PC Update Blues

[gfoster610]

Decided to give the update a whirl. Yuck so far. Let's see.....

What the @%$# happened to spears?? It used to be a great weapon with the throwing ability and now it's a @%$#ty melee weapon. Comparing an iron fire axe with an iron spear, both 6 quality, and the fire axe does better damage??? WTF??? What's the point of even having spears now when the fire axe does better damage and has other uses?

Empty glass jars......really? What did these ever do to anyone?? How are we supposed to gather water without empty jars? I guess now in this survival game, we're supposed to find bottled sources of water instead of gathering water which makes more sense.

I see the continued texture and item tweaks. So long wood frames and now they are wood cubes? Things like this seem like a waste of time when there are bigger items that need attention.

Have you guys come up with an endgame yet, that has been promised again and again and again? If not, it's just the same rinse and repeat of the same mechanics. Would love to see the bandits added to the game, as well as other elements like the solar panels and getting that working.

Also, I wouldn't mind a no stamina setting so I don't have to go back in and tweak that items.xml every time there's an update. That would be a much better improvement to focus on instead of making lots of cosmetic changes that don't really impact game play.

 

[Ramethzer0]

You know, you could save yourself a lot of stress and irritation by keeping up with the changes instead of learning about them

through percussion.   There have been threads upon threads of these things being discussed and most of them are still recent.

 

[8_Hussars]

What the @%$# happened to spears?? It used to be a great weapon with the throwing ability and now it's a @%$#ty melee weapon. Comparing an iron fire axe with an iron spear, both 6 quality, and the fire axe does better damage??? WTF??? What's the point of even having spears now when the fire axe does better damage and has other uses?

Well, spears are now an OP melee weapon.  Gone is the unreliable throwing "power attack" to toss your spear (or lose it).  The extended reach of the spear combined with the openings in doors really extenuates the spears power.    

 

[Javabean867]

What the @%$# happened to spears?? It used to be a great weapon with the throwing ability and now it's a @%$#ty melee weapon. Comparing an iron fire axe with an iron spear, both 6 quality, and the fire axe does better damage??? WTF??? What's the point of even having spears now when the fire axe does better damage and has other uses?

Empty glass jars......really? What did these ever do to anyone?? How are we supposed to gather water without empty jars? I guess now in this survival game, we're supposed to find bottled sources of water instead of gathering water which makes more sense.

I see the continued texture and item tweaks. So long wood frames and now they are wood cubes? Things like this seem like a waste of time when there are bigger items that need attention.

Spears are seriously awesome at all levels of play.  Give them a chance, you will be shocked by how good the feel.  Especially when paired with the spear book series.

Empty jars no longer exist, they wanted water to be a struggle early on, and it is.  By mid game water isn't a struggle at all.   Late game when you need duct tape for all the things, but honestly there are ways around it.

The wood frames still exist, you just need to select it in the shape menu.  They added tons of block shapes.  Building is definitely improved because of this.

Next you'll probably complain about learn by looting mechanic.  The community is split on this, but I've been enjoying the change to crafting.

 

[Riamus]

Spears are great with the update.  I hated the their mechanic.  Having a real power attack is a great improvement.  As to the rest, it really isn't a bad thing.  Maybe not the best choices but they work well enough.  And you can expect improvements to them with time.

 

[gfoster610]

Sorry guys. My cycle with this game is that it updates, I read through the notes, update the xml files after the update and then give it a shot. I don't really keep an eye on it anymore, not after 6+ years of dev, and that's just when I started with it.

I just find it to be a shame that the updates are mainly lateral improvements and that's it. No real progress towards a finished project and lots of these improvements could simply be update tweaks as the game goes on. Sad to see this still in EA when plenty of other games in the same/similar genre have been fully released.

