PC So eager for A18e! No more juice for A17, knowing what's coming.

[Roland]

Oh you know, probably the same or more if not for the fact that alpha to alpha for last 5 years they are completely scrapping and remaking all the core features over and over again.
At one point in time you just have to settle with something and write down ideas for 2nd game or get used to seeing some of the oldest and most loyal players leave the game en masse due to zero stabilization, no optimization(since you can't optimize anything if you constantly flip over all the systems around completely iteration to iteration) as game seems to run worse and worse alpha to alpha.

Or using a metaphor:

Its easier to print a book on a printer if you don't throw away printer and manually make a new one after every singular page printed, while also rewriting every second page.

I had my fair share of fun with the game, but with absolutely ZERO focus on anything, zero actual goals, no actual plan, doing everything impulsively "because we can" I am seriously concerned if my grandkids will live long enough to see this game released.

I am not interested in eternal alpha projects anymore.

Every single thing in A18 except for (god I do hope they REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME) "last" perk rework is a content that's suitable for regular expnasion/free DLC.

Over the years, excitement and anticipation turned to exhaustion and indifference.

I'm still following the game and updates, but its impossible to muster any strength to play the game, knowing it'll all be thrown away with next update and then 2-4 following smaller updates that nuke everything over and over only to get burned out and be forced to wait another year.

I have good memories of each alpha and I’m glad I explored them despite the fact that the gameplay changed. I got to play 7 Days without any character progression at all, with LBD progression, and now with common pool progression.

I got to play with craftable weapons parts using molds, with quality tier weapons parts, and now with no weapons parts, and soon there will be a new type of weapons parts mechanic for A18.

Waste of time? It’s been entertaining to follow the development and see the progression of the game. There are lots of games in my library and lots of games I’ve played on past systems that only exist now in memory. Just because I no longer play them or can play them because the platform they were on no longer exists it wasn’t a waste of time playing. It was fun while it lasted.

I’m in no rush for the game to stop reinventing itself seeing as it doesn’t cost me a thing for each new iteration.

 

[Kattla]

It's too easy to type 7 in my browser's adress line when i don't know what else to do.

 

[Birkenhoff]

I got to play with craftable weapons parts using molds, with quality tier weapons parts, and now with no weapons parts, and soon there will be a new type of weapons parts mechanic for A18.

IMO this is a good example for "absolutely ZERO focus on anything, zero actual goals, no actual plan, doing everything impulsively". I personally miss the development in this project, the advancement, the golden thread. Sometimes is one step ahead sometimes it's one step ahead and one or two steps backwards. Some years ahead there might be an alpha 20 where you craft weapons by using some weapon factory POIs and DEVs will talk about them beeing unhappy with the crafting system so that alpha 21 will receive a major overhaul.

At the end of a day it's a matter of taste and point of view. Someone might see a game reinventing itself. I see a dog chasing its tail.

 

[Roland]

Lucky for me, my perspective also includes a view behind the curtain and I can assure you that your view is mistaken and incomplete.

They are very much into experimentation and if something doesn’t work with everything else as they were wanting, they do retool. They also save everything. There may be a future game that develops the idea of molds for weapons parts or LBD. Just because they ultimately reject something for this game doesn’t mean they won’t revisit it again in a future project.

 

[TheProphet]

People can hear you even at bedrock level in an underground base which is dumb as ♥♥♥♥.

Zombies making a mega crater to bedrock level like they are a bulldozer.

 

[Katitof]

Lucky for me, my perspective also includes a view behind the curtain and I can assure you that your view is mistaken and incomplete.
They are very much into experimentation and if something doesn’t work with everything else as they were wanting, they do retool. They also save everything. There may be a future game that develops the idea of molds for weapons parts or LBD. Just because they ultimately reject something for this game doesn’t mean they won’t revisit it again in a future project.

And I see that as the exact problem.

There is so much random experimentation, random out of nowhere redoing of the stuff that doesn't really need to be redone yet that there is no foreseeable future for beta or day I say it, release. Unfocused development with no keystone goals leads to endless development, which then leads to complete burnout of playerbase, which is currently a problem for the game in my eyes and I don't think I'm the only one, I'm simply agitated enough by that, that I've decided to be more and more vocal about it.

