PC Some A17 thoughts

[madmole]

I think the poll you guys posted proves that 'most players opinions' are different to yours. Why post a poll if you already know you have no plans on acting on what the majority of people want? Why not just come right out and say "I'm making what I want to play. If you don't like it, tough ♥♥♥♥". At least that would be honest.

I haven't posted any polls nor any devs at TFP that I'm aware of. We make what we think everyone wants to play. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. That's why we change things. If a system is loved by TFP and most players who aren't biased then yes tough ♥♥♥♥. Its that way with any game, lots of whiners cried about Skyrim changes, but I loved 99% of what they changed and everything else was so much better that the 1% was nothing in the grand scheme of things. The stuff that could be better was modded, because not everyone has the same preferences.

All these changes are sharp sticks IMO, bugs or something we can improve in the future. The multiple land claim issue has been talked about. Obviously we want to make everyone as happy was we can, but its going to take more than a couple days out of experimental to get a clear picture of what changes are really needed.

Off the top of my head a few things can help:

XP slider for those who think its too tedious or those who want to level even slower.

Starting perk points options to specialize more or less at level 1.

When I say mod it in, its because we can only make the game for the general public, not for any one specific person with a specific taste. Thats literally impossible. All we can do is make the sandbox and give you guys toys but any special flavors will need to be modded in.

 

[madmole]

Now you're just responding like a complete troll.
Yes its a compelling argument that no mater what crafted quality bow I craft or axe, or steel pick, its always the same damage, but the durability is higher.

I don't think you understand how stale things get when progression gets halted on the same tasks with the same speed, especially something like killing zeds, farming more rocks/wood/feathers to make arrows to kill more.

That wastes my time.

We don't have to craft 50000 stone axes anymore that was removed from A15 to A16 and it was a great addition, however learning by doing in combination was a great addition.

Sucking at melee? Doing more, getting better? That makes sense though. Same with blade skills, or science, or building. ect. Some of it made sense while some of it didn't.

So you're telling me its better that I instantly gain the knowledge to cook by slamming arrows into 30 zombies heads?

Previously if you started to increase your archery skill by using archery, you got better at it, and did more damage! That made sense, if you crafted better bows you would assume they have better tensile string strength and which would lead to more damage.

Now? I put 3-9 arrows into a zeds head and they walk around like Pin head from Hell Raiser. Thats tedious, we need a milestone where we are able to start fluently reduce how much ammo is consumed if we have the personal skills and mechanics to effectively take advantage of it.

This game has lost so much continuity. Quit trolling.

I never said to change anything back to the horsecrap it previously was, only a few things were better, Stop assuming, it will make you look less stupid.

That is one thing we can agree on, I wanted quality to scale damage a little too. But to argue your point, getting a higher quality weapon allows for more mods installed and each mod increases damage and there are loads of perks to increase damage and attributes. So there are plenty of small increases happening all the time, but maybe the GUI doesn't show all of that, but every time you buy a single strength point your melee damage goes up. Every perk adds to that as well.

I don't find it tedious but maybe because I know how the whole thing works. There are loads of damage increases as you buy perks and atttributes though.

 

[madmole]

I disagree, there are many of us that enjoyed getting out the ole' axe to gather bones. I really didn't even care about the loot. I wanted them bones.

I get enough bones from cleaning up the roads, and killing wolves, dogs, etc. I don't think crafting anything except bases should be available in unlimited abundance, so its good that you NEED stuff and aren't swimming in endless streams of bones. It feels more like a survival game when you go out of your way to clean up a rotten corpse you see on a trail a block away because you need more glue from the bones, vs oh I can get 3k bones on horde night, no biggy.

 

[madmole]

And with that logic you guys destroyed every motivation to face zeds at your base. You get no loot, have to repair all the ♥♥♥♥ they destroyed and facing them at day and in the open is alot easier, if you want xp.
What is the point now? Forget the food, remove it from their loot table. Forget whatever else was on them. But at least you should be able to boil all the virus away from the bones and make a glue. Thats not rocket science. And glue is always useful.

Maybe make that rare zed bag account for how rare it is and always have like 100 bones in it.

