PC Alternatives to the Character Progression System

[Khulkhuum]

If you could mod perk cost based of a standard value + some variable, someone will surely make a mod out of it. Also, i envision there would be a "neutral" class, where you have no special perk and cost is all the same in every perk tree. This is how most games with starting classes do things, you have one that lets the player experience the game without any additional detriments nor bonuses.

Then again, i was thinking many things would be cool to be modded, yet some of these will never be possible due to how the game is...

Also, like the sanity + negative perk idea

 

[Katitof]

In the A18 Dev Diary somewhere, Madmole said that he liked the ability of spending points to increase your character's strength over time because varying character builds drastically increases replayability. However, there are a lot of potential problems that prop up if this is the main thing giving the game variation, such as the shifting of player priorities from "survival" to "progression", or leading to excessive gamestage bloat.

Not really.

Survival and progression are connected since forever.

You spec into what you believe you need most.

Different people prioritize different things, therfore they'll have different specs, especially in A18, where crafting isn't locked exclusively behind int(which is amazingly good change).

If you are experiencing "excessive gamestage bloat" its because you don't play the game, but grind levels with disregard to what you are prepared for and you will have harder time, but don't worry, dying frequently will lower GS for you.

 

[RestInPieces]

Introduce a Sanity meter!

+666

Not really.Survival and progression are connected since forever.

You spec into what you believe you need most.

Different people prioritize different things, therfore they'll have different specs, especially in A18, where crafting isn't locked exclusively behind int(which is amazingly good change).

If you are experiencing "excessive gamestage bloat" its because you don't play the game, but grind levels with disregard to what you are prepared for and you will have harder time, but don't worry, dying frequently will lower GS for you.

Of course you grind levels since you are encouraged to grind levels. You can't tell everyone not to, or to play the game "normally", while they are encouraged to do it by the game itself. It definitely didn't use to be like that.

 

[A Nice Cup of Tea]

Ahhh... kiss...
If only the game kept the character progression tied to world exploration, things you find, good old times. Find a better axe, chop tree faster. Days when finding a better gun part made you happy. Getting a schematic which was rare was an event. Finally reaching the city at 0.0 was actually some sort of an endgame which could have been built upon.

Those were the days. ~(*I did not manage to find another game to play yet which would excite me as much as what this game used to be)

That's kind of like the Terraria model of progression.

For those who don't know, in Terraria character progression is almost entirely loot based. The only differences between a starting character and an end-game character are:

1) The end-game character has more health (& mana, since there's magic in the game) - but this is still indirectly loot based because raising these is done by consuming items that you've found (in the case of health) or crafted from found items (in the case of mana).

2) The end-game character has much, much, better equipment - from a combination of found items, crafted items, and trader-bought items.

However, for this type of progression to work it has to be very carefully managed. Terraria does it masterfully - better than any other game I know - by having an extremely well designed set of gates in the game.

In Terraria's case, these are mostly based around boss battles. Defeating a particular boss will either have the boss drop materials that you can use to craft items that let you get to better content or have the defeat of the boss be the trigger for a new type of enemy spawning. The equivalent for 7 Days to Die would probably be tied to the questing system rather than bosses. Maybe there's certain items that only drop from radiated zombies, but radiated zombies don't start appearing till you've done a particular quest. Maybe the only way to acquire a Chemistry Station is to get it as a quest reward from a particular quest. Maybe there are items that the trader will only sell you after you've completed a particular quest. And so on.

And the balance comes in by having "gamestage" a measure of how far along the progression of special quests you've progressed.

Basically, you never go up levels and get better skills; but equally the zombies don't get harder over time. Instead you get access to better equipment as you progress through a series of special quests and the difficulty of the zombies you face increases on your progression through that same series of quests.

 

[Shelgeyr]

...The equivalent for 7 Days to Die would probably be tied to the questing system rather than bosses. Maybe there's certain items that only drop from radiated zombies, but radiated zombies don't start appearing till you've done a particular quest. Maybe the only way to acquire a Chemistry Station is to get it as a quest reward from a particular quest. Maybe there are items that the trader will only sell you after you've completed a particular quest. And so on.

