theFlu
Well-known member
I know, you Mod the game to fix the issue. You can do that, more power to you; but you're telling people to play vanilla that way, instead of asking for fixes to vanilla... why?
PC Traders and quests need to be nerfed
- Thread starter aamatniekss
- Start date
Roland
Moderator
I wasn't suggesting anyone do what I do, I was just sharing my own playstyle when I play solo. When I play with my fam we do three quests per day since we each take one and do them together and, yes, we progress a lot faster because of that. Also, I said 60 days or less but I usually play 40 minute days when I play solo but 60 minute days with my family.
My main point is that the game is great right now because players can decide how frequently they quest and most players have fun with their decision. We don't need the developers to force a limit on quests because of the small subset of players who hate the results of spamming quests but lack the will-power and mindfulness to limit themselves on quests.
Even with more balancing there will always be a way to stretch things if there is no hard boundary in place. So people who are calling for a perfect crafting progression that can't possibly be overwhelmed by looting and trading are actually calling for that as a forced play-style.
Roland
Moderator
I can think of a few reasons:
1) The job of asking for fixes to vanilla is already being done by several other vocal people.
2) Playing a "fix" voluntarily often gives people more perspective about that change than simply talking about it.
3) It's a fun challenge to play the game in alternative ways and if you can do it voluntarily without actually needing to mod it. there is a lot less effort and learning involved.
4) You can play a "fix" voluntarily while waiting for the "fix" to be implemented officially.
5) A normal player suggesting voluntary "fixes" to vanilla in no way threatens or hurts the chances that the devs will "fix" vanilla themselves so why not?
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theFlu
Well-known member
Nobody is saying you shouldn't complain on the forums. You just take the complaint, break it into it's constituent parts, figure out what they are and simulate the improvements already being in the game yourself.
Yeah, I guess I don't really disagree with the message That much, I might've gotten annoyed at the way it was phrased. It's usable advice, but when delivered that way, it feels a lil aggressive.
That, and scrapping a thing the game gives you to craft a worse version of the same thing is just outright silly ...
Slingblade2040
Active member
Because the average player doesn't do something like that much less in any other game.
Same with Roland's stuff about 1 quest a day and other restrictions.
Most players would do quests up until about a day or two before the horde, most players will keep an obvious upgrade. Hell the starting quest even guides us to the trader so how the heck are new players or casuals suppose to know all these ridiculous restrictions they have to impose on themselves when they see crafting is easily out paced by questing and looting? They will just come to the conclusion that crafting is broken and pointless and it's better to just do quests or buy stuff
Your personal restrictions, challenges or whatever other stuff you want to call it isn't even close to how most players would this game much less casuals.
Heck I play warrior difficulty, 64 blood moon count, jog day speed and feral sense to all, 90 min days with no loot respawn and no air drops and everything else is default setting. Tier 1 and 2 quests are like 3 per day, tier 3 and 4 maybe 2 a day and tier 5 or 6 are at most 1 a day. By day 10 questing has massively out paced anything I can craft. I don't see how that is such an insane playstyle that breaks the games crafting system so freaken badly.
The trader quest and loot presents a massively obvious flaw the negates any progress or use of crafting. Saying the solution is to restrict ourselves from game content by limiting the quests we do, limit the biomes we visit, the looting and other stuff makes no sense but instead makes it seem like certain people just want to cover up very obvious flaws that have become even more apparent in this alpha.
AtomicUs5000
New member
I just don't agree with this.
Zombies were made to dig again even though a small subset of players lacked the restraint to not bury themselves.
LBD was removed because a small subset of players could not restrain themselves from doing mundane tasks to level up.
Vultures attack vehicles and vehicles take damage from zombies because a small subset of players could not restrain themselves from using them to avoid the horde.
There are probably dozens of things to add to this list... it would probably be easier to list the things that don't belong to it.
There's always going to be a small subset of players doing something or not doing something. With all of the different ways to play the game, isn't it reasonable to assume that most players belong to some small subset? Those changes happened because small subsets matter a lot more than made to believe. Small subsets find areas of the game that might need to be improved.
With this particular subject we aren't talking about some small feature. I don't care how you play or want to play, the game currently pushes a lot of focus on these quests. You could easily become a member of this "small subset" just by going with the natural flow or by simply following what you love to do if doing quests is what you love to do. It will be great at first getting what you want from the so-called challenge presented before you, similar to abusing LBD or avoiding hordes, but in the end it hurts replayability and sustained interest and you end up hating what you once loved.