I have given spears a chance and yes they certainly are interesting, but you also have to look at these changes from the perspective of a new player. If I bought and downloaded a zombie survival game that had spears, I would think there would be a throwing mechanic. I've played tons of other games with spears and they generally have a throw mechanic, it just makes logical sense. So, that's why the change makes me go WTF??? It doesn't make logical sense.

I did also see the learning changes and etc and again more lateral stuff.

 

[YourMirror]

Well....thanks for letting us know. Consider us informed.

 

[Riamus]

It really isn't illogical to not allow throwing spears.  Yes, many games with spears allow throwing them but many also do not.  A lot of games that have a thrown weapon will instead use javelins and the spear will be a held weapon.  Generally speaking, a thrown weapon is something that is a "throw away" item... Something that isn't important and not expected to be kept.  They are things that you really aren't upgrading other than in your skills and you don't care about losing them.  The spear is a weapon that you intend to keep using and so doesn't really belong as a thrown weapon in this game.

Of course, some people prefer throwing them and that's fine.  But that was more of a fun mechanic than a valuable mechanic.  You can't stack spears and so throwing it makes it a one shot weapon without ability to "reload" unless you change to another spear or go collect the one you threw.  That really isn't valuable compared to using it as it is now.  Now the spear has value similar to other weapons.  You have a real power attack and the reach and ability to attack through stuff makes it much better than it used to be.

 

[RStarphoenix]

One of the bigger issues with the old throwing mechanic was the fact you could yeet the spear out of render distance and completely lose it forever. Plus it wasn't exactly the best ranged weapon since you couldn't bundle them together in small stack.

The spear is now the longest-reaching melee weapon we have (reaching just over 3 blocks on a power attack) and has some pretty juicy perks. Not to mention it is the best weapon to poke through a hole in a door next to an arrow.

Jars and cans are better off gone. The only real hurt that might apply are the anti-trader players (since water filters are a super rare find in the wild) and you heavily rely on finding a cooking pot early on to boil the murky water spawns. Unless you find vitamins or a water filter mod for the helmet.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

The throwing mechanic was generally not seen as a good thing by the player base. Not because of the throwing part, but the hassle of  getting it back is what made it unpopular. The change was made due to popular demand.

Throwing it really only was a good idea with a single zombie, with a group of them you either needed to clog up your hotbar with 2 or 3 spears or another backup melee weapon. Basically you missed out on a lot of power attacks when using a spear.

The point of having a spear vs a fire axe is the reach ofc. And hte fact that the spear can penetrate 3 zombies at once with the right book. You should read trough the books and spear perks. The axe might seem better at first glance, but it really isn´t, for close up melee there is better options like the club or sledgehammer.

The water mechanic simply is badly done. I wouldn´t mind it too much if it would make water acutally more scarce. But it doesn´t, it still is an all you can drink buffet. The only thing it really does is forcing a certain playstyle.

@RStarphoenix the new system also hurts MP only. I have no water shortage in SP even without using a dew collector. That´s very different in MP. In SP you only need dew collectors if you want to use explosive arrows/bolts and the rocket launcher a lot. In MP you already need a football field full of dew collectors without using those....

 

[RStarphoenix]

The water mechanic simply is badly done. I wouldn´t mind it too much if it would make water acutally more scarce. But it doesn´t, it still is an all you can drink buffet. The only thing it really does is forcing a certain playstyle. @RStarphoenix the new system also hurts MP only. I have no water shortage in SP even without using a dew collector. That´s very different in MP. In SP you only need dew collectors if you want to use explosive arrows/bolts and the rocket launcher a lot. In MP you already need a football field full of dew collectors without using those....

I run a 4-man server and we have zero water problems even on 67% loot abundance and loot respawns disabled (and we're on day 165 right now).
We got enough money to slap together 8 dew collectors by day 7 while I crafted our base.
The lot of us combined find more murky water than we can boil (in fact we have 187 jars sitting in our base cooking box right now), along with looting beverages with a little double-looting from quests. We loot more brass than we can sell (traders only take 3 stacks each) to buy extra drinks from all the vending machines (which we use for high-hydration stuff like mega crush or yucca smoothie) & traders in our map (which is disgustingly cheap thanks to better barter & all the perks).

