PC Poll - Which progression system did you prefer?

[Kosmic Kerman]

Interesting results so far... seems that 80% of active forum users prefer other system than the new one...

You mean 80% of the people who voted. I haven't voted because the choices do not reflect the systems the game has had.  And of course votes here are purely reactionary because no one has played A21 enough to be able to fully assess its strengths and weaknesses compared to A20. At this point, I can't say whether I prefer A20 or A21. Early game, I'm enjoying A21 but I have no idea how I will feel about it mid-game, late-game or on subsequent playthroughs. I can say I prefer the systems in A20 and A21 to those that existed in A16 and before. 

 

[NBornkilla]

Pretty much everyone who has played a16.4 prefer its progression to anything after it. I will admit it needed some tweaks, like craft quality need to not be tied to the learn by doing skill directly, but maybe to its assouated perk, like Pummele Pete 1 lets you craft ql 2 clubs etc. Darkness Falls has a modified A16.4 learn by doing progression system and its basically all tfp had to do to keep that system from a16.4. Instead they decided to make more work for themselves to redo the skill system into a far worse form for a17 and beyond.

The stat system CAN work but it needs changes, maybe a 2-3 stat system, Offense (has all weapons) Defense (Has armor etc) and survival, or something simmlar, the current stat system really screws over single player games, especially weapon wise.

agreed with this 

 

[Roland]

Good lord, it's been out for 4 days. You cannot tell me that after 4 days you can honestly (and fairly) make up your mind regarding a new progression system. Also given the fact that the game is in experimental and balancing will be a continual process for the next few minor releases.

How about we let it cook a little bit?

I encouraged him to go ahead and do the poll now when he first brought it up and then do another one after a few months. Some will initially like this new system and then grow to dislike it and others will initially dislike it and then grow to like it. We don’t know how people will like it for replay value after restarting a few times nor for long term games yet. We always get discontent people claiming that x play style has been destroyed by some change but then within a few weeks lo and behold someone figures it out and the play style turns out to be just as viable.
 

But it’s fun to see a snapshot of forum sentiment during week one. Nobody should feel threatened by any outcome of this poll. TFP doesn’t design by polls. They encourage mods by polls…

 

[sovapid]

lol, i've played the learn by looting for like 3 hours.  dont know how you would have an opinion based on experience yet.

 

[warmer]

I feel the current systems learn by lootimg is a compound of all three. RNG is influenced by skills point distribution, and skill point distribution is influenced by players intended play style.

I have always been a fan of learn by doing in any rpg as that is the closest to real world skill building, but magazines are essentially taking the place of youtube tutorials in the apocalypse.

The current system has the best balance/setting appropriate execution IMO

additionally, i feel that learn by looting brings MP balance into focus. Everyone essentially starts on the same playing field and no one can quickly outpace someone to end crafting stage by skilling into 1 thing. 

 

[Apocalipservice]

But it’s fun to see a snapshot of forum sentiment during week one. Nobody should feel threatened by any outcome of this poll. TFP doesn’t design by polls. They encourage mods by polls…

 Huzzah for modders! The various overhauls blow my mind - the base game is so "versatile" i.e. some many ways to interpret and play it. The changes in 21 remind me of getting used to new mods. I didn't like the learn by looting idea for several reasons at first glance but the sense in it pretty quickly. It seems reasonable that someone figuring out how to make a robotic turret by reading tech magazine articles would have  to read 38+ (?) magazines to figure it all out. That last magazine is something important I assume like making sure it doesn't shoot friendlies or getting the laser sight on. Also figuring out who gets what in a group is kinda fun and maybe some more teamwork is needed to make sure everyone is learning what they need to. Maybe some learn by doing mixed in 'cause I like Darkness Falls' skill system but I dunno yet.  

 

[Greymantle]

Can you explain why it is backing off and not simply balancing that was done?

I would say because they had a year and a half on this version. I would think the balance for the most part would already be done. Two days after release they are already backing off/making changes, that tells me they really didn't test this system out. It's like they tossed it out there for us to test and balance from that. What makes this bad is what if the new system doesn't work and needs to be revamped because no balance will make it work?

Test, more testing, then some more. If the software company I worked for released a product in this state, they would be out of business fast.

If they had made a lot of these changes early in development, I believe this game wouldn't even be close to as popular as it is now. This makes it easier for them to ignore feedback this late in the process, they already pocketed most of the money they will make from this game on the PC. Why I don't support early access games anymore.

