PC A21 Learn by reading: a cool system, but super imbalanced.

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OgreSlayeR

New member
Day 1 on my first world I was able to make T5 Stone Spears by 20:00 and now just shy of 22:00 I can make a tier 1 Iron Spear...on day ONE.

I was able to achieve this just by going to every mail box I saw and raiding 1 Crack A Book in town.

Definitely I feel like magazines should be a bit less common across the board. I do like the idea of Crack A Book being more valuable and a good place to find them, but I don't think every book container there should give 3 mags like it does now... I think 1 is plenty.

This clearly is not progression I think they want cause as it is faster than A20. Things definitely need slowing down a lot imo.

Also Daring Adventurer is a pretty broken perk. I saw a streamer get an Autoshotgun around day 12 by just running quests with that maxed perk. I think it should be changed to NOT affect the trader stage like now.

 
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Be able to make a level 1 iron spear on day 1 isn't really faster progression.  I usually could make tier 5 iron tools on day 2 or 3 in A20.

 
What else can you craft at a high level?

So far it seems fairly balanced based on player choice. If you put a lot of points into spear, well then thats your reason why. I put 1 point in and I can craft a level 2 on day. I also did a couple quests and didnt just look for magazines. I'd say you were rewarded for your choice and play style accordingly.

 
OP totally missed the boat. The real imbalance is that if he actually wasted the materials to craft the iron spear he would suddenly have something with

a) less damage

b) less mod slots

c) something that can't be repaired with a rock

d) all of the above

 
Imagine this guy's surprise when he finds out a T1 Iron Spear is essentially useless compared to a T5 Stone one. The speed of progression might be off a bit but the actual progression being broken is a far worse issue if you ask me. Still, TPF will fix it. They always do. That is the reason for play testing. Until then, if you aren't the kind of person who is willing to deal with these issues then you should wait until stable. I'm not saying that you shouldn't make your voice heard. I'm just fairly confident that they will fix it. Because they always have in the past. So if you see a bug or something that doesn't seem right, don't get your pitchforks out. Just make your case and try to be chill about it.

 
CoolJ said:
Imagine this guy's surprise when he finds out a T1 Iron Spear is essentially useless compared to a T5 Stone one. The speed of progression might be off a bit but the actual progression being broken is a far worse issue if you ask me. Still, TPF will fix it. They always do. That is the reason for play testing. Until then, if you aren't the kind of person who is willing to deal with these issues then you should wait until stable. I'm not saying that you shouldn't make your voice heard. I'm just fairly confident that they will fix it. Because they always have in the past. So if you see a bug or something that doesn't seem right, don't get your pitchforks out. Just make your case and try to be chill about it.
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I mean yeah there's definitely a problem with the weapon progression as well, just this was just my Day 1 impression of the LBR system. Obviously in no case should a Q1 Iron Spear or whatever be worse than Q5 Stone one except maybe mod slots.

As far as the rest of your post it was pretty dumb and maybe you should take your own advice and be chill and quit the passive aggressive crap.

Obviously I am well aware it is experimental and things won't be perfect and I just shared my Day 1 impression in a calm way. I'm having a blast in A21 in any case and hopefully yes they will look at fixing this, but sharing feedback like this is exactly what they should want during this period.

 
It's all more or less random. I'm on day 3 and can already craft a workbench but, for example, I can only craft a Q4 wooden club and Q5 stone tools.

 
RipClaw said:
It's all more or less random. I'm on day 3 and can already craft a workbench but, for example, I can only craft a Q4 wooden club and Q5 stone tools.
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I mean that's not a big of difference, have you found a Crack-A-Book store and hit every mail box etc? That is what really seemed to get me a ton of mags fast and also taking the mag reward from the trader which gives a lot. I also did put 3 into Spears, but I didn't think it would be weighted that much based off what they said otherwise I have just godlike RNG.

Right now I'm on Day 4 and managed to craft a tier 4 Iron Spear and personally I thought the primitive tech would last a bit longer, but I also played the Undead Legacy mod some, so...

