PC Do you like the A19 loot system?

[meganoth]

I'm sure they already have various internal tools. I remember them saying that for randomization in POIs, I don't know why they would want to avoid making any changes in them.

 I did read it

I am obviously no clairvoyant, but what I am saying here is that I expect a modifier that will raise difficulty, but will absolutely not prevent you from going there on "day 1". A modifier will obviously scale with you, since what it modifies is your GS (unless they put caps on them, which would be rather odd after the recent change), therefore I believe they will keep it within the player's reach. Since we are only talking about biome modifiers here, I also don't think they would go overboard with biome difficulty.

Anyway, if that turns out to be the case, put briefly, current problems will stay mostly unresolved. 

"within the player's reach". Notice that in vanilla at night 1 you can encounter running zombies, wolf hordes and bears. That is the reach TFP thinks players can endure at a minimum

So the modifier has no cap. Result may be something like this:

gamestage   --  hardest enemies in normal biome  -- hardest enemy in a difficult biome

      1                                  edgar                                                   feral edgar

     100?                             feral edgar                                           glowy edgar

This assumes gamestage rises somewhat linear, but why would TFP fear this result?

 

[RestInPieces]

"within the player's reach". Notice that in vanilla at night 1 you can encounter running zombies, wolf hordes and bears. That is the reach TFP thinks players can endure at a minimum

So the modifier has no cap. Result may be something like this:

gamestage   --  hardest enemies in normal biome  -- hardest enemy in a difficult biome

      1                                  edgar                                                   feral edgar

     100?                             feral edgar                                           glowy edgar

This assumes gamestage rises somewhat linear, but why would TFP fear this result?

I don't think they would, or have any reason to fear anything at this point. I just find what I described deeply problematic, especially item-wise.

Notice how everyone and their grandmother can pillage a e.g. SM within the first few days on default.

As for the caps, I keep mentioning them because they make logical sense - to me at least, since all biomes will end up being the same beyond a certain GS. Same glowy enemies, high tier stuff etc. And as for biome modifiers in general, unless a lot of extra changes accompany them, like POI modifiers, less inclusive lootlists and POIs in biomes etc etc, I wouldn't expect anything more other than a sudden incline in difficult-biome-POI roof-farming.

 

[Roland]

Anyway, if that turns out to be the case, put briefly, current problems will stay mostly unresolved.

It's doubtful that the current problem will ever be fully resolved for 1000 hr players in any case. Experienced players who know the ins and outs of every POI are going to be able to get in and get out with the better loot and have their powerful gear early on. Having to travel through the wasteland will be a challenge but going light and with stamina boosters will make most difficulties about the wasteland avoidable.

These changes will benefit those who don't have POIs memorized and still struggle with the routine of survival in the game. To make it work for the old-timers significant reworking of POI's would be necessary. The ONLY rework of POI's that I have heard repeated by Madmole as a possibility is making the treasure crates locked and protected with a key that must be found somewhere in the POI. Even that change hasn't been confirmed as something they are actually working on.

 

[Solomon]

Boxes afaik don't "spawn"

Sadly because making them "spawn" would fix some issues around by somewhat randomising the loot you can find.

 

[RestInPieces]

It's doubtful that the current problem will ever be fully resolved for 1000 hr players in any case. Experienced players who know the ins and outs of every POI are going to be able to get in and get out with the better loot and have their powerful gear early on. Having to travel through the wasteland will be a challenge but going light and with stamina boosters will make most difficulties about the wasteland avoidable.

These changes will benefit those who don't have POIs memorized and still struggle with the routine of survival in the game. To make it work for the old-timers significant reworking of POI's would be necessary. The ONLY rework of POI's that I have heard repeated by Madmole as a possibility is making the treasure crates locked and protected with a key that must be found somewhere in the POI. Even that change hasn't been confirmed as something they are actually working on.

That's true, even though I think 100h+ are more than enough for it.

Even without looking into the effectiveness of threats, DP, debuffs etc,  our weak, asthmatic, couch potato character (as some people call it), that goes everywhere by jogging constantly, sprints instantly, catches its breath in a couple of seconds, never needs to rest, is the fastest entity in the world and can dope itself with magical candies or gallons of coffee, makes this easily possible, yes.