 

[boban]

 What makes this bad is what if the new system doesn't work and needs to be revamped because no balance will make it work?

Who knows maybe they will settle on this system, but given they past history we are for complete revamp in 2-3 alphas

 

[Greymantle]

Who knows maybe they will settle on this system, but given they past history we are for complete revamp in 2-3 alphas

I bet we get a lot more patches for this version then any other, is my guess. This was a huge shift in game-play, let's hope they tested this out more than it looks.

 

[ShadeColdfang]

No matter what... Alpha 16.4 had the best progression System...
U mine <u get better with Mining tools over time.
U Scrap Cars <u get better with Mechanic tools over time.
U upgrade Blocks <u get better in that corner.

This rewarded u slowly over time by making u better. Respecting your time by even letting u spend points to get better, you had a choice and perks or other things where locked behind Mastery.
The other Learning by Perks or Looting are both bad... the one makes u too quick too strong the other one makes gameplay sluggish and forces u to go out of your Base. No Classic Roles anymore.
No Basebuilder, No Crafter, No Gatherer... everyone is forced to be a Quester and Looter.
This s*cks... i love to sit inside the Base and build it and Craft for my Team, while one goes collecting Ores and wood and other things i need for the team to supply them with freshly crafted goods and the other one is Looting and one is Questing... Now in Alpha 21... i am forced to spend costly time for crafting and upgrading, on getting out into buildings and loot them for sh*tty Books or complete Quests to get what i need for crafting Skills, since books are balanced by Player choice.
Those Books should be optional and not a forced gameplay loop.

 

[Riamus]

I would say because they had a year and a half on this version. I would think the balance for the most part would already be done. Two days after release they are already backing off/making changes, that tells me they really didn't test this system out. It's like they tossed it out there for us to test and balance from that. What makes this bad is what if the new system doesn't work and needs to be revamped because no balance will make it work?

Test, more testing, then some more. If the software company I worked for released a product in this state, they would be out of business fast.

If they had made a lot of these changes early in development, I believe this game wouldn't even be close to as popular as it is now. This makes it easier for them to ignore feedback this late in the process, they already pocketed most of the money they will make from this game on the PC. Why I don't support early access games anymore.

More like they thought it was fine but when the community started saying it was too many magazines, they listened and adjusted it.  Funny when people say they don't listen.  Of course, they also had the game telemetry data to help them see how it was working for the thousands (not really sure how many and don't feel like looking at Steam data) of players, which is far better data than just from the far fewer staff players.  Balancing is always done initially by devs but there is almost always additional balancing done after releasing an update when they see how it works with a far greater number of players who may play the game in ways the devs don't.  It's a rare case where additional balancing isn't needed for a large update in any game.

The main thing I'd say is that most people (and probably you) have put in more hours in this game than in almost any other game in their library, with the exception of things like MMOs or a game that is just a favorite of theirs.  For the low cost of this game, even when not on sale, that's a huge value compared to what you get in other games that you play far less.  Maybe you don't like the current state of the game, but if you've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the game up until now, then that's a good thing.  Many games get played once through and then put down and either never picked up again or not picked up for a long time and are still considered good games.  Yet this game, in most cases, has given far more hours of enjoyment than most other games.   I'd consider that a win.  Even if I decided I didn't want to play the game anymore because of this update and there wasn't a way to play old versions or modded versions, I'd still have gotten so much value out of the small amount I paid that I wouldn't complain about it.  I've paid more and gotten far less out of almost every other game in my library.  I'm not saying not to voice your opinions.  I'm just suggesting that you consider how much value you've gotten out of the game before bashing the devs.

 

[meganoth]

I would say because they had a year and a half on this version. I would think the balance for the most part would already be done. Two days after release they are already backing off/making changes, that tells me they really didn't test this system out. It's like they tossed it out there for us to test and balance from that. What makes this bad is what if the new system doesn't work and needs to be revamped because no balance will make it work?

Test, more testing, then some more. If the software company I worked for released a product in this state, they would be out of business fast.

If they had made a lot of these changes early in development, I believe this game wouldn't even be close to as popular as it is now. This makes it easier for them to ignore feedback this late in the process, they already pocketed most of the money they will make from this game on the PC. Why I don't support early access games anymore.

