PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

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fwiw I don't see an inherent issue with taking out zombie loot, or taking out fat and bones from gore blocks. My major concern is an incentive to fight zombies.
Within our current system - assuming the zombies dropped no loot - the only incentive to kill them would be for exp, but what if your spikes are killing zombies? Or your turrets or other traps? Your spikes get destroyed and you waste a bunch of bullets but you get absolutely nothing for it.

Now, why bother making a base for 7th night? Why not just get on a minibike and drive until sunrise? Sure - you can easily kill walkers during the day for exp, or clear out a house to loot it, but no point in bothering with a big zombie defense. It just gets destroyed and you get nothing for it.

I guess I'm not understanding the design process here to incentivize participation in the most exciting part of the game: horde nights.
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I think this comment shows how off the rails the game itself has become as a survival or horror game and how people themselves do not truly understand that you were playing an unfinished concept that was a work in progress. While it excels at both in my opinion, if your only incentive is to collect loot when killing zombies then that is a failure on the games part in making the zombies an actual threat. As fataal and others have said it wasnt that they intended to deceive, it was that other things needed to be fixed and polished up and implemented before we got to the meat of what this game is truly about. And with the new AI we are finally seeing that vision in all its bloody goodness.

The main incentive to kill zombies should be survival. You do not want your base wrecked, and you do not want to die. Zombies are now seen only as loot pinatas to be hunted down and rounded up anyway possible to gather loot, not to disperse a threat or to save your life. As a matter of fact very few kill zombies out of reaction unless a wandering horde shows up. Everything is meticulously planned and A17 is about to drop a bomb on everyone's party when it comes to comfort and ease. Literally no one and nothing is preventing you from gathering the supplies you need to collect a cache of ammo. ESPECIALLY in vanilla where you don't have the limitations some mods put on you like progression gating etc.

On our server a good deal of people are annoyed by looting corpses after a certain period of time as zombies are actually a VERY inefficient way of gathering materials. They get way more out of ramboing houses and stores in their purple gear then sitting back and letting spikes destroy a few zombies that may or may not have loot. What this does is force passive players out of their normal tactics and encourages interactive gameplay with the entire environment.

It's only my opinion of course, but if i was in charge of development ts actually one of the fist things I would do. Make the zombies a threat, something to be AVOIDED because the risk factor is high. Sneak is going to play a very important role in this Alpha it seems so there is always that option, and that will make gameplay more fun and interesting. We already do this in our mod. A select group of zombies do not drop any loot no matter what but you CAN chop up bodies for bones. Which i agree is also key, and Im sure Pimps have not forgotten we need them.

But what do i know. It's not like I run a very successful or popular mod geared to a more survival intensive experience. And while people have issues in some areas with it overall they have a blast playing it. So maybe the Pimps aren't as crazy as one may think with their decisions and their vision. Give it a chance before crucifying it.

If anything mods will find a way to put it back the way you like it. Darkness Falls by Khaine and Walkers by Dwall will reach even greater heights because that is the beauty of the whole process. We have options. As for Ravenhearst we won't be adding it back. In our opinion the performance we will gain from this change is 100 percent worth it. Give it a chance before everyone here condemns it.

 
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So many of the improvements are under the hood and coding changes that I doubt there will be anyone who will look at what they can see on the surface of the game and say that it was equal to what a year of work (in their opinion) should look like. I'm already mentally prepared for the onslaught of salt in that regard. Unfortunately, it will be those same people who will later praise and laud the modders for all their contributions not realizing that it is precisely what TFP did all year that has made it possible for modders to do more than they have ever been able to do in the past.
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QFT

So many times see people going on about what modders have done and dissing the development team. Fully failing to put into their head that without the functionality the development team put the extra effort and time in to make such mods possible could have been spent instead doing some static single way of doing the game and then getting essentially one static mod-less game.

 
Big maps, tons of POI, nice guns, good pvp, zombies here and there, decent balance between farming, looting, good curve progression from survivor in your underwear to loaded with guns armors and a vehicle.

That's it really. That's what's needed.

 
(snip)
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Eh, I mean I like killing zombies, and I honestly see big advantages to "no loot" - or less loot (let's be fair, he did say loot was more rare, not completely eliminated). The biggest advantage being that theoretically the corpse dupe bug is gone for good, and I have always hated not being able to do anything for a good hour after a 7th night other than loot, clean up, and repair. However, now that has turned into just "repair," and therein lies an obvious exploit: just leave your base on horde nights. Or just set up a playground 7th night base, or just hold up in a random PoI, or just drive around on your minibike, or log off (in a mp setting)... You haven't really addressed any of those concerns, not that you have control over development, but just that you ignored the keystone of my perspective in your response. To clarify: killing zombies in a house and getting no loot? Perfectly fine. I'm getting the loot in the house as a reward. Killing zombies wandering around in a forest? Perfectly fine. Just a little bit of combat to spice things up. Horde night comes around, attacks my base, destroys days worth of work and loot, gives me nothing in return - I have a huge problem with this.

