PC Is alpha 17 hardcore, unbalanced or boring ?
- Thread starter nickdaska
- Start date
pApA^LeGBa
Well-known member
Yep, gikon sums it up pretty nicely. Everyting got dumbed down and the focus went to killing. Another shooter. Like we need that.
This game could combine different types of gamers easily on one server. That vibe is gone now.
This game could combine different types of gamers easily on one server. That vibe is gone now.
Try playing A17 and not just reading random salty posts because people have to change playstyles.
The melee combat system is, in my opinion, tremendously better. I barely even use range because melee is so much better. Ignore the lies, there's still crafting in A17... Yeah, you cant get cement by day 3 and a full cement fortress with steel tools by day 7, sorry
I know that ruins the fun for some people by having to play the game, but it is what it is.A17 is harder, but not hardcore. More beneficial to play with a group? Absolutely! And i'd rather get more XP from killing zombies than with mining. Mining XP in A16 was game breaking. Think i read that zombie XP is getting lowered but everythign else is going up? which is brillant if thats the case
Roland
Moderator
Not only is there crafting in A17 but there is crafting xp in A17. There was zero crafting xp in A16 but now it is back again. Why doesn't anyone bring this up? Because it isn't the optimal path to leveling so they don't care. All anyone cares about who focus on speed leveling is the optimal path.Try playing A17 and not just reading random salty posts because people have to change playstyles.
The melee combat system is, in my opinion, tremendously better. I barely even use range because melee is so much better. Ignore the lies, there's still crafting in A17... Yeah, you cant get cement by day 3 and a full cement fortress with steel tools by day 7, sorry
A17 is harder, but not hardcore. More beneficial to play with a group? Absolutely! And i'd rather get more XP from killing zombies than with mining. Mining XP in A16 was game breaking. Think i read that zombie XP is getting lowered but everythign else is going up? which is brillant if thats the case
All the crying about losing crafting xp in the final months of A15 and then in the first couple months of A16 and now we have it back in A17 and zero threads discussing it because it doesn't represent the most efficient method so who cares about it....
pApA^LeGBa
Well-known member
I rather have more mining XP and no crafting XP at all. I find it dumb to get xp for something that i can do afk.
Also people might just fear it get´s taken away again, i first thought it was a bug that i got XP for crafting.
Also not efficent? Standing still and getting XP for single click is not efficent? I think you are way wrong with your assuming why people act like that.
Also people might just fear it get´s taken away again, i first thought it was a bug that i got XP for crafting.
Also not efficent? Standing still and getting XP for single click is not efficent? I think you are way wrong with your assuming why people act like that.
giKoN
New member
Roland, again, very unfortunate to start quoting a yay-sayer in this thread.
Also, there is a slight but significant difference - crafting xp in A15 was primarily focused on improving the skill to craft that very thing - like ammo for gun smithing, tools for tool smithing. Now you get a number. Your crafting of tools improves - well i need better perception right now. So the crafting xp is in no way related to what you are actually doing.
And let me tell you - i appreciated when spam-crafting was eliminated. It is more about those skills you eliminated that made actual sense WITHOUT severely damaging the performance of the game as spam crafting did.
Furthermore, let me tell you that your generalisation of "they" is just what you hate so much about "us" when "we" post. I have seen an item in A17 which says "ModYouReFired". I'm starting to sincerely hope that's an indication.
meandog1000
New member
Personally I haven't died a single time outside of horde night.
meandog1000
New member
Exactly, I love the feeling of barely getting out alive after having runners hot on my tail.
- - - Updated - - -
What I do works well. Bow and arrow/melee, and when there is a crowd, gun them down. Not all caveman.
Roland
Moderator
What was I saying yay!! about?
I guarantee you that people did not make 500 stone axes to get better at stone axes. I guarantee you that people used the experience AND the skill progression they earned from making stone axes in order to improve in areas unrelated to crafting stone axes. There's no need to ignore what was blatantly exploited. Pretending that crafting xp in A15 was primarily focused on improving skills in that thing lends you no credence. You find me one person who switched to crafting dozens of fireaxes to start improving their fireaxe crafting skill instead of just sticking to stone axes and then find me one other person who didn't use the points earned from leveling up thanks to crafting stone axes to improve perks in unrelated areas and one other person who didn't do all of that during the first week of playing so they wouldn't have to start playing the game for real before skipping over all the early game content and I'll show you a schizophrenic dude with multiple personalities-- because there ain't three people like that out there that utilized crafting xp as a means to progress in a natural and truly learning by doing manner.
