PC Will crafting balance come in alpha 22 or is crafting dead?

[Krougal]

The issue with 7 Days to Die lies in the lack of game content. The small amount of equipment and the extremely limited progression paths result in a game that cannot sustain gameplay focused on exploration, crafting, and quests. Merchants being unable to sell or provide unique items, along with the shortage of equipment upgrade paths, leads to a situation where merchants merely hand out items without the need for crafting or exploration. Consequently, everything loses its meaning.

I partially agree with you.

I don't know how you think there is a small amount of equipment, or paths. I mean 12 types of weapons with tiers, 6 stat trees. That is plenty for me. They could be ridiculous like Borderlands, where I realized all my time was being wasted shopping, because I have to try to compare stats on 100 items that don't even make any sense to me sure.  I'll take quality over quantity any day.

If things broke permanently that would maintain the need to continue exploring. Like I wanna say in A13 (I'm sure Roland will correct me if I'm wrong) when they first added QLs, you combined guns to get a higher QL gun and also you needed guns to repair guns. It was inconvenient and the generic repair kit has partially replaced it (the parts for crafting replaced the combine) and I wouldn't want to go back, and much as we all hate our precious stuff being destroyed (I know I do) it does necessitate continuous searching for replacement parts.

This is not a hardcore survival game, any chance of that, that ship sailed many alphas ago. Like I said in another thread, people need to get that fact through their heads. Game was released on console, that means they have to cater to the "filthy casuals".

I know it was a very difficult thing for me to do, but it let me stop hating what the game has become and actually start enjoying it again. I say this without sarcasm or malice or any other negative connotation.

 

[Roland]

Game was released on console, that means they have to cater to the "filthy casuals".

I say this without sarcasm or malice or any other negative connotation

If that were true you would have typed "gamers that are on the more casual end of the spectrum" or something else neutral like that. BTW, I don't know whether console gamers can collectively be called casuals any longer. Console gaming has come a long way and while control schemes must often be streamlined to work with gamepads, this in itself isn't what makes a gamer casual or not. Maybe in the 90s up through the 2000s there were mostly simplistic casual gaming experiences on consoles that drew a more casual player base but I think that has changed quite a bit in the last decade.

The streamlining of 7 Days to Die for consoles is entirely control-scheme-based and performance-limitations-based. Whether the game is balanced more toward crafting or more toward looting and quest rewards has absolutely nothing to do with it going to console and being played by the type of players who buy and play on consoles. 

 

[Kyoji]

I think the traders are in a much better place than they were in A20. Play the game long enough and you will see the slow progression towards progress. For me the game becomes 100 times easier when you don't do any quests initially and just raid Crack A Books, Mailboxes, etc. The annoying thing I noticed is that depending on the quest you may not get a minibike for a long time as an example, meanwhile I can craft a tier 5 bat and steel axe. 

It feels like the progression is off in that you can game the system to rapidly advance while also simultaneously fall very far behind if you play by the metric provided by just questing.

The progression feels good when you are achieving new unlocks, but lets say you spec 4/5 into Clubs you will likely max out on clubs by Horde #2 by the sheer increase of club books, furthermore this decreases your chance or getting involved into anything else. I will have a tier 5 steel club with a tier 2 AK or tier 1 knife. It just seems off to me. I feel like it would be better to reduce the skill point magazine find rate down to half and see how that works.

 

[Krougal]

If that were true you would have typed "gamers that are on the more casual end of the spectrum" or something else neutral like that. BTW, I don't know whether console gamers can collectively be called casuals any longer. Console gaming has come a long way and while control schemes must often be streamlined to work with gamepads, this in itself isn't what makes a gamer casual or not. Maybe in the 90s up through the 2000s there were mostly simplistic casual gaming experiences on consoles that drew a more casual player base but I think that has changed quite a bit in the last decade.

The streamlining of 7 Days to Die for consoles is entirely control-scheme-based and performance-limitations-based. Whether the game is balanced more toward crafting or more toward looting and quest rewards has absolutely nothing to do with it going to console and being played by the type of players who buy and play on consoles. 

My bad, "I say this without sarcasm or malice or any other negative connotation" applies to the part after the comma, not the preceeding sentence. I edited it to be more clear.

I fully mean console gamers are filthy casuals. That's also more of an old joke at this point and I don't do political correctness.