I really appreciate reading these little alternate perspectives on potential problems people find, but c'mon. Let's figure out real solutions.
Rotor
Well-known member
Roland
Moderator
Then why did you just make my point for me? Putting a limit on quests and barriers to the tougher biomes is exactly in line with those examples and is likely what TFP will do if they feel that players are going to ruin the balance by questing too frequently or rushing into higher Lootstage areas with abandon.
The devs want there to be better loot in the wasteland and better rewards for higher tier quests. So the fact that anyone can get better loot than they can craft by rushing the quests and rushing to the wasteland will always be an option that cannot be stopped except by forcing limits to end those options that keep resulting in people being angry that they find/receive better loot than they can craft.
Lethal heat, cold, and radiation are all ways to keep players in the forest until they obtain the needed gear to open those gates. “Sorry, but I have no more jobs available today” is a way to slow players down from progressing up the quest tiers. Some people will appreciate those changes but some will see them as thinly veiled attacks on the sandbox nature of the game.
I’m fine with whatever but I hope the people who do rush the quests and exploit the world Lootstage bonuses and who take trader and looting perks and then complain that they always get better stuff than they can craft understand what they are asking for: Less sandbox and more rules.
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AtomicUs5000
New member
I thought it was your point that adding a limit to quests was something the devs should not be bothered with and to restrain yourself from quests instead. I'm saying that adding a quest limit may not be the best idea, but it is at least a solution.
theFlu
Well-known member
"Cannot be stopped" Well, the crafting could keep up along the questing rush via the questing rush, like giving books as reward and by looting the quest POIs for more books and the needed mats.. wait, that seems to be the current design, just mildly out of balance?
As the source for crafting skill and mats is practically the same as the source for quest rewards, playing it "slower" isn't really going change much. Playing in places with lower loot-multipliers will produce a better books:loot_tier ratio, but the game is pushing you to the exact same POIs over time, no matter how "fast" you run the quests. You do 7 tier one POIs, get 5x book rewards for those and a few books from the POIs, then you move on to the tier two to repeat. The game day ticking up won't tick up your crating, but it might tick up your loot stage.
Getting crafting skills is a matter of looting things, and since you're looting something, you might as well get the quest to do with it - they're pretty tightly bound together. The only things that come to mind where "playing slower" would improve the crafting-to-loot ratio is air drops and trader restocking.. that's a couple relevant books every three days. That's Real slow to be waiting for.
EDIT: Bah, atomic broke my train of thought, kinda forgot to write the post ..
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Roland
Moderator
My point is that currently player choice is a large governing factor on whether looting and rewards outpace crafting. Sure, there is some balancing that still needs to be done but to guarantee that crafting stays ahead it will require new rules and limits.
Since these rules and limits would push the game into the way I already choose to play, it isn’t going to affect me but it will affect others.
AtomicUs5000
New member
We may be assuming that this is the only way, but really if the possibility exists, there might simply be content missing that should slow people down a little. If players can rush to the wasteland simply by doing quests, then doing those quests could be way too rewarding to begin with or it could be those biomes are not difficult enough to match those empowering rewards... or a combination of both. Maybe don't force an end to quests, but instead slow down the increase of tiers and maybe unlock the ability to take better quests from other traders in those other biomes after a certain level is reached from the previous trader.
I think that repair should also play a role in this. If you choose to play the game where you are able to find things at a much greater level than you can craft, then go ahead, but you will have to keep doing that to sustain yourself because you won't be able to repair those items fully. The further in level from what you can craft, the less you can repair it.
There are so many possible ways to go about doing this.
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Roland
Moderator
Sure, that solves part of the problem and I also made the suggestion that the traders only deal in parts and mats or low quality gear to which someone else replied that if the trader never has anything good as rewards then they become pointless so there are definitely other perspectives on what makes the traders fun to play with.
In addition, they just nerfed the book rewards by making them less frequently offered and fewer mags per bundle and that works against keeping crafting ahead as did their mailbox nerf. So there seems to be other things they are trying to balance besides just making it so people who want to craft everything are able to do so no matter how they choose to play.
seagas
New member
I was wondering why they did that. I still think they need to add a bit of LBD, for example, every game hour you mine, should be worth X% of reading a magazine, so spending a night mining would add a mining tool magazine.
