PC The real problem with A19 and the looting system

Reckis

Reckis

New member
I have been thinking about posting this for a few days, contemplating whether or not it would be worth the time and effort . . .

Players take the whole game too literally.

As I have said in other posts, the game is an abstraction of the real world :

          1. To give the loot a container to sit in. Why is it that we can handle all the leather bags, piles of ammo, and equipment bags and the ridiculous things they contain (like an AK47 in     a bag the size of a football), but people loose their minds over a sealed crate (again, abstraction) with primitive tools in it?

          2. Because creating an appropriate loot container for every different tech level of loot would be too resource intensive, both in manpower and hardware terms. Not to        mention tying the different models to the appropriate code to swap them out as necessary.

          3. The items in the game are just an abstraction. If it makes you feel better, call the stone tools "makeshift", "scrap", or whatever else you think would be appropriate to find in a "sealed" crate. What is important here is the progression through the necessary steps to make the game challenging and balanced, not the names or the models.

          4. This is not a simulation and taking the systems contained herein as such will only lead to frustration and confusion.

Overall this game has only gotten better with each alpha. Sure there have been a few stumbles along the way, but TFP have always addressed issues in an effort to make the game better.

 
Reckis said:
To give the loot a container to sit in. Why is it that we can handle all the leather bags, piles of ammo, and equipment bags and the ridiculous things they contain (like an AK47 in     a bag the size of a football), but people loose their minds over a sealed crate (again, abstraction) with primitive tools in it?
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Because they desire an AK47. They can talk about immersion all day but what it really comes down to is they don’t want to be disappointed when they open that box. 
 

If primitive gear could one shot zombies and decimate trees and boulders you wouldn’t hear a peep about how it makes no sense for primitive weapons being in safes. 
 

Just like we don’t hear a peep about AK47s being found in a small wall safe it could never fit into. 

 
Roland said:
Because they desire an AK47. They can talk about immersion all day but what it really comes down to is they don’t want to be disappointed when they open that box. 
 

If primitive gear could one shot zombies and decimate trees and boulders you wouldn’t hear a peep about how it makes no sense for primitive weapons being in safes. 
 

Just like we don’t hear a peep about AK47s being found in a small wall safe it could never fit into. 
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This pretty much how I feel about it, I was just trying to be tactful and helpful, lol!

I have thought about peeping, but I figure the Pimps will get it sorted if and when the deem it necessary.

 
What is this tactful thing you mentioned? I can’t keep up with the youthful lingo....

;)

 
Roland said:
Because they desire an AK47. They can talk about immersion all day but what it really comes down to is they don’t want to be disappointed when they open that box. 
 

If primitive gear could one shot zombies and decimate trees and boulders you wouldn’t hear a peep about how it makes no sense for primitive weapons being in safes. 
 

Just like we don’t hear a peep about AK47s being found in a small wall safe it could never fit into. 
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I think it's pretty sad that you imply all of those against the current (not talking about future "if's" here) progression are members of the "We Want It Now" squad. I wish I would dig into my history but I remember being VERY fond of the idea of a stone age, to the point it was the one feature I kept talking about to my friends to hype them up about A19. I don't want AK47's in every gun safe on day 1. I like the fact that progression is slow, and that I real feel like a guy that just woke up and starts getting better at being the hunter instead of the prey, one day at a time. I dislike that the game makes it very obvious to me what I can and what I can't find when opening a container, without a single hope for a "lucky drop", even when opening some of the best containers you can find. Some like looting for the "hoarding toilet paper feeling", and some like looting for the "perfect come-up experience". I'm on on both sides, and I miss the latter.

I also hate the fact certain things seem very unbalanced and don't really warrant such a drastic level gate (because in the end, it is exactly what it is). I don't expect to fly a gyro on day 7, but I also don't expect to not ever find better than a bicycle part schematic in both a 10 hour game and a 20 hour game. Trader Joel's would probably threaten my life with a magnum if I tried selling him anymore bicycle chassis schematics to be honest. Same can be said for mods.

We all have a different connection to "immersion". Some need the visual representation to match exactly the provided gameplay experience, and get thrown off by finding junk in military boxes. Some can't be hooked by a game that doesn't provide the best content right away. And then some think it's immersion breaking when they know with a 100% certainty that they'll never find an astounding majority of the items until they've lived enough days to be worthy of them.

 
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You practically answered the question yourself, it is an abstraction of something - it is not abstract. There are people whose jobs are about designing immersive constructs, including level designers, 3D modelers, environmental artists and so on. Guess all those along with the people who hire them are idiots after all, congratulations you outwitted them.

 
Actually I take offense to what you said too @Roland  The pimps have changed so many mini parts of the game that kept player busy and having fun to the drudgery that is the start of the game.

Minibikes - you had to build it and upgrade the parts.  There is so much more that could be done with the vehicles, but right now it's just yipped I bought the parts and put it together.

separate molds for each metal you want to make ingots for.  The Forge now is very dumbed down.