 
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I don't know how long it's been since a20 launched but it's been a long time, I don't think the ridiculous balance is excusable given the time they had to deal with it. I mean it's like -- totally 100% linear progression, it shouldn't be so silly.

 
OgreSlayeR said:
I mean that's not a big of difference, have you found a Crack-A-Book store and hit every mail box etc? That is what really seemed to get me a ton of mags fast and also taking the mag reward from the trader which gives a lot. I also did put 3 into Spears, but I didn't think it would be weighted that much based off what they said otherwise I have just godlike RNG.

Right now I'm on Day 4 and managed to craft a tier 4 Iron Spear and personally I thought the primitive tech would last a bit longer, but I also played the Undead Legacy mod some, so...
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It does seem to give a good boost.  At the beginning of day 3, I could make T1 Iron Spears though I'm still using my T5 Stone Spear because my stamina sucks.  I didn't check stats of them to see which is better but the stone spear may be better as some are saying here.  And that's with only 1 or 2 points in the spear perk.  The drop rate of magazines is high but at the same time, if you want crafting to progress fast enough to not be outpaced by looting, you almost need to have it progress this quickly.  I'm not sure that looting is slowed down so much that you aren't still going to find stuff faster than crafting it.  The main change there seems that you just find weapons, tools and armor in loot far less often.  So it might take longer depending on RNG to find something good but you'll still probably find something good before you can craft it if you loot a lot.

I tried a game where I had to run about 2.7km from starting spot to where everyone else was and part of that was across the snow.  I looted something like trash or a bag on my way and came up with a T5 Stone Ax and I hadn't even done anything except my starter quests and was on my way to turn in the initial find a trader that's part of the starter quest.  So it also definitely depends on where you are playing.  You'll never keep up with crafting if you start looting and/or questing in the higher biomes right away.

 
Riamus said:
It does seem to give a good boost.  At the beginning of day 3, I could make T1 Iron Spears though I'm still using my T5 Stone Spear because my stamina sucks.  I didn't check stats of them to see which is better but the stone spear may be better as some are saying here.  And that's with only 1 or 2 points in the spear perk.  The drop rate of magazines is high but at the same time, if you want crafting to progress fast enough to not be outpaced by looting, you almost need to have it progress this quickly.  I'm not sure that looting is slowed down so much that you aren't still going to find stuff faster than crafting it.  The main change there seems that you just find weapons, tools and armor in loot far less often.  So it might take longer depending on RNG to find something good but you'll still probably find something good before you can craft it if you loot a lot.

I tried a game where I had to run about 2.7km from starting spot to where everyone else was and part of that was across the snow.  I looted something like trash or a bag on my way and came up with a T5 Stone Ax and I hadn't even done anything except my starter quests and was on my way to turn in the initial find a trader that's part of the starter quest.  So it also definitely depends on where you are playing.  You'll never keep up with crafting if you start looting and/or questing in the higher biomes right away.
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Yeah, I mean I believe this whole overhaul is just something that is going to need a lot of feedback and it will be tricky to balance (especially crafting vs looting as you pointed out) because it is a bit subjective.

I personally want it to be more grindy with a slower progression of teching up through the tiers (longer time being in primitive tech then iron tech etc). I want it to be in a linear way (no nonsense like now with a Q5 Spear being better than a Q1 Iron). I can see how some other people wouldn't want it to be as grindy though, but there is a option to play on 300% loot for example though.

 
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OgreSlayeR said:
I mean that's not a big of difference, have you found a Crack-A-Book store and hit every mail box etc? That is what really seemed to get me a ton of mags fast and also taking the mag reward from the trader which gives a lot. I also did put 3 into Spears, but I didn't think it would be weighted that much based off what they said otherwise I have just godlike RNG.
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I found a Crack a Book but haven't looted it yet. I have looted some mailboxes and newspaper dispensers but not many of them. I got most of the magazines from quest rewards and from various loot containers.

I currently have 3 points in Pummel Pete, one point in Advanced Engineering and one point in Miner 69s. I still have to observe how much the perks affect which magazines I find. The magazine bundles contain random magazines. So you have to exclude those.

