PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Guppycur]

But can your 15 year old hand-craft tires and such? I do think we should be able to find bike parts / bikes, although,.

I think anyone over 5 can pick one up off the street, but that only a chemist could scrap a rubber tire into plastic...

...seems dumb, all those tires around and the only place you can find them as loot, is in garage boxes.

 

[lesipher]

No no no no!!!!!!

The random wepon parts was the worst most nonsensical system ever.

Guns don't go bad. Gun parts are never stored separately. Parts are not interchangeable unless the guns are the exact same make and model.

Wrong.

Guns do go bad/wear out. Riflings wear down, firing pins bend or wear down, springs give out, seals fail, hinges,slides,and receivers wear out. All in all just carrying one around and not cleaning it will cause failure.

I for one liked the granularity and mechanic of gun parts, and if they are not brought back then for the first time since alpha 5, I will find a mod to fix this ( in my opinion) glaring oversight.

 

[JCrook1028]

Wrong.Guns do go bad/wear out. Riflings wear down, firing pins bend or wear down, springs give out, seals fail, hinges,slides,and receivers wear out. All in all just carrying one around and not cleaning it will cause failure.

I for one liked the granularity and mechanic of gun parts, and if they are not brought back then for the first time since alpha 5, I will find a mod to fix this ( in my opinion) glaring oversight.

There's an awful lot of over a hundred year old guns out there being fired on ranges everyday...... A bit of string, some cloth/water and some animal fat will maintain a rifle for a long long long time.

 

[Jugginator]

There's an awful lot of over a hundred year old guns out there being fired on ranges everyday...... A bit of string, some cloth/water and some animal fat will maintain a rifle for a long long long time.

Yeah, I mean if you never clean/oil/etc your pieces they will break down. or if you overheat the barrel. But really, is breaking down every part of every gun onto a mickey-mouse mat really something we want to do in this game? Not knocking what you like, but I will quickly uninstall if all of that needs to be done. If I wanna do that, Ill download a gun break-down simulator, or do it to my own lol. Besides, is there really a 31/600 quality AK-47 receiver? or 600 different qualities at that?

 

[faatal]

Great work cant wait! Will the radiation bug and shaky wheels be fixed? Thx!

Don't know about radiation. Shaky wheels and other cosmetics is way down on my list.

 

[Jugginator]

Don't know about radiation. Shaky wheels and other cosmetics is way down on my list.

*pssst* bandits! Hehe just kidding. Keep up the good work. The AI is crazy good! I was testing out feral wright damage on various blocks earlier, and had myself in a cube of concrete. Started to upgrade to steel while he was hitting on a block, and straight away switched to another non-upgraded block. Very nice.

 

[faatal]

I for one liked the granularity and mechanic of gun parts, and if they are not brought back then for the first time since alpha 5, I will find a mod to fix this ( in my opinion) glaring oversight.

It it not an oversight, since we intentionally removed it. I hated it and I don't think any of us are wanting to bring it back.

 

[Jugginator]

Plus, I bet that was a nightmare of tiny micromanagement of small numbers in all of those thousands of part combinations... rough to balance I could imagine. Pain in the ass overall, that was. Overall quality with mods makes more sense for a game.

 

[Moldy Bread]

It it not an oversight, since we intentionally removed it. I hated it and I don't think any of us are wanting to bring it back.

So what's the point of looting now? You know once you find a gun safe you will have a stockpile of guns. I'll have to find a mod to fix this too. Maybe hold a poll to see what people want?

There is no challenge in guns anymore. Day one and I was drowning in guns. One of the reasons to loot was to find gun parts.

 

[Mechanimal]

The new POIs are amazing, especially in Navezgane, I have a habit of going to Diersvill and taking over houses there. I just ran the Cleaner thingy and wiped all my saves, then started a new Creative game to finally explore and try out all of the new shiny things while we are still in experimental. Started by building my own big fancy modern house just outside of town near the West bridge, filled it's garage with one of each vehicle, then promptly ate the bridge on my first test drive of the jeep while trying to cross it...

I know this has come up before, remember Faatal saying that leveling them with the road is complicated somehow, but, aw. I am afraid of destroying every bridge when I try to cross it. I sincerely hope a solution to this arises, eventually. At first I had my garage one block high, level with the floor of house, but of course the same prob came up, I destroyed the driveway ramp going back into it(love the new garage door btw). My solution was to lower the garage floor to ground level, then use plate for the driveway and garage floor. It worked, no destroy, but the garage door didn't go down all the way and looked really nope. So then I dug up a block worth of dirt and put down concrete, that worked, but I get that funny gap between the dirt and block, still best solution so far, and if it bothers me too much I can border it with plates to cover that gap nicely.

Anyway, some notes on building/structures:

- The aforementioned jeep eating bridge problem.

