PC What about co-op?

[Archael]

I know that game is balanced over single player experience:
we go to the npc, get quests, get reward repeat untill bloodmoon night, so we fight the horde and repeat whole cycle... ocasionally some mining? Hunting? Lumbering? No? Okay ;/ maybe somewhere in day 50 or so there will be mining needed.

But we should not forget about coop players.
There is often group of survivors which spread their tasks and so one is farming and cooking, one is mining, one is scavenging, one is doing quests.
There is few issues tho:

1. Perk distribution. Some proffesion archetypes needs to specialize in two or even three attributes to get two or three perks required for their proffesion, while others need only one attribute and three perks in this one stat. This could be easly fixed by changing skillpoints costs: each attribute needs only 1 skillpoint per lvl, but perks are more expensive. 3 stage perks should cost 1,3,5 points for total of 9, and 5 stage perks should cost 1,2,3,4,5 for total of 15 skillpoints. This would change very little in single player experience but increase overall cooperation experience.

2. Experience gain. Different tasks provide different experience points. we already have exp sharing from kills, but if this would be general exp sharing from all sources, this would be best, whole group would grow at the same rate. of course this XP should be divided before sharing, not multiply.

3. Magazines... Right now, the only people who will be able to craft stuff are scavengers and feds, even if they lack perks OR they will be forced to gather all magazines and bring those back to base OR EVERYONE need to be scavengers. my solution is that if anyone read a magazine, then point in said skill will be given to player who have most skillpoints in corresponding perks. you can see it as:
Scavenger found magazine about mining and read it so that they could tell everything what was in the book to the miner when back in the camp. Miner was fascinated about it so they remembered everything but scavenger forgot about magazine knowlege the next day because they was not so interested.
 

And maybe its much... but just think about it.

 

[Khalagar]

The game is fairly balanced around coop too, but yeah the magazine changes pretty much shut down any den mother play style. I used to always stay at home and build the base, mine for resources, craft the gear, cook the food etc while others handled the looting and killing etc, but that just isnt' really a thing anymore

I mentioned it like a year ago when they first revealed it, and was just told "Well tell your friends to bring all the crafting magazines back to you!"   ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Clearly they must have different friends than mine, since keeping them from auto eating any magazine they see is nearly as impossible as getting them to actually pick up crafting materials. Most "loot focused players" from my experience basically just run and gun and only pick up bullets and weapons etc, and the game is way more balanced around that.

Not to mention that if they found the magazines themselves there's zero reason to give them to you instead of them eating them, because they can just learn to craft everything on their own and don't need you to. If you aren't the one opening the loot pile then it will be more likely to be their skills as well, so even if you really want to be an armorer . . . you'll still just be run and gun looting like everyone else if you want to find any magazines

Mining is basically pointless because you just get everything from loot and traders like the huge cobblestone bundle rewards and enough bullets to build a fortress out of them etc. Even as a mining focused character, there's not really been a reason to actually mine for lead or shale or iron etc  in like 2 alpha. My friend literally uses his pistol as a "ranged hammer" to break open doors and blocks and still never runs out of ammo because you get so much from loot and rewards

Over all the magazine change is neat, but it does pretty much delete "den mother" play style from existence in coop, and makes every build a lot more similar. It's mostly the devs allergic reaction to Learn by Doing which rewarded specialized builds, where Learn by Reading just rewards mass looting as quickly as possible

 

[AtomicUs5000]

Mining is basically pointless because you just get everything from loot and traders like the huge cobblestone bundle rewards and enough bullets to build a fortress out of them etc. Even as a mining focused character, there's not really been a reason to actually mine for lead or shale or iron etc  in like 2 alpha. My friend literally uses his pistol as a "ranged hammer" to break open doors and blocks and still never runs out of ammo because you get so much from loot and rewards

This is going to be entirely dependent on your difficulty settings, loot settings, the type of base you set up, blood moon frequency, etc. In some situations you can easily blow through an entire crate of ammo for a blood moon. 

