.g. not too easy, not too hard to scavenge different items; and not too easy, not too hard to build large structures. What you're proposing would in practice just take away the decision making you have to do for everything except building. And since there's not much overlap between building materials and looted materials, it would pretty much have the same effect as a bigger backpack. You'd just have to put away your loot before you go building, and vice versa.

 

[Aldranon]

The backpack discussion is caused by people not thinking clearly. For me, a looting mission load out is an empty backpack and a full tool belt.

If you have a bigger bag you will just loot a little bit longer until you run out of space and end up with a similar problem.

Right now you can have drop off chests and when full, immediately drop off everything but whats in your well thought out tool belt. A large city will keep you busy for a long time.

===============================

My Tool belt Slots for looting missions is usually:

1- Spiked club, your "1" key is your go to weapon when you've been ambushed, SMG is also a great choice. (this will happen a lot in A17 apparently).

2,3 -Axe,Pickaxe

4-8 Not a big deal: Ranged weapon(if #1 is melee), ammo, food, water, healing. Done!

Antibiotics should not be carried unless you are on an exploration mission.

 

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

From what faatal has relayed, it sure sounds like wandering zombies will go around instead of through now.

Unless they hear you inside the base and switch from wandering mode to aggressive mode. Hence my comments about wanting to be able to hide from them.

Are you sure? I’m sure I’ve waited out horde nights after dying, in single player, by sitting on the respawn screen until I hear the morning stinger before. Super cheesy, I know, which is why I’d like to see the game improved in this area.

I'm not sure - I've not played single player in a long time. I might be remembering from before they merged the single player and multiplayer modes in alpha 16.

 

[Hazeree]

@braat
Do you're advocating smaller stack sizes but more slots. Hm, that could be interesting.

One better:

Infinite stacks, but now use item weights to restrict. You can either carry a thousand feathers, or a single motor. A hundred wood or only a dozen metal frames. That would create some interesting challenges.

But, this would kill the game for fun as inventory management would be even more tedious. Drop boxes every ten feet. Spend most of your time traveling back and forth to horde the loot to base. People would stop playing.

Thats why 'realism' has no place in a game, it about balance for fun gameplay.

 

[Jedo]

Just never mix sauerkraut and chili...a chili dog and a kraut dog is called the "Powder Keg Special" for a reason...KABOOM!

Well, now I'm intrigued.

Re: stack sizes - The discussion made me wonder: What if we had large and small backpack slots? You can only carry so many stacks of "big" items, and so many stacks of "small" items. Probably been discussed before...

 

[Jedo]

===============================My Tool belt Slots for looting missions is usually:

1- Spiked club, your "1" key is your go to weapon when you've been ambushed, SMG is also a great choice. (this will happen a lot in A17 apparently).

2,3 -Axe,Pickaxe

4-8 Not a big deal: Ranged weapon(if #1 is melee), ammo, food, water, healing. Done!

Antibiotics should not be carried unless you are on an exploration mission.

Pretty much my loadout. It works well. I usually build a bunker in each city as a place to stash that city's loot, and the stuff I really want I carry back to my main base.

 

[Guest]

Large and small backpack slots might be too complicated, each for developer and for player.

Using item weight is also something I thought about, but 1. a motor might be as heavy as a concrete block, so it might be too tedious to craft serious amounts of blocks and 2. I know that system from Fallout and inventory management there is hell, because you need to check the value and weight of every single piece to decide, which items to keep.

Some changes in stack sizes, slot amount seems like an interesting compromise to me.

@Jedo:

the idea with a stash at every city sounds great as well. After a few days, you can carry back finished stacks to your base.

 

[toores]

The stack sizes are balanced for gameplay, not realism, e.g. not too easy, not too hard to scavenge different items; and not too easy, not too hard to build large structures. What you're proposing would in practice just take away the decision making you have to do for everything except building. And since there's not much overlap between building materials and looted materials, it would pretty much have the same effect as a bigger backpack. You'd just have to put away your loot before you go building, and vice versa.

Agreed. I prefer it as it is ATM.

I don't find fun to prioritize loot. What items are renewable, what do I need in the beginnig, what I need in the later stages etc.