Even the altering out of parts of guns.  I wasn't the biggest fan of that, but I prefer that to what we're doing now.

If my brain was fully awake at the moment I'm sure I could point out many other enjoyable parts of the game that kept you busy and having fun.. I'm sure others can point out things the pimps removed in order to make the game "easier" or "simpler".  I get removing tasks that were boring and just was an added step to get a material to a state you can build items with.  But seriously... much has been removed

The pimps put in all those dungeon like POI's which while fun are OVERKILL on resources.  The current game I'm playing is the first out of 4 or 5 starts that I bothered making cement.  I made maybe 400-500 cement and that was to complete a build, or I'd just go get more from a POI.  The rest you can find in the POI's.   Stone, who needs to dig for stone?  you just bust up the Block crate at the POI's.  Cobble stone, so much of that at pretty near every POI as well.

You want to know why there is less to do in the game? the pimps took it out, it's less "fun" because the pimps have removed the things we used to have to do that kept us all busy.  I wasn't complaining about that, maybe someone was?  maybe they were complaining it's too hard to get materials to build with?  That I don't know. 

There WAS so much to do in the game until it was all dumbed down so much.  Making it easier appeals to some crowds I guess, but then you get what you have now, there's less to do in the game.... unless you're creative and want to do it.  Otherwise it is kind of a shoot and loot and regardless of what early weapons you have that's what it ends up being.

I still enjoy the game, but I can't play it as vanilla, I have to mod it to make it enjoyable.

So saying those of us that don't like the current loot system and want it now is ridiculous.  What the pimps put in was a bad decision, taking away enjoyable game options just for the sake of change wasn't necessarily a great idea either.

3 years ago I kept arguing for zones that were more difficult to add more to the game, not take out enjoyable parts to replace it with hard areas.  I guess resources and coding and optimization may make that challenging.  I don't see how, it just should make the game files larger... but I'm not a programmer, and I don't know why the pimps make the decisions they do.

 
I miss pre-A18 mining, I remember finding some lead after looking for lead everywhere and being overjoyed I finally found some. The raised mineral stones make mining easier but less enjoyable than mining down under the bedrock and making the discovery of massive, lead, coal or whatever deposit.

I have not really payed much attention to the looting but I do remember finding a lot of fairly useless garbage in a 10,000 HP chest which was a bit odd. I am primarily a builder in the game, I like to build structures for horde night so I spend most of my time trying to get enough stone for cement and iron for steel and iron bars as well as traps, so I do not really pay much attention to what I get when looting, but I can see some of the complaints.

 I guess its like Christmas, when you see a big present and you are "oh boy I cannot wait to see what that is" and you wait until Christmas and break it open to only find an IKEA shoe rack that you have to assemble first. Just surprise the player once in a blue moon with a treasure worth cracking open a 10,000 HP chest, maybe 1% of the time and 99% of the time just garbage. I mean whats wrong with opening 99 boxes of garbage and one box that has a steel sledgehammer in it, I know it would require extra programing to set the odds in that way, but it also requires programming to base your loot on your current game stage.

 
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Ha...you guys...

I said that nobody complains about finding awesome weapons in containers that don’t make sense like they have about stone tools. 
 

I didn’t say one word about anyone wanting high power loot on day one. You added that part in and then the other guy got offended about something I didn’t say. 
 

All I said is that people don’t want to be disappointed when they open a box. That’s pretty much what people have been saying too. “It’s horrible opening a safe and only getting garbage”. 
 

But please go back to my offensive post and show me where I said the things you boys projected....

 
@Roland  I humbly apologize for accusing you of something you didn't say.  I still claim tiredness for reading multiple posts and inferring an inaccurate sentiment from them.

Yet, I still stand by what I said about pimps removing many enjoyable "mini games" or however you want to call it that has reduced much of what you can do in the game. 

 
leaderdog said:
@Roland  I humbly apologize for accusing you of something you didn't say.  I still claim tiredness for reading multiple posts and inferring an inaccurate sentiment from them.

Yet, I still stand by what I said about pimps removing many enjoyable "mini games" or however you want to call it that has reduced much of what you can do in the game. 
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No worries!  All of this is the new hot topic so lots of people are saying all sorts of things in quick succession. It’s the “something just went stable” life. 
 

Thanks for your your perspective. I don’t disagree that a lot of things have been cut. All the people who start playing this game for the first time this weekend will never know about those things that were removed. It’s sad sometimes when a part of the game we personally love doesn’t make it through an update but at least we got to experience it for awhile. 
 

When the final version is released it will be amazing to think of everything that fell by the wayside during the journey. New players will just take bandits for granted not knowing the years and years those of us who followed the development waited and wondered about their implementation. When they eventually get their first crossbow they’ll have no idea about the design changes that weapon alone took during the years of development. I can close my eyes right now and see the 5x5 crafting grid filled in the correct configuration with the sticks and plant fibers needed to get it crafted as one of the first objectives. Now you won’t see one for a long while and it takes rare parts to craft. Amazing!

Glad I’m a part of it all. 

