PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Omega-Factor]

Not sure about your experience. But they would improve my experience by letting me not having to swing a club at a regenning health zombie for 5 minutes to even know if i have the power to kill it. Just One example

Regenning zombies is also a bad idea. How can that be justified? What exactly is the mechanism that drives the process of regeneration?

It would be wonderful to play the game unmodded for an Alpha or two, but considering some of the recent proposed changes, it looks like it’s just a pipe dream...

 

[dhlmaster]

Release to experimental too early, and you get too many reports on the glaringly obvious bugs, which aren’t useful. Release too late, and more of the obscure bugs that take longer to tease out slip by into the full release. Only The Fun Pimps have a clear enough picture of the state of development to see where that needle they’re threading is.

To add to your point, there's a good chance that the game is actually completely unplayable in its current build. For all we know, the current test build may only be good for testing features as they get ported in. Zombie spawning might not be working outside of manually calling from the F6 menu. The starting quest or respawn after death may be broken due to some bit of code that is currently being overhauled. I'm guessing that the process of rebuilding as much of the game's infrastructure as they seem to he overhauling for alpha 17 would break a lot of game features. It's probably not very playable until they are close to releasing an experimental build, or at least have content lock.

 

[Maharin]

As long as I can turn off health bars for everything that would be great. I like seeing mine but only when I am below 30%. I don't care for zombies having them games like WOW have them on everything but you can turn them off.

This, certainly. Please give us some control over them.

 

[SnowDog1942]

Regenning zombies is also a bad idea. How can that be justified? What exactly is the mechanism that drives the process of regeneration?
It would be wonderful to play the game unmodded for an Alpha or two, but considering some of the recent proposed changes, it looks like it’s just a pipe dream...

I'm not a fan of the regen either, i'd even take a huge damage sponge with no regen over the regen crap. As long as I know I would eventually kill it, even doing the smallest damage. With Regen you just don't know.

 

[Aldranon]

So a recap of A17:

-Until there's a reason to stay and defend something (NPC's for example) tower defense is purely a sandbox activity. So a sandbox mode should be added.

-If breadcrumbs are important to the game then anything that breaks breadcrumbs should be moved to the sandbox mode like Ziplines (if added) and anything that flies.

-What a person sees on the HUD should be 100% controllable.

-Al's Marina needs to have both an underground adventure sub-POI and a underwater adventure sub-POI. (If it takes up the whole map, so be it).

I think I mentioned everything we all want in the game, did I miss anything?

 

[Laz Man]

The whole air biome was entirely too safe. They'll also be adding flying zombies and the flying spaghetti monster.

If air travel becomes a thing, there needs to be a new horde rule that sends waves of zombie vultures at you if at a certain elevation.

 

[Laz Man]

So I guessed right! Everdeen is people! Um, I mean Sticky Arrows!

Roland should of used the codename "Anything But Everdeen" which would of been closer....lol

 

[DeadMole]

There's a few mods that have the bandits implemented but they will kill you fast if they get a whiff of you since there is no way to control their aim variability. They are basically walking turrets.

So I saw, I got massacred haha. I guess you need extremely good gear before even thinking of fighting them eh.

I'll warn the Bandit Leader that fresh meat is coming to diner.

He didn't need you to message him, he already had his meal served on a silver platter hehe.

Can we get a red bar that depletes as we get closer to A17 experimental? Kinda like a ♥♥♥♥ty doomsday clock.

THE END IS NIGH! FIND SHELTER UNDERGROUND!

 

[Guppycur]

Meh, like everything else, you get used to the bandits and they're no longer a threat. And I had them on my server set as high as possible.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Aim variability can be controlled in a way. Just like a regular gun, you can control their accuracy, rate of fire and drop off. People just usually leave them at default and do not try to balance it so either you get pushover bandits or you get aimbot style bandits.

 

[JaxTeller718]

To add to your point, there's a good chance that the game is actually completely unplayable in its current build. For all we know, the current test build may only be good for testing features as they get ported in. Zombie spawning might not be working outside of manually calling from the F6 menu. The starting quest or respawn after death may be broken due to some bit of code that is currently being overhauled. I'm guessing that the process of rebuilding as much of the game's infrastructure as they seem to he overhauling for alpha 17 would break a lot of game features. It's probably not very playable until they are close to releasing an experimental build, or at least have content lock.

THIS.

I think people get this idea in their head that testers are just plugging away in vehicles, leveling and questing in all the new POIs. It's more likely, in my experience with test builds, they get 5 minutes in and it crashes, or things are there but you can't use them. Each component needs tested and balanced one at a time. They can't just lump all this into one update.

Regular folks would rage quit if they TRULY had to test anything out in that environment. Testing is NOT always fun and it certainly is not playing.

