Lots of things here. I guess that's kind of my overall point on balance, though, that people still use different weapon types based on their preferences/perks. People use "arguably" inferior weapons based on their preferences. For instance, I tend towards Agility or Fortitude builds, and use machetes or knuckles, while my friends go almost exclusively for clubs/hammers and Strength builds as far as weapon choices. None of us use stun batons, even with Intellect builds, because it just feels a lot crappier as a weapon than any of the others to us, collectively. Does that mean stun batons are bad? Probably not, but it means people aren't min-maxing in that way, and so balance need not function in that way. And as you note, even when the weapon has such advantages (machete), there are people that will still avoid them or only use them grudgingly, indicating preference, rather than balance, is the key in what weapons people chose. As I said before, I'll sometimes spec bladed weapons and stick with the hunting knife over the machete because I find the combat with it, especially the power attack, far better than the machete's.
I personally like fireman axes because of being a volunteer fireman, but that's just me.
There is no question that preferences, play styles and wrong perception of the quality of a weapon all have an influence on the individual player whether he prefers specific weapons or how he sees the balance from his view. A game designer can only make make sure that either the balance is somewhat correct without taking personal likes into account or sample what the
average player will do and balance that.. Whatever TFP is doing they found the axe too good in past alphas when they probably did not value the saving of one slot as high as it actually is.
But I know they try to balance the attributes as a whole. With a small twist: It seems they want strength to be a sort of beginners atrribute so it is already balanced to be stronger than the others (or at least easier to play). Also Strength already has two "first class" melee weapons and if there were a third on their level that would double as wood cutter and essential door/container opener? Well, that is what I would call an obvious example of everyone's wet dream of an OP melee weapon that would make all others nearly obsolete. In an attribute tree that already seems OP
On the loot in houses: As you correctly surmised, I meant from the zombies, not the cupboards. It's possible to sneak through a lot of POIs waking few or even no zombies. So loot "behind" zombies isn't really a good "you're getting that instead of this, but they're equivalent", since it still makes the zombies kind of just "there" "in the way". And sometimes, not even that when you factor in buildings you can go straight to the loot room, loot it, and leave, ignoring all the zombies entirely while getting the bulk of the useful loot. I should also note the "loot is balanced in houses for the number of zombies there" argument doesn't apply to zombies killed out in the field/wilds, unless they only spawn near loot containers like sports bags, and the loot in those bags was also balanced upward to account for the wandering hordes and such?
A few points: Like Roland said but wrongly implied it was because of realism, it would be great if stealthing without killing were a viable option for players. It practically isn't really because a player misses out on a large part of the XP, eventually making the games progress take too long. Yes, a player stealthing through would not miss out on loot, but he also takes great risks in the event zombies wake up, because the way back out is not cleared. Now a true stealth play is an optional part of the game, this is just a reason why people might wish for no XP on zombies.
Your distinction that loot behind the zombie is something different because you could theoretically sneak-loot through the poi is largely irrelevant. Only a player going for agility and stealth to the exclusion of nearly everything else can go that route and as I said above would have the disadvantage of getting no XP (Even if that were not the case I don't see a large part of the player base suddenly going all stealth). Even I, with agility my favourite attribute, have never played an all stealth no kill game and I'm sure you will have a hard time finding such players. Did you ever do it?
But lets assume it were a popular playstyle. Then going around a zombie without noticing you is just another variation of handling a zombie aka dealing with the thread of a zombie. So basically a true stealth player gets rewarded with the loot because he handled the zombie, just in a different way, and therefore deserves the loot. Circumventing the loot by going directly to the loot room is a different problem, everyone can do this, with or without stealth. The solution would be to distribute the loot over the POI, but TFP seems not to like that idea, they want a loot room to signify the players success. And they specifically did not want the all the zombies to have the loot because that would simply make going into the POIs unnecessary.
By the way, if you think stealthing through POIs is easy and cheesy: There are rooms where the zombies automatically wake up no matter your stealth value.
But all of above is really beside the point, you were complaining before about not getting loot, and after I objected to this you now list lots of different ways to get at that loot! Instead of what you should be showing, that you can't get loot if zombies do not have it
. You have shown this only for the zombies outside of POIs.
Lets forget that you were specifically speaking about POIs in your initial post, you are correct that you will miss out some loot on those "wilderness" zombies. But this is probably just another reason why zombie loot was reduced so much. While zombie farming with forges was a practice lots of players simply didn't do, almost everyone felt the urge to kill every zombie in the wild for those loot bags. Again an incentive to regard zombies as merely loot bags, but on a smaller scale.
One could argue that that would be ok, the zombies just need to be a danger, but the problem is that zombies in wide open areas in this game will probably always be easier to handle for the player. There is no easy way to make outdoors zombies really dangerous and POIs still managable, at least not without a complete redesign of the game. So removing loot from zombies is on the whole the best option by far.
I also forgot another probable reason to remove zombie loot. With that much zombie loot the shooter part of the game felt the dominant genre for the game. There were lots of forum users complaining about the game being a shooter (correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that was in A16). And probably the developers felt that as well. Removing the loot simply put the focus again on looting POIs to get stuff and shooting zombies for self-defence instead of letting this be the central
I personally do find the "zombie farming" factories of automated weapon systems people would use obnoxious, though. I've never played that way personally, as I prefer going out to cities and such and finding loot. I remember people doing that in Minecraft with spawners, too. I get why people WOULD do that...but it just seems cheesy and not compelling to me as a playstyle, personally.
