PC Developer Discussions: Alpha 17

[NoamChomsky]

The idea is simple, link few doors/garage doors/hatch/drawbridge to electricity system

hooking a motion detector up to the drawbridge was one of the first things i wanted to do with the electricity system.

 

[NoamChomsky]

This backpack thing is that it teases many players. With few ppl that play around a lot (1000+ hours) we were thinking of different types of player characters with upgradable perks. Such as bigger backpack or more stamina. Or beer resistanse.
Lets say we have 3 types - a looter/scavanger, marine, medic/farmer. It will mess and both add and remove good stuff from the game but it`s what could be best way to add bigger backpack without destroying experience in MP/PVP

In SP - god I hope we have at least an upgrade or a lootable bigger (very rare) backpack. Or a pickup truck.

How about at least having larger storage / backpacks / baskets be game configurables? Then the default could be kept the default, while some servers / players could choose to cater to scavengers. Kind of like LCB size, drop-on-death/exit and such being configurable.

 

[JaxTeller718]

Someone mentioned BM's?
...oh. Blood moons.

Um, they need work, but as many times as they've changed since they we're introduced, I've no doubt they'll change again.

Let's female dog about them in beta.

(Or will that be too late?)

Possibly yes. And I wouldn't say bitching as they do have a place in SP, but I havent seen very many even discuss the BM on a MP until recently now that people are getting knee deep into gamestages and Day 200 plus. Sure there are other more important things, but its important we don't push EVERY conversation to "lets wait until Beta" because Beta is usually feature locked and balancing time. And BM on MP servers is something that needs discussing BEFORE being feature locked.

And Im not sure what's being discussed is specifically balancing. A scheduled event that occurs within a time frame of a countdown is a bad idea for an always running environment simply because it punishes anyone who doesn't log in for hours a day. That kind of requirement leads to frustration in a survival game setting. It transcends progression. Mathematically you only have a set time to prepare and for those who do not have that kind of time it makes server play much more restrictive. It takes AWAY freedom of choice (something I know you are a champion of) because from the second you log in if you aren't on for the full 7 hours then you MUST farm and build specifically for this one event. Where is the fun in that, especially if you log in 2 days before the event and are in scramble mode. Im certain you and I agree that being shoe horned into repair and farm mode every night you log in to play is most definitely restricting and not fun.

- - - Updated - - -

i do wish the hordes were a nightly thing, like is feeding time.. and the blood moons were monthly.

I like the monthly idea. It gives people time plus if balanced correctly with gamestages that monthly visit could be absolute destruction.

 

[NoamChomsky]

TBH (and this is just my opinion) some elements of the game needs to be grounded/based on reality or it just starts to get silly and can no longer be taken seriously. It's just a matter of how far you feel it should be stretched for better game play. I don't think anyone is trying to push that we can't carry nothing more than 1 or 2 items. I'm in the camp that at least some form of "Item management" needs to be in the game and having a 72 slot bag is a bad thing... (imo) You shouldn't be able to carry your whole base in your backpack and you're just going to need to prioritize what you should or shouldn't take.

So yeah, the "Reality" argument should be pitted against "game play" a lot in this type of game.

The problem here is that we have irreconcilable differences about which camps we are in.

I'm in the camp that would like larger storage, and particularly larger mobile storage. I find it unrealistic that we'd be able to be level 200 and build out own skyscrapers with fully automated turret defenses and nobody has managed to salvage a 24 foot box truck or a semi tractor in order to ship piles of stuff in between bases. Which is not to say that I want to see those kinds of player-driven vehicles added to the game, I'd be happy with a mega-mini-bike-storage and some suspension of disbelief. But from a gameplay perspective I don't like having to choose between abandoning bases with all kinds of stuff in them vs. doing a dozen runs across the map to ferry stuff.

If you wanted to fit this into the existing game without increasing the amount of scavenging that users could do, then maybe just some way of dropping off items in storage at traders and transferring them between traders. Then you ferry stuff to a trader, have it "shipped" across the map (imagine fleets of brown UPS trucks in the background), and then can pick it up at another trade all the way across the map and ferry it to your new base. As long as you build somewhat close to traders, then its not too hard to ferry lots of stuff around. But then you can't hit a town with 2,000 slots of storage open and strip it to the bone in one pass.

 

[Roland]

i do wish the hordes were a nightly thing, like is feeding time.. and the blood moons were monthly.

Set your game option to feral and zombies will gps to you at night. There are already wandering hordes on some nights but a lot of times they just run past without engaging. But if you set the game mode to feral any wandering hordes and any zeds spawning in the area will actively hunt you until the sun rises every night.

