More danger in the pine forest and burnt forest

[InfiniteWarrior]

My problem is I like to look at the Pine Forest but I want the challenge of another biome like I want the the dangers in the the cities

Understandable. The Forest biome had a bit more challenge to offer in A21 when larger and towns and cities were still allowed. (There's a mod that reinstates them in RWG.) One can also build adjacent to, say, the Wasteland biome and pick up some overflow challenge from there given the tougher zombies, bears, etc. don't care where the biome borders are any more than real wildlife cares where our national borders are.

I'd say it's mod territory for players who want it to be a great deal more challenging than vanilla, but I wouldn't mind a bit more of a challenge in the vanilla version of the Forest myself and I'm not even into it for the combat. It'd certainly give new players a sense of what they'll need to avoid until they're stronger and that Forest region can be quite large. 

 

[Vaeliorin]

With the current RWG, I doubt I'd bother building in any biome other than the forest.  Back when I used a third party map generator, I found an absolutely beautiful spot in the snow biome where I built my base, on the edge of a large lake with mountains on the opposite side.  But you don't get vistas like that with standard RWG, so the forest is where I stay. 

I should probably learn to use Teragon.

That said, if they were going to make the forest more difficult (doesn't really matter to me either way) they should probably just have it ramp up the difficulty more over time than just initially being more dangerous.

 

[Riamus]

I usually build in the forest, mainly because I prefer how it looks.  Though it is also partly because that's where I start and so where I first build and I don't want to have to build again until (perhaps) late game.  Rebuilding your base or even just building multiple sub-bases at east biome or trader doesn't appeal to me.  I like building, but I want to build and expand and upgrade one base (plus horde base) rather than doing it over and over again just to "progress" through the biomes.

As far as progression itself, you obviously don't need to build in other biomes in order to go to them.  Or you could just drop crates to store things if you want to hang out longer than what your inventory can support.  But I'm also not interested in running back and forth between biomes all the time.

In the end, I tend to spend the first half of the game near my initial trader area in the forest because it's convenient.  At the end of the game, if I feel like it (usually if I don't have any large cities near me), I'll look at moving to a better location.  But I still will never build in the wasteland unless it's just to take over a nice POI that I might find there (ZZTong has a fun abandoned base POI that is great to rebuild, and I've seen that in the wasteland now and then, though it also appears in other biomes) and am unlikely to build in the burnt forest.  Snow is okay, but just too white and plain.  That leaves desert, which is also pretty plain, though the color is better.  In the end, I just prefer the look of the forest and so don't really want to build elsewhere.  And *no* progression will change that.  Even with a good incentive to progress into other biomes, I would just end up going there temporarily, while keeping my base in the forest almost every time because I don't care for the aesthetics of the other biomes.

So where does that leave us?  TFP wants to force people to leave the forest by traders being locked to biomes.  Of course, you don't have to do those open trade route quests, and even if you do, you can return to the forest afterwards.  And you can always build in the forest near another biome to make it easier to go to another biome for better loot and enemies, so still no reason to build anywhere else if you like the forest.  Instead of trying to limit random maps to a specific style as they are currently doing so that there's a "progression" to follow, they should bring back the random maps and/or provide settings for the game (and RWG generation) that allow you to change difficulty per biome - maybe you want forest to be the most difficult, for example, or you may want all biomes to be equally difficult.  Let us make that choice, instead of making it for us.

I won't use RWG maps except just to test it out when a new version is in experimental.  I just don't like the limited options for map designs or the trader locking.  Instead, I make them with Teragon and avoid that stuff.  I still have to go to the traders in a specific order for the open trade route quests, but they aren't locked to biomes for that.  And I can have a map with biome layouts that make going into other biomes more likely without having to travel all over the place or build in other biomes if I don't want to.  But that doesn't help all the other players who use RWG and are stuck with TFP's preferred playstyle.

I'd like to see the following options in the game by the time gold is released:

• Option when generating a RWG map to limit or not limit traders to specific biomes.
  
• Option when generating a RWG map to limit or not limit town sizes by biome.
  
• Option in save to use or not use a specific trader progression for open trade routes, or to just pick the closest trader, or at least the closest trader who has not yet been seen with that quest.
  
• Option in the save to use or not use the story, once that's added.
  
• Option in the save to use or not use the bandits, once those are added.
  
• Option in the save to change difficulty per biome.  This should only be allowed when creating a save and not during a save.  This difficulty applies to the biome difficulty modifier (such as desert being +1 skull difficulty by default), as well as what enemies can be in the biome.
  
• Option in the save to adjust the animal spawns - low, medium, high - and what animals can spawn in each biome.
  

These options let even console players control how the game is set up, and lets you do this stuff without resorting to mods, which shouldn't be necessary for such basic choices.  There are probably other options as well that I'd like, but that's what comes to mind atm.

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[khzmusik]

Are you everyone's spokesperson? Somehow, I don't think so. Do you honestly think "incentives" of any kind are going to affect where a player does and does not want to be and what a player does and does not want to do? If a player wants to take up residence in the Forest or any other biome in the game as-is, they can and that's how it should be. Do you think they should be locked into moving from place to place as the "trader progression" route through the biomes supposedly "incentivizes" players to do now?