I think coming out alive and getting some XP should be the train of thought here, not where is my shiny reward. When they do drop loot its AMAZING, especially at high game stage. That is your reward. Some really great stuff, not a can of dog food and some fishing weights. You can get that crap anywhere.

You guys wanting loot don't get it. Bandits are coming and they will most likely always drop loot. Zombies are idiots who weren't savvy enough to survive, probably ate all the food they had and starved to death, might have been killed by a bandit and already looted before they became a zombie.

We all decided that getting some really good loot every so often was way better than getting trash loot over and over again. Base clean up is bad enough with blocks destroyed, I don't want to chop up corpses and loot 200 corpses, not to mention the decaying blocks caused a duplication bug that this better design fixed for us.

 

[CoolJ]

I get enough bones from cleaning up the roads, and killing wolves, dogs, etc. I don't think crafting anything except bases should be available in unlimited abundance, so its good that you NEED stuff and aren't swimming in endless streams of bones. It feels more like a survival game when you go out of your way to clean up a rotten corpse you see on a trail a block away because you need more glue from the bones, vs oh I can get 3k bones on horde night, no biggy.

I am so tired of you saying this. No one cares that you don't use explosive bolts or anything else that requires bulk duct tape. However, they are in the game and you will not have enough if you use them. So no, it is a "biggy". Why are you being so hard headed about this? Over 3/4 of recipes require duct tape. You are wrong about there being enough bones. Period.

Your personal vendetta against steel is equally disturbing. You have taken it to a level beyond hubris by having recipes that require gobs of steel 30 levels before the player can even make it.

 

[Sergoros]

I think coming out alive and getting some XP should be the train of thought here, not where is my shiny reward. When they do drop loot its AMAZING, especially at high game stage. That is your reward. Some really great stuff, not a can of dog food and some fishing weights. You can get that crap anywhere.
You guys wanting loot don't get it. Bandits are coming and they will most likely always drop loot. Zombies are idiots who weren't savvy enough to survive, probably ate all the food they had and starved to death, might have been killed by a bandit and already looted before they became a zombie.

We all decided that getting some really good loot every so often was way better than getting trash loot over and over again. Base clean up is bad enough with blocks destroyed, I don't want to chop up corpses and loot 200 corpses, not to mention the decaying blocks caused a duplication bug that this better design fixed for us.

As you might have noticed in my post, I said forget food and other items. But bones ARE there. Can't really hide them, you know. Holding the whole walking corpse together.

About coming out alive, thats not the problem, really, it is actually less troublesome to lead zeds away from your base and leave them /kill for the exp at day.

Facing zeds at your base is counter-productive. You dont get loot from them. You dont get xp when traps kill them. You have to repair/resupply those traps. All the disadvantages and no advantage at all. What is the incentive again?

Before, in a16. There were multiple motivations to face zeds at your base.

*It was safer and good build base could survive bloodmoon with minimal attention. 10 mins and you repaired it back like it was before. Now you would need hours to recover all you lost.

*You get loot from the zeds, that wasnt all that awful, especially from late game zeds, like military.

*you can resupply your glue storage with the bones.

*You level up your weapon skill. I often faced bloodmoons with weapons Im bad at. Pistols for example, to level them.

Now you removed all the reasons to face the wave. Why would I? What is the incentive for the player? Danger is not the answer, since there is none. You made zeds better at destroying bases. Not better at killing the player.

About duplication and carving 200 corpses, as was mentioned in my post, why not add 100 bones to every rare bag? Auto assuming, that you would have carved up all those corpses. Win win for both sides, I say.

 

[PoppaTot]

I get enough bones from cleaning up the roads, and killing wolves, dogs, etc. I don't think crafting anything except bases should be available in unlimited abundance, so its good that you NEED stuff and aren't swimming in endless streams of bones. It feels more like a survival game when you go out of your way to clean up a rotten corpse you see on a trail a block away because you need more glue from the bones, vs oh I can get 3k bones on horde night, no biggy.

Sorry, clarification, I want them bones on MP with anywhere from 4-6 active players. I get what you're saying and agree to an extent. However, those gore sacks on the road go pretty quick. Almost everything requires duct tape now. I actually rarely made duct tape in A16, I used them to make glue->paper->shotgun shells.

