There's been a fair bit of drama around here during the night. Sirens, lights and such. No sleep for me so the following is a mess. Reader beware heh.
That's a nice clear way of putting it, imo, and I agree.
While of course I have no idea what TFPs ultimate ideal stamina balance is, it's clear that whatever balance is found during the closed phase of recent new alpha coding and testing, stamina winds up being more punishing on release than where it winds up after it's been stable for a point release or so.
I expect I'm missing something in the overall, but these bits combined confuse me somewhat;
1) All Tools and Weapons have individual stamina costs. Obvious yes. Allows for Sledges to have very high cost vs a knife.
2) Player gathered materials, wood, stone, ores, etc., are basically worthless to sell to traders.
3) Zombie block damage is higher than it was (a16) so Wood or Flagstone horde bases are not really a viable option.
Assuming no exploits, player defended w low tech weapons, and not spending majority of week cutting wood for a vast spike field. I have watched MechanicalLens' first horde night vid, 7x7 solid cobblestone tower with bar overhangs, and zeds didn't break even one block. Mech had a number of pipebombs & molotovs and a T1 double barrel & T1 Pistol (not used) plus a number of zeds focused on the jump-gap access structure that allowed for some nice clustered pipebomb shots. And obviously Mech's a veteran player.
4) Point of 3 is that Cobblestone is bare minimum, and I'll cheery pick a couple bits from MMs recent post about his current game;
"I'm on day 12, another shotgun build. I have my 7x7 tower with r concrete up 4 layers and iron bars are almost finished"
<<I'm guessing he's forged a fair bit of Iron for Bars: takes 530 Iron Ingots for a single wide wrap of a 7x7>>
"I already made over 4k concrete mix all from loot!"
4a) Between getting enough iron (6000?) for several hundred ingots (assumption), and shoveling all the blue bags for Cobblestone (assumption, could be building w wet concrete), and shoveling all that POI bagged cement, plus either scrapping POI cobblestone for 4000 stone or mining it (I think he mentioned he hasn't done any stone mining?) also needed 4000 sand to make 4k concrete mix.
Could also be having good luck at Trader and buying most/all? cobblestone used. 1000 Cobblestone scraps down to 750 Stone but maybe it's more abundant in A19?
4b) Sry, got sidetracked with particulars. Point is MM has done a fair bit of at least shovel work. And he mentions how good the shotgun is, "once you get STR up there", so the stamina/food/drink cost may not be a major issue with a Strength build. Or could be his knowledge of what to drink & eat, and when, etc.
5) Regardless of character build template, they all need to be able to fight the horde, and have a chance to survive, during blood moons.
Even 'crazy' templates shouldn't result in guaranteed bm failure. Keep in mind recent discussions of being able to pick up and use any weapon.
6) Could easily disconnect 'mining' centric perks from Strength into their own tree, or into stand alone bits. Sure they make sense under Strength, but"Gameplay trumps realism".
7) The Building aspect of 7dtd seems to be a significant attraction for new players. I know building and a voxel world were the two biggest initial draws for me.
8.) Current meta of just using up a POI for a horde night base, while valid, doesn't seem like a thing to be encouraged, at least to me. So, (again my opinion) it would seem to be beneficial to support players building their own horde night bases.
9) Honest question: What's the downside if a player gathers a bunch of materials early game? Other than Flag/Cobble there's nothing you can do with them without the workstations. Along with crafting times there's also the Heat Map mechanic available to temper workstation useage.
For oldtimers think back a couple few alphas. How many working stations were in the average world? Wrenches? How long till you had/found a Forge, Workbench & a Mixer? Much less a Minibike? Or a dang Mining Helmet (argh!..)?
Downside 1) break many blocks, make mucho xp. fix=lower xp gained from breaking blocks
Downside 2) players can break into safes too easily. really...? anyone using a stone axe to crack a 5000 hp safe would chew it open if that's all they had
Downside 3) players won't burn through all their food. ..kinda got me there. can't recall what the food burn is in 18.4 for an all night pickaxe mining session. will say the food consumption for a 'normal' day out looting is pretty low, but I'm all guns, drugs (healing) & motorcycle.
Anyway. I'm not saying that day 1 we should be able to pick up any shovel/pick and just endlessly swing.
Don't want it to take 50 swings of a stoneaxe to break a 500 hp stone block, and exhaust stamina every 4 swings either.
Final bit: I'd prefer to see things balanced to fit TFPs goals food usage goals that also supported 'builders' _not_ spec'ing so heavily into Strength.