 

[Vaeliorin]

I really don't get the people saying mining isn't necessary.  In my first A21 game, I'd mined 100k clay by day 7.

 

[Khalagar]

This is going to be entirely dependent on your difficulty settings, loot settings, the type of base you set up, blood moon frequency, etc. In some situations you can easily blow through an entire crate of ammo for a blood moon. 

I've got everything on default besides being on the second hardest difficulty.  I think I've got something like 1,000 pistol and shotgun bullets each in my stash back home on day 18, and haven't crafted a single one

I really don't get the people saying mining isn't necessary.  In my first A21 game, I'd mined 100k clay by day 7.

What the heck did you use so much clay for lol

I've used some for my cobblestone and forge, but probably less than like 8k in 20 days. You get so much cobblestone from loot and breaking down the cobblestone bags + the trader rewards that I was able to build a pretty sizable base without needing to mine any more clay, and that's in the snow biome where clay is fairly rare too

 

[Vaeliorin]

I've got everything on default besides being on the second hardest difficulty.  I think I've got something like 1,000 pistol and shotgun bullets each in my stash back home on day 18, and haven't crafted a single one

What the heck did you use so much clay for lol

I've used some for my cobblestone and forge, but probably less than like 8k in 20 days. You get so much cobblestone from loot and breaking down the cobblestone bags + the trader rewards that I was able to build a pretty sizable base without needing to mine any more clay, and that's in the snow biome where clay is fairly rare too

It was mostly from digging out the trench around my horde base.  I made what I considered a (very) small first horde base in my current playthrough, and it cost me about 10k cobble.

I tend to queue up cobblestone in batches of 30k, so...yeah, I go through a lot of building materials.

Just as an example, this is my "it's good enough until I find where I want to build my real base" base.  It's not done, I still need to add another floor for living quarters, but I didn't have time before the day 14 horde.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I've got everything on default besides being on the second hardest difficulty.  I think I've got something like 1,000 pistol and shotgun bullets each in my stash back home

 
Sounds about right at day 18 for most players. Things change quickly once you start getting to 200+ days and everything around you is picked clean of loot. 

 

[warmer]

 I used to always stay at home and build the base, mine for resources, craft the gear, cook the food etc while others handled the looting and killing etc, but that just isnt' really a thing anymore

all of that can easily be skilled into, and if your player group is cool, they'll save those magazines for you. Having fun in MP/Co Op has as much to do with the people you play with as the game itself.

 

[Archael]

I really don't get the people saying mining isn't necessary.  In my first A21 game, I'd mined 100k clay by day 7.

tbh. i had much more than 100k clay at day 10 from pois while questing... with looting settings 0.5.. and only because i started doing that on day 8 just after finding my first shovel in lootbags after first bloodmoon, could be earlier but i couldnt craft neither found any shovel.

all of that can easily be skilled into, and if your player group is cool, they'll save those magazines for you. Having fun in MP/Co Op has as much to do with the people you play with as the game itself.

You know that magaznes takes inventory slots that can be used for other loot?
Its just better to eat that books/magazines even tho i had those skills and got some exp.
There is just lot of magazines, and saving those will use at least few inventory slots, its not that you can make book bundle where all books/magazines are stored and can be easly oppened in home.
Even in a20 and before, it was difficult to bring some skillbooks to home.

 

[Khalagar]

It was mostly from digging out the trench around my horde base.  I made what I considered a (very) small first horde base in my current playthrough, and it cost me about 10k cobble.

I tend to queue up cobblestone in batches of 30k, so...yeah, I go through a lot of building materials.

Just as an example, this is my "it's good enough until I find where I want to build my real base" base.  It's not done, I still need to add another floor for living quarters, but I didn't have time before the day 14 horde.

Are your loot settings / exp settings way higher than normal? Your like 20 levels hgiher than me, with way better gear, like 4 days earlier lol. Not to mention your healing bandages stack a lot higher than mine >.>

Man I wish my badnages stacked to 39 =(

all of that can easily be skilled into, and if your player group is cool, they'll save those magazines for you. Having fun in MP/Co Op has as much to do with the people you play with as the game itself.