Bigger stack > bigger grid

I would actually increase some stack sizes that seem unreasonably small. Bandages, for example, are small items and gameplay wise don't deserve to be stacked as small as First Aid Kits for example...

 

[Tilleen]

From what faatal has relayed, it sure sounds like wandering zombies will go around instead of through now.

Wondering zombies and hoards (not blood moon) will go around your base as long as it is not too big, and they don't notice you and they don't start getting hurt by spikes. It is part of my core design principle, and it does work.

 

[Aldranon]

Agreed. I prefer it as it is ATM.I don't find fun to prioritize loot. What items are renewable, what do I need in the beginnig, what I need in the later stages etc.

Bigger stack > bigger grid

I would actually increase some stack sizes that seem unreasonably small. Bandages, for example, are small items and gameplay wise don't deserve to be stacked as small as First Aid Kits for example...

The bandages and especially the first aid kits are so overpowered, you are almost immortal. It has to be a one shot death most of the time or you just choked up and forgot about them.

I cant even imagine how bad the game would be to have a stack of 50 first aid kits. I think I would stop playing.

 

[Xeen]

Every time the backpack thing comes up i bet the devs groan and sigh haha

 

[Sinz]

Replying to multiple discussions in one post.

@Faatal

Wooden chairs are invisible to zombies in the same way fences and other partial edge blocks are in A16. Have you tested / added an obstacle check for the wooden chairs in the Ai pathing too?

Just mentioning to ensure they're not missed for the new pathing. Thanks.

In regards to the bigger backpacks.

I don't know why there is so much fuss when we're going to have a truck in A17. I'm sure it'll fit more loot than a minibike basket not to mention multiple players. The backpack is fine how it is.

In regards to Ui.

Yes hotkeys should be consistent across all interfaces but no big deal.

More importantly, a deposit all button is long over due.

A deposit all pre existing would be great but is less of a priority.

And no guppy! Just no. Cheats.. Pfft.

In regards to zombies in city/Town streets.

Hell yes that needs a come back. Just like everyone else who agrees has said. Zombie swarming city Streets is hiw it is in the movies. It adds atmosphere and difficulty.

And in A16 sleepers are VERY easy to dispatch of from stealth mode, A16 was a huge decrease in challenge because of this.

In regards to container being opened by multiple people at the same time.

I think this would be a great feature but to my limited understanding it's hard to code for multiplayer programming devs.

Something to do with which data is server side and how it's accessed by client. I really don't know.

It seems everyone is concerned with this leading to item duplication exploitation but I hardly see the fuss when there are already simple, repeatable duping methods in the game which TFP have claimed to fix over and over but still work (assuming the same is true to A17-A18+). No offence TFP I love you guys.

My point is, if there are other dupe methods already available and being used, then why not get the feature in? At least that way, if there are exploits, they can be realised, assessed and fixed. That's how alphas work.

In regards to animal husbandry.

A few comments of people being doubtful. This would tie in with taming.

Does anyone know if these things are planned or dropped for goid?

 

[Ouch Quit It]

2 things

The decisions on what to leave and what to take adds to the fun of the game. You just cant take everything...what is most important.

Thats what modding is for...Sung to the song "that's what friends are for." KEEP SMILING...

MTFGA

 

[Aldranon]

Pretty much my loadout. It works well. I usually build a bunker in each city as a place to stash that city's loot, and the stuff I really want I carry back to my main base.

Yup. Works well as a large city is a pretty big endeavor for one player and you need a small base to keep things safe. You can scrap most clothes as the sell value isn't worth any effort.

That all might change in A17, I got a pm from "someone" indicating that the changes made in A17 are MUCH bigger than most people know.

Be ready... to not be ready!

That is all.

 

[Sinz]

2 things
The decisions on what to leave and what to take adds to the fun of the game. You just cant take everything...what is most important.

Thats what modding is for...Sung to the song "that's what friends are for." KEEP SMILING...

MTFGA

But also quite literally, that's what friends are for.

With a team, no loot is left behind.

Especially with some co-ordination and designated specific item type carriers.

A pro team of 3 can full clear an entire sky scraper.

 

[HerrKingsley]

@braat
Do you're advocating smaller stack sizes but more slots. Hm, that could be interesting.

And adding to that a Perk "Tetris" making you pack better, ergo bigger stacks.