I believe you can change the days for Bloodmoon in the xmls from 7, 14, 21, 28, etc. to 30, 60, 90, 120 etc. At least you could in earlier iterations.

 

[SlicksGirl]

Set your game option to feral and zombies will gps to you at night. There are wandering hordes but a lot of times they just run past. But if you set the game mode to feral any wandering hordes and any zeds spawning in the area will actively hunt you until the sun rises.
I believe you can change the days for Bloodmoon in the xmls from 7, 14, 21, 28, etc. to 30, 60, 90, 120. At least you could in earlier iterations.

Thank you, I'll check this out. For me the game seems to move too fast. and the moon cycle is a week long.. lol. feels weird

 

[Roland]

I'd turn off BM entirely

That would make fertilizer a lot tougher to create....

 

[SlicksGirl]

when will we get shopping carts? i mean, that seems like a beginner item. limited storage with mobility and it is restricted to only asphalt or actual blocks. and a squeaky shopping cart will draw attention, so it could be balanced. you want mobile storage, but you take the risk of getting noticed and you have to stick to roads, can take it across ground.

 

[Roland]

Thank you, I'll check this out. For me the game seems to move too fast. and the moon cycle is a week long.. lol. feels weird

Be careful though. In the past there was a bug that would make it so wandering hordes would run during the day if the game was set to feral. Not sure if they fixed it or not. Its not so bad but can give you quite a fright when you see a bunch of bikers come over the hill running towards you at full speed...

 

[Tin]

The problem here is that we have irreconcilable differences about which camps we are in.
I'm in the camp that would like larger storage, and particularly larger mobile storage. I find it unrealistic that we'd be able to be level 200 and build out own skyscrapers with fully automated turret defenses and nobody has managed to salvage a 24 foot box truck or a semi tractor in order to ship piles of stuff in between bases. Which is not to say that I want to see those kinds of player-driven vehicles added to the game, I'd be happy with a mega-mini-bike-storage and some suspension of disbelief. But from a gameplay perspective I don't like having to choose between abandoning bases with all kinds of stuff in them vs. doing a dozen runs across the map to ferry stuff.

If you wanted to fit this into the existing game without increasing the amount of scavenging that users could do, then maybe just some way of dropping off items in storage at traders and transferring them between traders. Then you ferry stuff to a trader, have it "shipped" across the map (imagine fleets of brown UPS trucks in the background), and then can pick it up at another trade all the way across the map and ferry it to your new base. As long as you build somewhat close to traders, then its not too hard to ferry lots of stuff around. But then you can't hit a town with 2,000 slots of storage open and strip it to the bone in one pass.

Your suggestion has pretty much solved part of the issue and a good compromise to both sides of the coin. Why not have a delivery service in the game? Why not have the player go to a trader and "purchase" a moving service that will move your storage? You wouldn't need to have a backpack any larger than you have now and ppl would still have the "Item management" aspect of the game as well. Plus you give the trader another use in the game.

But just giving the player a "carry all" bag? no ty.

edit: in fact, I would be totally for a delivery service in the game just for the fact, now it wouldn't be free and ppl would need to work for that service... Plus Hal has a really cool mod doing just that >.>

 

[Roland]

The problem here is that we have irreconcilable differences about which camps we are in.

Not completely irreconcilable. I like your idea of having massive mobile storage options gated to > level 150 as an abstraction of what you mentioned as far as trucks etc. For that point of the game where you have conquered the survival aspect and are wanting to do large projects of excavation or building it makes sense. I just don't like it for the early and mid game when you should be forced to choose this or that. Come back for a second trip or not. Most complaints I see are not for when they are level 150 it is for when they are level 5 and they want to carry all their tools, and changes of clothes, and food and water, and several weapon options, AND be able to clear a town of goods without having to make more than a couple of trips.

Someone was just recently complaining that cans of water aren't stackable to 15 like the bottled water is because they wanted to take several to stay hydrated but also wanted the slots for other stuff. That's some good tough decision making that can have lethal consequences if the wrong choice is made and things go sideways. Being able to carry everything early in the game wrecks such choices. Now I get that some people don't want to play a game where they have to make tough choices and have to struggle but their preferences should be a mod since what they aren't enjoying is the genre that this game was advertised as being. It's like buying a Daytona 500 style racing game and then asking for them to remove the track and make it cross country because its more interesting. Maybe so, but it won't be a Daytona 500 racing game any longer.

 

[OdoShorwick]

I made this suggestion before, but I'll put it here again.