OgreSlayeR said:
Yeah, I mean I believe this whole overhaul is just something that is going to need a lot of feedback and it will be tricky to balance (especially crafting vs looting as you pointed out) because it is a bit subjective.
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Balancing all this for the whole range of possible play styles is basically impossible.

It's like trying to perfectly synchronize several mechanical watches. You can tune the movements as much as you want but after a few days the clocks will drift apart noticeably.

 
RipClaw said:
It's all more or less random.
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This.

When watching streamers on the weekend I thought it might be cool and refreshing new thing to do things. But when I started playing it just didn't feel good for me having basically randomized progression in the game. Plus finding books was fun and exciting before, now it's becoming a chore as they are everywhere and you just got to read them to progress.

 
boban said:
This.

When watching streamers on the weekend I thought it might be cool and refreshing new thing to do things. But when I started playing it just didn't feel good for me having basically randomized progression in the game. Plus finding books was fun and exciting before, now it's becoming a chore as they are everywhere and you just got to read them to progress.
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Yes there is kind of magazine inflation now that`s right, but if you was lucky in previous version (or just power loot mail chests in cities in higher tier loot grade like snowy biome) you reached endgame also very fast. So i understand and can live with what they did, also finding tons of already read magazines wasn`t fun too. Not played enough to give final feedback to this new mechanic, but the slower progression feels better now, due to the fact that you can have some things leveled out very fast

 
But you have tons of letter boxes there? Normally i got 3 magazines in one of them and they aren`t guarded so run through the city, empty them and check what you got.

 
Yeah the magazines might be just a little bit too common. It is trivially easy to be past primitive tools before horde night.
I think first horde night you should have primitive gear.

Not sure what TFP's stance on progression speed is though tbh,

 
Lokeus said:
Yes there is kind of magazine inflation now that`s right, but if you was lucky in previous version (or just power loot mail chests in cities in higher tier loot grade like snowy biome) you reached endgame also very fast.
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Yea, I got back to 7d2d after quite a while (A18?) just couple of weeks ago. Vanilla progression, even when lowering xp amount felt way too fast, even with xp set to 25%. This new system makes it a bit slower, but RNG depended which I don't like. I just don't like the volume of it. Even after few hours of A21 I already trained my fingers to just automatically read all while looting, without even looking at what I read (i.e., it becomes meaningless).

I still miss the A16.4 days of learning by doing. But tbh, it's just me whining. I am not the target for TFP with my money already spent and having 1.7k hours in game. Good we have mods and can go back to any version though! I've just 'upgraded' to 16.4.

 
Gronal said:
Yeah the magazines might be just a little bit too common. It is trivially easy to be past primitive tools before horde night.
I think first horde night you should have primitive gear.

Not sure what TFP's stance on progression speed is though tbh,
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My thinking is the first week up to Day 7 you should just have primitive gear generally then somewhere in the second week you could get up to the iron tier of stuff and then so on up to steel stuff on the third week or later.  I had a feeling it would work like that , but I am currently on Day 5 now and able to craft a Q1 Steel Spear (which is of course worse than the Q5 Iron one I have) ...

 
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boban said:
Yea, I got back to 7d2d after quite a while (A18?) just couple of weeks ago. Vanilla progression, even when lowering xp amount felt way too fast, even with xp set to 25%. This new system makes it a bit slower, but RNG depended which I don't like. I just don't like the volume of it. Even after few hours of A21 I already trained my fingers to just automatically read all while looting, without even looking at what I read (i.e., it becomes meaningless).

I still miss the A16.4 days of learning by doing. But tbh, it's just me whining. I am not the target for TFP with my money already spent and having 1.7k hours in game. Good we have mods and can go back to any version though! I've just 'upgraded' to 16.4.
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To be honest i missed out 16.4, but hearing about it the solution could be super simple, doesn`t it? You progress by doing the things in a slow manner. When you reached point x you need to read and now understand a specific type of magazine to progress further. by this you achieve higher tiers in this crafting or weapon category. This would be perfect ... So the specific magazine can be found earlier but yourself have to be able to understand it, otherwise you cannot make use of it in a too early point of the game. This is great. TFP? Just do it this way, it will be awesome, i promise 😁

 
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