And I will appreciate when zombie xp gets reduced so that it no longer becomes the blatant high road to progression's end. The automatic skill gaining mechanic was never one I had an issue with myself. I don't miss it but if it was still in the game I would be fine with it too.
Well, I'm not sure why you felt to include yourself with the them I'm talking about. You said you were glad that spam crafting was removed so obviously you don't fit the profile of whom I was talking about. In fact, I'm not sure why you were even triggered by my post at all. I simply said that all those people who were upset about the loss of crafting xp aren't posting at all about how glad they are that it is finally back again. In my opinion it is because for speed leveling it is a non-factor this time around. That isn't a generalized "they"...not even in the context of "they who are unhappy with A17". I didn't even go there at all. You did that by calling me a yay-sayer as in, I suppose, you thought I was speaking in favor of A17 and against those who don't like it. Nope. At this point you are just looking for things in my posts to feel negative about. I wonder why?
Oh...THATS why.... Nice.
Because all sources of XP in a17 get blown out of the water by zombie kills. Crafting a stone axe takes us 4seconds and gives 12xp, it costs 2 wood, 2 plant fiber and 4 stone, scrapping the axe returns 3 stones for a loss of 1 stone, 2 fiber and 2 wood. Do we need to do the math?
We would need to craft 59 axes to get as much XP as one zombie kill. Taking about 4 minutes to craft and after scrapping it cost the player 118 wood, 118 plant fiber, and 59 stones.
I don't know about you, but it takes me quite a while to harvest those materials, especially the plant fibers, that alone is 118 swings worth of time going down the drain. The wood and stone come in bigger quantities per hit, but its still time spent hitting rocks and trees being wasted on minimal xp.
It's not that people don't care or that they only want to min/max to top level, it's that the numbers make crafting xp so insignificant it might as well not be there. Specifically it's the extreme amount of xp we get from killing zombies that make all other sources of xp seem extremely costly and therefore unproductive and undesirable. Why, in a game with dozens of hours worth of min/max grinding, would any player want to drag that process out and spend more resources doing it?
paulstrait
New member
This is true and I like it. Some of the xp bonuses were pretty nice surprises too (iirc the workbench was like 4k or something which I liked). I wish you didn't have to have the workbench open during the final second to not miss out on xp but whatever. It is nice that you get xp without really being able to cheese it like in a15. But you don't really get *that* much xp from crafting so it isn't surprising that it isn't brought up that much because it doesn't make that much of a difference in the scheme of things in your character's progression. It isn't that it isn't the most efficient method -- it isn't a method at all to progress. It's a cool plus, but if you took it away, a character's trajectory isn't really going to be meaningfully altered in any way.
My biggest deal is that killing zombies is basically the only avenue for progression outside of exploiting glitches. I'd be happy if crafting boosted crafting ability and that's it -- if we are saying that we want pseudo-classes, and someone's 'class' is a builder, then they should advance by building stuff, or else everyone is really just a fighter at the end of the day. Which is fine I suppose, but inconsistent with some of what seems to be articulated as the design philosophy.
My server is around day 120 and I just hit 65, so I still need to experience a17 more to get make a more confident judgment, but so far, the biggest thing I've missed relative to a16 was that a16 felt more consistently rewarding, in the sense that virtually everything you did in some way contributed to some minor progress for your character in some way, whether it was finding a marginally better gun piece, getting a couple of skill points in some area, getting a point of wellness, learning a new recipe, getting enough stuff to make some more fertilizer, whatever. I like so much about a17, but there are definitely extended periods of time where I don't think my character has made any meaningful progress. Some of that is the greater danger/difficulty, which I like, but it's bigger than that I think.
grieferbastard
New member
I am really, really enjoying A17. Way more than A16 - I had uninstalled and was bored with A16, it seemed a bit pointless and tedious to me.
HOWEVER.
I get that for a segment of the games population this isn't the direction they wanted. The wanted to build a 100% safe base and know the things they made or took home were always going to be safe and if they got into trouble they had a place (or places) they could go and be 100% safe. Functionally you could craft and mine and gather and when you wanted to fight zombies you could go fight zombies.
