PC V3.0 Dead Hot Summer Dev Diary

[Riamus]

“I should be maxed out in everything by the end of my run” = good balance is such a weird definition to me especially in a game designed to be replayed many times. I value survival gameplay that forces you to make do with what you are able to get whether by crafting, scavenging, or trading and not give a guarantee that you will get top tier of everything by the end.

If I finish game 1 with a tier 1 pot but then in game 2 I have a tier 6 pot but a tier 2 anvil by the end then that is fine. Knowing that I’ll always get everything up to tier 6 every run just makes it a lot less interesting to me.

People complain that the player becomes OP to any threat but then think that not having all the best of everything is not balanced? I’d say the player gets access to too many T6 items within any one single run as it is.

It's less that everything should be maxed and more that you should not be at Q1 by end game. If everything was Q3+, I think that's acceptable. But Q1? No.

Keep in mind that I'm one of those who liked the old schematic system that gave you a random chance to get the various schematics at different times in the game, letting you potentially get something great in the early game or not at all. But when they add quality levels that generally decrease the effectiveness of those mods if you're at the lower quality level(s) compared to what was there before and then make it so you have a low chance to get high enough quality of it to reach the level you used to have, that's not really a good change. When some mods you craft aren't worth the resources because you get a Q1 that isn't worth much of anything and can't be improved, that's what I'd consider bad design.

Take a Q1 magazine mod. The ammo increase varies by weapon of course, but when used on certain weapons, you get 1 extra ammo. One. The cost to craft it may not seem like much if you just consider the resources, but if you consider that you get an entire ONE extra ammo from it, it's not really worth the cost. If you could upgrade the mods you craft, such as using the Combiner, then it would be worth it even if you only got a Q1 when crafting it. There are people who would craft enough of them to combine into a Q6 and consider the resource cost of doing so as being acceptable. Others would be willing to start with that and upgrade later when they loot another.

In short, it provides value to crafting mods and makes it not feel so pointless to have quality levels when you're often at the lowest quality levels. If you look in my tool mods crate, weapon mods crate, and armor mods crate, you'll see a few higher quality mods, but you'll see that the majority are Q1 or maybe Q2. I have about 8 Q1 grills and 6 Q1 pots. Anvils and bellows are pretty uncommon, or even rare, to loot. If you have traders turned off, you're going to be extremely unlikely to ever have a high quality anvil or bellows. At this point, I refuse to craft any weapon, armor, or tool mods. It just isn't worth it anymore. I'll wait until I find one and just hope it's better than a Q1.

Now, yes... all mods are essentially bonuses that aren't required. But if you could only get a T3 Q6 weapon by looting and looting a higher quality/tier weapon that you wanted was as uncommon as getting a higher quality mod that you're looking for is now, I think you would be complaining about it as well and saying something needs to be done. Or would you like to be in the late game without being above to find something higher than a Q2 Iron weapon and only able to craft a Q1 Iron weapon unless you were extremely lucky in your RNG looting?

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 2:18 PM

Maybe points in Master Chef would increase the likelihood of better Cooking Pots and Grills in loot? And Advanced Engineering for better Anvils, etc.?

I'd be perfectly fine with something like that. If that applied to weapon mods if you're perked into weapons, that would also be good even though most people are perking into weapons and so would get that bonus. But whether from perks or from a basic change in loot chances, something should be changed.

 

[Roland]

But when they add quality levels that generally decrease the effectiveness of those mods if you're at the lower quality level(s) compared to what was there before and then make it so you have a low chance to get high enough quality of it to reach the level you used to have, that's not really a good change.

I don't agree with this. What if the old settings were OP and the nerf is justified? Regardless of its release status, I think we can all agree that the game is still very much in development. When a new development iteration comes out you have to force yourself to forget what the old iteration was like. So what if the old cooking pot you got from the start of the game was like the tier 5 cooking pot we have now and tiers 1-4 are worse than what we used to have?

My opinion is that in general the player is pretty much OP compared to the survival challenges the game presents and can easily progress faster than the difficulty curve that the game follows (at default difficulty). So any amount of nerfing that may occur is pretty justified in the name of correcting that delta for any typical playthrough.

If you can't help but compare what you used to have to what you now have then, yeah, it sucks. But play with the creative menu enabled for a couple years and then turn it off and that might suck too once you have gotten used to it. That doesn't mean turning off the creative menu is not a good change. These same complaints were voiced when the shovels and pickaxes we have now first got their progressive tiers. They also were nerfed from the static shovels and pickaxes we had before. Lots of people said "Bad design!" but here we are a decade later and the current tiers for tools we've had are now accepted and seen as normal because nobody still compares them to what they were in Alpha 10.

That said, I like the idea of perks granting a higher chance of finding better tiers of related mods.

 

[Riamus]

What if the old settings were OP and the nerf is justified?

