A New Chapter for The Fun Pimps and 7 Days to Die

[Jost Amman]

Trader Influence and Standing - Doing jobs for the traders builds your standing with them. After say 5 missions a new dialog option appears - "Did you set aside anything special for me?" This would reveal a higher tier of items specific to the trader; Rekt would have more seeds or food, Jen for more medical supplies or maybe she could apply a cast or splint with a rteduced healing time, Bob more vehivcle mods or schematics, etc. This would give players the incentive to actually do jobs for the individual traders.

This is already planned, but not at the, small, trader level.

Once they add bandits, they'll also add the two main factions, so you'll gain "faction influence" and all the traders that are with your own faction will probably treat you with better "rewards". (that's just my educated guess based and all that's been said by the devs over the years).

 

[4sheetzngeegles]

Just for aesthetic gameplay, I removed all source water types from all biomes
except the Wasteland. So my poiwater blocks are all dirt now, The trader sells
jars but a lower volume in inventory. Finding water is 0 and finding jars
very-low, except in the tier 5 pois and tier 5 infested, and wasteland all. Since I don't
have jar return. It kind of gives value and choices to me.

Spoiler: My Choices affected

Work for the trader. Meaning quest and sell, hoping they have a wrench, if not work to buy from
vending machines.

Brave tier 5 pois early on to find some jars.......enhanced danger looting

Try to speedrun, quests to get to t5 infested......Meta Run

Sell stuff to get money to buy from trader inventory, jars, water, foods that fill water,
Seek out other traders, and do above increasing probability of inventory helping........
Gives Traders and trading Value early on, Passively gives a reason for books. Goldenrod,
Workstations, resources.

Go to wasteland early on and loot any poi and garbage for a better chance a a jar.
Then collect water, and boil at campfire until I have a better method.......Risk vs
reward choice. Basically avoiding/fighting entities surviving the storms, and until
i finish the unlock quest having to monitor my timer.

Loot looking for cookbooks or buy from trader if he has, to get to goldenrod unlock as quickly
as possible. If I have jarwatergoldenrod and am in wasteland, drink water from the river, and
if I get dysentery, drink the goldenrod to cure it.

Or just give up and Die.

Spoiler: Additional benefits for me

Actual scramble for survival benefit until established which make it feel
like an achievement. Crossing boundaries, I get to collect, a lot of the unlock quest items in
passing, I see more game constantly so food is ok, As a backup eggs, and Yucca good sustenance,
higher chance for better weapon, armor and insulators as I go, Books to help get to a sustainable
level.

My 10k environmental configuration gives value to the above. Wasteland is 4+ biomes away from
the forest. My allspawn is continuous with more entities, all storm effects are in play.
Increased constant heat and cold per elevated biome, so I have to be aware of my core temp. But the
simple change in the first grouping of words, give a value and gameplay and inclusion for the choices that
followed. Each has pros and cons, so for me it balances. But for me I always approached it from The
thing I should really worry about in a Zombie Apocalypse are Zombies.

 

[Ostentatio]

Spoiler: Oh, no! An anecdote!

For 2.6, I set jar return to 0% gasp how dare I eat glass, m'realisms because the random return got more annoying than rewarding; my hoarder tendencies wound up feeling more frustrated that I had to find a spot for a single dang jar after drinking something in the middle of an immensely over-encumbered plundering outing inb4 first world problems. I don't think I'd play with any return % other than 0% or 100% just for that pack-rat reason - and I'll never not appreciate being able to customize that setting to accommodate personalizing my video game entertainment.

For dew collector vs water source harvesting, I only did jar-filling in the early-game; once I was able to afford/craft gatherers and tarps for 2+ dew collectors, I never filled jars at a water source again, because I was filling my time with other tasks. The nearest water was around 100m away, so it's not like access was an issue (and even if it was, buckets exist, which I did make use of in my short 2.5 run). Early-game, I was barely surviving on water (again, 0% return) and barely finding enough sand to get by, but as the run went on, a few things happened: 1, better-hydrating cooking recipes reduced demand for water; 2, better shovels eased sand-digging for stocking the forge (long before cement mixer); 3, water purifier helmet mod in loot, though I only used it 3-4 times.