 

[Death2gnomes]

THIS.
I think people get this idea in their head that testers are just plugging away in vehicles, leveling and questing in all the new POIs. It's more likely, in my experience with test builds, they get 5 minutes in and it crashes, or things are there but you can't use them. Each component needs tested and balanced one at a time. They can't just lump all this into one update.

Regular folks would rage quit if they TRULY had to test anything out in that environment. Testing is NOT always fun and it certainly is not playing.

You left out the expectation of the overnight fix.

 

[ParaSyt]

I think I have come up with a solution to the red health bar. Since we are getting a robust buff system there should be a crossfit magazine that when read lets you see health bars. Every zombie you meet, you will see their health bar, and let them know how their health bar is looking. Have you seen the health bar!!! It's soooo good for you!!!! I've been seeing health bar for like 3 days now and I feel great! Health bar healthbar bar health health bar.....health bar?

 

[Bubo]

Can we get a red bar that depletes as we get closer to A17 experimental? Kinda like a ♥♥♥♥ty doomsday clock.

Only if we can toggle it.

 

[dhlmaster]

You left out the expectation of the overnight fix.

I love it when we get an experimental build and then the same folks that were begging for it start complaining about the bugs, but they don't want to submit bug reports. Just complain and expect it to be fixed.

 

[DeadMole]

i know but its something about MOLES they like.

Even the leader of the moles don't stand a chance against them, haha. You would have to be mad to try eh.

I for one like the health bars. Lets talk about the most overused buzzword on this forum "immersion"
Get used to the fact that your playing a game and can use health info to make decisions.

I find it a bit silly that some people don't want any UI in the game for the sake of that. As if you shouldn't have any informations on screen in those games at all. I always had health bars in the face along with various other informations when playing all sorts of games and it never bothered me.

I think that is a game changer actually, in some way. You can know how much damage you do with your weapons now, and it can become clearly obvious that the weapon you're using is not adequate. Heck, there's been an "health bar" for tools since forever, but there wouldn't be a need of one for enemies? Even block has HPs.

 

[faatal]

There are plenty of bugs and unfinished features in A17. You would not want to play it yet.

 

[Demonoid74]

The real solution is to change that red health bar to a more soothing color such as teal...people wouldn't hate it so much then!

 

[BigMikJ]

THIS.
I think people get this idea in their head that testers are just plugging away in vehicles, leveling and questing in all the new POIs. It's more likely, in my experience with test builds, they get 5 minutes in and it crashes, or things are there but you can't use them. Each component needs tested and balanced one at a time. They can't just lump all this into one update.

Regular folks would rage quit if they TRULY had to test anything out in that environment. Testing is NOT always fun and it certainly is not playing.

Whenever I'm tasked with recoding or making changes to an existing project.. they usually start out well.... then the changes I made makes it 90% unusable. Then its back to the drawing board revamping the data structure which in turns breaks every single code page.. turns a 3 week task into an f'ing 6 month overhaul. Been there, done that...and will do it again, cause that's what I do. Fix s**t to break s**t only to fix s**t again.

**EDIT***

Now granted, I'm not the Fun Pimps! My tasks, projects and day job are not as large nor will be greater than theirs. But, not only with the above, I get hounded for 100 other issues, projects and/or bright ideas our department comes up with. So take a 6 month overhaul and turn into a 3 year plan then do it all over again. I like writing code and problem solving. Does it get me down? Sure does, but I reap the rewards at the end of a job well done. Plus, if you need someone to implement heavy duty infrastructure, that's my main forte'. Done ranting...back to building datacenter hypervisor clusters and failing at storage capacity requirements! Good Night and keep the Hype Train humpin'.

 

[Gazz]

I'm not sure how wanting gas to be scarce equates to "more silly micromanagement." With how easy it is to get gas right now why even have it in the game? I've never ran out of gas and I never mine for shale. Needing to conserve your gas is a good way to limit the OP nature of vehicles that can outrun everything in the game. I don't find that a silly argument at all.

The silly micromanagement would be having to craft gas, fill it into containers, then lug around unstackable containers with varying degrees of "filled".

You's also have to fill up your inventory slots with empties before you'd go out to look for gas and have yet another special action to siphon gas from cars.

Right now, when you find, craft or harvest gas, you get gas. Done. Moving on.

Whenever I'm tasked with recoding or making changes to an existing project.. they usually start out well.... then the changes I made makes it 90% unusable. Then its back to the drawing board revamping the data structure which in turns breaks every single code page.. turns a 3 week task into an f'ing 6 month overhaul. Been there, done that...and will do it again, cause that's what I do. Fix s**t to break s**t only to fix s**t again.

That's why you design the hell out of any such change before you touch anything.

Find out 99% of the breakage ahead of time. =)

Granted, the last 1% stillt akes 99% of the time but that's what you get paid for. =)