I mean don't get me wrong, some of my best friends (yes, I actually have friends, I know shocker!) are filthy casuals. It doesn't make you a bad person.

 

[Uncle Al]

My only annoyance about trader rewards is when I am offered something better than I can craft in my primary perked path. If I’m not perked into something I don’t really expect to be able to craft it at a high level for a long time and if I’m rewarded with a high level high tier version of it and I know I might never be able to craft it then that’s awesome. 
 

Maybe just an exclusion in rewards for any item you are currently perked into would be enough. 

With the current imbalance between quest rewards vs. magazine progression, that would cause the even more annoying situation that you'd probably be better off abandoning your perked weapon choices for what the trader gives you. The difference is that big.

Anecdotal example I've used elsewhere, but I'll repost it because it really highlights how bad the issue is:

My latest anecdotal contribution is day six of a new game. Went out, did a Tier 2 buried supplies which took no time at all, then while retuning home I got curious about one of the new Checkpoint POIs (A Tier 4) and ended up venturing into it and picking up a fair few things including the main loot. It was bloody hard killing mass soldiers using Q3 ish stone/pipe weapons, but it was great fun.

At this point I've got a mix of crafted and found gear, plus a T1 quest reward or two. Pretty consistently using Q2-3 tier zero stuff. So far so good.

Best loot I find in the hideous Tier 4 checkpoint is a Q4 primitive bow and a Q4 stone shovel. Both useful, great.

Stagger back from the checkpoint mission of death and hand in the buried supplies quest that took me about 30 seconds to complete, he offers me a Q5 iron crossbow and a Q5 iron pickaxe.

If you put in an exclusion for say, spears, because I was perking spears in that playthrough, then I can never get a wildly unbalanced T5 iron spear as a reward. But if I'm now going be offered a T5 baseball bat instead, then I'm better off totally ignoring my perked weapon and using the bat, rather than the T3 stone spear I can currently craft. Now not only is my magazine hunting invalidated, my perk choices are too. That's even more horrible.

Unless quest rewards are somehow linked to level (via traderstage/lootstage etc.) then it's going to be almost impossible to balance the usefulness of rewards for the first trader you do work for against the fourth or fifth.

I'm actually coming round to the idea, posted elsewhere but I forget by whom, that quest rewards should ONLY consist of dukes. That makes them inherently self balancing, as you can only buy what's available from the traders, and traderstage scales off level. Personally I think Daring Adventurer is totally out of whack, but apart from that, traderstage works pretty well.

 

[Krougal]

I still think everyone makes a bigger deal out of this than it is.

The way I see it, crafting is a guarantee. Quest rewards are a crapshoot.

Yes, I do feel like it's a kick in the ass to get the next tier or a higher QL as a reward right after I crafted one, but that's life.

Yes, quest rewards are generally better than what you can craft (another reason I use the QL6 crafting mod, to make crafting more competitive). If they were nerfed then we would all scream that the quests aren't worth doing because the rewards suck. It seems to be a very hard act to balance for some reason.

My current game for example, there are a few mods I don't have recipes for. Notable among them are banded armor and advanced muffled connectors. Two things that I want in pretty much every piece of armor so I am going to craft a lot of. Rad remove again, goes in pretty much every weapon. I am at the mercy of finding or getting them as rewards and the few I have are precious and finding them is exciting. Of course once I have the recipes I will make a handful more, or likely I will have found all I need by then it seems, but one way or another post scarcity is inevitably a thing.

 

[warmer]

Game was released on console, that means they have to cater to the "filthy casuals".

I own it on PC and console, what does that make me? Any blanket statements to justify your position will always have holes in it.

The term "filthy" to describe casual gamers is hilarious. The people I know with the worst hygiene also happen to be "hardcore gamers"  Oh the irony...

 

[Krougal]

I own it on PC and console, what does that make me? Any blanket statements to justify your position will always have holes in it.

The term "filthy" to describe casual gamers is hilarious. The people I know with the worst hygiene also happen to be "hardcore gamers"  Oh the irony...

You do have a valid point, but man, you people are taking this too literally.

I didn't make up the term.

I guess being a very old ex-NYer, I am used to pretty liberal use of idioms; they aren't meant to be taken literally.

Bunch of nitpickers around here

Oh, and to answer your question, by virtue of owning a console, you are a "filthy casual", the fact that you own a PC is superceded by the lowest common denominator, which is the console. No holes there

I'm just jealous because it is not worth the fight to get the wife to relinquish the tv. After 20 years you learn to pick your battles.