AtomicUs5000
New member
It could still be a decent idea that doesn't make players feel that way. Maybe not make it so extreme. If there was still a small selection of better items that could be purchased for a large amount of dukes (including crafting mags), I'm sure players will be checking stock often and still doing those quests for the dukes to be able to purchase those items. It was also brought up by some people to reduce the duke rewards or make it a separate reward option. I don't think that would do much harm to the fun factor of traders either. It would simply mean that players bring more basic materials to the trader to sell... things they accumulate anyway during those quests. In MP roleplay, the hunter sells some of their animal parts, the miner sells raw materials, the farmer sells food... but they all have a means to eventually build up their crafting abilities.
AtomicUs5000
New member
Maybe, but I'm not following how it relates to the topic of trade or crafting. If you mean that the mining skill should unlock related crafting, I don't think it will work and we've been down a similar road.
I actually wrote a Minecraft server very similar to that a couple of years ago. Instead of the typical McMMO plugin found on just about every server, I made it so that you had to find a scroll to unlock the next level, then you would progress that level with LBD.
(hidden because who cares?
Each attribute could also be increased by purchasing "training" from special NPCs with money, perked into with experience, and increased by completing quest challenges. If I remember correctly, 50% of skills were the scroll + LBD, 25% purchased training, 10% experience perk selections, 10% challenges, then a 5% bonus in level for that skill if you unlocked all levels. Every 25% within any skill unlocked a choice of special ability (some things only had a choice between two abilities... it is hard to come up with abilities for every attribute and tier them similarly). Death would remove your LBD levels (they were still unlocked, but the progression was wiped), so it also meant losing a couple of special abilities temporarily. Dying early on wasn't terrible, but if you died later, it was a big hit.
I will admit that although it was a relatively simple system, it was a very complicated system to implement... not because of keeping track of the data for every player, but because I had to create a world with a ton of POIs. Since then, I have never complained that a 7D2D alpha consisted of mostly of new and/or improved POIs. The amount of work to invest in that stuff is astronomical. The number of quality POIs in 7 blows my mind. But I digress....
Each attribute could also be increased by purchasing "training" from special NPCs with money, perked into with experience, and increased by completing quest challenges. If I remember correctly, 50% of skills were the scroll + LBD, 25% purchased training, 10% experience perk selections, 10% challenges, then a 5% bonus in level for that skill if you unlocked all levels. Every 25% within any skill unlocked a choice of special ability (some things only had a choice between two abilities... it is hard to come up with abilities for every attribute and tier them similarly). Death would remove your LBD levels (they were still unlocked, but the progression was wiped), so it also meant losing a couple of special abilities temporarily. Dying early on wasn't terrible, but if you died later, it was a big hit.
I will admit that although it was a relatively simple system, it was a very complicated system to implement... not because of keeping track of the data for every player, but because I had to create a world with a ton of POIs. Since then, I have never complained that a 7D2D alpha consisted of mostly of new and/or improved POIs. The amount of work to invest in that stuff is astronomical. The number of quality POIs in 7 blows my mind. But I digress....
So, I am glad TFP pulled out of that. You don't have many options left to gate crafting. It's either:
- the knowledge of crafting better
- obtaining larger quantities/ more types of materials to craft better things
- the requirement of rarer/difficult to obtain materials to craft better things
- some combination of these to craft better things
The crafting mags was a good and simple way to go about it and they might have everything in place to make it great... things may just need to be tweaked so that the purpose of gating crafting in the first place isn't lost. However, I do think that adding an element of rarer/difficult to obtain materials into the crafting of better items would do wonders for this game and could be used as a way to make entering other biomes a necessity as you progress.
We think of quests from traders as a choice of individual tasks. Do x, get y. Gets old. There could be a choice of questlines instead with an ultimate goal at the end. Each step could be obtaining each of the materials in some biome and the reward for completing the questline is the crafting knowledge (crafting mag) to do something useful with those materials you obtained. Some questlines could involve something with every trader, or every biome. It is something that could be built upon in the future for story elements.
We need some depth. All of these iterations of changes to handle these fundamentals and to simplify might have been needed, that's fine.... but it really needs to end soon because it gives the appearance that the game is stagnant in development. Sometimes you might just need some depth in order to wrap all of that up and move on to allowing the game to bloom into something really special.
BFT2020
Well-known member
I never said it was balanced if you play this way compared to vanilla, and I know as I do play vanilla, most of my hours playing the game from A16 to A21 are vanilla game with mostly default settings (just survivor and more BM zombies, loot respawn turned off, feral sense on). But my point still stands, you can play this way; it just is not going to be as easy as playing the game as it is today in its vanilla form.