 

[hotpoon]

I haven't posted any polls nor any devs at TFP that I'm aware of. We make what we think everyone wants to play. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. That's why we change things. If a system is loved by TFP and most players who aren't biased then yes tough ♥♥♥♥. Its that way with any game, lots of whiners cried about Skyrim changes, but I loved 99% of what they changed and everything else was so much better that the 1% was nothing in the grand scheme of things. The stuff that could be better was modded, because not everyone has the same preferences....

When I say mod it in, its because we can only make the game for the general public, not for any one specific person with a specific taste. Thats literally impossible. All we can do is make the sandbox and give you guys toys but any special flavors will need to be modded in

The poll I'm referring to is of course the "poll" posted by your moderator Roland. This poll is the only thing that we have that indicates what the majority of players want/don't want, but you keep using the 'most players' phrase as if they agree with you and the direction that A17 has gone. The poll says otherwise.

Just because someone, and in fact, as the poll suggests, most of us, disagree does not mean we are "whiners", or ''biased''.

 

[Ranzera]

We change things that are crude placeholders. Stuff that was hacked in with the meager engine capabilities of 2015-16. We always wanted this sytem, people just got used to to crude placeholder even though it was horrible. Who are these "more intelligent players"? Don't like it? Mod it out.

A lot of my problems with this alpha are things that got removed. Can I mod the plains biome back in? I'm doubtful. Can I mod gore blocks back in? Maybe. Can I enjoy these on multiplayer mods on multiplayer? Almost certainly no.

 

[Kilroy83]

I haven't posted any polls nor any devs at TFP that I'm aware of. We make what we think everyone wants to play. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. That's why we change things. If a system is loved by TFP and most players who aren't biased then yes tough ♥♥♥♥. Its that way with any game, lots of whiners cried about Skyrim changes, but I loved 99% of what they changed and everything else was so much better that the 1% was nothing in the grand scheme of things. The stuff that could be better was modded, because not everyone has the same preferences.
All these changes are sharp sticks IMO, bugs or something we can improve in the future. The multiple land claim issue has been talked about. Obviously we want to make everyone as happy was we can, but its going to take more than a couple days out of experimental to get a clear picture of what changes are really needed.

Off the top of my head a few things can help:

XP slider for those who think its too tedious or those who want to level even slower.

Starting perk points options to specialize more or less at level 1.

When I say mod it in, its because we can only make the game for the general public, not for any one specific person with a specific taste. Thats literally impossible. All we can do is make the sandbox and give you guys toys but any special flavors will need to be modded in.

Why not make the perk system like fallout 3 with base attributes picked at the beginning tied to skills and perks as bonus?

 

[iBane]

I think coming out alive and getting some XP should be the train of thought here, not where is my shiny reward. When they do drop loot its AMAZING, especially at high game stage. That is your reward. Some really great stuff, not a can of dog food and some fishing weights. You can get that crap anywhere.
You guys wanting loot don't get it. Bandits are coming and they will most likely always drop loot. Zombies are idiots who weren't savvy enough to survive, probably ate all the food they had and starved to death, might have been killed by a bandit and already looted before they became a zombie.

We all decided that getting some really good loot every so often was way better than getting trash loot over and over again. Base clean up is bad enough with blocks destroyed, I don't want to chop up corpses and loot 200 corpses, not to mention the decaying blocks caused a duplication bug that this better design fixed for us.

100% agree.

 

[Poojam]

One of my goals is to support as many player classes and play styles as possible. We're not there yet but I feel like we're way closer to A16 ever was in accomplishing that. Now there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to light and heavy armor, weapon specialization, medical specializing, crafting, etc. I want for you to be able to succeed with any attribute at 1 if you chose to. Its going to take a whole alpha or two to get there IMO, but its my goal.

The goal of the game is to survive. When the game locks everything away behind a xp-based progression system that increases your ability to survive (better tools, player stats, better weapons, better armor, better materials, faster acquisition of materials), then the goal becomes to get XP. That's a terrible thing to do to a sandbox game.

By defnining the player classes and play styles in the manner that is implemented in A17, TFP have greatly reduced the viability for people to play as they wish to survive. I can't understand why you can't understand this idea. People have been bemoaning this notion for over a month to great extent in /General.