 

[Roland]

But if I'm now going be offered a T5 baseball bat instead, then I'm better off totally ignoring my perked weapon and using the bat, rather than the T3 stone spear I can currently craft. Now not only is my magazine hunting invalidated, my perk choices are too. That's even more horrible.

That’s crazy talk to me but I’m not obsessed with only using the most powerful weapon in my arsenal to the exclusion of anything else. 
 

To me, getting that bat would be a fun alternative that would be worth switching to since it’s high level of damage would make up for the lack of perked abilities. It definitely would not invalidate my progress in spears. 
 

Any advantage over my spear that the baseball bat might have would only be temporary as I continued to craft better spears and gained more perception and spear perk abilities by spending points. 
 

I think your characterization of it is a wild exaggeration. 

It seems to be a very hard act to balance for some reason.

It’s hard because it annoys/pleases people to varying degrees and there is no way to make it pleasing to everyone other than making an option for rewards:

1. Dukes only

2. Items below lootstage

3. Items equal to lootstage

4. Items above lootstage

Then people can choose the setting that best fits their own sensibility. 

 

[Krougal]

It’s hard because it annoys/pleases people to varying degrees and there is no way to make it pleasing to everyone other than making an option for rewards:

1. Dukes only

2. Items below lootstage

3. Items equal to lootstage

4. Items above lootstage

Then people can choose the setting that best fits their own sensibility. 

Well, it could be pretty easily modded I guess. Although it's probably a non-trivial amount of work since it is a lot of data entries to tweak.

 

[hiemfire]

Any advantage over my spear that the baseball bat might have would only be temporary as I continued to craft better spears and gained more perception and spear perk abilities by spending points. 

"Temporary" with your suggested exclusion would be when you finally craft a quality 5 steel spear after 30+ real life hours of game play not using spears, but perking into them and some how getting better with them, and leaning on clubs or other weapons that you get of higher tier to get you through those 30+ hours because the spears you could craft won't keep up with the GS scaling.

 

[Roland]

"Temporary" with your suggested exclusion would be when you finally craft a quality 5 steel spear after 30+ real life hours of game play not using spears, but perking into them and some how getting better with them, and leaning on clubs or other weapons that you get of higher tier to get you through those 30+ hours because the spears you could craft won't keep up with the GS scaling.

Are you simply comparing dps stats between the two weapons and discounting the added bonuses of Perception and the Spears perk?  You won’t get any stamina reduction for the bat. It would be way more expensive to purchase the perk that increases swing speed for the bat than it would be for the one for spears.  It doesn’t seem to me you are bringing those things into the equation or that it is that you think they are negligible bonuses compared to the raw damage stat numbers. Personally, I think all the perk and attribute and support perk bonuses do matter and it isn’t going to take as long as you guys claim to equal and then exceed the worth of the bat by continuing to progress your perk path on the spear. 

 

[hiemfire]

Are you simply comparing dps stats between the two weapons and discounting the added bonuses of Perception and the Spears perk?  You won’t get any stamina reduction for the bat. It would be way more expensive to purchase the perk that increases swing speed for the bat than it would be for the one for spears.  It doesn’t seem to me you are bringing those things into the equation or that it is that you think they are negligible bonuses compared to the raw damage stat numbers. Personally, I think all the perk and attribute and support perk bonuses do matter and it isn’t going to take as long as you guys claim to equal and then exceed the worth of the bat by continuing to progress your perk path on the spear. 

You're stating that the perks make up for the difference in capability between a fully modded off spec weapon and an on spec weapon 2-3 quality levels lower, or more, and that excluding weapons you're specced into from quest rewards and, iirc, trader loot won't result in a long lasting capability disparity between the two. I'm saying, and I think @Uncle Al likely agrees, that I doubt you're correct.

Even if you are correct, what is a player going to reference to be-able to accurately tell that without having to break out a pen & paper or a calculator while flipping through multiple tabs in game while eating the time to the next Blood Moon or gamestage threshold (noticeable when the zombies get harder)?

 

[BFT2020]

I'm actually coming round to the idea, posted elsewhere but I forget by whom, that quest rewards should ONLY consist of dukes. That makes them inherently self balancing, as you can only buy what's available from the traders, and traderstage scales off level. Personally I think Daring Adventurer is totally out of whack, but apart from that, traderstage works pretty well.