For the game designers (TFP) it doesn't matter what you personally do but what large parts of the player base do and they act accordingly. Something that induces many players to kill off large parts of the game and has the potential to make it long term unfun for them has to be countered.
As an aside: I do kind of dislike "every structure is a dungeon". I liked some of the old houses before everything became a dungeon as they seemed far more realistic to what you'd find in a zombie apocalypse where not EVERYONE would have turned their house into a fortress. Maybe the people in Arizona are just...exceptionally militant/militia/preppers, though? XD
A sentiment some people on the forum including me have expressed from time to time. For me the "exactly one way" was the problem not that they are filled with obstacles. And it seems they listened to this because some of the newer POIs now have multiple ways or a more open structure (like the clothes shop for example)
As for the 25th zombie - the problem is the loot bag dropping is still random. Meaning you could kill 25 zombies - or 100 - and as far as I'm aware there's no hardcoded rule in the game's programming that insists that a loot bag WILL drop after X kills. So there's no guarantee there to make that valid. Though I am curious what you meant by the backpacks. You mean the sports bag type ones? Those tend to have (potentially) decent loot. Or, at least, they used to. They were often one of the earliest places you would find a pistol in the game, as well as cans, water, bullets, and various melee weapons and tools - all told, pretty good loot, and better than what the yellow bags give.
If you don't like random, don't play 7 Days to Die. The zombie loot bag is not essential. It is not different to opening 24 cupboards and finding nothing or just an empty bottle, and in the 25th you find ... nothing
, again. In the 26th you might find a blueberry pie and all the 25 cupboards before seem worth it.
Guaranteed finds??? When was that ever in the game (or in any survival game at all) and why do you think you need to be pampered with this?
I meant the backpacks you can find behind fake walls for example, but also in the wilderness. The topic is A19 and here is the backpack as far as I could determine (it is the only lootgroup with "backpack" in the name besides special backpacks like the yellow zombie bag:
<lootgroup name="backpacks/survival">
<item group="cupboard" prob="0.7"/>
<item group="groupWeaponsT0_All" prob="0.1"/>
<item group="groupApparelClothes" prob="0.12"/>
<item group="groupArmorT0" prob="0.14"/>
<item name="meleeToolFlashlight02" prob="0.08"/>
<item group="survivalMedical" prob="0.1"/>
</lootgroup>
As you can see, no pistol (WeaponsT0 is only stone age melee weapons and blunderbuss). Backpacks are okay in the first few days, but don't get better with gamestage (though cupboards have the same problem). They just seem disappointing to me when you take into account that they are often hidden behind false walls and then need more effort to access.
Here is the yellow zombie loot bag, for strong zombies there is an even better one:
<!-- EntityLootContainerRegular, rare random drop off regular zombies -->
<lootcontainer id="70" count="1,3" size="6,3" destroy_on_close="false" sound_open="UseActions/open_backpack" sound_close="UseActions/close_backpack" open_time="1" loot_quality_template="qualBaseTemplate">
<item group="cannedfood" count="1,2" prob="13"/>
<item name="drinkJarBeer" count="1,3" prob="5"/>
<item name="drinkJarBoiledWater" count="1,4" prob="10"/>
<item group="booksAllScaled" prob="6"/>
<item group="brassResource" prob="6"/>
<item name="resourceForgedIron" count="2,10" prob="3"/>
<item name="resourceForgedSteel" count="2,10" prob="3"/>
<item group="groupToolsTiered" prob="6"/>
<item group="groupRareToolsTiered" prob="3"/>
<item group="groupArmorScaled" prob="7"/>
<item name="armorMiningHelmet" mods="modArmorHelmetLight" mod_chance="1" prob="0.5"/>
<item group="groupApparelClothes" prob="6"/>
<item group="warmClothes" prob=".2"/>
<item group="groupAmmoRegular" count="2" prob="20"/>
<item group="groupWeaponsAllScaled" prob="10"/>
<item name="apparelNightvisionGoggles" loot_prob_template="probTemplate1.0"/>
<item name="casinoCoin" count="200,410" prob="6"/>
<item name="oldCash" count="150,500" prob="6"/>
<item name="drugHerbalAntibiotics" count="1,2" prob="1.3"/>
<item group="rareMedicine" prob="2"/>
<item name="drugPainkillers" count="1" prob="3"/>
<item name="drugVitamins" count="1,2" prob="4.5"/>
<item group="groupTreasureMaps" prob="0.6"/>
<item group="groupQuestChallenge" prob="0.6"/>
</lootcontainer>
Now all the stuff that says tiered or scaled means you will find better stuff in late game, so this loot container "grows" with your advancement. "count=1,3" means you will get on average two picks out of this list. And the list seems to be an almost complete list of useful things in 7D2D with the exception of whole car parts.
Though I am heartened to hear the yellow bags will be better in Alpha 20.
Personally, I avoid unnecessary fights, which is why when I HAVE to fight, I like getting something from it to make it worth my while. And I also feel the old system was just more...for lack of a better word "realistic"...than the random backpack model.
The principal reward of a fight in a survival game is that you survived. The "optional" reward of loot was taken away exactly because it became somewhat of too much a reason to take on fights, not for you but for a large part of the player base.
I'm not sure what the best answer is, I just know I personally don't like the feel and workings of the yellow loot pack. Maybe I can't put it into words well, though...? It just...I dunno, FEELS wrong somehow?
7D2D is a genre mix. Most people playing it will slightly or even strongly prefer some genre in that mix more than others and hope for it to steer a bit more in that direction. Can't be avoided. With luck A20 will feel better for you and if not there are mods to make it conform more to your tastes.