And the balance comes in by having "gamestage" a measure of how far along the progression of special quests you've progressed.

Basically, you never go up levels and get better skills; but equally the zombies don't get harder over time. Instead you get access to better equipment as you progress through a series of special quests and the difficulty of the zombies you face increases on your progression through that same series of quests.

I love this idea. Not least because it would eliminate the possibility of accidentally progressing the Gamestage beyond your ability to handle the resulting combat encounters.

 

[Dimpy]

Introduce a Sanity meter!
Kill a lot of zombies?

Frequently find yourself with dysentery?

Almost drown?

Sneaking a bit too often?

Getting really, really run-down?

You might be a candidate for a psychological disorder! (negative perk)

Such as....

Fear of Canned food!

Terror at the sight of canines!

Insomnia!

Paranoia...the kind where you just can't hold your breath and remain still for even one more second and you bolt out from the relative safety of the bushes you were in straight into a feral policeman.

Hatred of motorbikes...big and small.

Forgetfulness...you could have SWORN that you'd loaded your shotgun just a minute ago!

Swimming?...I. don't. think. so.

Fundamentalist Vegan. You'd rather stave than eat Bambi!

Kitten With a Whip. There's no kittens, and no whips, but ■■■■ do you NEED to wear leather.

The shakes! Remember when you could use the Chemistry station with no chance of failure?....sure you do.

Etc.

-Morloc

YES. A great way to counteract the "progression" part of "interesting and meaningful character progression" is to add "interesting and meaningful character regression" into the mix too. The system you describe sounds a lot like how Darkest Dungeon did it, randomly assigning negative quirks.

There are quite a few ways to do negative perks, and another one of them was addressed in this thread. Basically, when you get a malady that reduces your attributes, the attributes can go to zero or even negative, and you get perks that represent inversions of the attribute's perk.

 

[Dimpy]

If you are experiencing "excessive gamestage bloat" its because you don't play the game, but grind levels with disregard to what you are prepared for and you will have harder time, but don't worry, dying frequently will lower GS for you.

When I said "excessive gamestage bloat", I wasn't talking about how grinding leads be being underequipped. I was talking about how in the lategame, you become so strong that the regular zombies stop being a threat, and so in order to keep the challenge up, the game has to spam irradiated ferals and cops, which is something people on the forums have complained about. I was thinking, why not reduce the net progression the player goes through? That would help keep normal zombies as part of the game.

Not really.Survival and progression are connected since forever.

You spec into what you believe you need most.

Different people prioritize different things, therfore they'll have different specs, especially in A18, where crafting isn't locked exclusively behind int(which is amazingly good change).

Of course you grind levels since you are encouraged to grind levels. You can't tell everyone not to, or to play the game "normally", while they are encouraged to do it by the game itself. It definitely didn't use to be like that.

I disagree. If survival is the thing you care about, the optimal strategy is to avoid unnecessary xp-generating activities. I try to loot POIs while killing the fewest number of zombies possible because when I kill them, it attracts stronger zombies.

 

[AtomicUs5000]

I disagree. If survival is the thing you care about, the optimal strategy is to avoid unnecessary xp-generating activities. I try to loot POIs while killing the fewest number of zombies possible because when I kill them, it attracts stronger zombies.

Avoiding XP is the best strategy if you can manage patience with not getting perks. I try my best the first 2 weeks. At some point the days alive would still keep bumping up the gamestage, but balancing it keeps things in check.

I don’t like this btw. I think it shows that something isn’t right with how it’s all designed. It goes against the natural order of gaming.

 

[Dimpy]

Avoiding XP is the best strategy if you can manage patience with not getting perks. I try my best the first 2 weeks. At some point the days alive would still keep bumping up the gamestage, but balancing it keeps things in check.I don’t like this btw. I think it shows that something isn’t right with how it’s all designed. It goes against the natural order of gaming.

Hence the disconnect between "survivial" and "progression".

 

[hotpoon]

In a game like 7dtd i would rather have access to all the perks and levels over time than "make a build"
After all, this game is a survival game long before its an RPG and the main focus of the game is to build a base and defeat the horde.

