PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[Gareee]

My only concern 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?

The problem with that is that intelligence gates all tech.. workstations, cement mixers, electric defenses, the works. We can get a bike fairly easily now by day 13 or so. Personally, I prefer the idea of vehicle recipes being unlocked as horde night air drop rewards. Bike at day 15, motorcycle at day 29, ect. Maybe delay those reward drops by one day each per player death on a horde night as an incentive to play well? The problem you start running into is traders giving quests out that are too far away too fast unless faster transportation is unlocked.

 

[Gareee]

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.

They added a power attack buff if you stagger them fist with a regular attack, so its a zombieland double tap situation.. hit them regular, and then slam them with a buffed power attack.

 

[Gareee]

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.

We just got forges on day 19, and couldn't find a working one anywhere. Or are you talking about the new dropped level gating?

In that case, maybe make them recipe reward drops after horde nights, like the vehicle idea? Deliver the forge schematic on day 15, workbench on day 22, cement mixer on day 29, and again delayed a day x the number of player deaths on horde nights.

Horde nights NEED some reward for playing well. Also the zombie loot bag quality right now sucks big time. few jars of water is not a great loot drop if it 1 in 100 zombies.

 

[Gareee]

Workstationmania is the wrong way IMHO. The game already has upgrade-paths for the forge with the tools you need to insert. Crucible and tool-and-die set are already available to gate recipes. And if you can't build the anvil in the forge it is also available to gate recipes.


In the options set "24 hour cycle" to 90 or even 120 minutes and you will have more time to build your base and the harder zombies will arrive later.

The problem with that is a night sitting in your base for a half hour. They need to nerf the multiplayer gamestage multiplier to half of what it is now. We shouldn't have to adjust day length to compensate for gamestage imbalance.

 

[The Gronk]

We just got forges on day 19, and couldn't find a working one anywhere. Or are you talking about the new dropped level gating?
In that case, maybe make them recipe reward drops after horde nights, like the vehicle idea? Deliver the forge schematic on day 15, workbench on day 22, cement mixer on day 29, and again delayed a day x the number of player deaths on horde nights.

Horde nights NEED some reward for playing well. Also the zombie loot bag quality right now sucks big time. few jars of water is not a great loot drop if it 1 in 100 zombies.

There are two problems with that idea.

Not everyone plays horde nights. In a multiplayer environment some people log out during horde night because <reasons> and so they'll never get a horde night reward.

An airdrop is more likely to be picked up by the swiftest player instead of the most deserving player. There's no guarantee a leveled airdrop is going to reach the intended person. There are also those who play without airdrops.

 

[Guppycur]

Could do days alive knowledge points.

...but that's not my cup of tea.

 

[The Gronk]

The problem with that is a night sitting in your base for a half hour. They need to nerf the multiplayer gamestage multiplier to half of what it is now. We shouldn't have to adjust day length to compensate for gamestage imbalance.

You know there's a setting to adjust the hours of night in relation to the hours of daylight? If night on a server is boring that's down to a choice at world creation, not a design flaw.

 

[Gareee]

Is there any chance that while we're teamed with someone and close to them we can share all xp rather than just that for killing zombies?
I love being able to set the shared xp radius to larger than the map so we can always work as a party, and it would really make it easier when playing co-op to have one person building and one scavenging and one trading if we don't have to worry about everyone getting xp at different rates for their different activities. If we all shared all xp then it wouldn't matter whether you took on did the xp-rich role or the xp-poor role.

I like this idea!

 

[Tin]

They could just Auto give everyone, a "Survive the Horde Night" quest every horde night, that gives the player xp the next day. Base the xp amount on their personal game score.

 

[Gareee]

There are two problems with that idea.
Not everyone plays horde nights. In a multiplayer environment some people log out during horde night because <reasons> and so they'll never get a horde night reward.

An airdrop is more likely to be picked up by the swiftest player instead of the most deserving player. There's no guarantee a leveled airdrop is going to reach the intended person. There are also those who play without airdrops.

The rewards recipes could easily be given by the traders to survivors instead of air drops, and if people are ditching the horde nights they don't deserve the rewards then, now do they? It would be incentive for them to stick around the intent of the game. The point is to reward players for successfully surviving horde nights with game progress.

After catching up on a few day's worth of posts, I have a few new perk requests...

A "moonwalker" faster backpedal perk

A "Marathon" runner perk that specifically decreases running stamina use

A "Billygoat" climbing perk that gives us back the faster ladder climbing, and maybe also decreases the stamina use from jumping

Also while thinking about irradiateds and their health restoration, maybe they can have that coded so they have a health restored in relation to gamestage? So early on they get health back but at a lower rate than now, but at a higher gamestage they can regain more health as destructive player power increases? Irradiateds could even have the color particles tint change depending on their health restorative capability.... yellow to full green depending on their restoration strength.

That would kind of "fake" having more zombie diversity without any really high overhead in modelling or too much extra coding. Their restoration buff would just need multiplier based on gamestage.

 

[Hek Harris]

Maybe if we don't want to have easy access to motor vehicles early in the game, it would be enough to drastically reduce the amount of gas that can be found.

- remove the barrels of gasoline (or make them non-collectable),

- reduce the yield of wrecked cars,

- modify the crafting recipe.

