Recent content by Kalen

The reason item degradation was such a good feature, IMO, is that it provided continued relevance of both crafting skills and looting. Without it, once you find a Q6 item your crafting skill becomes useless (in a solo game... in multiplayer it remains useful until everyone is equipped). Same...

I've said it many times before.... in my opinion removing item degradation was the biggest mistake they ever made

I'm really enjoying Vein and I still really enjoy 7 Days. They both scratch different itches and there is no reason they can't both be successful.

Well, for the example I mentioned, traders weren't a thing.... but, like I said, it would have to be done well. I'm not a fan of trader questing, personally, but I'm not opposed to traders in general so I don't think its a bad things for traders to fill a gap in acquiring things in the game...

You're not wrong.... it has to be handled well. For example, in older versions of the game you needed to find the Forge Ahead book in order to unlock crafting a forge. This made the book extremely important to find. However, in various POIs around the world you could find working forges...

The better way, IMO, to handle randomness is to make sure nothing is essential. So there is always another way if you don't get that exact item you're looking for.

I'm almost positive you are correct about that, but I think they called it a "placeholder". I never bought that narrative, though. They've gone through, what, 4 different skill systems so far? You don't do that if its intended to be a placeholder. You do that if you're trialing different...

Yeah, to be honest, I pretty much assumed it was something like this.... I was, in a very passive aggressive way, disputing the statement that Joel was "completely against LBD".

Yup, doesn't change the fact that if he was completely against LBD it was a strange choice for a filler system. Even stranger that the filler system wasn't more in line with what they actually wanted.

If thats the case, it makes you wonder why they put it in at all

That sounds really cool.... can't wait to play with that.

Eh, its your game so your call.... but I agree with Riamus, randomness created emergent game play as you had to find ways to overcome bad luck or exploit good luck. Made the game far more replayable, IMO. Some of my favorite in game memories were games where I found something cool early or...

I've accepted that we're not going back to LBD, but I feel like it could've been fixed instead of completely removed.

If you had to craft that many clubs to max out your skill you were doing it wrong.

Well said.... and as much as I'd love to see a return of LBD in some capacity, its probably best that they don't and stick with the direction they're going. I'm still going to advocate for the changes that I think make a better game, but realistically they should probably go with minor tweaks...