 

[Exxodous]

The goal of the game is to survive. When the game locks everything away behind a xp-based progression system that increases your ability to survive (better tools, player stats, better weapons, better armor, better materials, faster acquisition of materials), then the goal becomes to get XP. That's a terrible thing to do to a sandbox game.
By defnining the player classes and play styles in the manner that is implemented in A17, TFP have greatly reduced the viability for people to play as they wish to survive. I can't understand why you can't understand this idea. People have been bemoaning this notion for over a month to great extent in /General.

I agree with you, the goal is to survive but at no point has the goal for me been to get XP. I find the progression quite enjoyable and rewarding, but I've never been a min/max kinda of player.

I also agree with you that "SOME" (and by some I mean the same) people have been bemoaning over and over and over and over, day after day the same tired argument which is basically A16 was better than A17. For the love of all that is holy the game you enjoyed (A16) is still available to play if you do not find A17 enjoyable. Why so much vitriol about it when you can still play it they way you want?

 

[Poojam]

I agree with you, the goal is to survive but at no point has the goal for me been to get XP. I find the progression quite enjoyable and rewarding, but I've never been a min/max kinda of player.
I also agree with you that "SOME" (and by some I mean the same) people have been bemoaning over and over and over and over, day after day the same tired argument which is basically A16 was better than A17. For the love of all that is holy the game you enjoyed (A16) is still available to play if you do not find A17 enjoyable. Why so much vitriol about it when you can still play it they way you want?

67% of the steam reviews since A17 stable dropped are negative. I want people to buy and play the game, so I can play with them on multiplayer servers and enjoy their creations. So I need people to like this version, which means I need to convince TFP to make it less bad.

edit - Min/Maxing is just about the dumbest thing I've heard. It falls right in line with Madmole's thinking. You both are missing the point. If you can get valuable rewards by min/maxing, then you've already lost the argument.

 

[Exxodous]

67% of the steam reviews since A17 stable dropped are negative. I want people to buy and play the game, so I can play with them on multiplayer servers and enjoy their creations. So I need people to like this version, which means I need to convince TFP to make it less bad.
edit - Min/Maxing is just about the dumbest thing I've heard. It falls right in line with Madmole's thinking. You both are missing the point. If you can get valuable rewards by min/maxing, then you've already lost the argument.

I don't see how I'm missing the point. It seems you were bemoaning the fact that you must earn xp to advance in the game because skill, weapons etc were locked behind the perk system thus forcing you to "chase" xp? I'm saying I don't worry about the xp, I just play the game, looting and surviving and then when the xp becomes available to unlock things, I get to choose the direction that fits my playstyle.

 

[Poojam]

We wanted zombie loot to be rare but good instead of walking trash bags. Nobody liked looting 100 bodies after the horde or cleaning up corpse blocks. If the virus is as dangerous as it is, then you wouldn't want to saw them up and use their bones for fear of infection. I don't recall them ever looting any zombies in the walking dead which has been considered the lore to go by from many customers.
Its better to get out there and find what you need, it always has been. I find needs engaging. Before it was meals on wheels and they brought you all the junk and food you needed. A horde should diminish your supplies and weaken your base and threaten your life, not enrich it. Its a survival game with RPG elements, and you should have to go find the things you need to survive. Of course you can farm and become somewhat self reliant, but you need to go out and scavenge like in TWD to get what you need.

Why bother having different types of zombies, if they don't drop anything of value at a meaningful rate? Used to be a thing to hunt for nurse zombies when you were infected, because of the chance to drop a pill or if you were having a hard time getting a beaker. Same is true for a lot of the classes/higher tier zombies. Now, what's the point?

I saw your other post where you talked about how it's all temporary until Bandits come, and they will drop reliably. If that's the case, then just change the % drop rate to 33% and nerf it back to hell when you get bandits in with A18. For the next year, we'll still have a reason to kill zombies.

 

[OnlyMeiya]

We wanted zombie loot to be rare but good instead of walking trash bags. Nobody liked looting 100 bodies after the horde or cleaning up corpse blocks. If the virus is as dangerous as it is, then you wouldn't want to saw them up and use their bones for fear of infection. I don't recall them ever looting any zombies in the walking dead which has been considered the lore to go by from many customers.
Its better to get out there and find what you need, it always has been. I find needs engaging. Before it was meals on wheels and they brought you all the junk and food you needed. A horde should diminish your supplies and weaken your base and threaten your life, not enrich it. Its a survival game with RPG elements, and you should have to go find the things you need to survive. Of course you can farm and become somewhat self reliant, but you need to go out and scavenge like in TWD to get what you need.