When I left the Pine Forest, I hadn't used jar-filling for a while and had three dew collectors with tarps and gatherers which I was only just keeping stocked with jars. In Snow (I lingered in Pine a bit too long, so decided to move from Pine straight to Snow), I set four dew collectors on the roof; a while later, I got the water filter recipe, and now the four fully-upgraded collectors are easily exceeding the supply I need for glue and food. I might be fine with two, comfortable with three. I'm not even using the cement mixer to make more sand for jars, any pallet-sand just goes into the forge and there's still way more than I need.

Because I'm lazy, I don't jar-fill. Possibly, it could be more efficient to load twenty stacks of jars and shove them into a hole in the floor with a bucket's worth of infinite water - but jars are slow to craft (and my single forge is usually busy with cement or other materials) and the manual-refilling animation is so slow. I appreciate that it's slow, and that you can only fill 10 jars at a time- that feels like a good balancing decision in my book. Whether it was a conscious balancing decision or not, it makes manual-filling tedious and time-consuming- particularly when factoring in that in the time it takes to fill 1-2 stacks of jars on animation alone, I've already dumped my jars into the collectors on my roof and have moved on to other things, and can grab all that water off the roof in as much time as it takes to fill a single stack of jars.

Someone might use a dedicated second forge or tweak a faster refill animation or larger empty jar stacks to reduce the tedium of jar-filling, but they could just as easily tweak the collectors to perform even better - as they are now, though, the dew collectors feel like they scale by quantity, while jar-filling is metered by the time it takes to fill each stack. It feels pretty balanced... using the perspective of time efficiency, particularly for the lazy or frequently restless. That's me!

There's always going to be different perspectives depending on RNG, chosen perks, number of forges, play style of course, et cetera, but based on my 2.6 experience, I quite like my dew collectors and won't be manual-filling any time soon.

 

[HammerDano]

This is already planned, but not at the, small, trader level.

Once they add bandits, they'll also add the two main factions, so you'll gain "faction influence" and all the traders that are with your own faction will probably treat you with better "rewards". (that's just my educated guess based and all that's been said by the devs over the years).

I thought it was said BI and TFP plan on following "the plan" until 4.0...then the plan is supposed to change to reflect the new ownership.
we've been told since December that we'd be told what's happening "in due time"...then TFP sold the company and we were told once again that we'd be told about the new plans and changes..."in due time".

I don't know how accurate that old information actually is anymore.

just a thought. I could be wrong.

 

[Grandpa Minion]

guys i have great news! the pre - testing departing for Behaviour Interactive has determined the #1 projected setting that will be turned on for 3.0 Sandbox 7d2d will be PVP.


https://www.bhvr.com/

 

[Space4Ace]

guys i have great news! the pre - testing departing for Behaviour Interactive has determined the #1 projected setting that will be turned on for 3.0 Sandbox 7d2d will be PVP.

View attachment 39309
https://www.bhvr.com/

The Ai / PVP worshipper strikes again!

 

[BlackRabbitMsk]

It wasn’t forgotten. There were internal discussions about it and your perspective was definitely brought up—all before even the experimental release. More discussions came up after experimental but before stable.

In the end, the decision makers chose to have it be this way fully aware of the disagreements you proposed.

The dew collector is now an alternate method of getting water that is less efficient than just filling and boiling jars yourself until you can add the filter and then it is about equal. So just fill and boil which is what I do. Once I can get the filter I craft a few collector and add all the upgrades and use it together with filling and boiling.

Maybe if the tears you and I are crying were as hot as the tears of those who wanted jars back and then wanted a way to use up all of their extra jars it might be possible but they are just no where close.

Well, actually, I was saying that even a cursory discussion can yield many options that won't break this mechanic, but merely change it to fit the overall logic. This is more a request for such future changes to be more balanced than simply adding something new. Without tying it to a specific case (I could give several more similar examples), this will only lead to lengthy discussions and defeat the purpose:

When adding new mechanics, carefully check and balance all related ones to ensure they function properly and don't break or become useless.

I liked the idea with mineral water. But it's only needed for drinking, while larger quantities of pure water are more needed for cooking and creating glue.

Regardless of the solution itself, I'd like to see it simply refined to make it more understandable. Here's my vision for a solution to this problem:

Change the "Water Filter" item type from a station modification to a resource. Make the recipe cheaper and remove the recipe for it altogether. The resource itself is used to craft the dew collector.

For the dew collector, make the base output clean water, not dirty water. This means that everything the player collects by hand in a puddle is dirty water and requires processing; everything the collector collects is clean water.

