beHypE

No doubt, i'm a software developer myself and given the voxel nature of the game, I can only imagine the can of worms it is, depending on how realistic you want them to behave. That being said, it's been in the "near future" for many alphas now, which is the frustrating part. I doubt they have been all hands on deck for that long, or it would have been shipped/abandoned by now. Oh well, we'll just skip this Alpha and check back in 2025 for A23 !

<quarterly check for announced end-game features> You know the changelog is disappointing when all you did was CTRL+F "bandit" for the past 20 pages... It is what it is, I guess the focus is still on making the game look as great as possible compared to current standards because that is going to attract more steam buys than bandits, and from a business decision that makes sense. For more seasoned players like my group and I, some new textures and animations won't incentivize a new playthrough quite enough. I guess they'll look just as good in A23 (or beyond), see you then ! </quarterly check for announced end-game features>

If i'm being honest the person I remember that gave me hope was you, knucklerubber! 😄 As a player i'm obviously disappointed by the answer, because indeed it seems it's - at least - a couple months away yet. But as a developer I can only praise the mentality of your company, I wish all my projects were driven by quality metrics and not time metrics ! Time to disappear in the cloud for some weeks again. 😅

This might have been answered previously, but I remember that during November there was hope that A21 would get released before Christmas. That obviously didn't happen, but we're close to being in April now. Without going into the "when will you release the kraken" discussion, could you guys explain what lead to that big of a planning delay ?

There used to be an external website that was a devtracker. Don't think it's live anymore, which is a shame. I often connect here just to see where things are regarding the release, and I gotta admit it's not always enjoyable nor practical having to scroll all these pages of loosely A21 related discussions.

Since faatal reads everything, do you guys hire, and if so do you do any Java? 😆 I guess I can get used to .NET if I have to. 😝 Jokes aside, release the krakeeeeen

That's as subjective as it gets, I've played this game so much that the eye candy doesn't even get registered by my brain most of the time. As a seasoned player, I can't help but feel that it has been quite some time since the last game-changing aspect was introduced. And A21 won't change that to be honest, even though I'm still eagerly awaiting starting over with the new LBL system.

Everyone's guess is different but i'm pretty confident it won't be taking too long to get the experimental out. Then again I doubt it happens before the end of January, as they always release with an associated marketing plan (streamer week-ends etc), and that probably didn't organize itself during the holidays. Development wise they probably aren't too far off but it was surely too risky and hectic to get it out before Christmas time. Still enjoying a new playthrough of Valheim and i'm barely into the Iron Age, so take your time Pimps, but don't leave us hanging until Spring. 😄

Definitely the old system. It was poorly balanced because you'd swim in parts after every loot run and the sorting got old real fast, but the constant thrill of upgrading your weapon made it feel like... your weapon. There was obviously room for improvement (there always is), but it felt organic and engaging. Ever since the new system came with the generic parts, that whole subgame was lost and I've never ever felt like my gun was the result of looting and tinkering : "do I have enough parts to craft a Q5 ? not yet, guess i'll keep my Q4 for now. (30 minutes later) screw that, i just found a Q6, i'm set for life"!

That is true when the game's loot system actually provides more parts than fully functional tools. I guess the new system will make it less obvious as to "when" you'll be able to craft a higher level item since it's RNG based and not based on experience/point attribution. That being said if you find steel tools in the loot before you find any significant amount of parts, then we'll be back at square one where i'll have to find 3-4 low quality augers before I can finally craft a good one, and by the time that happens i'll probably have found a good quality one before I'm able to craft it myself. Any changes regarding the balance of finding parts/functional tools ? Other than that I mostly agree that the feature list is lackluster given the timeframe; I guess most developers are currently working on long term A22+ features, while another part of the team works on balancing & assets that make it to A21. Still excited to see how the new LBL system will shake up the predictable progression we have now.

I don't know if that's something that might be revealed but I wonder how the team is split up regarding the development of the game. The new "LBL" system amongst other things seem very interesting but rather small features regarding amount of code involved. As a fellow developer I wonder how much work is being done on stuff that is not on the OP. Specifically bandits which are, I suppose, a nightmare (or dream) feature to tackle properly. Looking forward to all of it, great game that only gets better !

Please let this be the Alpha where bandits or at least some kind of end game content is added. No matter how better the game got overall, these past alphas really felt like more (or a better version) of the same, and the mid/end game still gets stale fast.

Is anyone finding any schematics for vehicles or already made parts ? We have been looting bookstores, post offices, mailboxes and every car shop to no avail, with 100+ lootstage in a big city in the snow biome. Not a single vehicle related item, aside from acid/wheels and batteries. We're still running our bicycles, and would be on foot if it wasn't for the reward you get when you end the tier 1 quests. It's getting to a point where I'll start investing points into Intelligence just to unlock Motorcycle recipes, it's pretty obnoxious to be fair. That's 7-8 wasted levels just to be able to craft 3 vehicles, not to mention it really takes away from the pleasure of finding the schematics, but at this rate we'll be decked out with T6 stuff in every slot before we can ride anything decent.

Can't say Acid is the issue in our game, but we have yet to find ANY recipe for a vehicle on day 25 and still driving around the bicycles we got from completing the Tier 1 quests. Overall if noone plays intellect it feels like stoneage for a looong time, besides being better/good at combat.

Come on now, we all know bandits aren't gonna make it to A21 either. 😏