I'm up to date with what Madmole says, but Madmole says and Madmole does are 2 completely different things, like the "no longer 1 year long wait for new alpha" which seems less and less likely as we're on a standard schedule of releasing one alpha, then patching it for half a year and then taking another half a year for development of new one. Its been 7 years now, how many more will take to finally settle on BASIC systems that'll allow them to do implement anything into the game in a time frame that isn't being counted by the candles on the birthday cake? Come on!

Addressing previous post, I sure do not regret playing the game previously and starting over when it felt like a new game every single time, but that feeling is gone now, after 7 years, I simply want something persistent, I don't want to nuke my world every single time Madmole decides that glass pane should have horizontal crack instead of vertical, because that REALLY do sucks soul out of me and my friends I play with. After all, the game is NOT rogue-like and starting over and over without being able to literally built something meaningful is now dishearting, when me and my friends no longer have the time to play as we used to in the past.

Having to start over after every singular even smallest update is my biggest and pretty much only gripe.

And that comes from a massive, but bitter fan. I love the game, I really do, but its going nowhere. Once the kickstarter roadmap was pretty much filled, the development literally jumped on a horse and YEE-HAAA'd to the wild wild west in search of mystical El-Dorado.

 

[Feycat]

Still playing, got a game with just my husband and I and one with our friends. Still enjoying the game just fine.

 

[fragtzack]

Filling time with Kerbal Space Program..

 

[Kage848]

Oh you know, probably the same or more if not for the fact that alpha to alpha for last 5 years they are completely scrapping and remaking all the core features over and over again.
At one point in time you just have to settle with something and write down ideas for 2nd game or get used to seeing some of the oldest and most loyal players leave the game en masse due to zero stabilization, no optimization(since you can't optimize anything if you constantly flip over all the systems around completely iteration to iteration) as game seems to run worse and worse alpha to alpha.

Or using a metaphor:

Its easier to print a book on a printer if you don't throw away printer and manually make a new one after every singular page printed, while also rewriting every second page.

I had my fair share of fun with the game, but with absolutely ZERO focus on anything, zero actual goals, no actual plan, doing everything impulsively "because we can" I am seriously concerned if my grandkids will live long enough to see this game released.

I am not interested in eternal alpha projects anymore.

Every single thing in A18 except for (god I do hope they REALLY MEAN IT THIS TIME) "last" perk rework is a content that's suitable for regular expnasion/free DLC.

Over the years, excitement and anticipation turned to exhaustion and indifference.

I'm still following the game and updates, but its impossible to muster any strength to play the game, knowing it'll all be thrown away with next update and then 2-4 following smaller updates that nuke everything over and over only to get burned out and be forced to wait another year.

So from what I can take away from your comments is you want the updates to stop, optimize finish and release? Then we can have DLC?

Ok the dlc we will get wont be anywhere near the content we have been getting in major alpha updates.

So game goes gold, game dies. Then there will be a minor spike at a dlc releaae then dies again. If TFP are losing players with a year of development after 3 months then a minor DLC release will lose them even quicker.

I dont agree TFP have been making major back peddling changes the entire time though. That's more of a recent thing, past few updates. But i do agree, it looks like they are shooting in the dark, trying to see what will work. But I do applaud them for scrapping something that does not work. Not just keeping it because there too lazy to fix it.

 

[Kalarro]

I dont agree TFP have been making major back peddling changes the entire time though.

Me neither. Unlike many I like that the game is still in alpha. It plays well enough and I get free expansions now and then. The problem was just A18, and not even directly, like I said, on paper it sounded awesome.

 

[Roland]

The only real backpedaling has been with how the player progresses. If you consider that TFP always planned for the player to be able to progress in an RPG-esque manner and had some ideas about how that would be accomplished then it really isn’t stabbing in the dark.

Pre-A11 there was zero progression other than improving building materials and going from the primitive tools to iron tools.

A11 introduced tool quality. It was an LBD design but with a random +/-50 quality die roll mixed in. Over the next several alphas they developed player progression by adding xp and skills and perks in different ways.

At A15 they decided that they didn’t want LBD. Their first move was to remove it from crafting. Then they removed it from skills. A17 was the first version since A11 without any LBD components and now A18 will continue that but with a reorginization if the perks.

Books have also gone through several iterations. When first implemented they were considered a placeholder for perks. They were never meant to remain. In A17 they were almost completely phased out and the devs realized that they had been mistaken to consider them simply placeholders for perks. So A18 will bring them back as officially a full feature in the game to complement perks.