That's how the game has been largely designed prior, intentional or not. A17 makes that way less so. While you can still build 100% safe bases (build up, not down. Tops of apartment complexes or the like, fill ground floor with flagstone/concrete/etc, put spike traps all around it as much as you can. It's full of resources you can gather at night. I've never even had a slightly close call and I'm on day 40+) it's not like it was.
I would be in favor of a lower difficulty setting that didn't dig or jump. It seems like that's the crux of the concerns and frustration; people who liked and wanted an environment where they could easily and safely separate the crafting and mining from the risk of fighting and have no real risk of losing all your stuff in your base. That's okay - it's a game, there's no moral facet to what someone has fun doing and that sort of environment attracted a lot of people who've bought the game.
HOWEVER.
I get that for a segment of the games population this isn't the direction they wanted. The wanted to build a 100% safe base and know the things they made or took home were always going to be safe and if they got into trouble they had a place (or places) they could go and be 100% safe. Functionally you could craft and mine and gather and when you wanted to fight zombies you could go fight zombies.
That's how the game has been largely designed prior, intentional or not. A17 makes that way less so. While you can still build 100% safe bases (build up, not down. Tops of apartment complexes or the like, fill ground floor with flagstone/concrete/etc, put spike traps all around it as much as you can. It's full of resources you can gather at night. I've never even had a slightly close call and I'm on day 40+) it's not like it was.
I would be in favor of a lower difficulty setting that didn't dig or jump. It seems like that's the crux of the concerns and frustration; people who liked and wanted an environment where they could easily and safely separate the crafting and mining from the risk of fighting and have no real risk of losing all your stuff in your base. That's okay - it's a game, there's no moral facet to what someone has fun doing and that sort of environment attracted a lot of people who've bought the game.
ilukaappledash
New member
I think unbalanced is the word. Daytime enemies are as weak as ever, and with the changes to arrows and the melee buff, we have even better weapons at our disposal.
And at nightime the zombies turn our Fortresses into kindling.
But ill never reach late game to see if it changes. The grind feels so much worse early game. Its not challenging, the way our stamina expires and dies isnt realistic or balanced IMO. They've taken out some fun and replaced it with better graphics that my weak CPU cant handle. Might be time to move on.
And at nightime the zombies turn our Fortresses into kindling.
But ill never reach late game to see if it changes. The grind feels so much worse early game. Its not challenging, the way our stamina expires and dies isnt realistic or balanced IMO. They've taken out some fun and replaced it with better graphics that my weak CPU cant handle. Might be time to move on.
Last edited by a moderator:
RantingMonkey
New member
I don't find the zombie spawns to be any different. More than once I was killed by dog packs on day 1 in Alpha 16. Screamers could come at any time if you're making too much heat, day one or otherwise.
I love this alpha. There are more zombies which is a great thing. I don't want to feel like I'm in the zombie Apocalypse and only see zombies on horde night or if I go into a POI. It's not that this is hardcore, you just have to pay a lot more attention now.
Kalarro
New member
a17 has many aspects, you cant just answer that as a hole. It does a lot of things, good and bad
- It adds new good and cool things, and even balance in some areas
- It has a lot of unbalanced things, like fighting vs gathering/building
- It stears some game focuses into more boring things, like wanting us to fight too much and making defenses more useless. Or making tool quality useless until mods, and things like wood clubs beeing exactly the same as iron spike club until mods.
- It adds new good and cool things, and even balance in some areas
- It has a lot of unbalanced things, like fighting vs gathering/building
- It stears some game focuses into more boring things, like wanting us to fight too much and making defenses more useless. Or making tool quality useless until mods, and things like wood clubs beeing exactly the same as iron spike club until mods.
The first week goes something like this:
Grind your way to level 20 so you can get half decent tools so the resource grind isn't unbearable. Best way to do that? Grind zombies. You'll need to kill ~250 of them - more or less depending on how much XP you gain from other sources, but really there isn't much else there.
You COULD just buy some tools (if you get lucky) or earn them from quests (if you get lucky) but then you'll also still need to buy materials to repair them once they break. Which means finding things to sell so you can blow that cash on upkeep materials. Since you really do want to get to a high level anyway since the early low levels are pretty atrocious, and since getting to level 20 is just far more consistent, let's roll with that idea.
By the time you're done with that you'll probably be on Day 3-4 at the earliest. Now you need resources to craft a furnace - unless you already live next to a trader with a working one, in which case you can just use theirs. Shouldn't be too big of a problem either way but can still be rather annoying depending on what you're working with.