Which doesn't address any of the issues

• The one who finds the loot gets magazines more relevant to them, so a full on crafter would have to be out looting to get magazine drops regularly
  
• The magazines would take up room in the other players pockets, and there's just way too many crafting mags for them to carry them all back. Bringing back a single stack of brawler magazines for your buddy who is doing a knuckle build is one thing, trying to bring back 10 magazines for your crafter is totally different
  
• There's no reason for them to bother bringing them back to you instead of just eating them on sight, because they will unlock crafting too and be able to craft just as well as you can
  

Learn by Reading is basically the exact opposite of Learn by Doing in that LBD encouraged specialists and in a group everyone would have their own strengths and you could play the game your own way.

LBR encourages you to be looting 24/7 and makes everyone generalists fairly fast. Any time not spent looting is time not spent advancing a large part of your build. Any playstyle not focused on chain looting houses as fast as possible is directly punished

It's not the end of the world, and I do like Learn by Reading overall, but it does have it's flaws for sure.

 

[warmer]

Which doesn't address any of the issues

• The one who finds the loot gets magazines more relevant to them, so a full on crafter would have to be out looting to get magazine drops regularly
  
• The magazines would take up room in the other players pockets, and there's just way too many crafting mags for them to carry them all back. Bringing back a single stack of brawler magazines for your buddy who is doing a knuckle build is one thing, trying to bring back 10 magazines for your crafter is totally different
  
• There's no reason for them to bother bringing them back to you instead of just eating them on sight, because they will unlock crafting too and be able to craft just as well as you can
  

I think all your points are valid, but in no way game breaking for your play style. We all need to modify how we play a game when rules change. I find magazines all the time that aren't related to what I want. I decide to read it or sell it.

What I am hearing is I want to level up and magically learn things by putting a skill point into something vs. a much more realistic finding a magazine that has technical info. Much like watching a youtube tutorial now. This is context and realism appropriate vs. spending a skill point and magically gaining knowledge.

Also, you can easily buy skill mags as well. If you just run through town 1x and loot every mailbox you see, you'll find dozens. If your group is to selfish to save you a few inventory slots for mags that make sense for you, I think you need a better group to play with.  Maybe make a loot drop at the half way point from your base and the quest area. There are many ways to make it work.

The old system made you choose things and ignore others. This new system slows down the pace of end game and allows a much more open ended build in my opinion. I find it much better balanced and far less boring and predictable. After 1000hrs you want some random thrown into progression to keep things interesting vs. routine.

 

[Khalagar]

hat I am hearing is I want to level up and magically learn things by putting a skill point into something vs. a much more realistic

Wat

Half my post is a love letter to Learn by Doing, which is the exact opposite of what you are saying lol. Learn by Doing was where you leveled your skills up by using them, like leveling mining by mining and sledgehammers by hitting zombies with a sledgehammer

 

[warmer]

Wat

Half my post is a love letter to Learn by Doing, which is the exact opposite of what you are saying lol

well what is the alternative? the old system? what is your actual solution?

we currently have a hybrid lbd and lbr you level into things based on how you intend to spend your time and that is reflected in the mags you find. Do a few quests and there are your mags. 

 

[Vaeliorin]

tbh. i had much more than 100k clay at day 10 from pois while questing... with looting settings 0.5.. and only because i started doing that on day 8 just after finding my first shovel in lootbags after first bloodmoon, could be earlier but i couldnt craft neither found any shovel.

You had much more than one hundred thousand clay from POIs by day 10.  I have to admit, I find that very hard to believe.  You'd have to destroy like 3000 of those clay/sand/cobblestone piles to get close to that amount.