How many experimental alphas have you witnessed with 7D2D? Just asking because I seem to remember that early and quite heavy-handed balancing in the experimental was the rule not the exception. Madmole explained once that he doesn't like small incremental balance steps and prefers a binary search approach, i.e. make a big change down that is sure to be too much, then half up again, all steps half the distance of the previous. Accordingly the players noticed something being too scarce, then too frequent, then slightly too scarce again. And this happened in all or almost all alphas I witnessed.

And yes, they toss it out for us to do the ultimate playtesting. Most people are fine with that though, or at least they don't quit when they actually play experimental in an EA. Many players don't wait for the stable even though they would be spared the biggest imbalances and bugs.

What I am saying this happened in every alpha. And I concluded that the devs and testers were probably just too "close" to the game to get a real feel of where the balance might be. And this alpha had 1.5 years time, but other recent alphas were close to that and at least a year as well, so they had practically the same time to balance it, A21 is not really special

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@Lasher By the way, just interests me: Did you intent the third option (learn by magazine) to represent the current system in A21 or did you intend for it to be some new system where actually **skills** and not crafting alone were governed by magazines (i.e. like the description of the third option says) ?

 

[Lasher]

@Lasher By the way, just interests me: Did you intent the third option (learn by magazine) to represent the current system in A21 or did you intend for it to be some new system where actually **skills** and not crafting alone were governed by magazines?

Third option was really meant to represent the current system.

I know we still have "Skills" as such that we put points into - but for me the way that works is even more bizzare - I put points into, for instance Sledgehammers, and that somehow makes me magically find more sledgehammer magazines? Why? It just seems a little nonsensicle.

Surely a better way would be if when looting we found some sort of research papers that we could use to invest into ANY branch of crafting.

That would also solve the co-op problem in that the research could be brought back to base and shared and skill investment would make no difference to it.

 

[YourMirror]

Third option was really meant to represent the current system.

I know we still have "Skills" as such that we put points into - but for me the way that works is even more bizzare - I put points into, for instance Sledgehammers, and that somehow makes me magically find more sledgehammer magazines? Why? It just seems a little nonsensicle.

Surely a better way would be if when looting we found some sort of research papers that we could use to invest into ANY branch of crafting.

That would also solve the co-op problem in that the research could be brought back to base and shared and skill investment would make no difference to it.

So you made sure you mispresented the current system to steer voting. Your preference drips through in the descriptions of the poll. Its pretty obvious what your preference is just by looking at them. Now off to make a poll about the quality of yours.

 

[Greymantle]

How many experimental alphas have you witnessed with 7D2D? Just asking because I seem to remember that early and quite heavy-handed balancing in the experimental was the rule not the exception. Madmole explained once that he doesn't like small incremental balance steps and prefers a binary search approach, i.e. make a big change down that is sure to be too much, then half up again, all steps half the distance of the previous. Accordingly the players noticed something being too scarce, then too frequent, then slightly too scarce again. And this happened in all or almost all alphas I witnessed.

And yes, they toss it out for us to do the ultimate playtesting. Most people are fine with that though, or at least they don't quit when they actually play experimental in an EA. Many players don't wait for the stable even though they would be spared the biggest imbalances and bugs.

What I am saying this happened in every alpha. And I concluded that the devs and testers were probably just too "close" to the game to get a real feel of where the balance might be. And this alpha had 1.5 years time, but other recent alphas were close to that and at least a year as well, so they had practically the same time to balance it, A21 is not really special

-------------------------------------------

@Lasher By the way, just interests me: Did you intent the third option (learn by magazine) to represent the current system in A21 or did you intend for it to be some new system where actually **skills** and not crafting alone were governed by magazines (i.e. like the description of the third option says) ?

I have been around since Alpha 9? This is the first time they have made such a huge shift in the game-play loop. It's also very concerning that this is supposed to be near the end of said alpha, and we are getting overhauls this late in development.

 

[Lasher]

So you made sure you mispresented the current system to steer voting. Your preference drips through in the descriptions of the poll. Its pretty obvious what your preference is just by looking at them. Now off to make a poll about the quality of yours.

Not at all - I'm happy to be quite open about what my intention was - and I think your effort to suggest that I was attempting to "Steer" voting is highly disingenuos.

By all means make another poll and word it however you like - I'm more than happy about it.

I think the only "Dripping" going on here is your quite obvious distaste for the results.

As for my preference - I'm quite open about it as I've stated before - Perks worked for me as did LBD but there's some problems with both.

I literally just responded with the post that you yourself quoted detailing my problem with the new system and also suggesting ways that it could be improved.

It's supposed to be a constructive debate.