Now you need enough iron so you can get your first pickaxe, which will help you work your way up to the rest of the iron tools. Albeit very slowly depending on how you spec'd your character. And if you spec'd to make the grind less tedious and painful now, you're going to have to deal with not having enough skill points for other necessary abilities down the line. Otherwise you just have to deal with so many other tedious things that it doesn't really matter, things are still going to go slowly in different areas.
But anyway; now that you have your tools, you have to immediately get to work on fortifying a base. You don't have much time. You'll be praying to go back to grinding XP off zombies by the time you're finished because you'll be farming resources all the way up to the blood moon. You don't have much to work with, so you're really just going to be making spikes. Wood ones last only a couple seconds and metal ones last slightly longer, but are more expensive and take a long time to make.
Just so you can min/max the amount of resource you need to dump into making spikes you probably want to build yourself a small tower of some sort, just 4x4 and tall enough that the zombies can't reach you. Setup some frames around the edges of the top so you can shoot down.
By the way, even though you were locked out of making iron tools for so long and forced into this grind cycle - you could have started making reinforced concrete at any point. Yep, that's right. Find/craft a furnace, you can make cement and rebar. Find a trader with a cement mixer, and you can make concrete. If you can afford to juggle a couple extra things before the blood moon, might be worthwhile.
Then after you run out of time you have to fend off the first horde. Goodie.
If you're like me you probably spent time and resources fortifying an actual base rather than a temporary defense tower. Not one you made since there's no time to do that - just a prefab you setup shop in. This means after the horde you have to go around repairing all the damage, replacing the missing defenses, probably setting up new defenses because you already know what you're currently working with won't work or otherwise you didn't have time to complete it. You know what that means? More grinding.
Pretty soon you can probably start exploring some POIs and doing missions comfortably without having to worry so much about the next blood moon but... Jesus. It takes like a full week to get setup. And it's not hard. It's just boring, and grindy, all the way through. And the grind doesn't even stop there.
The main new thing to do is explore the new POIs, which are really cool and intricately designed. But you really aren't given much to look at them until you dump several hours into just whacking trees and zombies repeatedly. Only then do you have time to spare that you can spend playing the actual game without the threat of dying to the next horde.
Not to mention the POIs are now scaled since you're high level. So enjoy those feral zombies that will gang up on you if you alert too many. I hope you brought a bow and invested into headshot damage and sneak attack damage, because you're not fighting these things with melee. Not when they sprint around so quickly, twitch all over the place with every animation they play and with melee combat needing you to be so specific where you aim. Don't have that? Back to the grind.
I opt for A17 just being boring rather than hard in an interesting way. It's just so grindy. I just get burnt out by the time I get done with the first horde because the immediate thing I need to do is farm more resources so I can repair the damage done to my base. I just want to look at the POIs. I want to go play the game. Not hit more rocks like I have been doing for the past 7 hours.
In A16 you had a good balance between things. Start out, find a place to live, grind a bit so you can secure it. Then go scavenge until you have enough leather and pipes to build a furnace. Go back, grind for the better tools, probably grind some more to reinforce your base. Go out and scavenge and fight zombies so you can level up more. Then do some more grinding so you can be ready by the time the horde comes.
It was a really nice back and forth and really you had enough leeway that you could really choose what you wanted to do. You made good progress no matter what you chose. Was it too easy? I'd probably say so. But at least it wasn't constant boredom where you were forced to grind at a specific thing until you hit the breaking point and had to go farm a different thing for some hours.
And I haven't even mentioned all the other micromanagement systems like encumbrance, stamina, level progression (particularly in singleplayer). They're really what makes this build so annoying. But the long, slow grind is bad enough on it's own.
Grind your way to level 20 so you can get half decent tools so the resource grind isn't unbearable. Best way to do that? Grind zombies. You'll need to kill ~250 of them - more or less depending on how much XP you gain from other sources, but really there isn't much else there.
You COULD just buy some tools (if you get lucky) or earn them from quests (if you get lucky) but then you'll also still need to buy materials to repair them once they break. Which means finding things to sell so you can blow that cash on upkeep materials. Since you really do want to get to a high level anyway since the early low levels are pretty atrocious, and since getting to level 20 is just far more consistent, let's roll with that idea.
