PC What was the point in making the treasure rooms in Poi's?

[Solomon]

So for a long time i started to wonder just why was it necesseary to create this whole dungeon style setting for Poi's at the end of each with a treasure room. 

For example of what exactly is my problem im going to use this Poi as an example:



Now as you can see the treasure room in this Poi is on the top at the Crack-a-Book building. Theres no enemies at that rooftop because the intented way is to pass throught all four buildings and the last spawn before the finish is the top of the red building.

There are multiple problems here:

First you can just nerdpole/ladder/mine your way up there. This is a sandbox game so the players have various ways to reach that treasure room without any problems.

Second looting anything is kind of pointless in all treasure room poi's because your main reward is always at the end of the dungeon.

Most of these treasure rooms are kind of immersion breaking because they literally look like as this was someones emergency stash and yet theres no sign of a survivor ever being there.

The pros of there being a treasure room is just that at the end of a Poi you know you will get a guaranteed reward.

The cons of there being a treasure room are the following:

1. it encourages nerdpooling because why would you waste ammo and time when you can easily reach the treasure.
   
2. It creates a problem of players nerdpooling into the treasure room.
   
3. It encourages the developers to go for fixes no one asked for (credits to @Roland):
   
4. It literally wastes development time, without these rooms there would be no need to create any fixes nor any need to create intented paths throught poi's.
   

In my opinion the cons vastly overshadow all the pros of there being a treasure room.

Without them the developers wouldnt need to waste time on creating dungeon like Poi's with intented paths. Just create a building what looks good, theres no need to create survivor ladders and hidden roads. Just create a building what has no way to reach the second floor because both stairs collapsed, because who cares the players can ladder/pole/mine their way up embracing the sandbox builder nature of the game. As an example the building combo i has plenty of walls what you can just break throught and windows what you can climb into.

Without them the loot could be just randomly distributed around the building in various containers. Players will just loot everything like how it was intented from the begining instead of speedrunning/poling themselves up to the only room what matters. As an example in this building we have plenty of containers what you can easily use up to hide the loot, the army truck behind for ammo, the storage area for food and randoms, probably place in some random safe for the weapons also and the rest around the whole building.

Theres no more immersion breaking by you wandering just who the hell would leave supplies like this unattanted out in the open.

What is your opinion about this?

 

[Kalen]

I couldn't disagree more.   The dungeon style POIs are, for me, one of the best things they've ever added to the game.   The fact that people can bypass the dungeon aspect and go straight to the loot room does trigger quite a few people for some reason.   Personally, I don't go straight for the loot room, I enjoy progressing through the POI.... but I couldn't care less if others do.   Your 3rd point is wrong.... plenty of people asked for a "fix" to the "problem" of going straight to the loot room and the key concept is a pretty good idea to combat that, IMO.   I just hope it's not over used, because that would get annoying fast, I think.

However, I do think too many POIs have a loot room.... I'd like to see more variety.   Some POIs with loot rooms, some with loot distributed, as you mentioned.   

 

[Roland]

My opinion is that treasure rooms are artificial and problematic like you pointed out. But they are also fun and rewarding and I’m always happy when I enter one. (I’m not always happy when I leave one). 
 

My insider knowledge is that dungeons were not created so that we could have loot rooms. Level designed POIs were created for their own sake and a final loot room grew out of that. Removing the loot room would not end level designed POIs or suggested pathways. So you definitely have your causality crossed. 
 

Back to my opinion, I absolutely love and prefer the level designed POIs that started in A16 and have proliferated since then. They are so superior in fun to the legacy open empty box POIs of A15 and previous that there is no comparison. 
 

I would be in favor of spreading the loot around instead of having it be in one room or of the key idea as I think they both have merit. The game already supports code locked containers so rather than a physical key make it a code. Just so they keep making level designed POIs. 

 I just hope it's not over used,

You do know this is TFP right...? 

 

[Xtrakicking]

I've got a problem, and it's that it's a yes/no situation for me.

On the one hand, it's cool that everytime you enter a POI you truly got something to look forward to, and encourages exploring the whole thing to find it. On the other hand, it kinda sucks that you can find every type of loot crate in every POI. 

Back in previous alphas, if you wanted weapon crates, you had to go to gun stores, police stations or military bases. You were never going to find a single weapon create in a normal house. With this whole treasure room thing we have now, it doesn't really matter. Each POI has plenty crates of different kinds to look forward to, so it doesn't really matter which one to loot.

Now when it comes to the problems it generates, here's my opinion:

1. I don't mind nerdpoling. It's one of the beauties of this game, the fact that you can manipulate the terrain and choose your own method. Many treasure rooms are hidden in places you can't nerdpole to anyways, and if they're guarded by tough enemies, it's not a concern.