 
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RestInPieces said:
Don't you remember my whining about weapons growing on trees etc? Did I not whine enough?!
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@Roland refers to realism and that you can loot weapons from containers that are too small to contain such a weapon. For example a M60 in a wall safe.

If someone don't accept that he can find stone weapons/tools in sealed crates, he shouldn't accept that he can find a big weapon in a small wall safe or a small weapons bag.

 
Reckis said:
The real problem with A19 and the looting system
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...is that it isn't done, yet, but players are assuming that it is.

What I implemented is a greatly simplified version of what the level designers cooked up for loot distribution.

It is what could be fit into A19 and it's a massive improvement over the ridiculous loot pinatas of previous alphas where you would be "done looting" after a week or two.

RipClaw said:
@Roland refers to realism and that you can loot weapons from containers that are too small to contain such a weapon. For example a M60 in a wall safe.

If someone don't accept that he can find stone weapons/tools in sealed crates, he shouldn't accept that he can find a big weapon in a small wall safe or a small weapons bag.
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Pfft. That's easy.

automatic-rifle.jpg


 
Gazz said:
...is that it isn't done, yet, but players are assuming that it is.

What I implemented is a greatly simplified version of what the level designers cooked up for loot distribution.

It is what could be fit into A19 and it's a massive improvement over the ridiculous loot pinatas of previous alphas where you would be "done looting" after a week or two.
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We aren't, but then again we can only comment on what we have in front of us can't we ? I mean, if you go down that route nothing ever gets discussed before gold, because god forbid no feature is in it's final version yet.

You stated something very interesting though. "It is what could be fit into A19". We have had the loot system of A18- for... 18 alphas. Why the rush to squeeze in such a 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT feature if you knew you didn't have the time to prepare the rest for A19 anyways ?

"Massive improvement" is one hell of a stretch imo. Somehow we've played a 60 hour gameplay in A18 with me as the Int guy (so a LOT of content was unlocked with perk points), and after 20 hours we still had a @%$*#!ton of stuff to find. That is bound not to happen in A19 even though none of my group chose to play Int. Weirdly enough we have so much left to find, but it feels like such a grind it's just painful. 

 
As i said in other treads i get this feeling that people just dont understand how suspension of disbelief works.

You create a setting for our case, we have an apocalypse with zombies in a general game. We know that we are in the modern ages and the fall of humanity was not long ago too because electricity still works in plenty of the places.

Suspension of disbelief now suprasses how the following are unrealistic and put them into parts of the immersion:

  1. General gameplay mechanics (we somehow know how to flint stones to make an axe, have a purse filled with 3 tons of iron and accept the healthbar)
  2. Zombies existing
  3. The world is based on blocks
Apart from these we also have the following what are part of the immersion set by the devs themselves:

  1. We are in the modern ages.
  2. An apocalypse removed all humans.
  3. This is a survival game.
  4. Houses of a certain theme have items of a certain theme.


Now the problem starts when you try to add/change/remove parts what break suspension of disbelief.

A simple example would be adding an AK47 into skyrim, if you dont change it to fit the looks, keep the name and dont put any lore for its existance up there it will break suspension of disbelief and as such it will break the immersion.

Now lets get back to 7 days to die, you just found a shotgun messiah crate from the looks of it you can conclude the following:

  1. Its pre-apocalypse, so it couldnt have anything what looks survivor made. (no rocket launcher!)
  2. Its sealed so that means no one opened it.
  3. Its from a factory so it has to have items from that factory.
When a player opens this sealed crate they expect the following items in it thanks to the immersion created by the devs:

  1. Weapons and pre-apocalypse only.
  2. Weapon parts.
  3. Bullets and explosives but pre-apocalypse only.
  4. Forged iron and steel.
  5. Springs.
  6. Iron.
  7. Gunpowder.
  8. Iron Pipe.
  9. Repair kits.
  10. Beaker. (for measuring stuff to make gunpowder or gunpowder itself, bit stretchy)
Anything other than these makes the players shake their head as it doesnt make sense. If you think otherwise like @Roland does go and meet one of your friends or relatives, tell them this and wait for the answer:

In a distant land of america you wake up in an abadoned city after an apocalypse killed most of humanity. There are zombies crawling around you, so you make your way silently into a local shop to scavange for food and items for your survival. Inside the shop you find several cans of food and in the back you find a sealed box with the name "Shotgun Messiah" on it its from a weapon factory, whats in that box?

Now you could probably leave out the weapon factory part and most people would still say anything but prehistoric tools. I asked my mother about what could be in that box, just because it had the shotgun on its label she guessed a gun and after that guessed an iron pipe and lastly plastic toys as i did not clarified that the shotgun messiah is a weapon factory here.

I wouldnt have any problems with the looting system even if i wouldnt find any weapon or weapon parts in this specific box because there are still loads of items what could be put into them what still fit the immersion.

The only place where stone tools actually make sense are those bags outside in the open and on zombies because we can go with the assuption that the poor fella died and lost his stuff there.

 
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