Even if that wasn't the case, a tiny amount of randomization within POIs would go a very long way. I don't know how having to find a key every time, would make any sense immersion or gameplay-wise. And if they are not willing to try and randomize a few things in them, I doubt they will randomize the key location or which POIs have the key, so I can see where this is going - "hey look! this is a key-dungeon, let's loot it by going from A->B instead of just B and ignore anything else or other POIs". I suspect the reason they don't want to randomization that a "dungeon"-POI is already designed in a linear way, and they want players to go through it, which would make absolute sense in a non-sandbox game where you don't visit the same POIs dozens of times.

Anyway, if they do add keys I demand this sound effect to go with them 

I don't see how it isn't possible to randomize any prefab's props at map generation. Hard part is to avoid adding 5 minutes to it

 

[stample]

They can already randomize locations somewhat, the way they do with Satchels for fetch quests.  Simply have 5-10 locations it CAN spawn, and each time it resets, put the box in question in one of those locations.  This should work fine for a "pile of trash look alike" that contains the key, or the end-loot chest itself.

I think the biggest hurdle to this right now is that its triggered off the Quest system, and wouldn't happen at map gen.

 

[meganoth]

I don't think they would, or have any reason to fear anything at this point. I just find what I described deeply problematic, especially item-wise.

Notice how everyone and their grandmother can pillage a e.g. SM within the first few days on default.

A different problem that can't be solved by capping or even randomizing loot for example. If a lvl1 player knows how to fight or avoid high level zombies, nothing can stop him from getting at higher level loot, it at most can slow him down a little. But higher level biomes are actually there as an alternative for experienced players. My grandmother definitely won't be able to pillage an SM in a high difficulty biome 

As for the caps, I keep mentioning them because they make logical sense - to me at least, since all biomes will end up being the same beyond a certain GS.

I agree that caps would improve the game for players that play a single game for more than 100 hours because it would keep the order of the biomes indefinitely. There would be no appreciable difference at all in early or mid game.

Same glowy enemies, high tier stuff etc. And as for biome modifiers in general, unless a lot of extra changes accompany them, like POI modifiers, less inclusive lootlists and POIs in biomes etc etc, I wouldn't expect anything more other than a sudden incline in difficult-biome-POI roof-farming.

They can already randomize locations somewhat, the way they do with Satchels for fetch quests.  Simply have 5-10 locations it CAN spawn, and each time it resets, put the box in question in one of those locations.  This should work fine for a "pile of trash look alike" that contains the key, or the end-loot chest itself.

Simply because that would be the easiest and fastest way to implement keys I expect them to just use the Satchel mechanism. I would very much prefer a random zombie to have the key, but implementing that would take them 5-10 times longer and dev time is their most precious resource.

I think the biggest hurdle to this right now is that its triggered off the Quest system, and wouldn't happen at map gen.

Why? You want the key location randomized per quest activation, not at map gen. Otherwise the second time you get the same quest POI you would already know where the key is.

 

[RestInPieces]

A different problem that can't be solved by capping or even randomizing loot for example.

Of course it's a different problem (it's the one I was talking about in my first post) and it is (mostly) irrelevant with caps. Caps or randomizing loot won't help in this, however randomizing loot container locations will help quite a bit.

I agree that caps would improve the game for players that play a single game for more than 100 hours because it would keep the order of the biomes indefinitely. There would be no appreciable difference at all in early or mid game.

Yes you may even argue that this is not a particularly big problem and I might agree (although it definitely doesn't take 100h to reach the last tier of items/mobs with default xp).  

If a lvl1 player knows how to fight or avoid high level zombies, nothing can stop him from getting at higher level loot, it at most can slow him down a little. But higher level biomes are actually there as an alternative for experienced players. My grandmother definitely won't be able to pillage an SM in a high difficulty biome 

Don't underestimate her. But seriously, besides radiation zones or other plot-mechanisms, environmental factors (which already "gate" you, but negligibly) etc, only thing one has to do is make the risk not worth taking.

-Randomized container locations would prevent roof-farming etc, if players don't know where the containers are.

-Item economy. Can you imagine a scenario where it's just barely worth spending the resources to take a more difficult biome/POI on? 

-Enemies. Do we need insta-kill-staring zombies to stop players? Do we have to add Spiderman? Chupacabra? Manbearpig? No, they just have to keep doing this: https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/21592-regarding-animations/ and keep improving sleepers imo. Sure, some players can flawlessly fight zombies but factor in the risks and it may stop being worth it anymore.

