Hello,
I just registered in to give my feedback about a18. I'm a new player basically, starting with a18. There is a few points which come in mind about balancing (remember that only apply to singleplayer and to build 18.2, since i don't play multiplayer):
- The loot, i basically love the hunt for books, included the random part, but there some issue with it (at least in my opinion), this is far from beeing balanced, in a play i made it to level 40 kind of, and i actually never find that crucible, despite the hunting of any book poi and the other bookcase around other poi. I don't think this is intented especially when on another game i found the crucible recipe in the second poi. Still in that game, i did not found the forge recipe until the level 30.
On another point of the looting, the tools, i did a few start game, and just by walking around the first town i found, and looting vehicles i will often ends up with some good tools (even without lucky looter), and sometimes even steel tools, for example one game, steel sledgehammer first vehicles.
- Vehicles, here again, the rng feels off, maybe we need a leveling based rng with a better chance to loot progression-vehicles items when we levelup, because by hunting specifically for vehicles part, i end up having the motorbike before having the bicycle. It's not that i don't like it, but i think you should not get the motorbike until you reach a certain level, this allow to have better chance early game to find at least the bicycle.
- I took a look around the differents classes that you can specialized on, in particular the int build, it feels useless in some way, yes you can have forge - vehicles - chemistry early, but other than that it does not have good bonus (imo) to be worst playing with (i will prefer go for hunting books and have a stronger character even if the recipes cost more resources).
- Not sure if this is a bug or not, but i actually never found baseball bat parts (other than trader).
- Guns (looting again), i was able to found a lot of guns everywhere i go, especially pistol, but in my play i actually found like 1 shotgun level 1 (other than trader of course), and compare to other guns, again, looks off, either we need to find less other guns, or more shotguns (imo).
Other than the looting part, the game looks good, you can do a lot of differents stuff, one thing is kind of limiting about the ability to play the way you want in my opinion, is the rng a little bit off about must-have progression items, which actually limit you to loot endlessly to have the luck to found the forge, worbench, chemistry or crucible recipe, basically i got a 4x4 (full) and a gyro part before going to steel age, and at some point i just stop doing poi because it was not like i want to do some poi, but i need it to progress to steel (only progression-items are in concerns here, the totally random is great about mods and all other stuff).
Edit: i forgot to mention, one thing is missing from the crafting part, you don't actually see the general stats about what you are about to craft, base melee damage, resistance, ligth armor rating, and so on. This means you have to craft an item to actually see the stats, i know there is some rng about the stats too, but the base statistics should be display before crafting (imo).