PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Thecolours]

We can level gate specific perks if needed, but I'm in favor of making a rare trinket needed to craft said vehicle, like a schematic for each part like mods.

Leave the Bicycle behind no gates, gate the rest of the vehicles.

 

[FileMachete]

My only consern is that bicycles/minibikes will become obsolete, because everyone will rush to motorcycles. I definitely will. Same with iron tools/armor. Maybe leave intellect level gated as it is now?

^ that's an interesting point. As a SP I'm thinking this _may_ actually slow down getting to 'all' the goodies, since I'll be the only one. While in MP, with a good 'work together' group it might speed thing up a fair bit.

By 'all', for me as mostly a builder, I'm mainly interested in getting to Concrete & at least Electric Fences, and hopefully Shotgun Turrets (not sure in a17, maybe darts?). And of course being able to craft ammo. I don't mind 'having' to specialize in one Melee & one Ranged, other than possibly 'wasting' points in archery? Though the Head Shot bonus working for all ranged seems to be enough to keep up w zeds scaling until you can tranistion fully to firearms.

Maybe Steel will actually be pushed back a bit? If instead of a gap between say an Iron & a Steel Pickaxe is more of an overlap; so a maxed IronPick isn't outdone in all respects by a SteelPick? I'm also guessing that when recipes, especially Mods, get a balance pass that maybe lower tier ones will call for Forged Iron rather than Steel. End result being that as a SP I may be reliant on scrounging Steel to maintain/build a few things (hopefully a few more things in world to wrench for steel), but won't have anywhere near enough to upgrade a bunch of blocks. Yet also not severely gimped until I can afford to perk into steel.

-- In above I'm assuming I'll need to balance in combat perks to stay viable.

So to your point @unlike them, for me, I can see myself looking longingly at a 4x4 for a long time, while puttering past on the minibike I've been riding for a 100 levels

I'll say this, you Fun Pimps aren't afraid of a good challenge!

Seriously, this sounds great, and you may want to stock up on Extra Strength.. something. cause this is gonna take some serious neron squatting!

 

[danielspoa]

I love the concept!

about the vehicles I think this can easily be balanced around the cost for the faster options (and of course how good other perks are). If going to a faster vehicle makes me lose many important perks I will just stay with the slower one. Specially if the low tier vehicles get buffed a bit.

BTW I miss improving my stamina regen

 

[Thecolours]

It seems now power attacks aren't worth it from a stamina cost standpoint. But, what if power attacks had the ability to knock down not only the zombie you hit but any zombies standing in a close proximity behind them. This would be a great crowd control ability that would be worth losing 30 stamina with one swing.

 

[Blake_]

Leave the Bicycle behind no gates, gate the rest of the vehicles.

Yes, agreed, even the minibike should not be gated to incentivate its use over motorcycles and 4x4s.

 

[FileMachete]

... just figured something out. MadMole is a build tease! Just when we think we've started to get a 'grip' on things, so to speak, the game changes! H*ll, he's so good at it I bet his wife trys to trick -him- into bed... :twitch: :lol: nicely done Sir, nicely done.

 

[rubenjonathan]

It seems now power attacks aren't worth it from a stamina cost standpoint. But, what if power attacks had the ability to knock down not only the zombie you hit but any zombies standing in a close proximity behind them. This would be a great crowd control ability that would be worth losing 30 stamina with one swing.

Love the idea, that would be really cool!

 

[Erik Louden]

"It seems now power attacks aren't worth it from a stamina cost standpoint."

2 Power attacks

vs

4 Regular attacks

That is fighting 1-2 but yeah fighting a whole horde you have to juggle stam (as it should be).

 

[Jugginator]

Hey Madmole, I love the changes you did to the traders / vending machines, but did you accidently break air drops in the process? I picked 3 of them up and all of them contained massive stocks of various canned goods. As in, 8 or so inventory spaces worth lol.

We can level gate specific perks if needed, but I'm in favor of making a rare trinket needed to craft said vehicle, like a schematic for each part like mods.

I agree with this.

 

[DaVegaNL]

I agree, the system did not reflect the freedom to create your favorite character class very well and I didn't like the lack of early game specialization. That said we've already changed it and are testing it for a release. Now to balance this attribute points scale in cost, something like 1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,5,6. Don't quote me there, but you can max out one attribute roughly in your mid 30's but at the expense of having zero perks.
Here are is my portion of the release notes on it:

Changed: Attributes are no longer gated by your level. You can specialize very early game now but attributes cost more for the higher ranks. The goal is to allow players to specialize into classes early game, and be awesome at a few things and ok or poor at other things. Or you can be a jack of all trades, the choice is yours. With the costs of the higher attributes being steeper, players will probably want to specialize in one or two attributes and get the best perks in those attributes and late game there will be less god tier characters who have every perk unlocked. We are looking for feedback such as are there any exploits or severe imbalances with this new system.

Blegh. I actually did like the level gates.

So now we are back to being able to make a forge on day 1 anf iron tools on day 2?

 

[Jugginator]

Blegh. I actually did like the level gates.

Me too... there were some things I didn't liked gated but one of the things I hated about A16 was being able to get everything very quickly. If gates are completely gone and everything is easily accessed, difficulty settings better have a "♥♥♥♥ your quickly gotten end game stuff" bloodmoon affect.

 

[Ouch Quit It]

Personally...i think the game is WACKED now..too chaotic and too much dependence on traders . You might as well build every base as close to a trader now. YOU HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO USE THEM NOW ..and at least you would have one side protected. Every quest is go to the trader...run 3 k away..kill a few zombies and run back to the trader...Rinse and Repeat.