-And most importantly all these don't matter unless the DP/debuffs are of little or no consequence. Without consequence there can be no risk. Without any kind of risk, you can never have any meaningful world variety and you end up having to use level scaling and gate stuff behind a magical number ...which may be fine for some of course. 

 

[meganoth]

Of course it's a different problem (it's the one I was talking about in my first post) and it is (mostly) irrelevant with caps. Caps or randomizing loot won't help in this, however randomizing loot container locations will help quite a bit.

It started with you promoting stampies idea of removing the "valuable" loot containers from tier1 and tier2 ("valuable"== has chance to contain tier1 tools or weapons). Now I simply don't see how that helps much since at day 1 we experienced players and even some grandmothers, except mine , can loot a tier3 as easy as a tier 1. Even if they had randomized loot container locations.

Therefore, unless we add some more difficulty to those tier3 (or better only tier4 and tier5) POIs where the better loot is, even bread-and-butter players and grandmas will just go there.

But if those better loot locations are in

1) tier 1-5 POIs 2 km away in a generally more difficult biome, or

2) tier4-5 POIs in your neighborhood, but again with increased difficult, meaning a good chance for ferals

 then say 90% of the players will have a challenging and somewhat expensive (in terms of food and time) endeavour to get their iron axe in the first days.

There is still those 10% of players that will laugh in the face of anything TFP throws at them. That's ok, they are a lost cause anyway.

And there are another x% of players who simply nerdpole to know loot locations. I agree that randomized loot container locations or simply distributing loot in the POIs would prevent this, but Madmole rejected those ideas. So for the moment I prefer to declare nerdpolers as a lost cause as well and wait for a time when nerdpolers are the only big problem left to tackle.

 

[RestInPieces]

It started with you promoting stampies idea of removing the "valuable" loot containers from tier1 and tier2 ("valuable"== has chance to contain tier1 tools or weapons). Now I simply don't see how that helps much since at day 1 we experienced players and even some grandmothers, except mine , can loot a tier3 as easy as a tier 1. Even if they had randomized loot container locations.

Therefore, unless we add some more difficulty to those tier3 (or better only tier4 and tier5) POIs where the better loot is, even bread-and-butter players and grandmas will just go there.

Which is why I said this right after I quoted stample:

Not that this alone would change something for the better but it would be a ...start.

And continue on saying that the problem is that everything is easily accessible from day 1 and nothing is gated/reserved for a more long-term goal. 

I agree that randomized loot container locations or simply distributing loot in the POIs would prevent this, but Madmole rejected those ideas. So for the moment I prefer to declare nerdpolers as a lost cause as well and wait for a time when nerdpolers are the only big problem left to tackle.

Well, nerdpolling is a behavior that is encouraged. But never mind that - even if you choose not to nerdpole it's not great knowing what to expect  and where. Yeah, I remember that discussion. 

 

[danielspoa]

if only we had other people involved into this. Im sick of madmole always being there to say he dislikes good things or that he knows better than the community whats fun for us. The EA approach you know.
Unfortunately that puts me at risk of being banned

what annoys me every time I see certain things mentioned - like a few mechanics in the earlier pages of this topic - is that TFP actually DID great things, and for god knows what reason they changed these. Great ideas that came from themselves! From simple things like getting plants with E to entire mechanics like LBD. Not only that, they remove some stuff required to make these work - like they are afraid with proper mods its still gonna be more popular than their choice -. U talk to another guy from TFP (like Rick in the interviews pre a19), they are far more open to discuss or at least explain why they take X or Y approach.
-----
back to the loot system specifically: It was ridiculously easy from the start, and got slightly better over the versions. Quality 6 gear too early, too many items per loot, some POIs being too good compared to others. I made progression far slower, changed certain loot containers to have less items (or even zero), added some junk to containers that were too good (libraries!).
When we talk about POIs, those loot rooms are by far the biggest problem. There are some ideas floating around but talking about current modding, I heavily nerf those and try to spread the loot through some more common containers. Not what I would like to have, but it diminishes the problem at least.
nerdpole blocked thanks to sphereii.
Oh.. and I had to heavily nerf traders too, not so much the items available but more the prices to buy and sell.