Heck, once someone in the party learns how to make the actual yucca smoothie all you need is a day of snowball & yucca farming and just grow a decent garden of blueberries and you don't even need water to consume anymore.
The reliance on "ez mode jars at the lake" is a bad habit people should break; there's more than enough beverages in the world to sustain even a decent sized group which will allow you to save regular water for crafting. The only hard part, which TFP was going for, was early game to make the survival aspect a little more impactful, but that is easily overcome unless you're making the game as hard as possible otherwise (ie: no traders and loot abundance at 25% or something like that).

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@RStarphoenix Well we don´t play MP Coop to go loot on our own. And we have a base mom and a miner. So we end up with 2 looters, ofc we do quests all together aswell, but it´s only 2 that go looting most of their time. This is what i mean with forcing a certain playstyle. If you don´t wanna struggle everyone has to go looting on their own early game. That´s not the point of playing MP Coop. This along with the magazines givers every other playstlye than heavy looting a big disadvantage. Wich will hurt the longevity of the game if every playtrough is the same... 

 

[RStarphoenix]

A few shared perks is all your group needs (1 into lock picking for Forge Ahead, 1 into Engineering to get the other Intellect books for your main crafter). Outside of that most everything else is the same (My group has been playing since A18 and we barely changed our playstyles, we just changed up a couple of things to adapt accordingly, even with two of them being negative about the loss of the jars, now they love not having them around and find the skill changes rather fun)... and the playthrough for vanilla is pretty much the same since once you get to high gamestage it is all about making enough iron & steel to maintain everything, farming parts, cranking out ammo and crafting endless duct tape while holding off the chunky hordes until you feel like you done it enough to start over with a fresh file. -- And trust, while my group does the mining, farming, etc separately we do most of our quests together once we get Tier 3 (when infested quests become worth doing in pairs or grouped).

And if you really miss the old crutch of jars that badly, the modding community made solutions -- thankfully that's why modding communities exist, to provide alternatives when main development doesn't offer something the player base might want.

The things I can agree with people on are the changes to crucible & solar panel rarity, and the fact water filters in the wild are crazy hard to find if there's any real gripes to the A21 system to be had.

End input on my part for this thread.

 

[Ramethzer0]

I just find it to be a shame that the updates are mainly lateral improvements and that's it. No real progress towards a finished project and lots of these improvements could simply be update tweaks as the game goes on. Sad to see this still in EA when plenty of other games in the same/similar genre have been fully released.

I find it a shame to so grossly oversimplify the effort that has been made by the devs.  Other indie games of the same/similar genre that have been fully released are terribly few, and almost all of them can't hold a candle to previous versions of this game (many of which are inspired by this one!).   So I got nothing for ya, my dude.

 

[Roland]

@RStarphoenix Well we don´t play MP Coop to go loot on our own. And we have a base mom and a miner. So we end up with 2 looters, ofc we do quests all together aswell, but it´s only 2 that go looting most of their time. This is what i mean with forcing a certain playstyle. If you don´t wanna struggle everyone has to go looting on their own early game. That´s not the point of playing MP Coop. This along with the magazines givers every other playstlye than heavy looting a big disadvantage. Wich will hurt the longevity of the game if every playtrough is the same... 

So everyone going looting alone early game is not the point of playing MP Coop but one guy building alone and another guy mining alone while 2 people go off mining alone is what playing MP Coop is all about? This is what doesn't work about your argument. You say the changes force people to loot alone meaning they aren't playing together but are separating off to do their own thing and yet by your own admission you have already been playing that way. 