Same. I love RPGs but this game is not a good example of an RPG. I hope the pimps decide to play to its strengths as a survival/crafting/tower defense hybrid.

 

[RestInPieces]

I disagree. If survival is the thing you care about, the optimal strategy is to avoid unnecessary xp-generating activities. I try to loot POIs while killing the fewest number of zombies possible because when I kill them, it attracts stronger zombies.

With that line of thought you can stay at level x (which could be 1 or 10 doesn't matter) forever wandering around doing nothing surviving optimally. Barely anyone will do that. Not to mention, why would anyone want to follow the optimal survival strategy in a game that barely penalize death? But it doesn't even matter when surviving is a matter of pressing shift for a few seconds every once in a while atm.

Any player will realistically go for the perks, progress in the game, eat through content. And yes it's counter-intuitive - no, terrible, to incentivize the player to progress, while they are punished by the GS at the same time. All that does it making player progression as a concept matter less. Level scaling is the laziest and most artificial way to "keep things challenging".

In a few less scrambled words, survival and progression must be one and the same.

 

[Dimpy]

With that line of thought you can stay at level x (which could be 1 or 10 doesn't matter) forever wandering around doing nothing surviving optimally. Barely anyone will do that. Not to mention, why would anyone want to follow the optimal survival strategy in a game that barely penalize death? But it doesn't even matter when surviving is a matter of pressing shift for a few seconds every once in a while atm.

You can't stay at the same level because doing most things (like finding food, defending yourself against zombies, getting building mats) generates xp, and because gamestage increases based on time anyway.

If survival is the number 1 priority, death IS the penalty.

Any player will realistically go for the perks, progress in the game, eat through content.

I mean, it's not like the perk system is actually withholding that much content. Most of the perks are just % bonus to certain things. The int tree adds a lot of crafting recipies, but most of them are either just stat-boosted equivalents of other things, or scavengeable. The biggest things I can think of that are held back are the electricity system and the vehicles. That being said, the perks do look shiny and cool, and it's really tempting to try out as many as possible as quickly as possible.

 

[RestInPieces]

You can't stay at the same level because doing most things (like finding food, defending yourself against zombies, getting building mats) generates xp, and because gamestage increases based on time anyway. If survival is the number 1 priority, death IS the penalty.

No, gamestage doesn't increase based on time. Gamestage = your level + days survived which is capped at your level value * difficulty multiplier. Meaning if you are level 3 for example, GS will never go above 6.

What does death even include, other than it being an ominous-sounding word? If death carries no consequence then survival will never be "the number one priority". You can always avoid zombies, you don't have to defend against them.

I mean, it's not like the perk system is actually withholding that much content. Most of the perks are just % bonus to certain things. The int tree adds a lot of crafting recipies, but most of them are either just stat-boosted equivalents of other things, or scavengeable. The biggest things I can think of that are held back are the electricity system and the vehicles. That being said, the perks do look shiny and cool, and it's really tempting to try out as many as possible as quickly as possible.

Any player will realistically go for the perks

Your average player won't ignore the game's rpg elements and say "oh who cares about the perks, they are not actually withholding that much content" and just shrug if off. It is unrealistic to think so, for both new and old players. They will obviously want to get them, even if they are non-int perks that don't offer any content. As you said, they are "tempting" because they are meant to be tempting - and that's ok, as long as the game forces a pace by various means e.g. by time being a valuable resource, failing to survive being more impactful, balanced xp sources etc etc.

 

[Shelgeyr]

What does death even include, other than it being an ominous-sounding word? If death carries no consequence then survival will never be "the number one priority". You can always avoid zombies, you don't have to defend against them.

This is why I usually play by YDYD rules. I die, I scrap the save and start a new one.

 

[RestInPieces]

This is why I usually play by YDYD rules. I die, I scrap the save and start a new one.

It would be even better if we didn't have to set self-imposed rules for such things but were able to choose them as an option - and to also have an mp solution for those who want make death more consequential, especially something in-between the extremes of no consequences and deleting the save/character.