You might be talking about me and my style of gameplay.  My trader mod that I actually posted in the mods section does that as one of its changes.  It removed all trader awards to only Dukes and made a small boost to Dukes earned since you don't get the items anymore.

 

[Riamus]

To me, if quests only rewarded you with dukes, they'd feel completely pointless.  Dukes are a minor necessity only needed for a very limited selection of items (solar and filters and a few decorative things that can't be crafted).  Unless you are actually buying things from the traders, dukes have little real value for most things.  Not only that, but people are upset that traders are such a big influence right now.  If you only give dukes for rewards, that puts even more focus on buying things.  It may take out rewards as being powerful but it just shifts that to buying from the trader.  You already get money to buy things as it is, but with such a change, your only incentive from a quest is to buy things from a trader.  It's a worse state of affairs than we have now.  Far better to adjust the rewards so they scale instead of being solely a loot table.

I wouldn't even bother with quests and would only scavenge if all I could get was dukes.  I rarely spend what I get as it is.  I do quests because I can get actual rewards that have value.  Dukes aren't valuable to me except when I want solar and I really don't like the current situation with solar.

 

[Krougal]

You might be talking about me and my style of gameplay.  My trader mod that I actually posted in the mods section does that as one of its changes.  It removed all trader awards to only Dukes and made a small boost to Dukes earned since you don't get the items anymore.

Seems to me like "kicking the can down the road" since now instead of RNJesus for quest rewards, you get cash to spend on....RNJesus trader inventory?

I don't think it would make the "trader haters" camp happy.

How is that working out in practice? I mean I guess you are happy with it since you are using it and put it out there for others to use.

 

[Roland]

You're stating that the perks make up for the difference in capability between a fully modded off spec weapon and an on spec weapon 2-3 quality levels lower, or more, and that excluding weapons you're specced into from quest rewards and, iirc, trader loot won't result in a long lasting capability disparity between the two.

No I'm not because I'm not assuming the player will keep that on spec weapon that is 2-3 quality levels lower or more and play the rest of the game with that weapon while waiting to be able to craft the best version of that weapon. I'm assuming that as they find magazines and are able to craft better and better versions they will do so and the disparity between the bat and the spear will disappear much faster than you and Uncle are representing things. 

I would agree with both of you if we were locked into using that quality 3 stone spear for the rest of the game until we could suddenly craft a tier 5 iron spear but that is certainly not the case.

Even if you are correct, what is a player going to reference to be-able to accurately tell that without having to break out a pen & paper or a calculator while flipping through multiple tabs in game while eating the time to the next Blood Moon or gamestage threshold (noticeable when the zombies get harder)?

Who does that? Who feels the need? I suppose the player would just use both weapons and when they noticed that they could kill an enemy with one or two less hits but that they were running out of stamina more often and not getting very many dismemberments or one shot decapitations from their non-perked bat but then with their raw stat weaker spear they were never running out of stamina, able to do more power attacks and get lots of one-shot kills by smashing off heads due to the perks granted by perception and Spear Master-- I dunno-- they might mostly use the "weaker" spear since it was more fun but keep the bat for variety since it is also powerful and sometimes you just feel like swinging instead of poking.

Seems to me like "kicking the can down the road" since now instead of RNJesus for quest rewards, you get cash to spend on....RNJesus trader inventory?

I don't think it would make the "trader haters" camp happy.

How is that working out in practice? I mean I guess you are happy with it since you are using it and put it out there for others to use.

I've tried it and it is definitely much slower since what the trader offers for sale is significantly less quality than what he offers for rewards. While I acknowledge that there definitely is a "trader hater" camp, those particular gamers won't be made happy until the trader is removed from the game. Most people here are not trader haters. We like the trader and want to see a better balance between quest rewards and crafting progression. BFT's mod definitely fixes the problem but if you really like choosing an item as your reward it can result in an anticlimactic end to your quest and often the trader doesn't have anything exciting to spend your dukes on.

I got a tier 5 auger for my last quest reward and it was a lot more exciting of a reward than simply dukes would have been-- especially since I have 40k dukes now with nothing I really want to spend it on available.

I do want to try out his mod again but it isn't an easy change to make. Its definitely a nerf.