2. I don't think looting is pointless. Though the treasure room is what you're aiming for, there's tons of containers inside the POI to loot. Bookcases, kitchen cabinets, file cabinets, wardrobes, hidden stashes, etc.

3. Immersion wise, my main gripe is that there's a treasure room in every single POI. Maybe it would be way better if some of them didn't have one, and you have to figure out which ones do.

4. I'm not too keen on the key idea, to be honest, but if it's all they got to fix the nerdpole problem, I guess there's not much choice.

So yeah, I'm not againts the idea, nor do I think it should be removed, but I think it could be better if it worked differently.

 

[Morloc]

Rather than keys, perhaps a number of "triggers" could be tripped in the POI which would result in a significantly lower spawn in the "treasure room". If you go straight for the roof you encounter 25 vultures, if you pass over invisible triggers in the POI you could reduce that to just a few.

I had to laugh at one solution for a POI in the Compo Pack. There's this innocent looking pillbox sitting in a swamp. You meet some fairly nasty trap spawns....and eventually come upon this cave that's super dark. Stumble around enough and you eventually find this room with a bunch of crates including at least one of those huge military containers. Woot! right?...

Spoiler

.Approximately 15 zombie bears chew through a dirt wall when you open the container. Fun and surprising!

-Morloc

 

[Solomon]

Rather than keys, perhaps a number of "triggers" could be tripped in the POI which would result in a significantly lower spawn in the "treasure room". If you go straight for the roof you encounter 25 vultures, if you pass over invisible triggers in the POI you could reduce that to just a few.

I had to laugh at one solution for a POI in the Compo Pack. There's this innocent looking pillbox sitting in a swamp. You meet some fairly nasty trap spawns....and eventually come upon this cave that's super dark. Stumble around enough and you eventually find this room with a bunch of crates including at least one of those huge military containers. Woot! right?...

Spoiler

.Approximately 15 zombie bears chew through a dirt wall when you open the container. Fun and surprising!

-Morloc

Thats pure EVIL! I love it!

In all seriousness this is kind of the thing i would like to see more than these every poi has loot room setups.

My opinion is that treasure rooms are artificial and problematic like you pointed out. But they are also fun and rewarding and I’m always happy when I enter one. (I’m not always happy when I leave one). 
 

My insider knowledge is that dungeons were not created so that we could have loot rooms. Level designed POIs were created for their own sake and a final loot room grew out of that. Removing the loot room would not end level designed POIs or suggested pathways. So you definitely have your causality crossed. 
 

Back to my opinion, I absolutely love and prefer the level designed POIs that started in A16 and have proliferated since then. They are so superior in fun to the legacy open empty box POIs of A15 and previous that there is no comparison. 
 

I would be in favor of spreading the loot around instead of having it be in one room or of the key idea as I think they both have merit. The game already supports code locked containers so rather than a physical key make it a code. Just so they keep making level designed POIs. 

I wanted to add a 4th question on how people like to improve the current situation but im limited to 3 questions per poll it seems.

I wanted to make a list of possible ways to improve the whole system like on avarage much less loot rooms, adding "sense" to them like as if they were used by a now dead survivor, and changing around their looks so they are not always the same box+reinforced box+weapon bag combo.

What @Morloc suggested would be my dream come too (thought maybe not at this levels of evil), a Poi setup what looks natural and at the same point is dangerous, even if you skip to the end the last fight is literally at that end.

 

[RestInPieces]

Briefly put: Populating a sandbox world randomly with a limited number of unique, discernible prefabs AKA "dungeons" (with no variations whatsoever) is fundamentally a terrible idea. It's like having players watch the same tape repeatedly, as great as that tape may be. "Loot rooms" cement that even more. Instead of them adding more load to that already heavily repeated process, depending on their generation stack, it should at least be feasible to have some degree randomization in them. 

Creating a bunch of different POI variations or letting the community do that is also a bad idea  since they could create infinitely more POI variations programmatically. Even without full randomization, with a few randomly predetermined choke points, traps, collapses, loot containers, events, etc they could create a ton of variations drastically changing the experience of the player visiting that same POI.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Oh so you loot plastic, brass, acid, dogfood, megacrush, books and schematics in the main loot? Also no need to salvage things for mechanical parts, springs and such because they are in the main loot? That´s new to me.  *ironyoff*

I don´t get the hate for dungeon stlye tbh. The easy to reach part will be gone in future i guess. When the new loot system is here, those easy to reach main loots without even seeing a sleeper, propably are gone. Otherwise the whole system would be pointless.