Do you think the original mods were OP? I've never heard anyone suggest that, and I would be interested in knowing why. And if they were OP, why add levels that make them even better than they were (I think each mod varies, but I think around Q3 is close to what we had before in many of them, so Q6 is better in most or perhaps all cases). And since you can find a Q6 mod in the early game if you're lucky, I would say they went in the wrong direction if they think the originals were OP. Don't you? If you don't think they were OP, why ask it? We are talking specifically about the mods and not some random topic where maybe it used to be OP and maybe I would support a nerf because of that. But that's not what we are talking about.

Now, that's regarding normal mods and not workstation mods. The cooking mods didn't have any improvements to speed before to the best of my knowledge (I never really paid attention), so the new levels always are better. And I am not entirely sure how the speed bonuses before for the forge compare to the new quality levels. I brought up the workstation mods mainly because those are very hard to find (I doubt I've found more than 3 anvils in any single game... ever... not counting buying them from a trader), so the chances of finding a good one (in loot) is pretty rare. But the normal mods are in a similar boat. Yes, you may find a Q6 mod in the early game, but will it be what you want or need? Finding a Q6 mod that can only be used on a shotgun when I never use those is not any help. If that's the only Q6 I find, I might as well never have found it. The average level of mods I find is probably about Q2. I have found a handful of Q4 mods, fewer Q5 and Q6 mods, and a LOT of Q1 and Q2 mods. Q3 is really low. And that's doing a LOT of quests and scavenging with 2 hour days and 2 people looking.

As far as pickaxes and shovels go, I really don't think we needed quality levels for them. They are tools. A single level for each tier would be just fine. But that ship sailed a long time ago.

As a final note, yes, the game is generally very easy once you know how to play it. However, you keep suggesting the quality levels are a nerf. It's only a nerf if you can't find high level mods. Otherwise, it boosts your stats even more. So you really can't call it a nerf or suggest that they did it because things were OP before. If Q6 equaled what we had before, you could perhaps say that. But not when Q6 is even better than before.

 

[meganoth]

Do you think the original mods were OP? I've never heard anyone suggest that, and I would be interested in knowing why. And if they were OP, why add levels that make them even better than they were (I think each mod varies, but I think around Q3 is close to what we had before in many of them, so Q6 is better in most or perhaps all cases). And since you can find a Q6 mod in the early game if you're lucky, I would say they went in the wrong direction if they think the originals were OP. Don't you? If you don't think they were OP, why ask it? We are talking specifically about the mods and not some random topic where maybe it used to be OP and maybe I would support a nerf because of that. But that's not what we are talking about.

Now, that's regarding normal mods and not workstation mods. The cooking mods didn't have any improvements to speed before to the best of my knowledge (I never really paid attention), so the new levels always are better. And I am not entirely sure how the speed bonuses before for the forge compare to the new quality levels. I brought up the workstation mods mainly because those are very hard to find (I doubt I've found more than 3 anvils in any single game... ever... not counting buying them from a trader), so the chances of finding a good one (in loot) is pretty rare. But the normal mods are in a similar boat. Yes, you may find a Q6 mod in the early game, but will it be what you want or need? Finding a Q6 mod that can only be used on a shotgun when I never use those is not any help. If that's the only Q6 I find, I might as well never have found it. The average level of mods I find is probably about Q2. I have found a handful of Q4 mods, fewer Q5 and Q6 mods, and a LOT of Q1 and Q2 mods. Q3 is really low. And that's doing a LOT of quests and scavenging with 2 hour days and 2 people looking.

As far as pickaxes and shovels go, I really don't think we needed quality levels for them. They are tools. A single level for each tier would be just fine. But that ship sailed a long time ago.

As a final note, yes, the game is generally very easy once you know how to play it. However, you keep suggesting the quality levels are a nerf. It's only a nerf if you can't find high level mods. Otherwise, it boosts your stats even more. So you really can't call it a nerf or suggest that they did it because things were OP before. If Q6 equaled what we had before, you could perhaps say that. But not when Q6 is even better than before.

One could also say that previously the mods provided the same buff from early to late game. Which might be still ok if the progression is handled through other items or XP.
Now **on average** mods are nerfed in early game and buffed in late game. Which adds to and increases the possible progression from early to late game

If I had to guess then I would say the latter could provide a better balance over the whole game than the former.

 

[theFlu]

If I had to guess then I would say the latter could provide a better balance over the whole game than the former.

It makes the player progression curve steeper; but to speak to balance, we'd have to pretend to know that the difficulty progression is steeper than that, and steeper to a fault. Doesn't look like it to me - day 1 is the hardest, day 100 tends towards trivial. Whatever the progression curves are doing, it hasn't been broken at the high end, imo.