I really supported this decision. I was among the ones who hated looting zeds, the only good it was for me was to try and get a few scavenging skill ups.

It was very tedious and boring, which is why I usually skipped it and just went to slashing the bodies for flesh to make fertilizer and bones for glue/duct tape.

 

[Poojam]

I think coming out alive and getting some XP should be the train of thought here, not where is my shiny reward. When they do drop loot its AMAZING, especially at high game stage. That is your reward. Some really great stuff, not a can of dog food and some fishing weights. You can get that crap anywhere.
You guys wanting loot don't get it. Bandits are coming and they will most likely always drop loot. Zombies are idiots who weren't savvy enough to survive, probably ate all the food they had and starved to death, might have been killed by a bandit and already looted before they became a zombie.

We all decided that getting some really good loot every so often was way better than getting trash loot over and over again. Base clean up is bad enough with blocks destroyed, I don't want to chop up corpses and loot 200 corpses, not to mention the decaying blocks caused a duplication bug that this better design fixed for us.

Then just reduce the drop % to something like 20-33% and remove the trash loot? Why effectively kill it completely and destroy the idea of even using a tower defense base to.....survive, which is supposed to be the "train of thought here".

 

[Thorne]

We wanted zombie loot to be rare but good instead of walking trash bags. Nobody liked looting 100 bodies after the horde or cleaning up corpse blocks. If the virus is as dangerous as it is, then you wouldn't want to saw them up and use their bones for fear of infection. I don't recall them ever looting any zombies in the walking dead which has been considered the lore to go by from many customers.
Its better to get out there and find what you need, it always has been. I find needs engaging. Before it was meals on wheels and they brought you all the junk and food you needed. A horde should diminish your supplies and weaken your base and threaten your life, not enrich it. Its a survival game with RPG elements, and you should have to go find the things you need to survive. Of course you can farm and become somewhat self reliant, but you need to go out and scavenge like in TWD to get what you need.

Makes sense. Maybe I was doing things wrong, but even in A16 I didn't just sit in my base and let the zombies bring me everything. There were things I needed, and while I enjoy being self-sufficient (big fan of Swiss Family Robinson, Mystery Island, etc), it never occurred to me to just live off of the horde. Maybe I just wasn't clever enough at taking advantage of the game, but I actually did feel the need to go looting and trading, or I was going without. Special delivery of questionable quality or content every 7th day I happened to be on was great, but it didn't amount to that much in the grand scheme of things--most of the good quality items I had were acquired through looting or trading.

On the subject of the danger of the virus, that also makes good sense. It doesn't totally jive with the fact that I've just slaughtered the horde in and around my base by any means possible without risk of a plague setting in. Am I good as long as I'm not up to my elbows in them, in this line of thought? I'd say you're absolutely right with regard to exposure to the virus, but this idea actually doesn't show up in your game except as a justification for not being able to harvest corpses in this thread... (would be better if it did, IMO, since I agree with you)

To anyone else poo-pooing the idea of finding usable loot on a zombie, let me just say that in my mind it's best hashed out as a matter of frequency and quality. I'm certainly not suggesting that we need MORE loot than was dropped in A16. I feel it's been adjusted to a bit of an extreme in the other direction, and I don't think it was totally necessary.

 

[JoelleEmmily]

All we can do is make the sandbox and give you guys toys but any special flavors will need to be modded in.

I loved playing in the sandbox when I was a kid... and sand boxes do have walls... but I don't remember having to dig 10 piles of sand with my bare hands before my plastic shove was unlocked... Or smash 100 potato bugs before I could use the pale... or smash another 100 potato bug before I could play on the swing... or another 100 bug to use the slide... or a 100 more to build a sand castle with water... OR HAVE TO GO INTO THE SHED TO GET GASOLINE AND BURN THE SANDBOX DOWN TO CONCRETE TO ENJOY MYSELF...

Sorry, Fallout 4 transference... not 7 Days fault... just some old bile belching up...