 

[Whorhay]

I think the dungeon style POI's have become too prevalent but I don't have any real problem with them. Even before they were a thing players would beeline to the best treasure in a POI if that was what they were after. I pretty much always work all the way through dungeon POI's and strip the site for most all of it's loot. I wrench all the stuff that needs wrenching and dig up all the free resources, and I loot every trash pile. People that nerd pole to treasure rooms are missing more than half of the worthwhile loot. I'm always finding books in trash piles, acid in sinks, and there are plenty of safes and such sprinkled around to make it worthwhile, not to mention all the zombie XP.

 

[DaChibii]

I like the 'Treasure Rooms'. Although, I understand that they currently have some issues, I'm confident the Fun Pimps will have sorted that stuff by release.

Honestly, I feel like most Treasure Rooms could just be basic rooms until a number of triggers happen, like for example 'Trader quest activation, killing all the zombies in the POI, killing a specific zombie, or flipping of switches/solving of puzzles. After a trigger (or triggers)happens then the Loot Table gets swapped in, and the player is rewarded with the better loot. Alternatively, Fun Pimps could just go classic Dungeon-Crawl loot and have the trigger zombie drop the specific loot instead of using a chest.

For me, the dungeon-style POIs greatly improved the enjoyment of the game. I just sort of wish that they scale the idea up to the Town/City level so that they don't feel like a grid of randomized buildings. It would be nice if the cities felt like they had a start (Traders maybe) and end goal (Downtown or the major POIs), instead of relying on the player to figure out a pacing or path through it. Although, I don't want limit the people that like freedom (ie, let them nerdpole around barriers etc), but rather support those that like doing the simple mazes. Mazes are cool.

 

[Hinch]

I don’t see an issue with smash and grab in SP. I can see it being a problem in MP.

 

[Kyonshi]

I chose neutral on the necessity of loot rooms. I like them, first and foremost. But some POIs should have them and some shouldnt. Even better: some POIs should have two versions of them. One with loot room coded and the opposite, with an empty loot room or with very few loot. The place could have been looted and ransacked by previous unknown survivors. It could have partly been destroyed by fire or by an explosion in that part of the house. This would alleviate the outcome of previsibility and repetitiveness when reaching certain houses and buildings. Now, instead of saying "Oh i know this place. Just nerdpole to the top or dig right there to reach the loot", people would have second thoughts. They would have to consider that maybe, the loot may not be what they can expect.

I know this means more coding from the programmers and level designers. But that's the outcomes of creating a sand-box game: the freedom of movement and creativity asks for a monumental lot of possibilities and eventualities and the developer must cover the highest number of them if they wanna provide the most immersive game. And when they're able to, within a certain context, this gives the most entertaining games ever. That's why 7DTD is so fun and popular.

Its ok to not have a loot room at the end of a dungeon-style house. Its ok to also have a bare-bone loot in a loot room. This is the apocalypse, nothing is always supposed to be in pristine conditon when you find it. Sometimes, you dont always win in that context.

So no, loot rooms shouldnt be removed and they do improve gameplay. The idea is to design and play around with them, like you do with plasticine. That's what game design is all about. Create, modify, adapt. Spreading the loot around the whole POI instead of a loot room is also a great way to diversify the gameplay. Even better, you could spread the loot in a place where its usually in a specific room dedicated to this and subvert the player. They would enter the place, loot on their way to the treasure room thinking "Omg, im finding good stuff and im not even in the treasure room yet!" and when they actually get there, BAM, there's no final loot... but couple of Soldier Zs, Wraiths or dogs.

 

[DaChibii]

Its ok to not have a loot room at the end of a dungeon-style house. Its ok to also have a bare-bone loot in a loot room. This is the apocalypse, nothing is always supposed to be in pristine conditon when you find it. Sometimes, you dont always win in that context.

I like the randomness of this, but would like to add in... "If a POI is a trader quest, then it should always have a loot room." People will expect a pay off for assigned work, even if said work is just nerdpoling/bypassing barriers.

 

[Kyonshi]

I like the randomness of this, but would like to add in... "If a POI is a trader quest, then it should always have a loot room." People will expect a pay off for assigned work, even if said work is just nerdpoling/bypassing barriers.

Yes, i agree with that in this particular context. And even if the trader would send you in a place you previously looted before, the game resets the layout anyways, as we already know. So that wouldnt be a problem.

Edit: well, on second-thought, it depends. The payout of a trader quest isnt necessary the loot room... its the actual pay and reward the TRADER gives you. You could still encounter a POI designated by the trader as your quest location and still have it generated without a treasure room. I personally wouldnt mind that.

 

[FelixLightfoot]

If you nerdpole to the roof you're only depriving yourself of the fun and XP of fighting zombies.

