Recent content by Uncle Al

I simply can't get behind this narrative that the driver for changing the armour system was to monetise cosmetics. Possibly cosmetic opportunities was considered as a side benefit, but anyone backing the full conspiracy theory seems to completely ignore: The old clothing system had horrendous...

This is so true. It's kind of surprising TFP, and indeed any developer, listens to us (forum users) as much as they do. Commercially, pretty much all your significant direct revenue comes from people who'll buy the game, never install a mod, never post about it anywhere and will probably play...

You're assuming you only craft once, at max level. I can see why that's an option, but I'm almost certain that's not the design intent.

I certainly see a strong argument for having quest rewards be only cash. In addition to making them less good, it would make their value self correcting once 3.0 comes in. I'm assuming there are going to be some economy modification options for buy and sell prices. The other factor that makes...

Lucky looter and loot settings don't affect trader inventory. The things that do are: Your level How many quest tiers you've completed Daring Adventurer perk You were most likely seeing much higher stage items earlier in your old play throughs due to playing with 300% xp, making your level...

That was my point. Your blanket statement 'supports multiple play styles so is good' doesn't work unless those different playstyles also have mechanical impact. Though we seem to agree there, I go further and say it's not good design unless there is some risk/reward balancing between the...

By this logic, games where you have multiple apparent choices but your choices have no mechanical impact whatsoever on achieving the game goals are good designs. I don't think that's the case.

If it makes it clearer I'm happier to use 'grants mechanical advantage' as distinct from 'encourages'. I was using 'encourages' in that sense, and totally accept the degree to which mechanical advantage affects an individual persons gameplay is down to them. That said, I don't think 'you don't...

Technically true, but I think it's fair to expect a game designer to force hard, meaningful choices without requiring the players to formulate their own 'house rules' to ensure choices are both meaningful and hard. Armour bonuses are inherently problematic as soon as they start buffing an...

Yes, but it's gamestage not level that determines the horde composition. theFlu gives an example above. Gamestage is basically level + days alive capped at 2x level. Certainly different players will see different hordes on the same day, if they are different levels.

Interesting. I'm currently on a 'horde every night' playthrough and I'm definitely still seeing the dropoff in my early hordes. The max alive was dropping from 8 (I've started default and will raise it every week) to maybe 4 for the later part of the horde. I'm still only on day 7 or so, so that...

It kind of did have pre determined wave counts, and still does, but the waves are so large a lot of players don't notice them. The change was that once all the waves are exhausted you still get a minimal spawn of zombies until dawn. Previous to the change you could kill all the zombies in the...

Unless it's changed very recently, you can't put a tempered blade on a pickaxe. I constantly try and forget that TFP don't consider a pick as bladed... Are you using a mod or has this finally changed?

Wow. Didn't foresee TFP getting a publisher after all this time. Fingers crossed they're sensible enough to leave your creative freedom intact while doing all the boring stuff a good publisher should do...

There does seem to be a lot of variance in people's choices, which is definitely a good thing. Of your 'never use' list, the only one I'm pretty surprised you can live without is armour. The armour skills themselves aren't great, light is decent and heavy is absolutely horrible but none of them...