Sure, things may be more looting-centric in the beginning but your base mom can be a full-time base mom after the first week or so of helping with the initial looting and still spend 90% of the total game playing by herself back at base while everyone else goes off to loot, quest, or mine. Your miner might need to wait a short time to get the magazines needed for better mining tools and to perk up for stamina but for much of the game they will still be able to mine away off by themself in your coop game...

The way you and others make it sound the entire game has fundamentally changed to 100% looting for 100% of your playthrough. Maybe it is 90% looting during the first week or so but things shift back to doing other things for the rest of the playthrough. 

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Roland And exactly that first week is what sucks now. We are 2-3 looters and even if only us played, with no base mom and no miner we would have a hard time with water and magazines if we loot together compared to SP. Also what if the base mom likes shotguns and sledgehammer when no one else has points in those to get the books? And yes she needs them. Staying at home doesn´t mean you don´t need to fight. Especially if you like to build and build/repair the hordebase. Also blood moons. That isn´t done in a week.

You simply can´t deny that this hit´s harder in MP. Have you tried a 5 player party using rocket launchers and explosive bolts on horde night? You need an unreal amount of dew collectors for that on top of the already huge amount you need to maintain a 4-5 player party, and that´s already the case if only 2 use the explosives. And it isn´t funny nor challenging to maintain them and get the place to put them. It´s just tedious.

And what about SP? You don´t have a choice anymore. Not the slightest. And traders are also a must now for most people. Wich makes crafting redundant even more than the constant need to loot already does. I still can´t understand why a dev would take away the freedom of choice just so people use their hand made dungeon POI´s where most people simply break trough doors/walls and windows anyways instead of using the path they should use. (Brass from doors book basically invites you to leave the path) I basically only use the pathing in skyscrapers. Every other POI doesn´t need to be a dungeon style. That´s basically a preference from the devs and adds very little to gameplay, i am quite sure most people wouldn´t give a flying fish if POI´s are dungeon style or not. It´s also quite boring pretty fast if you go trough a POI the same way every time.

Going into a city was once exciting because it was dangerous as there were cops and dogs everywhere and you had to be prepared. Now it´s a must and the cities are empty and no threat at all.

And if me (speaking for a group here that thinks the the same btw) and others make it sound like that, don´t you think there is any truth behind that?

 

[Riamus]

@Roland And exactly that first week is what sucks now. We are 2-3 looters and even if only us played, with no base mom and no miner we would have a hard time with water and magazines if we loot together compared to SP. Also what if the base mom likes shotguns and sledgehammer when no one else has points in those to get the books? And yes she needs them. Staying at home doesn´t mean you don´t need to fight. Especially if you like to build and build/repair the hordebase. Also blood moons. That isn´t done in a week.

You simply can´t deny that this hit´s harder in MP. Have you tried a 5 player party using rocket launchers and explosive bolts on horde night? You need an unreal amount of dew collectors for that on top of the already huge amount you need to maintain a 4-5 player party, and that´s already the case if only 2 use the explosives. And it isn´t funny nor challenging to maintain them and get the place to put them. It´s just tedious.

And what about SP? You don´t have a choice anymore. Not the slightest. And traders are also a must now for most people. Wich makes crafting redundant even more than the constant need to loot already does. I still can´t understand why a dev would take away the freedom of choice just so people use their hand made dungeon POI´s where most people simply break trough doors/walls and windows anyways instead of using the path they should use. (Brass from doors book basically invites you to leave the path) I basically only use the pathing in skyscrapers. Every other POI doesn´t need to be a dungeon style. That´s basically a preference from the devs and adds very little to gameplay, i am quite sure most people wouldn´t give a flying fish if POI´s are dungeon style or not. It´s also quite boring pretty fast if you go trough a POI the same way every time.

Going into a city was once exciting because it was dangerous as there were cops and dogs everywhere and you had to be prepared. Now it´s a must and the cities are empty and no threat at all.

And if me (speaking for a group here that thinks the the same btw) and others make it sound like that, don´t you think there is any truth behind that?