Then again, in practical terms, the power of most mods is the 10% damage buff; the rest is mainly QoL. Some of them may vary from useless to OP, like stamina and barter, but most are just "meh" anyway. The number updates don't really matter; so it's not really a big balance issue either way

 

[Riamus]

Now **on average** mods are nerfed in early game and buffed in late game. Which adds to and increases the possible progression from early to late game

If the mods you could find (or craft) did improve throughout the game, then I'd agree with this. But from my experience with 3.0 and 3.0.1, it appears to be entirely random. You can get Q6 on day 1 and Q1 on day 30 with 2 hour days (equivalent to day 60 on default days) and you can't craft higher levels or upgrade them. So there isn't really any progression happening. If there was, I wouldn't be concerned about the mods. The only "progression" that you have is that the more you loot, the more things you find, and so the more chance you'll eventually find a high quality mod. But that's not really progression.

 

[Kalen]

I value survival gameplay that forces you to make do with what you are able to get whether by crafting, scavenging, or trading and not give a guarantee that you will get top tier of everything by the end.

Which is why I hate the somewhat deterministic behavior of the magazine system

 

[Jost Amman]

Which is why I hate the somewhat deterministic behavior of the magazine system

Magazines can both be scavenged or bought to be honest.

 

[Kalen]

Magazines can both be scavenged or bought to be honest.

For sure, thats why I qualified it with "somewhat". But I really don't like how the perks you chose impact the magazines you find.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

@bdubyah
Define anonymous. I have never thought of a digital transaction or survey as
anonymous.

I guess it comes from my past. You are on one a sight that adds cookies, that have
an ip reference, a time stamp, and the next site you go to. You are clicking on
a link, on the sight to go to another site, that also has a time stamp of the
anonymous start and end of the survey.

 

[bdubyah]

@bdubyah
Define anonymous. I have never thought of a digital transaction or survey as
anonymous.

I guess it comes from my past. You are on one a sight that adds cookies, that have
an ip reference, a time stamp, and the next site you go to. You are clicking on
a link, on the sight to go to another site, that also has a time stamp of the
anonymous start and end of the survey.

I just posted a link..

 

[Jost Amman]

of the survey.

Wait... are you a woman?

Post automatically merged: Today at 1:52 PM

For sure, thats why I qualified it with "somewhat". But I really don't like how the perks you chose impact the magazines you find.

Personally, I think about that effect not like "magic", but more like... I'm interested specifically in that topic, so both my attention and my time while looting are focused particularly on those magazines; that's why I find more magazines about (i.e.) cars while I don't even notice (or care) much other types.

 

[Syphon583]

@bdubyah
Define anonymous. I have never thought of a digital transaction or survey as
anonymous.

I guess it comes from my past. You are on one a sight that adds cookies, that have
an ip reference, a time stamp, and the next site you go to. You are clicking on
a link, on the sight to go to another site, that also has a time stamp of the
anonymous start and end of the survey.

You really think TFP are going to go through the trouble of tracking IP addresses? And what if it wasn't anonymous? What then? You think TFP will somehow punish or reward for certain answers? WTF cares?

But if anyone is that concerned about it. Copy and paste the link into a separate browser's Incognito/InPrivate mode. TFP would have zero knowledge of who visits the survey in incognito. Only your ISP would.

 

[Syphon583]

For sure, thats why I qualified it with "somewhat". But I really don't like how the perks you chose impact the magazines you find.

As imperfect as the magazine system is in its current form, it would be insufferable without the boost you get from perks. Yeah I get that it's unrealistic, but from a gameplay standpoint having it be truly RNG would sap the enjoyment from the game.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

I just posted a link..

I was just being obnoxious. I just finished doing the survey.

Post automatically merged: Today at 3:57 PM

Wait... are you a woman?

LOLOL no I didn't even look at the Icon.

 

[Kalen]

As imperfect as the magazine system is in its current form, it would be insufferable without the boost you get from perks. Yeah I get that it's unrealistic, but from a gameplay standpoint having it be truly RNG would sap the enjoyment from the game.

Eh, it depends on what you're looking for. I was originally responding to Roland's comment about having to make do with what you find.... something I also like. So, for me, pure randomization is fun because I might gain in a skill I hadn't intended to and have to find a way to capitalize on it.

But yeah, I don't expect everyone (or really most people) to feel that way.

 

[Kire]

LOLOL no I didn't even look at the Icon.

You made him get all excited for a moment there, shame on you

 

[Jost Amman]

You made him get all excited for a moment there, shame on you

Well, I was more curious than anything, because he never gave me the impression of "talking like a woman".

Sometimes you can infer that from little things even though it's not always reliable. There are of course other factors that come into play, like age, maturity, general attitude, but in general you can at least guess. For example you can always tell an engineer from other normal people (lol).

In any case LOL for pulling my leg.
Sooo... what about YOU Kire?

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Thank you all so much. That made my day.
Jost your timing was impeccable.