ktr

Here we go. "Clearly misunderstood". You have absolutely no basis to make this claim, but you do it anyway. You assume that I'm offended, which, btw, implies your offensive to my comments. You are coming at me as if you understand me, while I approach you as someone that I am trying to understand. In case I need to point it out, the error here is on you. I have also informed my opinion by what the devs have explained. The difference is that I disagree with their conclusions and you do not. I am willing to allow your lack of disagreement while you are not willing to even entertain my disagreement. People can be wrong. I am willing to admit that I can be wrong. You are not willing to entertain the idea that the devs and testers can be. BTW testers look for bugs, things that aren't working up to specs. (Hint: I know this because I do software and config testing every other week) that doesn't mean they're 'experts' on gameplay. As far as my knowledge of the Alpha, you don't know anymore than I do unless you're suddenly going to out yourself as dev. Are you? I correct numbers all the time. Usually from other people's mistakes

Nah, I think you're missing my point, which is sad because I thought this might be a fun discussion of the new features. I'm not going to trust "they're adjusting loot tables" because I've heard that promise for the last 4 Alphas. Maybe they'll get it this time? Maybe not. You haven't clarified anything except perhaps your bias for the Alpha, but props to you for the unnecessary aggression. Then if you do not have informed opinion, you cannot tell me what this Alpha will contain, right? I don't care about min-maxers because that can mean a breadth of things in games like this. I'm an accountant. I run numbers. Interesting that you choose to downvote my response. Good luck to you.

Water was easy since I started playing in 13? Maybe sooner. It took maybe two days to not have to worry about water. I have played NO survival game where I couldn't negate the need for water within 7 days of system play (not IRL play). If you're getting "all high-end stuff" by week 2, I can only ask what settings are you playing?? Never had that happen in SP or MP except maybe in the days of LBD in a large-ish group.

I suck at breaking up quotes, so I ask your forgiveness. I can see your point on the bandits, except for one thing - bandits aren't a guarantee in this Alpha at this point. Maybe they'll happen, maybe they get pushed off to 22, which does present a problem when you consider the other changes. Of course, everything is a personal opinion. My status as a tester for Alpha 21 or not doesn't matter. That is an appeal to authority fallacy. I can tell you as someone who has played a huge breadth of survival games and watch about a dozen different streamers/you tubers that player even more survival games than I play, that players, in general, tend to skip the food and water stress as fast as they can except in games that are specifically designed to put those aspects at the core of gameplay. Those games typically don't have dozens or more enemies pounding on your doorstep at a regular interval with no recourse to avoid it. Of course, that is an appeal to authority too. What we are all doing here is discussing our opinions. You choice to place your trust and that's fine. I choose to express my dissent. The difference is that you choose to poo poo any opinion as not rational, which you cannot in good faith say one way or another. What I do know is that my gaming group will try Alpha 21, but are already showing signs of not caring at all about these changes and since my group has shrunk from 10 active players to 2-4, the forecast is not good. Maybe for TFPs that will be fine in the end. They've done a good job for what has been a labor of love for them and I wish them the best. Still doesn't mean I think that my sudden inability to boil water but can drink it through a magical filter is a good choice.

I guess I would ask first why anyone's opinion would make you facepalm? There is some validity in the point that maybe bandits are the only thing new or exciting to come. Oh, we're re-doing water again because apparently water became too easy to get. Okay. There was a simpler solution to that problem than essentially creating another problem with the water collectors. People will simply make enough water collectors to suit SP or group needs. It adds nothing to this game than an arbitrary step that is exciting on the first play through, but redundant and boring on subsequent play throughs. Awesome, for a group of 4, we now have to look at collecting enough materials to build 8 water collectors ASAP so we can do the other things in the game that we want to do. Bodies of water are now even more meaningless than they were before because you cannot collect water from a river. That bears repeating - unlike the majority of other survival games out there, the player cannot collect and refine water from water sources. Might as well remove bodies of water from the game entirely except as decorative objects. Yes, yes, I know, you can get the water refiner mod and drink from any body of water at will. Was this change made just to give that mod relevance? That would be a poor choice. Water was fine as it was. Easy to get, but provided no real benefits. This game is not Green Hell where the basic need for food and water is the central gameplay. Central game play is dealing with the zombies and the zombie hordes. Which means that food and water will always have to be easy enough to get for the player to have time to prepare for horde night. New progression system - why? Literally WHY? From what I can tell, it boils down to 'well, people were skipping over progression steps'. To that I say, so what? Stone tools are a pain in the ass. Their lower stamina use does not replace time spent using them. The fun of base tools and weapons for me in SP was having to make decisions about how to use better things that found effectively when I couldn't make them. Now, I'll have a harder time finding better things and making them is even..... harder? Sound like fun. New progression because people where skipping steps? I mean, yes, I skipped steps because the loot tables gave me no other choice. I always found better stuff WAY WAY WAY before I had the parts to craft them. That's a loot table problem, not a progression system problem. A problem that the new progression system doesn't address. I now have to read x number of books to craft y.... but still don't have enough parts to it. Sounds fun. TL'DR don't poo poo this dude's opinion when problems that aren't problems are being made into problems and problems that are problems may just be made worse while giving us potentially nothing new to engage with.

