Yeah, I'm a really visual person. I've long held that I can play old games and games with bad graphics as long as they are consistent in what they're trying to portray (and have good gameplay and story). So when I see the steel knuckles, I think "This thing can harvest animals because of the knives on the knuckles". Then when I see the stone spear, I'm like "This thing should harvest animals really really well" because (for anyone who knows about skinning or preparing animal meats) spears like the stone spear tip were used by ancient civilizations for exactly this purpose. Longish, flat, and jagged edged blades. It's also why the stone axe makes sense in this purpose. You could do it with a fireman axe, but it would be more difficult since the weight is off and the hand motion you're going for are relatively short, quick, straight rubbing strokes, whereas a fireman axe is weighted for breaking through walls and doors and such to get at trapped people to save them.
I'm not sure "balance trumps reason" is always a good policy, though. Not to mention nothing is perfectly balanced anyway.I mean, we could argue that the HUNTING KNIFE should be the best animal harvesting weapon in the game, meaning even players using machetes would need to carry a hunting knife on their person for maximum efficiency when hunting. Indeed, the machete's shape and weight would actually make it a poor skinning tool because the length. With the spear, you could hold it just below the head and make your strokes, while with the machete, you're doing so with a much shorter lever arm and a much longer cutting edge, which would make it less useful for that, I'd think. Not to mention, as a person that likes the hunting knife's attack animation better (for some reason, it's WAY easier for me to get headshots with, even though it's a narrow collision box, because it's straight down the middle of my screen unlike the machete), I honestly wouldn't mind this all that much...
Same with axes. When my eyes see that steel axe, I would THINK that would be the most damaging weapon in the game. Think about getting hit with any of the game's weapons and the only one that comes close to the raw damage the steel axe would do would be the steel sledgehammer. The steel axe has the steel sledgehammer's weight (or close to it), with not one but THREE cutting edges at slightly different insets added to it. This should cause TREMENDOUS physical damage to anything it hits, first from the blunt force of weight, which would be similar to the steel sledgehammer's, but then from the slash, since no amount of zombie flesh is going to stop that much momentum with a bladed edge until it cuts its way out the other side of whatever limb or area it hits. And considering that war axes were a more commonly used weapon than warhammers, complete with warriors training in their use specifically for combat, I think that's all the reason we need to see it deserves its own skill line.
I do wish we had more Swiss army knives. Swiss army knives are fun in games, but developers avoid them like the plague. Trading versatility for a bit of power.
And yeah, "group friendly" skill as in "things you can do for the group". Every now and then I'll play a world with up to 4 friends (VERY rarely 5), and we tend to run into the problem that one or two people in the group feel kind of worthless to the group if we each choose a single skill line to go down. And the person that picks Intellect is the most valuable to the group, but tends to feel like they have no good combat capability because batons and turrets aren't really like most of the other weapon systems in the game.
But, as I said, I'm not sure the solution other than maybe moving medicine to Fortitude and gardening to Agility or something...
We don't have problems like this in our MP group. Everyone is valuable when he brings home new schematics or books for other players (we usually allot book series to specific players so a player has first pick on "his" books). Or weapons/armor/mods that someone else needs.
The INT player can be invaluable on horde night if his turrets are used well. But thats beside the point. The game has a diversity in its classes that in my opinion helps replayability. Going into INT feels different than going into agility, whether in SP or in MP.
The old way was horrible in my opinion: After a horde night looting all the bags took ages.
And a lot of players farmed zombies for that loot (they turned on lots of camp fires and forges to get screamers). Especially the latter was the reason the zombie loots bags got removed AFAIK.
That people would lose loot was never a reason. On the contrary, the decomposition was short to lure reckless players to jump down and try to loot during the horde night.