Are your loot settings / exp settings way higher than normal? Your like 20 levels hgiher than me, with way better gear, like 4 days earlier lol. Not to mention your healing bandages stack a lot higher than mine >.>

Man I wish my badnages stacked to 39 =(

I play on 2 hour days, and have since A16.4.  I'm not really interested in being pushed timewise, I want to build fun bases.  Also, I'm using a stacking mod, because otherwise I'd end up with my entire inventory full of stone or what not after a night of mining mid-to-late game, when I'll often mine up 100,000-200,000 stone a night (which will all get turned into cement.)

 

[sovapid]

I play on 2 hour days, and have since A16.4.

Thats a pretty big tidbit to leave out when you say you done whatever in X number of days.  Your days are twice as long.....

 

[Vaeliorin]

Thats a pretty big tidbit to leave out when you say you done whatever in X number of days.  Your days are twice as long.....

Sure, and if I was talking about some kind of accomplishment, I'd feel the need to point that out.  Having a bunch of clay isn't really an accomplishment, though.  I just find it weird how so many people apparently do little to no mining.

 

[Archael]

I love spending my time in mine i dont care about someone else creating my tools for digging.
But my friend love to be base mommy, doing farming and cooking, and there is where problems arise.
For mining i need only strenght, motherlode and miner 69er.
For cooking, she needs strenght, cooking and magazines to learn how to cook, for farming she needs living of the land with fortitude which is 2x as investment as miner build.
If we have hunter, they also need two to three attributes - perception for animal tracker, fortitude for the huntsman and agility for archery and deep cuts... okay maybe dead eye from perception instead of archery, but with silencer mod on rifle.
This is a very huge deal in terms of exp, lvls and skillpoints.
Also Chef needs magazines to learn cooking, otherwise their perks into cooking is wasted since scavenger who leraned from magazine will make food very slowly and using much more ingredients.

im about to post a counter idea to magazines - learn by doing, but not as it was in earlier versions:
Using specific weapon or cooking, will increase your progress bar, and unlock new recipes or better quality gear.
Not all. Some things like armor ormedicine can stay as magazines.
using weapons and tools should fill a bar via damage dealt to blocks or enemies, and once bar is filled you learn how to make better gear.
imagine the miner who is constantly sitting in a mine and is @%$#ed of their rusty pickaxe that is constantly broken. this miner will look at the tool and look for a weakspots that can be fixed to make better gear.
Same with all weapons.
And as for cooking and advanced engineering - after creating some amount of items new ones are discovered, just like it was in previous versions. Will it be abusable? maybe in terms of items and food, will it be bad? Not really, you need materials to waste if you wants to learn new recipes faster, so there is a tradeoff.

And we need to be able to share all EXP, not only from kills.

 

[Koltira]

While I agree that current implementation is not, by far, the best, I would say its better than LBD
You don't have to be good in shooting to be a reasonable gunsmith. You don't have to be a miner to be good at forging pickaxes. On the other hand, shooting things with a pipe shoota will never teach you how to make a proper tactical marksman rifle

Same with gaining levels by crafting things. You will never learn how to cook a gumbo stew by boiling hundreds of eggs. In the meantime you kind of could learn the recipe from a book or magazine 

And the LBD from previous alphas was also bad design wise. Imagine learning blacksmith's arts by assembling thousand of stone axes 

As for me, I do like the approach from Undead Legacy with researching and stuff 

 

[meganoth]

Are your loot settings / exp settings way higher than normal? Your like 20 levels hgiher than me, with way better gear, like 4 days earlier lol. Not to mention your healing bandages stack a lot higher than mine >.>

Man I wish my badnages stacked to 39 =(

Which doesn't address any of the issues

• The one who finds the loot gets magazines more relevant to them, so a full on crafter would have to be out looting to get magazine drops regularly
  

Agreed, this is a drawback for the one staying home. But the effect is small, in xml the bonus is just 2% per perk point, and the feedback here in the forum is inconclusive, lots of people see a marked difference for perked magazines, but quite a few players also report that they DON't find magazines for which they have a bonus from perks. Just what you would expect from random drops.