I would just say that you will always have people who play similarly to you who will agree with you on this and others who play differently and who will disagree with you.  And there will be those who agree only in part.  It doesn't matter what the devs do... This will always be the case.

It also depends on your game settings.  Different settings affect how much it little these changes impact the player.  For me and the way I play, a single player game has zero need for dew collectors and water is never an issue.  And I don't loot or quest non-stop and rarely but things from traders.  But I *do* loot and quest, and those are intended mechanics for the game.  Choosing to ignore those mechanics will absolutely impact how your game plays.  In a two player game, water is also not an issue for us and dew collectors are still optional.  But if you want to play in larger groups, then yes, water becomes more challenging and dew collectors are necessary.

I personally feel like the difficulty of water should be similar regardless of the number of players.  So, because of that, I feel like the water changes are a failure.  But I am happy to be done with cans and jars.  I just think there should be a better balance from 1 player to 8 players.

As far as players who choose to play only one aspect of the game and expect to have it just as easy as those who play the entire game, I really don't see any reason to accommodate them.  If I were to do that, I would *expect* to have a harder time and to need to do some other parts of the game to some extent to get by.  There are certainly ways to make such styles work, as long as the group is willing to work in a way that allows it to work that way.  Does that mean a change in how they do things in A21?  Sure.  But that isn't the end of the world and a game in alpha is going to change.  Expecting it not to is foolhardy.

Keep in mind that I don't think the water changes are very good and I think magazines are also very unbalanced based on the number of players.  I don't support those changes.  But I do think that the outcry of some because they can't do only one thing all the time without it affecting how the game plays for them is a bit much.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Riamus It´s not that i am not expecting changes. That´s the nature of the early access. But looking at other games in early access, and ih have played a lot of those, you don´t see the game turned around as much as this one. 

And i have to disagree with not accommodating people who only want to play only one aspect of the game. Exactly that is what it made so sucessfull. There would be a lot less players if this would have been as loot and quest heavy as it is now. Beeing able to have different playstyles and beeing able to have roles for players in MP is what made TFP beeing able to still work on the game due to having a bigger playerbase.

Not accommodating your existent playerbase and only catering to new players also might not be the best idea if you want your next game in early access aswell. Right now i have no interest in buying their next game before it´s finished. And i am sure i am not the only one here.

 

[Riamus]

@Riamus It´s not that i am not expecting changes. That´s the nature of the early access. But looking at other games in early access, and ih have played a lot of those, you don´t see the game turned around as much as this one. 

And i have to disagree with not accommodating people who only want to play only one aspect of the game. Exactly that is what it made so sucessfull. There would be a lot less players if this would have been as loot and quest heavy as it is now. Beeing able to have different playstyles and beeing able to have roles for players in MP is what made TFP beeing able to still work on the game due to having a bigger playerbase.

Not accommodating your existent playerbase and only catering to new players also might not be the best idea if you want your next game in early access aswell. Right now i have no interest in buying their next game before it´s finished. And i am sure i am not the only one here.

This may or may not be true.  There are many gamers who prefer that kind of game who may have chosen not to get into this one simply because that wasn't a main focus of the game in earlier versions.  But either way, it makes sense for them to design the game around all of the main aspects that they want in the game rather than try and make individual aspects work just as well as the entire game.

They have specifically designed the game to allow easy modding, which allows players to change things to meet their own desires.  If you don't want traders, you can mod them out entirely.  If you want to adjust loot tables because you feel those are too much, you can do so.  If you want to put jars back in, you can.  If you don't want magazines, or want to change them, that is also an option.

They should design the game around all aspects they want to be in the game and let those who only want to play one part of the game mod it to where that works well for them.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Riamus They could have easily kept the way of playing however you want and change the systems for the balance, wich is the reason we got told tehy changed things at least. . That wouldn´t really be big problem. If their vision was looting heavily as a must, why let us play different for nearly 10 years?