- A 3x garage door and a nice new 5x garage door... and then a 4x drawbridge... are you trolling us?

- Why no able to flip doors or at least have a Left and Right version of each? Double doors become a nope, is there not a way to just mirror them instead of having a second set of geometry and texture?

- Diersvill houses are SO amazing, but then the sidewalk. Ugh, not only looks like crap and does not do the houses justice, but also acts funny if you try to build on top of it. I tried placing picket fence and it fell and broke itself. I solved by placing posts behind for it to anchor to, but that ended up distorting the sidewalk all irregularly, somehow making it look even worse. Had same problem when tried to place plates over sidewalk, which I was seriously about to do for the entirety of Diersvill. I miss the old sidewalk with a curb. Fancy houses like this would have a nice curb up in their hood. Where'd that go?

Bridges, doors, and sidewalks, oh my.

Yeah it's nit-picky, still gonna(continue to) play the F outta A17 regardless, and imagine most will resolve by A18, Beta, or Gold at least. Would however be nice to at least resolve bridges by stable release or peeps gonna be eatin up their bridges once they finally get their 4x4, will be an extreme moment of happy/sad. I'm glad I discovered it in creative, if I'da worked that hard in an actual game I'd be super annoyed. Maybe I will start a creative, fix all that manually, then save it and start my Nav games from then on with that save.

One last thing about bridges, and I honestly do not know if this was a bug or on purpose. One game I started in burnt biome, then when I crossed bridge near the Hotel it collapsed behind me as I ran across it, the entire thing. Thought maybe it was supposed to, for dramatic effect, and it was. But it left the river all janky and wonk-watered, with a plane of iron piles on it's bed, so maybe not.

 

[faatal]

So what's the point of looting now? You know once you find a gun safe you will have a stockpile of guns. I'll have to find a mod to fix this too. Maybe hold a poll to see what people want?
There is no challenge in guns anymore. Day one and I was drowning in guns. One of the reasons to loot was to find gun parts.

That is simple. I would make guns drop at 10% the rate they do now and/or only in the better loot containers, but not my call.

 

[icehot]

I'm not sure guns are a problem loot wise - I'm on day 22, and yes have a few guns, but i'm not drowning in them, it was also a good way to earn some money from the trader, though just enough to get a few needed items, I'm not rich from it. The guns i've been looting are low quality as well, and also ammo is becomming the problem as I still can't craft it, so looting is needed to keep getting ammo for horde nights. Also as oil isn't found too often, so repair kits to keep these low quality guns maintained is also something I want, so I'm looting for oil etc. Plus the chance to find a good quality one so I don't need to keep repairing.

 

[argeos]

Quick feedback:

(A17 b199 exp.) (windows dedi server) (default mode; default settings except days of 90 min.)

- the first week was a bit linear; we didnt have much choices, stuff to do

after starting with bows; we ended fightning with "compound bows" mostly.

- we didnt die during the first 7 days but we did 2x each during the first horde (day 7).

we were not prepared at all for some new attacks mode from them. it was quite fast. thanks the horde was "small"

- once we got level 20+iron tools (a bit past Day 8), we were able to progress quicker; have more fun all around

- by day 10 we had at least 750 feathers "in stock". Nests are now too easy to spot. Vultures are also giving tons of feathers.

besides, we had over 200 arrows each.

- reaching Day 13 night, food was never a problem. We had plenty of meat. Over 300 in stock.

- So far guns are last recourse stuff; we simply have no bullets, neither ways to made them.

During Days 12-13, we past level 30...up to level 32 (Day 13 evening)

- Day 13 late evening, we were surprised by a mini-horde with 1 vomiting cop and a "green radiation zombie" (always running) and a feral (white). we died, lost a backpack when they (zombies) died over our spikes.

we had no way to distance them "running" and they were simply eating our defenses like paper.

our defenses are to be redone for Day 14 night, although we still have lot of spikes all around

my guess is that we need to adapt even more. spend more time fortifying a base, than wandering around (exploring, hunting...).

 

[Jugginator]

@Argeos Yeah That's about how m friend and I fared. I am on day 14, just finished a little square iron room with spikes on the wall and 1 layer on the base, iron wall around that, same spike setup and cobblestone (since... soo much iron for walls and no concrete yet) wall around that (all 1 block deep). Going to layer a lot of spikes and barbed wire, iron bars on top with a tunnel entrance. Hopefully itll hold.

I've noticed the AI is really smart, and traps, when done deep enough, do the trick. But don't house in a large POI. We did it with a forge and a workbench that was in there. Sorta set it up with spikes on the outside and did some touching up, but they found a gap and barreled through like boiling water on warm butter. Had a swarm sprinting at us at night lol. Wound up spending 3k wood spiking the whole upper floor. They got in one more time at night, but the spikes slowed em enough for us to shoot from the bottom floor. Its a 2 story house with an attic, the bottom floor is sorta like a basement with a garage. I love the new ways they make us re-think strats!