Do not change the quantity and speed modifications at all. However, the filter should be replaced with something else entirely, or (the easiest option) an advanced filter that collects mineral water.

As a result, the dew collector will be significantly more useful in this form, while the entire jar mechanic will remain intact.

 

[meganoth]

Well, I don't quite understand what "not killed" means? After all, the player will make 50 empty jars, fill them all with muddy water from a puddle, and boil them. A collector without a filter essentially does the same thing, only over a longer period of time. What I'm saying is that installing a collector and all its mods completely loses the point until the player has a filter. Doesn't that completely destroy the entire mechanic that existed before?

I'll try to explain again: Filling 50 jars at a puddle will take 25 keyboard klicks (5 per stack).
Filling 50 jars in a dew collector will take 6 clicks (5 clicks to put them into the dew collector and 1 to remove them).

There are players who like to make as few clicks as possible and who don't mind the delay of the collector. You need time for producing the jars and boiling the water anyway, so there is a delay anyway, the collector just adds to this delay.

So dew collectors provide a little more comfort (less clicks) but longer production time for water. Not many, but some players will likely prefer that

 

[BlackRabbitMsk]

I'll try to explain again: Filling 50 jars at a puddle will take 25 keyboard klicks (5 per stack).
Filling 50 jars in a dew collector will take 6 clicks (5 clicks to put them into the dew collector and 1 to remove them).

There are players who like to make as few clicks as possible and who don't mind the delay of the collector. You need time for producing the jars and boiling the water anyway, so there is a delay anyway, the collector just adds to this delay.

So dew collectors provide a little more comfort (less clicks) but longer production time for water. Not many, but some players will likely prefer that

Well, I'm not quite sure what clicks we're talking about. Filling the jars in the dew collector requires a long wait to collect a maximum of six jars. And to fill five jars in a puddle, you need to click once and wait for a three-second animation.

Post automatically merged: Tuesday at 5:47 AM

I'll try to explain again: Filling 50 jars at a puddle will take 25 keyboard klicks (5 per stack).
Filling 50 jars in a dew collector will take 6 clicks (5 clicks to put them into the dew collector and 1 to remove them).

There are players who like to make as few clicks as possible and who don't mind the delay of the collector. You need time for producing the jars and boiling the water anyway, so there is a delay anyway, the collector just adds to this delay.

So dew collectors provide a little more comfort (less clicks) but longer production time for water. Not many, but some players will likely prefer that

I wouldn't have any questions if the filling process didn't take 3 seconds in one case and 20 minutes in the other. I don't really understand how this can be tied to lazy people's habit of clicking the mouse. These are simply incomparable actions. Again:
- the player creates jars and places them in the dew collector, then waits a very long time for them to fill.
- the player also creates jars and simply fills them all in a puddle, 5 at a time, with one click.

 

[meganoth]

Well, I'm not quite sure what clicks we're talking about. Filling the jars in the dew collector requires a long wait to collect a maximum of six jars. And to fill five jars in a puddle, you need to click once and wait for a three-second animation.

Post automatically merged: Tuesday at 5:47 AM

You have that stack of empty jars in your inventory. To fill it you have to click on it with the mouse (1 click), move it to the toolbelt (1 keyboard click), exit the inventory (1 keyboard click), fill it (1 keyboard click) , enter the inventory again (1 keyboard click). That is five clicks per stack

I thought jars stacked to 10 currently? Do they only stack to 5 now? I can't check right now.

<<<<
I wouldn't have any questions if the filling process didn't take 3 seconds in one case and 20 minutes in the other. I don't really understand how this can be tied to lazy people's habit of clicking the mouse. These are simply incomparable actions. Again:
- the player creates jars and places them in the dew collector, then waits a very long time for them to fill.
- the player also creates jars and simply fills them all in a puddle, 5 at a time, with one click.

I thought they had increased the capacity of the dew collector. Again, can't check right now. Could anyone please tell me how many empty jars you can fill into the dew collector and how many filled jars you can get out in 2.6?

 

[BlackRabbitMsk]

You have that stack of empty jars in your inventory. To fill it you have to click on it with the mouse (1 click), move it to the toolbelt (1 keyboard click), exit the inventory (1 keyboard click), fill it (1 keyboard click) , enter the inventory again (1 keyboard click). That is five clicks per stack

I thought jars stacked to 10 currently? Do they only stack to 5 now? I can't check right now.