• The magazines would take up room in the other players pockets, and there's just way too many crafting mags for them to carry them all back. Bringing back a single stack of brawler magazines for your buddy who is doing a knuckle build is one thing, trying to bring back 10 magazines for your crafter is totally different
  

If the player at home wants to be just a crafter for everything, then yes, that would be a heavy load for the other players. But maybe it would be enough if he is miner, builder, farmer, cook and only "half-crafter".

There is no real advantage for anyone if he gets the wrench magazines for example. Or any of the weapons and armor magazines.

Essentially there are about 4-5 magazines that he really needs(*) and all the rest are bonus. And since the looters don't find all of those all the time, they actually just need to provide 1-3 spots in their backpacks.

(*) the 4-5 magazines would be for seeds, cooking, traps, electricity, off the top of my head. With that he could be miner, builder, farmer, cook and crafter for all the stuff needed around the base.

You are correct that without his co-players doing him a big favor the at home player will not be the crafter for everything. In A20 this was even impossible, in A21 only possible to the degree your co-players agree to.

• There's no reason for them to bother bringing them back to you instead of just eating them on sight, because they will unlock crafting too and be able to craft just as well as you can
  

Learn by Reading is basically the exact opposite of Learn by Doing in that LBD encouraged specialists and in a group everyone would have their own strengths and you could play the game your own way.

LBR encourages you to be looting 24/7 and makes everyone generalists fairly fast. Any time not spent looting is time not spent advancing a large part of your build. Any playstyle not focused on chain looting houses as fast as possible is directly punished

It's not the end of the world, and I do like Learn by Reading overall, but it does have it's flaws for sure.

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I love spending my time in mine i dont care about someone else creating my tools for digging.
But my friend love to be base mommy, doing farming and cooking, and there is where problems arise.
For mining i need only strenght, motherlode and miner 69er.
For cooking, she needs strenght, cooking and magazines to learn how to cook, for farming she needs living of the land with fortitude which is 2x as investment as miner build.

Yes, she needs to level up two attributes, but not up to 10, and the system easily allows for this double-classing. With about the same perk points that you can level up one attribute to 10 you can get two attributes to 7. And with 7 in FOR and STR you can max out or nearly max out both farming and cooking.

The magazines don't need any investment from here, just that her co-players bring back those magazines, that is just 1-2 slots in their backpack.

If we have hunter, they also need two to three attributes - perception for animal tracker, fortitude for the huntsman and agility for archery and deep cuts... okay maybe dead eye from perception instead of archery, but with silencer mod on rifle.
This is a very huge deal in terms of exp, lvls and skillpoints.
Also Chef needs magazines to learn cooking, otherwise their perks into cooking is wasted since scavenger who leraned from magazine will make food very slowly and using much more ingredients.

im about to post a counter idea to magazines - learn by doing, but not as it was in earlier versions:
Using specific weapon or cooking, will increase your progress bar, and unlock new recipes or better quality gear.
Not all. Some things like armor ormedicine can stay as magazines.
using weapons and tools should fill a bar via damage dealt to blocks or enemies, and once bar is filled you learn how to make better gear.
imagine the miner who is constantly sitting in a mine and is @%$#ed of their rusty pickaxe that is constantly broken. this miner will look at the tool and look for a weakspots that can be fixed to make better gear.
Same with all weapons.
And as for cooking and advanced engineering - after creating some amount of items new ones are discovered, just like it was in previous versions. Will it be abusable? maybe in terms of items and food, will it be bad? Not really, you need materials to waste if you wants to learn new recipes faster, so there is a tradeoff.

And we need to be able to share all EXP, not only from kills.

 

[theFlu]

But the effect is small, in xml the bonus is just 2% per perk point,

Is that a 10% chance for an extra book in every trash bag at 5/5, or just a 1.1 ratio in the total list of 20 or so books? (as in (1,1,1,1.1,1,1), spot the different one.. )

That 2% doesn't mean anything without knowing what it does.