The ferals and greenies show up too early and you are way too underpowered to deal with them. I went into the paper mill and a green feral cop, a green wight and a tourist materialized in front of me and attacked...at level 40...how the hell to you survive that with a yellow bow and pistol and a brown marksman rifle with no mods. WTF

You are encumbered with 12 feathers in one extra slot, but i can carry my minibike in my backpack.

RWG is a wreck with the floating buildings, missing buildings and no maps above 8k.

Spikes are basically useless as a main component of protecting your base early on. After a horde night its a grind to fix and replace...Exactly what the game has become....A GRIND. I never chose to jump start my game by using the traders in A16..now pretty much every component is tied directly to them.

In an A16 server you had multiple types of players in game. You had a group playing together and several individuals playing by themselves. Now you are forcing people to play together in a group....You have taken the single player out of the game and severely handcuffed them when they do try to play that way. `Congratulations you have made the game into exactly every other game out there.

I dont mind learning ..thats part of the fun, but if i am dealing with these type zombies at levle 40....what the hell am I going to face at level 150+. Are new lasers and anti aircraft guns coming in the next patch???

I think you should of waited another year and a half before releasing it.

Dissapointed IMHO

Ouch

80 arrows to take this down..i missed a few..but not many....bow is my favorite weapon, so I know how to use it. Limited ammo from all the others I took out with my pistols and slow loading marksman rifles.

 

[DUST2DEATH]

I use 1050ti with fx6350 16 gig ram everything maxed out I get 18 to 26 fps everything turned down apart from full textures I get 50 to 60 fps resolution 1920x1080 surely my setup should run this game at maximum settings n get more than 18fps what's it take to run this game maxed out

Why should it? Because you assume it should? No.

7 days is heavily cpu dependent, and your cpu isnt good.

The memory bandwidth available to a GPU is also just important, particularly more so in A17 with the streaming of textures in and out, whether TFP are filtering and rendering block textures before they are drawn on screen or not, all matters.

7 Days being voxel, also, makes it more demanding than most "normal" games, especially in regards to the amount of work the CPU has to do.

The higher your IPC is, and the faster your IO systems are, the better 7 days will run.

 

[Royal Deluxe]

We are looking for feedback such as are there any exploits or severe imbalances with this new system.

Well intelligence is what i think its worth to be pushed

Q6 Auger, AK, Truck, Armor ?

All in one branch

Q6 Auger and Vehicle = you need no stamina

Q6 Auger + AK = Enough ammo

+ All base assets (but you dont need because of vehicle and free stations)

And by the economy we have you are rich after a traderun.

How about removing all gates until lvl 40 and spend the player 15 additional skillpoints he can make a startup "build". Did this in the first A17e build and it feeled good, but by far not op

Its hard to balance

I need some sleep. Tomorrow i make a decent suggestion

 

[khzmusik]

Your concern is right to one point, but Been an experimental, we cannot really have a say on performance for two reason:1. In Experimental build they may have more logs been generated that slows down overall computation.

2. Since they rewrite most code, it is about new game from scratch as they built new framework. So it is still not optimized.

And most of all they new it, and they are working on it.

Agreed on all points.

In fact, the excess writing of log files is something I hadn't even considered. Disk writes are relatively expensive, and have a tendency to block operating system processes, so I could definitely see this making a performance impact.

In any case, Madmole has already said there is a performance improvement build in the works, so things should get better soon. Even if not, I'm sure there will be big improvements prior to A17 stable.

 

[DaVegaNL]

I just feel like we're going back to a16.4 with the forges up and running before the first 3 days, completely bypassing the first part of the game.

 

[khzmusik]

PS: maybe you can add a Deer (Corn) feeder in the game that uses a solar panel, Battery, Barrel, pipes, electronics and Corn (mutant corn?) to attract deer/boards? that would be a great feature!

This is a great idea.

I would say it could be done using XML mods, but I don't know if that's possible now. I think it would require a new type of AI action (MoveToTargetFriendly or something along those lines).

On the other hand, if that is possible now, that's good news - because that same AI action could be used for other things too, including things I'm interested in doing.

DEVS: any input on whether that is possible or not? Through some combination of MoveToWaypoint and different consideration values maybe?

 

[DaVegaNL]

Me too... there were some things I didn't liked gated but one of the things I hated about A16 was being able to get everything very quickly. If gates are completely gone and everything is easily accessed, difficulty settings better have a "♥♥♥♥ your quickly gotten end game stuff" bloodmoon affect.

Yep. Sounds like we're going back the a16 way. Thankfully TFP said they're going back to a 3-month release cycle, so the feeling of a new, and difficult, game, will not be very far away.

 

[Kosmic Kerman]

I just feel like we're going back to a16.4 with the forges up and running before the first 3 days, completely bypassing the first part of the game.

Only by player choice. Regardless I’ve found iron tools in my first week in every playthrough in A17. I’ve also found working forges in the first 2 days in every playthrough. So what has changed exactly? I won’t be wasting perk points in intellect early on since forges are much less important in A17.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Only by player choice. Regardless I’ve found iron tools in my first week in every playthrough in A17. I’ve also found working forges in the first 2 days in every playthrough. So what has changed exactly? I won’t be wasting perk points in intellect early on since forges are much less important in A17.

Because there's a difference between being able to make a forge yourself in a base of your choosing very early on, and being dependent on a poi or a trader for their forge. The reason I stopped playing a16 very early on was that you were able to get everything rather quickly, completely bypassing the first stone age part of the game.