Balance is subjective. Everyone has a different opinion on how the game should be balanced. Some people like where it is today, some want it to be easier, some want it to be harder. We have seen some changes to the traders and looting, but you can force rush through progression if you desire - via trader quest spamming or inflating your loot stage via harder biomes. So the game allows a player to speed their progression while at the same time, you can slow down your progression by the choices you make in game - only using crafted items, no trader awards, staying in the forest biome.
Playing those ways (per your post) are a valuable way of looking at how the game plays out in different scenarios. If you only use the equipment you craft yourself, you can see how the game reacts to your playing, and know what works and what doesn't. If you play with no traders, then you can get a feel on how the game plays without them.
BFT2020
Well-known member
Never against fixes in the game, nor have I told people that they should not ask for fixes or balance changes to the game. I just said it is possible to play this way, even without mods.
In A19, I started that way in pure vanilla. No fixes were available as I didn't learn to mod back then and I figured I would see what I can do with the vanilla game itself. Since you couldn't craft non-perk gear higher than Q1 at the time, I made an exception of purchasing off-perk gear from the traders but I know I hacked the file to make everything more expensive.
In A20, I started to mod the game. I removed trader quest rewards (so I didn't have to drop the items all the time), removed recipe unlocks from perks (so you could only unlock them via schematics), removed the ability to repair equipment, and added a new perk so you can craft non-attribute equipment higher than Q1. But the principle was the same, pushing myself to use crafting more and more.
I have talked over the years how I play the game and what I do, but I just haven't been as vocal as others are about things they want or don't want. Heck, I am still waiting on TFP to relook at bulk stone arrow crafting because once you unlock the ability to do so in vanilla, you are already at iron arrows if not steel arrows. I know I mentioned that awhile back, but it isn't something I keep bringing up as I understand that in the end this is their game that they are developing (and I fixed it myself in A20 once I started to learn how to mod).
But the question I have for you is this...Have you seriously tried to play that way in vanilla? Have you pushed yourself to see how far you can survive that way? I have, and that is why I am talking about my experience.
I have also stated in the past that I understand my way of playing is not the baseline, nor that it should be. But I didn't know it was possible to play that way until I tried it...and didn't realize how much fun I had doing it that way until I tried.
theFlu
Well-known member
Hmm, at the current stage, you get a forge by day .. 2? I don't think I use _a_ bulk of stone arrows in the current meta, soo; yeah, there's something to fix there. But unless the tech tree speed is absolutely borked atm, the fix is mostly to remove the bulk option...
"That way". Obviously, "no", at face value, as I have no real idea what you are doing. Have I challenged myself with the game, ignoring parts of it? Yeah, I've done a "self-sustainment playthru" in every alpha since it was the default; or rather, since I started. One of my major gripes in this one is the neutering of that, the other is breaking physics.. I'll still do it, but I expect to die miserably a few times. And with lake water being the only drink available, good luck with the perma-runs, me. Technically, one charred meat + one sip of lake is 10 food, 5 water, 5-5=0 HP, so it might not be impossible, but likely not very fun either. Eating burnt meat just to be able to drink, spend the rest of the day hunting. Hey, might have a use for that bulk stone arrow thing though! ... oh right, not getting the books for it, darnit.
I've done "silly" challenges like "Lumberjack", axe only at my normal difficulty, after the major nerfs to the tools-as-weapons. Just to see if I could.
I haven't modded for gameplay, just done some minor tweaks myself for testing.. installed one overhaul at a point, it filled my then-only-16G memory to the swap. I managed to get it running at about 14, but it wasn't really playable. Haven't bothered since.
Never have I ever scrapped an item to craft a worse version of the same thing. I don't think. Could I do it? Yeah, I know I could, I've crafted "roughly equal" main things my whole A21-SP experience, and none of the things I've done in game have required excessive cheese yet. (Required, doesn't mean I haven't applied all of the cheese at every physics-breaking event I've recognized) So losing 20% of power on my main stuff and 60-80% on the "gathering" things wouldn't hurt me, won't say not at all, but it wouldn't really differ that much.
My impression was that before the nerf too many magazines dropped (not necessarily in SP, but definitely in MP where every quest gave (9 * number of players) magazines. So they reduced drop chance. But now another imbalance showed up which might have been simply hidden before because the massive drop rate of reward bundles dominated as a source.
I think that when less cooking magazines and some more of the other magazines drop we might already have a good balance between crafting and looting (but not the trader).