You see, I'm not gonna be sneaking around while I'm looting. I like running around bashing some zombie heads in and that's not going to stop, loot or no loot. My concern is that in the past, you might set up a base with 200 wooden spikes and 5 turrets loaded with 500 rounds of 9mm, and most of that would be consumed by a nasty horde night. Thankfully, you could loot the zombies and make a solid 30k dukes coins, get a bunch of weapons and ammo, brass, and lead to help replace at least a good portion of what you've lost, and it was fun. Now what. Now you just take the hit and are forced to loot cities and PoIs for several days to recoup? Is that really better than looting the zombies you just killed for 20 minutes? Alternatively, you can just avoid having your base take 7th night damage via the simple gameplay mechanic that zombies don't attack your base, they attack you. So just leave your base. Doesn't sound fun to me, but I haven't given it a shot yet so I'll withhold my ultimate opinion. Right now it's simply a theoretical concern. Either way new strategies will have to be employed on a macro level.

Also, in a multiplayer setting the world loot is going to be more competitive than ever. At least if the world was dried up before you could still get key items from zombies. Now what? Some guy playing 24/7 gets all the city loot and that's it; there isn't any more?

 
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A17 looks good

Ok just finish watching the new video. 95% of it looked good some graphics could use improving but like joel said 7 days not really in it for the beauty.

My biggest concern i seen with the video is what many are saying and that's the zombie loot. although after watching the video i understand it improves performance and whatnot and they'll occasionally drop loot. but them dropping the loot is not my problem the loot was the bonus the primary was it confirmed that the zombie was dead. In this video Joel couldnt actually confirm if the zombie was dead without putting a extra shot, arrow or hitting them again with a club. I remember an a early video zombies had health bars if im not mistaken but in this video i didnt see one. maybe they consider putting that back in if it was taken out.

Other than that it was pretty fine we did see the bow glitch that im sure Joel took a mental note of and probably looking into that. Not sure if he was playing on the highest quality while recording so the quality could be much better for us gamers. the stamina and health bar will need getting use to. i dont know if i rather like seeing that or seeing i have 150 heath 150 stamina instead.

I Am sad its taking longer than i expected its nearly September and now a flood of new games are coming out. And my friends and i may have to put 7 days on a back burner. which all and all may not be a bad thing waited this long right. Because if the game receive some nice patches after release it just will be a much better experience when we do come back.

 
Smaller maps and less water will mean we don’t need a raft anymore. Then they can spend that time putting in fishing.
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I like games with fishing, its simple and relaxing. I enjoy both extremely complex games and very simple games equally. :)

 
its not a waste. letting the developers hear the clear worry there is for such things is important to the health of the game. belive me, its not just the developers who want this game to continue being successfull. its the people who have stood behind it for so long.
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dont go making them observations, many is from the casual player. much like myself.
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But you haven't played A17. It hasn't been released. I'm all constructive criticism and have had plenty during the dev of this game but it's completely baseless at this point.

 
But you haven't played A17. It hasn't been released. I'm all constructive criticism and have had plenty during the dev of this game but it's completely baseless at this point.
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We got rid of fire demons and we got rid of zombie health bars. Criticism before playing is helpful.

 
Dont think thats a bug. If i remember correctly they took it out on purpose.
Cheers
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they took it out because it was bugged :D or not working properly...

but he definatly said they wanted to reimplement it to give players an incentive to finish a tree and not leave 5000 trees half finished (because every hp bar needs to be saved)

 
We got rid of fire demons and we got rid of zombie health bars. Criticism before playing is helpful.
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Zombie hp bars we're never going to be in A17. They were always boss only and we're just on for testing though.

 
I get the no loot from zombies from both a logical and a technical standpoint. But I just don't see it from a fun standpoint.

As of right now there is very little reason to try to kill zombies without loot. Sure you can make them harder, but then there is even less reason for killing them. Since it will be harder.

The issue is balance, with no reward I have no desire to kill sombies on a horde night. @fataal might think ok well how about this, I will make it so you are forced to kill them if you want to live until morning.

Fair enough, but good luck finding the magical Goldilocks difficulty where both someone like me is threatened and the average casual player isn't bent over and violated endlessly all night.

I have played several survival games and i realize fun gameplay is a hard Target to keep.

I'll keep an open mind, but encouraging us to avoid combat as much as possible doesn't seem "fun". It's ok in an enclosed low complexity horror game. But you don't need any of the bells and whistles 7 days to die has to be a horror game.

Typed on phone so sorry for grammar problems.

 
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LMFAO

@xrt MM

That was too funny!
bfb.gif


*********GO MADMOLE GO MADMOLE GO********

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He also said that the Alpha 17 was mostly about fixing bugs. If this or that wasn't fixed, it's most likely not considered a bug.
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a) I've never heard anyone from TFP say that A17 is "mostly about bug fixing". They changed physics for vehicles and the Unity Engine TWICE.

b) Even if they had said that your assumption that anything not fixed would therefore not be considered a bug is very poor logic.

 
MM said "Zombies are not dropping loot! Get your ass into a POI and get some loot, this isn't meals on wheels. Anyhow, zeds WILL drop loot, now you just don't have to check 200 dead bodies to find it."

10 minutes after the patch this morning after he recovered his second corpse:

Die zombie die! WTF where is the loot, die die die, erm hello loot?

10 Zombies later: Nice I got teh phat loots backpack, water yay, sluuurp AHHH!

If all we are gonna get is 1 in 10 drops we better get more than a water for our trouble.

 
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