I can see a consistent movement toward their goal of having player progression in their game since it was first implemented in A11. But they are doing it through experimentation and several iterations. It sounds like some of you wish they would have handled this process behind closed doors so that all we would ever see was what they ultimately decided upon.

Some of you really should avoid Early Access....

 

[Stevepunk]

I've played on an off for the last 5 years.

It's nice to see something new each time I play; I'm glad I no longer have to craft 1k+ axes just to level up.

I did find this alpha a bit harder at the beginning but I'm back into the swing of things now.

People say this isn't a roguelike but it's got procgen and when you die without a bed you drop everything and start in a random location; but it has permanent progression so it's more of a roguelite.

Y'all should try CDDA. It's a zombie [and everything else] apocalypse open world survival roguelike.

You might play a character for 50 or 100hrs (and build a megabase on wheels), but when you die they get deleted.

And that's ok because the real progression is in player knowledge/skill.

 

[jdifran]

Avoid early access?! I wish I could get A18 pre-experimental right now. (Well, without having to get hired as QA...)

 

[Katitof]

So from what I can take away from your comments is you want the updates to stop, optimize finish and release? Then we can have DLC?
Ok the dlc we will get wont be anywhere near the content we have been getting in major alpha updates.

So game goes gold, game dies. Then there will be a minor spike at a dlc releaae then dies again. If TFP are losing players with a year of development after 3 months then a minor DLC release will lose them even quicker.

I dont agree TFP have been making major back peddling changes the entire time though. That's more of a recent thing, past few updates. But i do agree, it looks like they are shooting in the dark, trying to see what will work. But I do applaud them for scrapping something that does not work. Not just keeping it because there too lazy to fix it.

Well, you have got it wrong then. I quite literally explained what the problems are and what's holding back me and the game.

And I honestly don't know how to write it any plainer and simpler.

You seem to be under a weird impression that its impossible to add new content to a game once it releases, which most certainly is not the case.

Flipping everything made so far upside down with every single update instead of actually having a clue on what you want your game to look like and pursuing that direction WITH A PLAN instead of impulsive random experimentation that extends development to infinity and forces restarts on a game meant to play persistently is the problem.

 

[Roland]

I swear it’s like there’s a fire somewhere and people can hear the smoke and hear sirens and then one guy says, “I bet it was Al-Qaeda!” And someone else says, “Yep, I’ve seen what they can do. It probably is Al-Qaeda!!”

Then, an eye-witness arrives and after listening to all the speculation says, “It wasn’t Al-Qaeda. Some kids were smoking in the basement and caused the fire”

To which one of the speculators says, “Its definitely Al-Qaeda!”

As an eye-witness I can tell you there is a plan and they have not reworked everything. The game is generally the same it has always been. It may seem more dramatic if the feature is your personal favorite one but that doesn’t mean there is no plan nor that that feature was a core feature of the whole game.

 

[Katitof]

Well, that's another problem, lack of transparent roadmap makes it look like devs are playing hot potato with development features and direction, being all over the place instead of heading towards a visible(to us, players) goal.

Surprise parties work well for birthdays, not long term game development, unless its extras on top of what was supposed to be delivered.

What we SEE as players over last years seems like random adding and removing of features/items/systems. And that is what is so tiresome.

It would be much more bearable if game was stable enough to not require wipes with every tinitest update it gets.

 

[Roland]

It would be much more bearable if game was stable enough to not require wipes with every tinitest update it gets.

You keep saying this and it isn’t true. That standard of wiping is only reserved for those who wish to report bugs.

 

[Katitof]

You keep saying this and it isn’t true. That standard of wiping is only reserved for those who wish to report bugs.

Have you ever played on RNG world without restarting it after update?

 

[zootal]

Have you ever played on RNG world without restarting it after update?

I have. More than once. It seldom works well. It was anything from severe landscape changes when they changed rwgmixer.xml to floating trees to simple things like floods of NREs in the console. I learned the hard way to restart after updates.

 

[Roland]

Have you ever played on RNG world without restarting it after update?

Yes. I’ve even kept the same world through several A18 builds and been just fine. Sometimes there does need to be a restart.

Sometimes. Saying that it must be done after the tiniest little update every time there ever is an update is wrong. If you want to admit you were just exaggerating to emphasize your point and annoyance over wiping then I can understand that.