So having a vehicle would not be a problem, but driving it would require managing inventory. And the bicycle would be an essential vehicle for short trips.

 

[The Gronk]

The rewards recipes could easily be given by the traders to survivors instead of air drops, and if people are ditching the horde nights they don't deserve the rewards then, now do they? It would be incentive for them to stick around the intent of the game. The point is to reward players for successfully surviving horde nights with game progress.

Some people are avoiding horde night due to frame-rate issues, not difficulty issues. Locking core mechanics from players who are trying to avoid your sub-optimal systems is really going to annoy a lot of people.

 

[FileMachete]

I don't play MP but wondering if the new Shared XP is actually making things harder? Z wise. And shortens the game.

For arguments sake say TFPs find a 'perfect balance', where different specialists putting in 'equal' effort gained the same xp. MP progression would still almost certainly be faster than SP. The new changes MM revealed will allow faster progression in a specialized char build, so more resources faster from a Miner type (more stone/hr = more xp/hr), quicker z kills, etc.

While shared xp from z kills certainly encourages group play, a good thing, from vids it looks like zeds can be worth 2-3-4+ times the xp compared to a 'solo' kill. Sort of like if four peeps were mining the same boulder and they all got 75%, that's 300%.

I get why they do this in MMORPGs, they have to balance so that the really selfish players still want to group up with strangers; since they'll still lvl faster in a so-so group than by themselves.

I don't know, I don't play MP in 7dtd, but if it's really Cooperative Play, and folks aren't rushing the end game, then shouldn't shared xp be toned down to a max combined shared xp of X? Where X is a magical average of xp over time, considering distance traveled, ave zed density, etc.

Not meaning to work anyone up with this. Just seems like there are already so many benefits to a decent CoOp group that large amounts of shared xp may be counter intuitive.

Or I could be completely backwards and TFPs are leveraging the shared xp as a way to increase the GS/difficulty enough to keep CoOp/MP games exciting?

Edit: also consider a group where there are 2 stay-at-homes, 1 mining, other cooking/building base. 3 others kill z's, loot pois etc, as a group, now shared xp is likely to lvl that group of 3 faster than the other 2. And all the combinations. Would make anything other than, 'all xp earned from anyone, anywhere, will be equally shared' impossible to balance.

 

[TSBX]

Scheduled recipe drops don't sound like fun to me.

 

[Gmad03]

I really like that traders now carry more supplies cobblestone rocks cement coal etc.

 

[meganoth]

I don't play MP but wondering if the new Shared XP is actually making things harder? Z wise. And shortens the game.
For arguments sake say TFPs find a 'perfect balance', where different specialists putting in 'equal' effort gained the same xp. MP progression would still almost certainly be faster than SP. The new changes MM revealed will allow faster progression in a specialized char build, so more resources faster from a Miner type (more stone/hr = more xp/hr), quicker z kills, etc.

Shared xp for quest kills makes sense because it is a group effort but often with different roles. A bow expert will probably make fewer kills than the front liner with a sledge hammer who often can make the final power attack. Or the miner that comes along has to be much more careful and also has less damage potential than the fighter builds. Shared effort should be shared win.

And I think they increased xp for groups somewhat to incentivice people grouping. As long as it is only for kills it isn't that dramatically changing the speed of advancement.

But if the xp were shared for ALL activities they also would have to dial it back again and give out strictly xp divided by number of players to everyone.

 

[Lonestarcanuck]

They added a power attack buff if you stagger them fist with a regular attack, so its a zombieland double tap situation.. hit them regular, and then slam them with a buffed power attack.

So this is a problem. when I am doing a sneak attack on a radiated I want my power attack+buff on first hit.

 

[The Gronk]

<snipped for space>

It's logical and reasoned arguments like this that make me think that shared xp is a good idea.

As an addition, it would help low level players who are trying to join their higher-level friends. Eventually the xp bonus for playing with people higher in level than you will even out as you get closer to their level.

This could theoretically be gamed with lower level characters latching on to a higher level party to level up quicker but I'm going to slip into RP mode and say that's what would happen when a n00b runs around with veterans, they tend to develop the skills quicker than if they're on their own.

 

[meganoth]

Don't know that word. Sounds like caviars. Elitist!

cvars are just arbitrary numbers you can store and change on players, zombies, blocks, items.

Add a number to a player that just means how friendly a faction is to you and let traders of that faction give you better prices if that number is high and you already have a simple faction system.

Activate specific quests only if that number is high enough and you can make a quest chain where you climb the ladder inside that organisation.

The problem with that is a night sitting in your base for a half hour. They need to nerf the multiplayer gamestage multiplier to half of what it is now. We shouldn't have to adjust day length to compensate for gamestage imbalance.

A builder would not mind a long night time. But I agree, even in the client a shorter night should be selectable (on a server it is no problem to do that).

But the question is really if it is an imbalance or just that many players can't select a difficulty setting below normal? Maybe day length should be part of the difficulty adjustments. For me having more time is more acceptable than weaker zombies if I need to lower difficulty.

 

[Royal Deluxe]

Well as long as most Multiplayer player level slower than me as singleplayer i see no issue in shared XP´s XD