For mid-late game tools we have the Auger (mining), Chain Saw (wood), and the Nail Gun (building/repair); however we have nothing for dismantling. My suggestion is to have a Power Drill that we can collect the parts and build; case, motor, parts, and we can use the same battery as the nail gun.

You can then add in a battery charger to hook up to the electrical system. Using the Nail Gun for repairs or the Power Drill for dismantling will decrease the charge on the battery. The battery would then be removed from the tool and added to a slot in the charger.

 

[Janna3921]

You were but my muse Meganoth. I understand you were not wanting to carry your kitchen sink around with you.
But I do think the current backpack size is good for the basic unmodded game.

Sorry Roland, I don't agree. I don't want it doubled, but a extra row would be good to have. I forgot to write down what I carried as I moved from the worthless town I spawned near to the one I hope will be worth living in, but there were several cans of food. Why? I saw one boar on day one and I killed it. I saw on day three a deer and I killed it. Three meat from boar and four from deer. The first town didn't have any gardens but I did get a lot of canned food from the apartment building. Besides the stone, fiber, wood, feathers, cloth, dukes and water, I had yucca juice, bandages, knife I bought at trader, leather, torches, duster, puffer coat, poncho and I found a wrench, fireaxe, pick axe and shovel. Rest was canned food. I saw no wolves, bears or direwolves (which made me happy) and even when in the desert and plains no vultures (which was weird). The tool belt has axe, bow, arrows, knife, frames and torches.

We need to have it changed that the books can stack. You can loot the book tower or book store and find five crossbows but each one take up a slot. Books need to stack. Why can't we stack more than 15 jars of water? You can stack a whole lot more of empty jars or jars of murky water, why not boiled water? We need to be able to stack more than 250 feathers also, that would take up less room and give us another slot. TFPs added the mechanical and electrical parts, electrical components, plastic and more that is needed but there was no increase in slots for the items needed to make the new stuff.

I don't waste spaces carrying glass, clothes (except for coats and ponchos for the different biomes), lead, brass and other stuff I won't be using in early game. I don't have a gun so don't need to carry items to make bullets. I do keep arrowheads when I find them but if running out of room I scrap them.

I can't remember how many slots there are or how many are in a row, but with all that was added in 15 but no extra slots and now we have to build a chem station, workbench we need that one extra row to carry needed items.

 

[Kaiser502]

They also seem to have a habit of killing out stuff I love so uh no thank you on them doing that to 7 days.

I know Amazon helps a lot with their engine, trying to get it main stream. They helped Star Citizen convert.

 

[M4ALEX]

A16 :smile-new: - MY favorite update to date. See you on the tube for A17 madmole!

edit: unpopular opinion, I am for the mechanical keyboard

 

[meshif]

I made this suggestion before, but I'll put it here again.
For mid-late game tools we have the Auger (mining), Chain Saw (wood), and the Nail Gun (building/repair); however we have nothing for dismantling. My suggestion is to have a Power Drill that we can collect the parts and build; case, motor, parts, and we can use the same battery as the nail gun.

You can then add in a battery charger to hook up to the electrical system. Using the Nail Gun for repairs or the Power Drill for dismantling will decrease the charge on the battery. The battery would then be removed from the tool and added to a slot in the charger.

A sawzall would be a more appropriate demo tool. I agree though, a power demo tool would be nice.

 

[almightypmj]

Its not so bad but can give you quite a fright when you see a bunch of bikers come over the hill running towards you at full speed...

You sound like you have plenty of experience in this field, is this an experience from real life? I hear that's what happens when you piss off Hells Angels. :smile-new:

 

[Death2gnomes]

are you kidding? nitrate is everywhere. one map I was on by day 3 i had mined 30 nodes. and it is dropped from rock, gravel, and underground ores like candy on Halloween. I find it mainly in the plains area. it super common there.

seed name?!!?

 

[Jackelmyer]

The problem here is that we have irreconcilable differences about which camps we are in.
I'm in the camp that would like larger storage, and particularly larger mobile storage. I find it unrealistic that we'd be able to be level 200 and build out own skyscrapers with fully automated turret defenses and nobody has managed to salvage a 24 foot box truck or a semi tractor in order to ship piles of stuff in between bases. Which is not to say that I want to see those kinds of player-driven vehicles added to the game, I'd be happy with a mega-mini-bike-storage and some suspension of disbelief. But from a gameplay perspective I don't like having to choose between abandoning bases with all kinds of stuff in them vs. doing a dozen runs across the map to ferry stuff.