By the time you're done with that you'll probably be on Day 3-4 at the earliest. Now you need resources to craft a furnace - unless you already live next to a trader with a working one, in which case you can just use theirs. Shouldn't be too big of a problem either way but can still be rather annoying depending on what you're working with.
Now you need enough iron so you can get your first pickaxe, which will help you work your way up to the rest of the iron tools. Albeit very slowly depending on how you spec'd your character. And if you spec'd to make the grind less tedious and painful now, you're going to have to deal with not having enough skill points for other necessary abilities down the line. Otherwise you just have to deal with so many other tedious things that it doesn't really matter, things are still going to go slowly in different areas.
But anyway; now that you have your tools, you have to immediately get to work on fortifying a base. You don't have much time. You'll be praying to go back to grinding XP off zombies by the time you're finished because you'll be farming resources all the way up to the blood moon. You don't have much to work with, so you're really just going to be making spikes. Wood ones last only a couple seconds and metal ones last slightly longer, but are more expensive and take a long time to make.
Just so you can min/max the amount of resource you need to dump into making spikes you probably want to build yourself a small tower of some sort, just 4x4 and tall enough that the zombies can't reach you. Setup some frames around the edges of the top so you can shoot down.
By the way, even though you were locked out of making iron tools for so long and forced into this grind cycle - you could have started making reinforced concrete at any point. Yep, that's right. Find/craft a furnace, you can make cement and rebar. Find a trader with a cement mixer, and you can make concrete. If you can afford to juggle a couple extra things before the blood moon, might be worthwhile.
Then after you run out of time you have to fend off the first horde. Goodie.
If you're like me you probably spent time and resources fortifying an actual base rather than a temporary defense tower. Not one you made since there's no time to do that - just a prefab you setup shop in. This means after the horde you have to go around repairing all the damage, replacing the missing defenses, probably setting up new defenses because you already know what you're currently working with won't work or otherwise you didn't have time to complete it. You know what that means? More grinding.
Pretty soon you can probably start exploring some POIs and doing missions comfortably without having to worry so much about the next blood moon but... Jesus. It takes like a full week to get setup. And it's not hard. It's just boring, and grindy, all the way through. And the grind doesn't even stop there.
The main new thing to do is explore the new POIs, which are really cool and intricately designed. But you really aren't given much to look at them until you dump several hours into just whacking trees and zombies repeatedly. Only then do you have time to spare that you can spend playing the actual game without the threat of dying to the next horde.
Not to mention the POIs are now scaled since you're high level. So enjoy those feral zombies that will gang up on you if you alert too many. I hope you brought a bow and invested into headshot damage and sneak attack damage, because you're not fighting these things with melee. Not when they sprint around so quickly, twitch all over the place with every animation they play and with melee combat needing you to be so specific where you aim. Don't have that? Back to the grind.
I opt for A17 just being boring rather than hard in an interesting way. It's just so grindy. I just get burnt out by the time I get done with the first horde because the immediate thing I need to do is farm more resources so I can repair the damage done to my base. I just want to look at the POIs. I want to go play the game. Not hit more rocks like I have been doing for the past 7 hours.
In A16 you had a good balance between things. Start out, find a place to live, grind a bit so you can secure it. Then go scavenge until you have enough leather and pipes to build a furnace. Go back, grind for the better tools, probably grind some more to reinforce your base. Go out and scavenge and fight zombies so you can level up more. Then do some more grinding so you can be ready by the time the horde comes.
It was a really nice back and forth and really you had enough leeway that you could really choose what you wanted to do. You made good progress no matter what you chose. Was it too easy? I'd probably say so. But at least it wasn't constant boredom where you were forced to grind at a specific thing until you hit the breaking point and had to go farm a different thing for some hours.
And I haven't even mentioned all the other micromanagement systems like encumbrance, stamina, level progression (particularly in singleplayer). They're really what makes this build so annoying. But the long, slow grind is bad enough on it's own.
wolfhorse
New member
right too boring...like playing CoD zombies..just kill zombie kill zombie...kill zombie...wait on bldg til BM passes rinse repeat. I been thru two hoards now. haven't had time to gaather enough stuff to build much of a base or time to explore. It's not just hoards of dogs or wolves or spider zombies on day 3 or 4. it's just that there are TOO many zombies everywhere and they burn up your day killing them. I'm sure once you get to level 60 or 80 you probably do it faster but who wants to wait that long or grind that long before you can play the whole game. guess thats why its on sale for 9 bucks.