I wont even get to perks and how they interact with the gameplay pace. Overall the game seems to have gotten shorter those recent alphas.
Important Im complaining about progression. There are a lot of good stuff that makes me play the new versions.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

And there are another x% of players who simply nerdpole to know loot locations.

Two points:

1) players who destroy their own game experience by nerd poling have absolutely no argument to complain about it and should get a lifetime ban from the forum if they do, because that's the perfect evidence of own stupidity (sorry if that sounds harsh, but those people are imho pure idiots anyway)

2) change the pois to not have the main loot just on top...

I agree that randomized loot container locations or simply distributing loot in the POIs would prevent this, but Madmole rejected those ideas.

And in this point madmole is absolutely right, because those people mostly complain about RNG, but random containers would just take RNG further.

What's the point of "i haven't found X yet, but that's stupid" with making it even more RNG?

As i said previously: Loot tables per POI that override the world-loot-tables.

Day 40 now and still not found a crucible, nor one was sold by 4 traders. Haven't seen a perk that makes me able to craft a crucible. Did i miss a perk?

RNG FTW! Bad luck locks the whole progression. And there is no way where to go to increase chance to find one.

So for the moment I prefer to declare nerdpolers as a lost cause as well and wait for a time when nerdpolers are the only big problem left to tackle.

There is no way to handle them anyway. Not as long as the whole world is modifiable. Someone can ALWAYS make his way to the loot room directly as long as everything is breakable. No matter if he spends a whole night hitting a concrete block or just nerdpoles up to the roof of a skyscraper.

Making some blocks or areas unbreakable, just because some people can't control them selfes imho would break the overall game experience.

I'd even advocate disabling nerd poling, like some mods do. Not being able to place a block while jumping. Or placing ladders while standing on a ladder. However that would make regular building much harder.

Imho those requests could and should just be ignored. It's imho just like literally buying a jump rope to hang yourself and then complain about it teared when you tried to hang yourself. If you want to hang yourself just buy a real f*cking rope that fits your "needs".

It's very similar to people complaining about PVP. You want to use the game different to what it was designed to? Then f*cking use mods, play another game, or rage quit but don't bother other players with "requests" that don't fit the game.

Maybe you already noticed that i'm really annoyed of people that want to make a game fit their needs that was overally not designed to fit their needs. If you want to fly to the moon, better not buy a bicycle and then complaint about it not being able to fly to the moon.

 

[Kalen]

There is no way to handle them anyway. Not as long as the whole world is modifiable. Someone can ALWAYS make his way to the loot room directly as long as everything is breakable. No matter if he spends a whole night hitting a concrete block or just nerdpoles up to the roof of a skyscraper.

Making some blocks or areas unbreakable, just because some people can't control them selfes imho would break the overall game experience.

I'd even advocate disabling nerd poling, like some mods do. Not being able to place a block while jumping. Or placing ladders while standing on a ladder. However that would make regular building much harder.

I agree.... complaints about nerd poling really trigger me for some reason.   Nerd poling isn't the problem... never was.    If someone wants to make a bee line to the loot room, there are many ways to do it, most of which have nothing to do with nerd poling.   The "problem" (which I don't even agree is actually a problem) is that people know where the loot room is going to be and can bypass the intended route to get to it.

 

[stample]

Why? You want the key location randomized per quest activation, not at map gen. Otherwise the second time you get the same quest POI you would already know where the key is.

You'd also want it triggered via Quest gen when you got a quest, sure.  But you also need it to exist the at map gen so that it's there if you walk into the POI before a quest has ever been there.  Otherwise you cannot get the key/loot until a quest is triggered on it, and not all POIs are quest-associated.

If you want to fly to the moon, better not buy a bicycle and then complaint about it not being able to fly to the moon.

Wow, why the E.T. hate?  He actually got pretty far on a bicycle that wasn't designed to fly

 

[Liesel Weppen]

The "problem" (which I don't even agree is actually a problem) is that people know where the loot room is going to be and can bypass the intended route to get to it.

Absolutely, and as you said, if they know, they are doing it intentionally. Nobody forces them to do so. If they do anyway, there is no reason to complain about.

It's the same like double looting POIs before starting a quest and then complain about it takes time.

That's just min-maxers, who are not even interested in natural balancing, they are just "abusing" game mechanics just because it is somehow possible.

If those people want to do a speed run, let them do so. But if they finally complain about the game being to easy because of this, just kick them (in the ass). It's their own fault, not a mistake in the game design.