 

[Pico]

Meh. After almost 4000 hours on this game (since A13) I'm actually feeling pretty bored with it all of a sudden.

They've eliminated any desire to try.

If you know your building efforts will fail, then where is the motivation to try.

If you know you'll be killed by a horde of vultures that emerge from nowhere, then again, why try.

If we start accepting death as inevitable, then we've all lost something.

I've lost a reason to play.

I set Zombies to Always Walk in order to be able to defend my base, but in so doing I lost any challenge associated with building. I might as well set my storage boxes and forges in an open field now, coz Always Walk is zero challenge to defend a base.

A survival game needs to be survivable.

Difficult, Yes, most definitely, but survivable if care is taken.

But a game that defeats all your efforts has defeated its own purpose for being.

I can't get invested in a game if it rips apart any sense of progress.

 

[Milanzombie]

First things first: very happy with the new style of 7 Days to Die - especially the difficulty. Can't wait to play with friends once stable comes out.

Secondly: perhaps this has already been mentioned, but when will a new build be up-and-running? Want to start a new game but perhaps the new build will be out soon. Hope you guys can help!

 

[AlabasterW]

Meh. After almost 4000 hours on this game (since A13) I'm actually feeling pretty bored with it all of a sudden.
They've eliminated any desire to try.

If you know your building efforts will fail, then where is the motivation to try.

If you know you'll be killed by a horde of vultures that emerge from nowhere, then again, why try.

If we start accepting death as inevitable, then we've all lost something.

I've lost a reason to play.

I set Zombies to Always Walk in order to be able to defend my base, but in so doing I lost any challenge associated with building. I might as well set my storage boxes and forges in an open field now, coz Always Walk is zero challenge to defend a base.

A survival game needs to be survivable.

Difficult, Yes, most definitely, but survivable if care is taken.

But a game that defeats all your efforts has defeated its own purpose for being.

I can't get invested in a game if it rips apart any sense of progress.

If it's too easy with Always Walk on then why don't you just turn it off?? You can't complain that it's boring if you are the one that is making it boring through your options. Let them come and break your base! Repair it! If there's no challenge of course it won't be fun.

 

[DaVegaNL]

Meh. After almost 4000 hours on this game (since A13) I'm actually feeling pretty bored with it all of a sudden.
They've eliminated any desire to try.

If you know your building efforts will fail, then where is the motivation to try.

If you know you'll be killed by a horde of vultures that emerge from nowhere, then again, why try.

If we start accepting death as inevitable, then we've all lost something.

I've lost a reason to play.

I set Zombies to Always Walk in order to be able to defend my base, but in so doing I lost any challenge associated with building. I might as well set my storage boxes and forges in an open field now, coz Always Walk is zero challenge to defend a base.

A survival game needs to be survivable.

Difficult, Yes, most definitely, but survivable if care is taken.

But a game that defeats all your efforts has defeated its own purpose for being.

I can't get invested in a game if it rips apart any sense of progress.

Remember A16? Where you had a forge up-and-running by the end of the 1st day? And had iron tools on day 2? Steel tools probably around day 5-6? Where you could relatively quickly build bases which were completely impenetrable by zombies, probably by the mid of the 2nd week?

And you were talking about motivation to play..?

You were talking about 'surviving' a survival game? What's surviving without dying? Merely existing..

A player that defeats all the efforts of the game has defeated said game, and is done with said game.

A16 was way too easy on standard difficulty. A17 is spot on, on standard difficulty.

 

[JaxTeller718]

So what's the point of looting now? You know once you find a gun safe you will have a stockpile of guns. I'll have to find a mod to fix this too. Maybe hold a poll to see what people want?
There is no challenge in guns anymore. Day one and I was drowning in guns. One of the reasons to loot was to find gun parts.

There is no real way to mod it back to what it was before unfortunately because they decided to actually remove the capability of both the gun part system as well as the action exp you used to get from using the tools and weapons.

This new system is entirely watered down. I can set guns to 0.05 percent and it still wont help. Because now you're removing a reward from players. And even if you DID that the second someone finds a level 3 or 5 gun the chase is over. Before you had to find 4 pieces, each at different quality and stats and as time wore on you assembled your weapon, made it better.

In my opinion when they removed that they removed a huge mini game in and of itself. In an Alpha that promotes difficulty, gating and slowing down progression it boggles my mind that the overall tools and weapons system got so stripped down they became practically the most boring aspect of the very same Alpha.

 

[Mrjohn1337]

It it not an oversight, since we intentionally removed it. I hated it and I don't think any of us are wanting to bring it back.

But the player base mostly loves it, who do you make your game for ?