It’s a really good start, but they still haven’t even touched on one of the biggest topics players have been bringing up and they just keep ignoring it.
They did have a reddit post asking about it so it's not like they aren't listening. Also, I am curious why you feel jars will be worth the development time. Personally I think jars are fine if adjusted and feel they should have just done that instead of the dew collector, but now that we are in 2.0 I just think there are far more pressing concerns to deal with including such as giving alternatives to questing or providing content that will give people more reasons to loot high end POIs such as bringing back parts quality, schematics, legendary weapons, etc. I would even argue that darker nights or dynamic moons (full/half) is more pressing than jars when it comes to impact on the game. All I can think of for why jars is nice is because it makes water sources valuable which is a good thing, but I don't think it's more pressing than other concerns IMO.
I don't think they should bring jars back personally, I think they should make it more realistic to survival if i'm honest, and if i were out in an apocalypse with a backpack, i would not be carrying around 1000 glass jars lol, but what I would carry is a canteen.. They should add canteens to the game, stainless steel type ones, so you can boil the water, but make it so it only stacks to 1, u could craft it then once u have the crucible, or u may find it as rare loot (but it would be rare as most survivors would have one and not leave it behind), I think that could balance really well.
You would have to rework glue as a byproduct unless you think it's still alright to carry around 1,000 filled water in jars or have a dew collector farm instead of a solar farm. Sadly, without some TLC I don't think many of the ideas in themselves are ideal.
We also want old-school farming as an option in the game again, improved with modern touches: water irrigation pipes, UV lighting for underground farming, and a rain collector upgrade that fills water trenches we dig so crops can absorb it. Fertilizer, the hoe, bring it all back as part of a dedicated farming path that we can still choose to follow alongside the AFK-style farm plots.
I prefer not to have such a complicated system for farming. Plots don't bother me and at best I think fertilizer increasing yields/time to grow would suffice. I don't want to spend my morning watering plants like Stardew Valley or build convoluted piping like in ARK. You are asking for a lot of manpower to fix something that I personally never even used in the previous systems much as hunting was far easier and without wellness added back I don't see people
I think most anyone would agree with you that it doesn't make sense. My response? So what!
Like others have pointed out, there are many other resource items in the game that come in a 'container', and once you either consume that resource item (Meat Stew, Steroids, etc.), or deposit it where it's used (like gasoline into a vehicle), their respective containers unrealistically vanish into thin air.
I think this could be a win for those wanting jars back but have them consume on use.
Worse case I see an extra 4 or 6 weeks of 2.x work before some devs switch to 3.0.
I would prefer you guys to get it right before moving on so these issues aren't revisited years later when it's not as logical to reimplement them. Such things as temperature and clothing went quite a while before it's now being added back into the game. I think there are obvious limits, but hopefully with a bit more engagement with the community you can find out what specifically people are thinking and find creative ways to blend those wishes with the developers thoughts on game progression in a way that is mutually beneficial.
Adding new elements to the game is a good thing. I just hope the new things add value to the sandbox style of the game and help diversify the game away from just quest spamming and trader jumping. I think if you guys can get flatspot coding to work with dynamic events that would be a massive win for the game. If not then create small POI parts that spawn crashed helicopters, etc in the wilderness that offer good loot to encourage exploration as currently I just go from one quest to another in the same town until I move on to the next biome and then rinse/repeat.
One reason given to want them is reason or immersion. If you were living in a world where zombies are walking through water and corpses are everywhere, the last thing you want to be doing is drinking water from a lake or river, regardless what you do to decontaminate it. Sure, if you have no choice, you can do it. But you are very likely to face some kind of side effects, including potential death. It would be fast safer to use a rain collector or dew collector. There are still risks there if there are any contaminants in the air, but it would tend to be a safer choice.
I think from a realism perspective zombies wouldn't exist as they would freeze in the winter and spoil in the summer, but even following that train of thought there would be feasible aways of fixing this as if you get bitten you can cure yourself so logically one would assume you could cure water.
Next, let's look at jars.
That is true but you also wouldn't be able to carry an inventory filled with so many items either. Again realism I think is a term not meant to be taken literal but meant to combine with logical trains of thought one might expect in a game such as this, especially based on other games of this genre.
I do agree that, and I think the fundamental issue, people shouldn't be able to get water easily. If you made water jars consume on use but could still fill up at water sources it fixes the problems you seem to have. Remember that currently you can find a plethora of murky water in loot even before you get to a dew collector.
First change a percentage of murky water into empty jars and then lower the drop rate of all jars/murky water in loot by a fixed percentage. So now what you have done is made water harder to get as instead of murky water you just boil you get empty jars you have to get water from a source to fill. Then you decontaminate it through boiling and the jars are consumed on use. You have made water harder to come by and made water sources more viable with little effort.
Your belief that the loudest voices of the community should be what drives the development decisions of this game is just going to continue to lead you to disappointment. And these changes are not because people screamed loudly somehow forcing their hand. They have ALWAYS made adjustments based on community feedback consistently for 10 years now. I have no doubt they would have made these exact adjustments even without the big review bomb.
I think what you are saying is that community input is very valuable and that TFP listen to everyone and not just he loudest if I cam correct in assuming. That is true and generally a good practice to follow. You don't want to just make changes every time someone complains, but I do think this time was an exception to that rule as if you watch the town hall they did mention they had it due to the large outcry from the players.
TFP shouldn't just blindly listen to the loudest, but infer issues with the game from posts, videos, discussion boards, etc. and determine if they can improve the game from the feedback provided by the community so we don't need a second town hall.
Yeah, I get it, but it's still a drop in the bucket.
If we assume that people posting, commenting, rating, posting videos represents a small minority of players then why are we assuming the inverse that it's a large portion of the player base that do not want change?
With limited data and information you can only make decisions based on what you know.
I don't think you have any idea how difficult a job that would be.
How difficult is it? How many hours? If we can't assume it will be easy then why would we assume the opposite? What if it's not that bad? Sorry playing devils advocate a little here with this one, but depending on how much a feature is wanted or not should determine it's value proportional to the time spent developing it or not.
If you make a game based on other people's opinions, then even those who expressed these opinions will not play it for long. What's the point of playing something that you absolutely understand?
I am not sure if the OP is explicitly asking for them to do it because they said so but are putting forth their argument for it so that they can determine it to be a good idea an implement it. Idealistic but isn't that the point of any of our suggestive posts? But overall I agree that the ones driving the ship are TFP and have to take suggestions, even popular ones, and fit them into the framework of what they want within the game and have to determine whether it's possible or good to do so and balance that with the sentiment towards that change from the community.