I thought they had increased the capacity of the dew collector. Again, can't check right now. Could anyone please tell me how many empty jars you can fill into the dew collector and how many filled jars you can get out in 2.6?

That's not what I mean by "thinking." You need to consider the time spent on a specific player's task. Here's an example: You need to fill 20 cans with water. In one case, it might take 20 seconds, in another, 30 minutes (I don't remember the exact timing), and that's exactly what I'm talking about. If I need water, I see absolutely no point in waiting half an hour; I'll just fill everything up at once and then go about my business.

Empty jars have a stack size of 10. This means that to fill 10 jars, I need to make one click.

 

[meganoth]

That's not what I mean by "thinking." You need to consider the time spent on a specific player's task. Here's an example: You need to fill 20 cans with water. In one case, it might take 20 seconds, in another, 30 minutes (I don't remember the exact timing), and that's exactly what I'm talking about. If I need water, I see absolutely no point in waiting half an hour; I'll just fill everything up at once and then go about my business.

Other players are more organized and produce jars of water early enough that time isn't important for them. Other players have different likes than you and may put more importance on convenience and less on time.
I get that for you time is the most important value, please accept that other players have different tastes and likes and methods

Empty jars have a stack size of 10. This means that to fill 10 jars, I need to make one click.

Put 50 jars into your inventory, then go to a water source and fill them all. Count ALL klicks, keyboard and mouse, you need to make, not only the click to fill the stacks. Also count mouse moves if you use the mouse to move the jars into the toolbelt.
I guarantee you that you will need more than 5 clicks and keypresses.

 

[BlackRabbitMsk]

Other players are more organized and produce jars of water early enough that time isn't important for them. Other players have different likes than you and may put more importance on convenience and less on time.
I get that for you time is the most important value, please accept that other players have different tastes and likes and methods



Put 50 jars into your inventory, then go to a water source and fill them all. Count ALL klicks, keyboard and mouse, you need to make, not only the click to fill the stacks. Also count mouse moves if you use the mouse to move the jars into the toolbelt.
I guarantee you that you will need more than 5 clicks and keypresses.

Here's the math straight from your own math:

The same old story: fill 50 jars with water.

Option 1: I fill the jars in a puddle:
5 clicks to move 10 empty jars to my belt, 5 clicks to fill them with water, and another 5 to remove them from my belt and return them to my backpack. Total: 15 clicks and 30 seconds total for all operations.

Option 2: I fill the jars in the collector:
I'm not taking into account that the collector itself and its two mods require resources and crafting.
5 clicks to move the jars to the collector. Then I wait many minutes for them to fill (at least 10 minutes). I should also note that even with all my efforts, I can only fill 24 jars in one go. So, I need to wait 10 minutes each time for all the jars to fill.

I don't understand how this could be more convenient?

 

[Jost Amman]

5 clicks to move the jars to the collector.

Actually it's 6 clicks, since there are 6 empty slots in the Dew Collector... (I know the example was with 50 jars, but it would be stupid to leave one slot of empty jars in the collector... empty).

In any case I completely agree with your point of view, though I found myself building a collector anyway later in the game, as a backup.

 

[meganoth]

Here's the math straight from your own math:

The same old story: fill 50 jars with water.

Option 1: I fill the jars in a puddle:
5 clicks to move 10 empty jars to my belt

You seem to use the mouse to move the empty jars to the belt, right? For me one such move is (in terms of convenience and speed) the equivalent of 2-3 keyboard clicks as you have to click on the item, move the mouse to the toolbelt and place it exactly enough that you don't drop it instead.

This is why I prefer to move them with the keyboard, but lets continue with your method

, 5 clicks to fill them with water

This is definitely wrong as you need at least another keyboard click per stack to select the next toolbelt slot. Also you need another 2 keyboard clicks to leave and enter the inventory, making this 12 klicks in sum

, and another 5 to remove them from my belt and return them to my backpack. Total: 15 clicks and 30 seconds total for all operations.

Wrong again. You need more clicks or moves since you have to insert the weapons or tools you replaced with jars into the toolbelt again.

Option 2: I fill the jars in the collector:
I'm not taking into account that the collector itself and its two mods require resources and crafting.
5 clicks to move the jars to the collector. Then I wait many minutes for them to fill (at least 10 minutes).

You might do that. Some other players don't. After the 5 clicks we drive away to do quests, mining, fighting, ... . When we get back the jars are filled.

