PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

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Just a couple opinions from the Alpha 17 experimental:

1) I'm still not a fan of just how many sleepers there are in every single building. I really wish that sleepers were more the exception and not the rule. I don't enter a POI with a sense of caution and alertness as I try to loot and scoot. I enter it like Rambo, ready for the inevitable 5 minute battle royal. It gets old and makes every looting experience start blending together regardless of how different the POI might be. Still holding out hope that this is a direction that will ultimately be rethought and adjusted. If nothing else, at least make some sleepers dummies. They never get up. So it at least introduces SOME uncertainty.

2) Hand in hand with the first point, I don't like how the leveling system encourages me to be Rambo. I think a pretty fundamental rule of survival would be "Don't be Rambo". The game is feeling more and more like an action game than a survival game. Hunger and thirst systems are great and all (the new additions to those systems are great btw), but any progress that makes towards creating an immersive survival feel is lost when I feel I have to intentionally go play Dead Rising in the nearest POI, not because I need more food or water or a crucial schematic from the world. But because I need to grind the blue bar on my hud. I don't want to slip in to the WoW grind mentality in a survival game.

3) the way loot from Zombies is handled is really awkward. I'm not sure what prompted the changes, but I know I don't care for this new system. It's unintuitive and clunky and can really make the flow of gameplay stumble hard. But I won't say much more than that as I have a feeling this change was made for technical/optimization reasons.

4) I was worried that the dungeon ready building thing would be taken too far, and I feel that worry has been justified. There's a sense of immersion that's really been lost in this alpha. So many buildings feel so blatantly hand crafted it's jarring. Towns feel like some sort of strange dungeon select menu rather than organically dilapidated buildings left after a zombie apocalypse.

All in all so far I think a lot of great work has been done on A17. Lots of great system level progress. But in terms of the over all feel and direction of the game, it's actually moving backwards. At least in my tastes. But maybe the vision for the game just isn't for me in the long run.

 
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Hi,
is there any way to change the requirements for the vegan mode? We often play for buildung, relaxing an practising without enemies. But without them you don't have any chance to get skillpoints and you need years for destroying a few blocks. For this mode I would have back the former version respecting of stamina. For now it's unplayable in the vegan mode.

For now, you can change the XP values in the xml file you can find in the game's data. Go to modding section for more info

 
Just a couple opinions from the Alpha 17 experimental:
SNIPPED for space...
I sneak and use ladders and frames and put points in the Ninja stuff. this has let me get some/most of the loot with little zombie danger.

my other ploy is to fire a gun outside and get the Zombies in the open and hack/club a few and run back in and loot.

 
TFP please remove "buy" shortcut from the perk menu. I accidentally pressed "W" and bought "ninja movement" at level 7 - what a waste...
Or add an undo button for the first 5 seconds after a purchase or something...

Is there a way thorugh a console command to undo this??
Agreed. None of the shortcuts should be WASD.

 
I think most people feel: "A17 is good, but...".

I'm sure most can agree TFP intent was NOT to be boring like A16 was and in that they mostly accomplished that.

My critique:

It's now a shooter game with gaming the zombie pathing needing more finesse than A16.

Its now a MP game with some room for SP.

Its not a survival game unless you consider shooter games to be survival.

Its not a good SP game until all vital perks are maxed.

"Dead is Dead" is dead.

 
I think most people feel: "A17 is good, but...".
I'm sure most can agree TFP intent was NOT to be boring like A16 was and in that they mostly accomplished that.

My critique:

It's now a shooter game with gaming the zombie pathing needing more finesse than A16.

Its now a MP game with some room for SP.

Its not a survival game unless you consider shooter games to be survival.

Its not a good SP game until all vital perks are maxed.

"Dead is Dead" is dead.
Doom is a shooter.

Battlefield is a shooter

Call of Duty is a shooter

Far Cry is a shooter

A17 is nothing like any of those.

 
Hey y'all,

For the most part I'm liking the new alpha. Couple things though.

1. Like others have mentioned, the sleepers are too common. Every last one is still kicking and every situation seems to be the same. Every building will have at least 8 zombies and take forever to truly clear as they seem to be everywhere.

2. Was Quality Joe removed entirely? I have been looking through the skill list and can't find anything on it. It was possibly the most important skill in the previous alphas and if it's buried in the skill tree it should be mentioned which one controls it.

3. The random world generator is bugged. Buildings have been rendered with all but a single block off the ground. I saw a water tower entirely off the ground. The freaking sign outside the gas station just outside Diersville collapsed without any real reason to. The absurd peaks and valleys are back. I've found lakes at the bottom but if you fell in you would never get back out without digging through the mountain. I do like that there seems to be more flat areas than there were before. LOL, seems to be the extremes this time around...then again Alpha 16 started the same way. Then there's the biomes. I've been finding an insane amount of patches of a biome in the middle of another. Instead of there being large areas of wasteland or burnt biomes, they seem to be more common in ~20 x ~20 patches. I had two traders literally across the road from each other too. I mean, I don't mind the short walk from one to another, literally only ~6 meters, but when the next closest is more than 2.5 km away it's absurd.

Yeah, I think that's it for now. I like the combat. I like most of how the skill tree is. I like the simplicity of the point system. I like the inclusion of degradation on the stamina even if it makes things more difficult. I don't like that you don't get more ore with iron or steel tools, but I get it as that is in the skill tree. Doubling it with tool bonuses would make it too OP at higher levels. Just started a new game on b208, hopefully some of this is fixed. I haven't looked at the list of changes yet.

 
2. Was Quality Joe removed entirely? I have been looking through the skill list and can't find anything on it. It was possibly the most important skill in the previous alphas and if it's buried in the skill tree it should be mentioned which one controls it.
This is now under "Lucky looter" under the Perception tree, which got merged with loot speed and treasure hunting radius.

 
You don't feel A17 is less boring than A16?
nope

... edit, the double negative mixed with lack of sleep confused me. and this forum doesnt allow members to delete their own posts it seems... so i will correct myself with oversimplification...

17 > 16

 
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Zombie pathing has improved but still needs work.

Most of the time zombie's are better at pathing but still get confused in the following areas:

1. Smaller blocks like 4x4 beams.

2. Multiple floors.

Zombie's get stuck an smaller blocks and try to smash through them. But it would have been better to walk around them.

I saw a zombie try to dig through the floor when it could have just gone down the stairs. I made a bug report (see bug report b99) for this one.

Both of these problems happened at the information center.

 
A16 is a total snoozefest compared to A17
That's right, most people have indicated that and that's why I said that about most people's feelings. I then separated that from my critique. Is it clear to you?

 
That's right, most people have indicated that and that's why I said that about most people's feelings. I then separated that from my critique. Is it clear to you?
Got it.. but A17 is no where near a shooter... Play Call of Duty for 10 minutes and you may take back your critique :)

Play Call of Duty.. then play 7 days. I think they are a "bit" different.... lol.

 
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