Are you honestly saying that game mechanics have no influence on player behavior?

The end result of that line of thinking is that it doesn't matter what the mechanics are. Players who live in the pine forest now would live there even if it's the most difficult biome with the best loot but the least resources; and players who live in the wasteland now would still live there even if it's the least difficult biome with lower-end loot and abundant resources. It doesn't matter if TFP put traders in specific biomes to "incentivize" player progression through different biomes, because players will just ignore it anyway. And so on.

I don't think that's what you mean, but if so then I'm not sure what you're arguing against.

My main point is that difficulty (especially combat difficulty) probably isn't the best proxy for "progress" in a survival or sandbox game like 7D2D. I just don't know what the best proxy for progress should be, since I have yet to see a perfect example in any game.

EDIT: Also if you don't like locking traders to biomes, look in the Mods section on these forums. I wrote a mod that does away with that but keeps biome progression, and I'm betting other people did similar mods.

It's part of the reason I keep bringing up the idea of progression in survival games. If someone suggests an idea that I might like, then maybe I could try modding it in to see how it goes. I'm drawn to this game as a survival game (more than an FPS). So, I tend to be drawn to things like food spoilage or seasonal weather that increases survival difficulty as the game goes on, as opposed to enemies that do more damage or are bullet sponges (and the weapon/armor "progression" needed to deal with them). Along with that are the ideas of why the player would want or need to be in situations where survival is more difficult.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

@khzmusik

Here are two things that may strike your interest. The first is a potential mod, the second an overhaul.

The potential; if I am correct in my thinking, you can possibly get away with just posting a trader outpost

on a patch of the biome that they belong to. Sort of like an oasis, and have the rest of the terrain be any

biome you wish. I don't know if it will affect local quests though. Untried thus far.

The overhaul to look at is from A16 Medieval Book1, in particular the blight mechanic.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

you don't have to do those open trade route quests

And if you do them, you also don't have to do them in the biome(s) to which you've been sent. You only have to go back there to wrap them up and have odd jobs in the next tier show up at all the vendors, which is what leads me to think the biome-locking has been done primarily for other considerations, e.g. "progress" through the forthcoming story mode, which I'm of the strong opinion (not that it matters) would best be confined to the Navezgane map as a mode separate from RWG freeplay. Then all the associated linear and nonlinear options mentioned for RWG generation wouldn't even be necessary. RWG would be nonlinear in every way, including traders, and Navezgane would be accommodating the linear pathing and storyline as single player and multiplayer modes do in single player games with separate multiplayer modes, except that Navezgane could, of course, still be played by friends and family together, though I imagine TFP will be running into the same issues as, say, FO76 did, its "separate instances" for each player's progression through the story being both an awkward and undesirable solution.

I just don't know what the best proxy for [survival} progress should be,

Isn't that pretty much tied to the cooking and farming and other "survival" aspects of the game? Farming is optional, atm. It's certainly not necessary to survive just as farming resources such as gel sacs and so forth in Subnautica is not necessary to survive or craft, but serves as a convenience. Subnautica has a bit of an edge on threat levels within biomes either to avoid/defend against or go all Rambo on (I choose the former) in every biome as well because there are set pieces to support them, e.g. the Aurora and its Reaper Leviathons; the Lost River and it's Ghost Leviathons; etc. I'm not sure what you're getting at with progressive survival. Either you survive or you don't. The progression is from nothing through various levels of tools, ever-more complex recipes and schematics for mods to better resist cold and heat, etc. (Weather system also forthcoming, of course.) Can you clarify what you think the game needs in that arena?

 

[Riamus]

And if you do them, you also don't have to do them in the biome(s) to which you've been sent. You only have to go back there to wrap them up

The quest is just to go see a trader.  Once you're there, it's done.  You would need to go back after completing a tier in order to get the next one, but the actual quest isn't something you "do" anywhere.  I have a feeling that's probably what you meant.

It sounds like they are planning the story in all maps, including RWG.  I think that is a bad choice as no one wants to do the story each game they play, even if it's a good story.  We just play too many games to make that a good choice.

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

@Riamus

I don't mean to repeat myself, or necro a thought but what you
just posted reminded me of a simple thought I posted a few years
passed.

Once you open Pandora's box it is impossible to put everything
back in. The game was originally billed as an every game, With thousands
of choices, then between Alpha 1 and 17 it was built to be an every game
again building up to those thousands of choices. Then a linear thought was
added trade routes. If you were given an free pass to an amusement park and
for 5 years you did exactly what you wanted with each visit. Then you were
told here is a nice clean path for you to follow, please stay off the grass.

How would a large amount of people react?

This is the picture I submitted when there was a discussion about a story line.



The last part is a lesson learned from a mmorpg that has been around since 1997. The founder stated in an interview that they had produced

a perfect and beautiful and structured system. The players having full autonomy wrecked it day 1. The devs had to pull it, and no one even noticed

it was gone. His last words about it were, they had learned that what is tested and works with an inhouse team, won't necessarily work with the

public, the reason is unpredictability of human nature. Can it work possibly, personally i'm a bit dubious. A the top of the pic that is a lot of

constiction. Possibly more work in one year that the passed 11.