I'm a more casual player of this game and in earlier alphas I would always get bored pretty quick once I had a decent base and a zillion resources. Dungeon-style houses have improved the gameplay quite a bit now because it feels like they're all way more varied and fun to explore than before.

I agree the 'brute force' design approach is problematic long term since eventually you will see all the POIs. On top of that the quest system seems to repick the same few levels over and over again.

 

[Boidster]

I enjoy the "clearing" aspect of the POIs, but I also have no problem with people laddering up the side to just get the loot. I frequently break through the One True Path when inside a POI, usually to create escape routes or to loot specific containers (e.g. going right for the sink in search of a wrench).

Use the tools the game gives you to play how ya like.



I also will have no problem with locked, impenetrable (or loot destroyed if box is destroyed) containers requiring a key found randomly in the POI. Or with significant zombie resistance around the loot rooms. Or both. Generally no problem with TFP adding barriers that players need to overcome with the tools provided, keeping risk/reward ratios within reason.

Plopping a few more "loot owner" corpses around the POI loot? Sure if it adds to people's enjoyment. I always figured that the zombies in the POI were the survivors who had cached the loot before they got infected. But more corpses is fine too.

 

[Gouki]

The objective of treasures in the POIs, are the missions that the trader gives you, also to have something good assured after looting the POI, without having a specific mission.
Each player plays the way they want and has their style, that's why they get bored very quickly by just looting the treasure and nothing else, they don't enjoy the game.

 

[Ramethzer0]

I'm neutral about the situation to a point.  I understand that loot rooms provided more incentive to actually explore and thus loot.  I still think looting is fun for looting's sake.  So, loot and treasure rooms seem like a bonus to me.  But remove them?  I'd be just as happy, because that meant the point was the randomness of loot was the same across the board.  Not all current POI's have the same value anymore.  so.. I'm ambivalent.

But to remove them now seems foolish.  In terms of the game's health, I'm in the minority for certain when it comes to looting.  Removing these rooms now would piss off a lot people whom aren't me, and thus that just seems like the game is walking backwards.

I think making them more fun by adding extra mystery or key gates might be interesting, and would certain provide entertainment to people that would want that (myself included) but that comes at the risk of adding extra emotional labour to the dev team that they may not want.  If they add small things, that would be fine and maybe that fits their development goals.

I'm also in favour of what Glock9 refers to as 'sneaky loot'.  I mean the only reason TO nerdpole or scale your way up the side of a building is because you already know its there (that's metagaming, for sure), and if you know and you're willing to do it, then why should anything stop you?  Nerdpoling can ease the grind, as it were.  You aren't required to play to the POI's standards.  I often rip through walls that are easier to get through than go through locked and barred doors.  800 block health in a wooden wall is easier to go through than a 1k door, ya know what I mean?  These are choices to be made, and being a player those choices are yours to make.

And for those that feel like its cheating and want to clear a POI as presented?  That's your choice too.  More power to ya!   I have no problems admitting I do both.

And the reason for that has a lot to do with timing.   If I feel like I have the time to do it the long way, maybe I will.   But if I've given myself a goal of 'gotta get back to the trader and unload all this crap so I can go after this other spot before dark'  Well that means I just might go after the main loot and leave the rest for another time.

 

[Solomon]

Oh so you loot plastic, brass, acid, dogfood, megacrush, books and schematics in the main loot? Also no need to salvage things for mechanical parts, springs and such because they are in the main loot? That´s new to me.  *ironyoff*

I don´t get the hate for dungeon stlye tbh. The easy to reach part will be gone in future i guess. When the new loot system is here, those easy to reach main loots without even seeing a sleeper, propably are gone. Otherwise the whole system would be pointless.

After a while (day 4) i just stop looting trashbags of all kind and by the time i reach day 10 i no longer touch cupboards too. Its pointless when i know there will be a food pack there, some medpacks here and soo on.

I still loot books and certain containers but i leave like half of it because its meaningless.

I think the best improvement would be to change the actual loot rooms to be the last fight zone instead of just an empty reward area, for example on the poi i showed we can just pole up to that area. Put a big fence on the top of it with barbed wire and make it check how many zones the player in the area triggered. If its not atleast 2 indicating the player didnt even try to find the intented path just make it spawn double the zombies.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Well, i am not talking about trash bags only (wich i always loot, 8/10 crucible recipes found in trash bags, can´t tell how many vehicle recipes, but a lot, books also) but also salvaging chairs, computers, electrical devices and such. There is crates in pretty much every dungeon POI on your way to the main loot. Safes behind pictures, sinks for acid, cupboards for dogfood (needed for the learning elixir) and canned food wich is needed for the better food recipes.

It´s like you do a quest, for XP and the reward and you can get things you need anyways on the way to it. Dunno why i would skip that.