My apologies if this has already been asked and answered, but I haven't been able to find the information specifically. Are there going to be significant changes to looting parts (weapons/armor/tools)? The issue that I had with crafting those items was 2 fold. 1.) Generally started looting decent gear way before I had the amount of parts required to make it. As a result, I'd often hold back taking the next level in skill just so I could hopefully find those last few parts needed to make a lvl 3 wooden bow before jumping my parts requirements up to level 4 if I wanted to ever craft anything at all which then lead to.... 2.) Crafting a piece of gear that was of higher level but overall crappier quality. Have random stats, fine, but a lvl 4 shouldn't ever be weaker than a lvl 3, especially when combined with the scarcity of some parts. Both pieces just made crafting for weapons, armor, and most tools completely pointless. I NEVER crafted or used a rachet in game because I never had enough parts to craft one before I found the impact driver recipe. Or just found an impact driver. If parts are still rare birds to find, I'm not sure this crafting change makes much of an impact.

I'd be happier with AGI builds getting a semi-night vision boost. Would make the line WAY more valuable to go out early game at night when other lines want to stay inside. Especially since our most power tool is render near useless on horde nights.

Farming isn't a gamble. It's a collective of knowledge, skill, and willingness to go out in the mud and salvage what you can to prevent complete catastrophe. It's not RNG. And as you say, farming is made irrelevant by the prevalence of meat. The bonuses of the complicated foods are nice, but aren't game impacting at this point. There's no reason to invest in LoTL unless you have a big group and go all in. Even then your returns are 'meh'. What had a point in A19 feels tertiary or worse now. But without the loss

Depends on how you play. I run hard AGI. Bullets are nothing to me but backup for "oh hell" moments through most of the 7 days. By the time I hit T5 missions, I can get through them with iron arrows for the most part, leather armor and some mix of military by that point and usually come out with a trove of ammo for guns on horde night. I am speaking almost strictly SP and to some degree MP (depending on the number of players). Horde nights until then? Stilt base with moltovs and pipe bombs (thanks Grand Spartan for the inspiration!). I have yet to have an issue in SP with bullets. MP is harder to gauge because we have a hardcore miner/crafter and we covet brass like the Lost Ark from the beginning lol. By the time we actually need bullets, we have have a stockpile of resources.

Hmmm, I have experiences where a zombie 'wakes up' but I am still able (at low Hidden) to get a Stealth shot on them very quickly and other situations that are similar where I can't. Definitely need to test it more, but it's hard to control for variables. What I do know is that stealth on horde nights is.... well, not great. I can sometimes get the bonus but haven't been able to pin down why well enough to make it count on a semi regular basis. Which sucks because outside of guns (and to some degree with them) I am the main damage dealer.

I started a new SP game. Haven't gotten to where I can farm anything yet. However, in my multiplayer game, I am at LoTL 2 and have yet to get more than 3 from any seed that I grow. I am about to get LoTL3 so we'll see how that turns out!

I will disagree here a bit. It's not effort. It's RNG. If RNG decides to flip a person the bird, even mildly ( you either don't get the extra crop, you lose the seed, or god forbid both) then farming is losing situation. The only real reason to the LoTL is for the extra crops you get from farms generated. But those are a finite resource unless you get trader missions that let them respawn. That's not effort; it's random luck. Effort would be having to properly irrigate and tend a farm (and I don't mean the Minecraft way where one block of water makes 9 or more blocks produce infinitely). It would be dealing with too much/not enough rain, maintaining proper soil conditions, deal with pests (missed opportunity IMO to have to craft and use a resource that prevents the zombie plague from spoiling crops). Vultures, other birds, etc could be a problem. But no, it's just pure RNG as if to make bothering with farming beyond the seeds you find is even worthwhile. To have dive all the way to 3rd tier to make farming semi-viable is kind of a joke. The rewards are paltry unless you're a die hard farmer and in group play beyond 4-5 is still ultimately unsustainable. Even then, that's a lot of investment for mediocre returns. And to compensate for that, we get airdrops with 10 or more highly valuable foods, vending machines always offering food the next day, and well, you only need 1 point in tracking to make sure you can live off charred meat indefinitely further making LoTL less desirable. All I'm saying is, let's not pretend it's effort that people are complaining about. It isn't. RNG is a mechanic rubs a lot of people wrong at the end of the day and while I might personally understand why and welcome the challenge, I can completely understand why people who liked farming, or have large groups they're trying to feed hate this change. Make seeds a 60-65% chance.

I'll have to recheck, but I'm pretty sure I'm not getting 4 from a planted crop on lotl1 or 2.

Ah, gotcha! My bad. Really? What do you think will get changed?

I am currently fence sitting on the farming changes. What the person who I play with the most and I DO like a lot is that we have to be craftier (hah!) with what we have on hand. It forces us to branch out to other foods that we either ignored before or made only because we wanted to make something different. What we don't like is that seems to make Living off the Land 1 and 2 close to irrelevant. It takes 5 plants to craft 1 seed. At 1 and 2 you get 2, maybe 3 back from a punch. But if you lose the seed, you're now at a net two loss (or 3!) loss. Finding seeds hasn't been super productive and most of the seeds we have found are yucca, cotton, goldenrod, and the red plant that I don't want to spell out. All of which are useless for crafting food. We're more than willing to ride it out a bit longer and see if things even out, but right now we both feel that either the chance of getting the seed back needs to be increased to 60-70% OR the cost to craft seeds needs to be reduced. The other possibility would be to lessen the need for corn either in tweaking recipes or more recipes that don't rely as heavily on corn/farmed foods.