Then we put them into the campfire to boil and drive away to do quests, mining, fighting. When we get back the water is clean. See how this is similar to the above?

From the description of how you want to use the dew collector should we assume you stare into the campfire for minutes and hours while the water is boiled?

I should also note that even with all my efforts, I can only fill 24 jars in one go. So, I need to wait 10 minutes each time for all the jars to fill.

I don't understand how this could be more convenient?

 

[theFlu]

You need more clicks or moves since you have to insert the weapons or tools you replaced with jars into the toolbelt again.

This is such a weird thing to optimize for; at best it's design-by-UI-nuisance. But, there's an "Equip" keybind; smoothest way to reset the entire belt is to click-thru everything off of it into inventory, then select->equip key through whatever you want to belt (they'll fill the first free slot).

The "clearing action" is plenty of clicks, but they're all "trivial"; counting clicks feel weird, when the clicks themselves are different... select-equip is a two handed operation, not exactly "a click", but not exactly two either ...

But seriously, if this level of analysis is required to show a difference ... there isn't one. I love optimizing stupid stuff way more than the next guy, but this difference is small enough to be ignored. One UI improvement and the difference disappears.

 

[Vaeliorin]

...this might be the weirdest hill to die on I have ever seen.

 

[meganoth]

This is such a weird thing to optimize for; at best it's design-by-UI-nuisance. But, there's an "Equip" keybind; smoothest way to reset the entire belt is to click-thru everything off of it into inventory, then select->equip key through whatever you want to belt (they'll fill the first free slot).

I usually use the keyboard equip and have used it in my own example of how I fill jars. But in the post you are quoting I was measuring the method BlackRabbitMsk seems to use

The "clearing action" is plenty of clicks, but they're all "trivial"; counting clicks feel weird, when the clicks themselves are different... select-equip is a two handed operation, not exactly "a click", but not exactly two either ...

But seriously, if this level of analysis is required to show a difference ... there isn't one. I love optimizing stupid stuff way more than the next guy, but this difference is small enough to be ignored. One UI improvement and the difference disappears.

I did the counts to quantify the effort of different methods with numbers. I could instead have simply said "Filling the jars with the dew collector **feels** less work or less annoying to me than filling the jars at a water place.
At least one other forum user, Ostentatio, seems to agree.

 

[Roland]

I have a well in my base next to my campfires. Once I fill my stacks of jars I don’t put them back into my inventory. I simply turn slightly to the right and put them straight into the campfire to start boiling.

I would never choose to use the dew collector until I have a filter for it. But I also don’t count clicks. I wonder what the total click comparison is for crafting a dew collector vs building a well/fireplace combo?

 

[Ostentatio]

I usually use the keyboard equip and have used it in my own example of how I fill jars...
... I did the counts to quantify the effort of different methods with numbers. I could instead have simply said "Filling the jars with the dew collector **feels** less work or less annoying to me than filling the jars at a water place.

Personally, I'd measure the comparison by time taken rather than through clicks or keystrokes - clicks and keystrokes are certainly one aspect of UI design and interaction streamlining, but time taken is usually the more felt element, depending on the phalangial agility of a given person (Also factor for the controller users, whom suffer the misfortune of joysticks. I sometimes play with someone who uses controller on PC for comfort reasons, some things are to be desired). An example of time-taken from other games might be dialogues or mini-cutscenes to go between UI elements, which aren't a factor in 7DTD

I don't mind clicks, what I mind are delays and sidetracks. I could rant about my most passionate example from the Monster Hunter series, but to keep it to 7DTD:

... After the 5 clicks we drive away to do quests, mining, fighting, ... . When we get back the jars are filled.

Then we put them into the campfire to boil and drive away to do quests, mining, fighting. When we get back the water is clean. See how this is similar to the above?

From the description of how you want to use the dew collector should we assume you stare into the campfire for minutes and hours while the water is boiled?

That's an example of what I mean by time efficiency. I could grab 40 jars, stare at a puddle for the 20-30 seconds it takes to fill them, then dunk them on the campfire and be on my way. That 20-30 seconds isn't much time, realistically - but it adds up every time it has to be done, and in a fraction of the time it takes to do each cycle, I can slam those jars into a dew collector and be doing other things for those 20-30 seconds, also subtracting the boiling-time once filters are involved. Why would I choose to stare at a puddle, cycling empty jars out of a hotbar for up to 30 seconds when I could invest resources into not having to do that, which is the very nature of automation?