I don't see you doing much except attemting to be snarky and accusational.

Grow up.

 

[Greymantle]

What does anyone think about magazines giving more than one skill up to cut clutter of magazine drops? Make the magazines more rare to account for more skill ups per magazine. I would rather ditch the system myself, but we know TFP if they get the crawl in something it's going to be patched to death to try and get it right or scrapped at the end.

More like they thought it was fine but when the community started saying it was too many magazines, they listened and adjusted it.  Funny when people say they don't listen.  Of course, they also had the game telemetry data to help them see how it was working for the thousands (not really sure how many and don't feel like looking at Steam data) of players, which is far better data than just from the far fewer staff players.  Balancing is always done initially by devs but there is almost always additional balancing done after releasing an update when they see how it works with a far greater number of players who may play the game in ways the devs don't.  It's a rare case where additional balancing isn't needed for a large update in any game.

The main thing I'd say is that most people (and probably you) have put in more hours in this game than in almost any other game in their library, with the exception of things like MMOs or a game that is just a favorite of theirs.  For the low cost of this game, even when not on sale, that's a huge value compared to what you get in other games that you play far less.  Maybe you don't like the current state of the game, but if you've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of the game up until now, then that's a good thing.  Many games get played once through and then put down and either never picked up again or not picked up for a long time and are still considered good games.  Yet this game, in most cases, has given far more hours of enjoyment than most other games.   I'd consider that a win.  Even if I decided I didn't want to play the game anymore because of this update and there wasn't a way to play old versions or modded versions, I'd still have gotten so much value out of the small amount I paid that I wouldn't complain about it.  I've paid more and gotten far less out of almost every other game in my library.  I'm not saying not to voice your opinions.  I'm just suggesting that you consider how much value you've gotten out of the game before bashing the devs.

 If they are making changes because of the uproar, then they have already failed. As to the hours put in, that is the reason I'm upset. After all these years now they decide to put in an over-haul of said system. Yes, that makes me unhappy, it's not the game I supported the last 10 years anymore. I expect changes like this in the first few years of development, not 10 years after the fact.

 

[boban]

What does anyone think about magazines giving more than one skill up to cut clutter of magazine drops? Make the magazines more rare to account for more skill ups per magazine. I would rather ditch the system myself, but we know TFP if they get the crawl in something it's going to be patched to death to try and get it right or scrapped at the end.

That would make the system less painful, yes. I seriously don't know how anybody thought that finding dozens of magazines per day, most of which not changing gameplay/unlocking anything (just raising a stat that has no influence on a game whatsoever that you will probably never look at) was a good game design.

Also now that I'm thinking about it... making loot depending on what you speced into feels like a bugfix rather than actual intended game design (in the context of this game, where loot is determined by where you find it and other factors)

 

[Greymantle]

That would make the system less painful, yes. I seriously don't know how anybody thought that finding dozens of magazines per day, most of which not changing gameplay/unlocking anything (just raising a stat that has no influence on a game whatsoever that you will probably never look at) was a good game design.

Also now that I'm thinking about it... making loot depending on what you speced into feels like a bugfix rather than actual intended game design (in the context of this game, where loot is determined by where you find it and other factors)

I'm just as puzzled. It's a survival crafting sandbox game. It has turned into a reading game with combat/looting loops to get said reading done.

 

[zztong]

Just having taken the poll, and not having read the conversation, I think there are options missing.

I like Learn by Looting and all the magazines. I think the magazines found a nice way to draw out the game.

I like Learn by Perks. I thought that system worked reasonably well, though sometimes I am frustrated at which perks were with which abilities (like Strength) or that they're tied to an ability.

I'm okay with the idea of Learn by Doing, but not to the exclusion of the others. I've played on a server that swapped in Learn by Doing and I didn't think it played very well. Then there are the notable goofy things like crafting 100 stone axes.

Since TFP likes to experiment, I wonder if a mix of the three might be the best. I think the approaches could be integrated a little. That is, when you take some of the remaining Perks I think it could come with a little bit of magazine-like improvement, maybe as if you had read 2-3 magazines. I think there could also be some milestones that represent Learning by Doing that also generate some magazine-like points. For instance, when you craft your first iron tool, your first steel tool, kill your 100th zombie with a club, etc.

If you make me pick one, I'm sticking with Learn by Looting for now just because I want to see how it plays out over a long game. I'd put Learn by Perks 2nd. Then I'd put Learn by Doing last.