If you wanted to fit this into the existing game without increasing the amount of scavenging that users could do, then maybe just some way of dropping off items in storage at traders and transferring them between traders. Then you ferry stuff to a trader, have it "shipped" across the map (imagine fleets of brown UPS trucks in the background), and then can pick it up at another trade all the way across the map and ferry it to your new base. As long as you build somewhat close to traders, then its not too hard to ferry lots of stuff around. But then you can't hit a town with 2,000 slots of storage open and strip it to the bone in one pass.

Actually, I think a large vehicle with large storage is just what's called for. I agree with Roland that big ol backpacks would kill some of the fun decision making aspects of the game. However there's a real need for game play improvement when it comes to moving bases or large quantities of loot from one place to another. I almost never stay in the same base that I start the game in. And it becomes an incredibly tedious and laborious task to move things. On top of that, I'd be awesome if we could have some moving truck of a sort that we could eventually clear paths between traders to make large trade runs after having spent a week looting.

* Expensive Part list (gating)

* Rare Part list (gating)

* Extremely High Fuel Consumption (Limit usage to important large tasks)

* Destroy-able (requires defending and/or turrets added even in motion)

* Wandering Horde Attraction (It's gonna be loud, so yeah, zombies)

* Large vehicle, may require road clearing to utilize.

Right there. A boat load of gating. Limited usability. Good luck on early/mid game usage. High Risk (have fun picking up the stuff that dumps out if it's destroyed, if stuff dumps out).

Would be cool if TFP got things tweaked so that players could sit on top of an armored truck, moving van/truck, or something like that and do the whole run and gun keeping some type of vehicle like this safe. Totally Mad Max stuff here guys.

With all that said... There's bigger fish to fry than this stuff IMO.

AI

Water

RWG

More Goals (Bandits/NPCs/Quests)

Electricity Improvements

Sleeper Volume Improvements

More Zombie Variety

More Prefab (POI) Variety

etc etc etc.

Storage is completely functional right now. Would put it on a back burner for now if I were TFP.

 

[Death2gnomes]

The problem here is that we have irreconcilable differences about which camps we are in.
I'm in the camp that would like larger storage, and particularly larger mobile storage. I find it unrealistic that we'd be able to be level 200 and build out own skyscrapers with fully automated turret defenses and nobody has managed to salvage a 24 foot box truck or a semi tractor in order to ship piles of stuff in between bases. Which is not to say that I want to see those kinds of player-driven vehicles added to the game, I'd be happy with a mega-mini-bike-storage and some suspension of disbelief. But from a gameplay perspective I don't like having to choose between abandoning bases with all kinds of stuff in them vs. doing a dozen runs across the map to ferry stuff.

If you wanted to fit this into the existing game without increasing the amount of scavenging that users could do, then maybe just some way of dropping off items in storage at traders and transferring them between traders. Then you ferry stuff to a trader, have it "shipped" across the map (imagine fleets of brown UPS trucks in the background), and then can pick it up at another trade all the way across the map and ferry it to your new base. As long as you build somewhat close to traders, then its not too hard to ferry lots of stuff around. But then you can't hit a town with 2,000 slots of storage open and strip it to the bone in one pass.

Not completely irreconcilable. I like your idea of having massive mobile storage options gated to > level 150 as an abstraction of what you mentioned as far as trucks etc. For that point of the game where you have conquered the survival aspect and are wanting to do large projects of excavation or building it makes sense. I just don't like it for the early and mid game when you should be forced to choose this or that. Come back for a second trip or not. Most complaints I see are not for when they are level 150 it is for when they are level 5 and they want to carry all their tools, and changes of clothes, and food and water, and several weapon options, AND be able to clear a town of goods without having to make more than a couple of trips.
Someone was just recently complaining that cans of water aren't stackable to 15 like the bottled water is because they wanted to take several to stay hydrated but also wanted the slots for other stuff. That's some good tough decision making that can have lethal consequences if the wrong choice is made and things go sideways. Being able to carry everything early in the game wrecks such choices. Now I get that some people don't want to play a game where they have to make tough choices and have to struggle but their preferences should be a mod since what they aren't enjoying is the genre that this game was advertised as being. It's like buying a Daytona 500 style racing game and then asking for them to remove the track and make it cross country because its more interesting. Maybe so, but it won't be a Daytona 500 racing game any longer.

U-haul trucks for temporary usage. Then there is PODS, a steel shipping container that gets dropped off in your driveway then you pack it up and then they come and ship to your new house. Just make a temporary storage unit just for moving base. Should be expensive but not heavy in farming materials, maybe should cost 20k+ payable to the newly added travel agent at the trader complex.