 

[meganoth]

if only we had other people involved into this. Im sick of madmole always being there to say he dislikes good things or that he knows better than the community whats fun for us. The EA approach you know.
Unfortunately that puts me at risk of being banned

what annoys me every time I see certain things mentioned - like a few mechanics in the earlier pages of this topic - is that TFP actually DID great things, and for god knows what reason they changed these. Great ideas that came from themselves! From simple things like getting plants with E to entire mechanics like LBD. Not only that, they remove some stuff required to make these work - like they are afraid with proper mods its still gonna be more popular than their choice -. U talk to another guy from TFP (like Rick in the interviews pre a19), they are far more open to discuss or at least explain why they take X or Y approach.

horseradish

Removing the code from old features is a necessary part of cleaning up a big software project. If they keep old stuff around it needs to be maintained like any other active code and can make adding new features more complicated. Sorry, you won't see any EA project that will keep unused code around. If you do you can be relatively sure it will fail.

Even the Factorio developers, who are often complimented for their exemplary community and modding support, throw out old code.

I agree.... complaints about nerd poling really trigger me for some reason.   Nerd poling isn't the problem... never was.    If someone wants to make a bee line to the loot room, there are many ways to do it, most of which have nothing to do with nerd poling.   The "problem" (which I don't even agree is actually a problem) is that people know where the loot room is going to be and can bypass the intended route to get to it.

Before we get too off-topic, I only mentioned nerdpoling as a short form for all types of beelining to the loot room, as I was in a hurry. If I had remembered "beelining" I would have used that term instead

 

[meganoth]

You'd also want it triggered via Quest gen when you got a quest, sure.  But you also need it to exist the at map gen so that it's there if you walk into the POI before a quest has ever been there.  Otherwise you cannot get the key/loot until a quest is triggered on it, and not all POIs are quest-associated.

Ah, right. But they could also make the door to the loot room be open or not there at all at start and only have a closed door there when the quest was activated. It would just be another quest type then and not specifically to keep beeliners away.

I also think that closed off loot rooms will only be added to some higher tier POIs. TFP may have mentioned this already, even if they didn't it stands to reason they won't redesign seven hundred POI's.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

Before we get too off-topic, I only mentioned nerdpoling as a short form for all types of beelining to the loot room, as I was in a hurry.

Imho nerd poling or other "exploits" to the main loot is not off-topic but indeed the main question in these regards.

Of course it's absolutely game breaking in PVP, but as state multiple times, PVP is not the focus of the game.

It's a question of how to play the game in general. And it depends on the player himself.

You can nerd pole up to a skyscraper of course. But nerd poling is just one example. I don't need to nerd pole anyway. Once i know where the loot room of e.g. the water works is, i just cut down the tree, dig up one dirt and go directly into the loot room within seconds. The "rocket launch" POI is just the same, the main loot room is just on top and you just need to club off two blocks of concrete to get there, if you know where it is.

Imho that is broken POI-design, but nobody forces me to abuse it that way anyway.  And if i know and abuse it, complaining about is simply invalid. You knew, you are aware of what you are doing. So you "cheated" intentionally.

You can ask what cheating exactly is... It's a matter of your position and how you personally want to handle it.

So from my POV, going into the main loot room of water works backwards, is somehow cheating.... (*) How about landing with a gyrocopter on the top of a skyscraper? Still broken POI-design imho, but you need a gyrocopter first. So in the end perfectly fine to me.

(*) playing on a public server even without pvp is different. That's also the reason why i don't play on public servers at all. I only play with friends that use it the same way i do. Because it is like this.

 

[SarkMCPFan]

needs slightly slightly more for cabinets and the random backpacks as if someone really dropped them. like having food/torches or even a weapon (higher chances than just aluminum cans and empty bottles you always find in them.)

 

[Solomon]

I don't see how it isn't possible to randomize any prefab's props at map generation. Hard part is to avoid adding 5 minutes to it

Make 3 variants of each poi, mark them as A, B and C and make the game choose them randomly when placed.

The base layouts are near identical to the point where you only notice the difference when you reach deeper into the poi like for example:

SM factory A has its loot room on the top of the towers aka the current version. SM factory B has a hole coming down from the smelter where the flaming zombies are revealing a secret underground military base. SM factory C has its entire inner layout changed because it was taken over by survivors.