 

[Krougal]

I've tried it and it is definitely much slower since what the trader offers for sale is significantly less quality than what he offers for rewards. While I acknowledge that there definitely is a "trader hater" camp, those particular gamers won't be made happy until the trader is removed from the game. Most people here are not trader haters. We like the trader and want to see a better balance between quest rewards and crafting progression. BFT's mod definitely fixes the problem but if you really like choosing an item as your reward it can result in an anticlimactic end to your quest and often the trader doesn't have anything exciting to spend your dukes on.

I got a tier 5 auger for my last quest reward and it was a lot more exciting of a reward than simply dukes would have been-- especially since I have 40k dukes now with nothing I really want to spend it on available.

I do want to try out his mod again but it isn't an easy change to make. Its definitely a nerf.

Doesn't it limit you more or less to the weapon(s) you perk into? Granted this playthrough I haven't gotten away from Joel much, I don't even know what his specialty is but his weapon and armor QL have been @%$#. Quest rewards have been good.

I still prefer to use weapons situationally. While I forced myself to primarily use the baton and turret my current playthrough I still carry and use pistol, AR, sniper. Admittedly the sniper gets so little use I could save the slot. Even with no or low perks in them, they were still useful enough to me (granted I have a headshot mod). Honestly the baton is a lot better than it used to be, and lately I have become pretty lazy and just plop down a turret and get to looting while the turret "takes care of my light work". Int- Work smarter, not harder!

And then there is armor. I was pretty reliant on quest rewards to get decent armor early-mid game.

I mean I know the magazine thing is the first pass at it and if they don't drop it for something completely different in A22, I'm sure it will get some tuning. I've got mixed feelings about it. I don't absolutely hate it, like I thought I would, but I don't love it either. I like the way you can tune it by your perks, but I feel a little limited by it too. I was also very lost early game until I figured the new system out, so I was picking up perks and magazines and then wondering why I still couldn't craft anything, not knowing I didn't have enough magazines.

Maybe for my 2nd A21 playthrough I will mod the trader to pay you in duct tape!

 

[Uncle Al]

Whether you use an unperked weapon for a short or long while wasn't really relevant to my point. My core observation was that the suggested system of 'keep giving overpowered rewards but only if you can't use them' was still horrible. It also breaks in multiplayer, as you just swap stuff between you. So long as trader rewards are an entire tier higher than what you can craft or loot, they're unbalanced.

In answer to a few observations above, along the lines of 'unless the rewards are great, nobody will do quests', that would be true if there was a real opportunity cost for doing quests. There isn't. You give up a bit of travel time and a more limited selection of target POIs for a potential reward streets ahead of what you can find, craft or buy. Target POI type doesn't currently matter that much, frankly. There's a bit of variation in the sealed crates, but the end loot is the same for everything of the same tier. Maybe if end chests used different loot tables depending on POI type it would be more impactful, but currently I will always clear a house 500 meters away rather than a garage next door, when the house comes with a cash reward and a very good chance of a top quality iron weapon or tool, and I'm grubbing around with mid quality stone.

Quests get you a cash reward, progression towards the VERY impactful end of tier rewards (which are a bit better balanced as they're once per trader and actually take some effort to achieve), and gives you progression towards improving trader stock. They don't need a huge item incentive as well.

The willingness to do scut work for the trader to get in his good books so you can buy useful stuff from them would be even more of an incentive if Daring Adventurer didn't so massively outshine the quest progression bonus to traderstage. When quest progression is giving 5% of your level per tier, and each level of DA is giving a flat +10, it's not hard to see why traders don't stock much useful stuff if you don't perk DA.

I'm really surprised that whoever designed the systems had the sense not to make lucky looter a flat bonus, yet didn't follow that model for Daring Adventurer. Currently, one rank in DA is the equivalent of having completed ALL SIX quest tiers for a trader, when you're level 33. Below level 33, it's better than ANY bonus to traderstage you can get by questing.

I feel quest tier should be way more impactful, more like 15% per tier, and adjust the base 100% of level to 80% or so. New traders would be a little bit worse than currently, the ones you've put serious work into would be quite a bit better. DA should give something like a free bonus tier (+15% per level) per point. Still very useful, but not insane at low levels as it is now.

 

[Krougal]

lot of good stuff

You make a lot of valid points. I'm not gonna rehash them all.

Much as I hate to admit it, DA is OP AF. I maxed it ASAP, it really is that good.