PC Bone, bone, give me BONES!

I harvest every carcass on the roads starting Day 1. I stay on the roads so I can harvest as many bones as possible, even though I will not need them for a while. Because when I do need them, I need a lot! :)

It reminds me of the quote from the movie Dune: "Whoever controls the glue, controls the universe... the glue must flow".

I think that's what the emperor said. :)

 
Now that fertilizer doesn't spawn in coffins, why not put a bunch of bones in there to help with the balance? I've looted a bunch of funeral homes and desecrated many cemeteries expecting to find the bone motherload and I don't think I've found as much as a finger.

I guess you could say the bodies rose from the dead, which is sort of implied by the spawns in the open graves, but since I'm not fighting skeletons there must still be bones in the old graves.

 
According to the patchnotes the trader now sell glue. This might help a little.
Someone suggested that it would be nice to introduce something like pine tree sap as replacement for bones to craft glue. It should not be hard to add it to the game.

I think I create a little modlet to test if it reasonable.
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That would be a cool way to make flaming ammo.

 
I'm not a fan of multiple ways to craft the same thing, it clutters up the recipe menu and why? If unbalanced then add more bones, not make some weird way to achieve the same thing. Then its like hey how do you get glue and the noob gets 2 different answers. Confusing.
I'm swimming in glue but I kill every animal I see with my sniper build. I changed it to 1 bone for 1 glue in 17.1 so you guys will have twice the glue as before, it should be plenty.
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I suggested it... but as a mod.

Just wanted to comment here on this though. I fully understand not adding multiple recipes to craft the same thing because it makes balancing things more difficult. It should just end right there. It is the reason why I even suggested it as a mod and not a game feature. I don't agree with the noob comment as a reason to not add things in the game though. If something so trivial as an item having two possible recipes is confusing to someone, they wouldn't have the intelligence to even know what a recipe is. If that person got 2 different answers, and not the real one stating two recipes, then we now have three morons. So now, we have a stupid noob, and apparently people who aren't noobs are still stupid. I sure hope this isn't the basis behind simplifying things in game because it is and has been an ongoing trend lately to hold the hands of gamers... and then we wonder why games are feeling so flat and guided lately.

2 + 2 = 4 and the day I found out that 1 + 3 ALSO equals 4... man, that blew my mind. I was never the same.

 
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I'm not a fan of multiple ways to craft the same thing, it clutters up the recipe menu and why? If unbalanced then add more bones, not make some weird way to achieve the same thing. Then its like hey how do you get glue and the noob gets 2 different answers. Confusing.
I'm swimming in glue but I kill every animal I see with my sniper build. I changed it to 1 bone for 1 glue in 17.1 so you guys will have twice the glue as before, it should be plenty.
Click to expand...

Kinda wondering how many animals you're running across and what you're skinning them with.

Up to day 14 I have run into 7 animals (deer/boar/wolf), 2 rabbits, and a snake. I'm far from swimming in bones. Though yeah, 1 bone per 1 glue would be a huge help for me personally. But then again I'm not making bullets yet either.

 
coudnt you just make the zombie corpses be harvestable, like animals and dogs? take your hunting knife after them and you would get rotten meat and some bones. right now i think they have like 1000hp and you don't get any harvestable items like you do off dogs and animals. i could be wrong on this, but i have tried harvesting them and havent gotten a thing, but when a dog horde shows up, kill them and its out there with a knife immediately getting those bones.

 
I suggested it... but as a mod.Just wanted to comment here on this though. I fully understand not adding multiple recipes to craft the same thing because it makes balancing things more difficult. It should just end right there. It is the reason why I even suggested it as a mod and not a game feature. I don't agree with the noob comment as a reason to not add things in the game though. If something so trivial as an item having two possible recipes is confusing to someone, they wouldn't have the intelligence to even know what a recipe is. If that person got 2 different answers, and not the real one stating two recipes, then we now have three morons. So now, we have a stupid noob, and apparently people who aren't noobs are still stupid. I sure hope this isn't the basis behind simplifying things in game because it is and has been an ongoing trend lately to hold the hands of gamers... and then we wonder why games are feeling so flat and guided lately.

2 + 2 = 4 and the day I found out that 1 + 3 ALSO equals 4... man, that blew my mind. I was never the same.
Click to expand...
Funny story...I'm a math teacher and I taught my students the formula for finding the volume of a cylinder. We had already covered Prisms and Cylinders were very similar with just the inclusion of pi being the difference. After I taught them cylinders they wanted to use pi to find the volume of all shapes. They put pi into the formula for Prisms even though we hadn't used it for Prisms in the past and when we went on to Pyramids they tried to put pi into those as well.

There may well be many ways to add to 4 but human nature is to prefer one way and one way only and as soon as you introduce variations it really does complicate things.

 
Oh, are you saying different ingredient for same item is more confusing,

than same ingredient recipe on different workstation, madmole? (Current glue)

This might off topic, but can't defy.

 
I know as a business model you should cater, but I'm not a fan of dumbing the game down.

There should be multiple ways to achieve a goal. That's just life. Choices are good imo.

 
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I'm not a fan of multiple ways to craft the same thing, it clutters up the recipe menu and why? If unbalanced then add more bones, not make some weird way to achieve the same thing. Then its like hey how do you get glue and the noob gets 2 different answers. Confusing.
I'm swimming in glue but I kill every animal I see with my sniper build. I changed it to 1 bone for 1 glue in 17.1 so you guys will have twice the glue as before, it should be plenty.
Click to expand...
I can't speak to the abundance of glue in 17.1 yet. But I will say that, while maintaining a one-recipe-per-product rule is a nice ideal, it causes problems in practice. In particular, it's annoying that you can't used boiled water in chemistry station recipes. You have to use dirty water, and whether or not that's a real hardship, it's not intuitive.

I also think multiple paths to the same goal is a big part of the survival game feel. Surviving means taking what life gives you, and making it work. If that means collecting sap from pine trees one game, and boiling bones in another game, I'd view that as similar to hunting a rabbit one game and picking wild corn in another game. That is, another variation that makes your survivor story different on different playthroughs.

Not that I think tree sap is the ideal solution or necessarily needed; it would be a new item, new art, new thing to balance, etc. But I think multiple recipes can have their uses, in general.

 
Funny story...I'm a math teacher and I taught my students the formula for finding the volume of a cylinder. We had already covered Prisms and Cylinders were very similar with just the inclusion of pi being the difference. After I taught them cylinders they wanted to use pi to find the volume of all shapes. They put pi into the formula for Prisms even though we hadn't used it for Prisms in the past and when we went on to Pyramids they tried to put pi into those as well.
There may well be many ways to add to 4 but human nature is to prefer one way and one way only and as soon as you introduce variations it really does complicate things.
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Understood, but I compare a recipe with basic addition. You are trying to compare it to pre-calculus.

 
I'm not a fan of multiple ways to craft the same thing, it clutters up the recipe menu and why? If unbalanced then add more bones, not make some weird way to achieve the same thing. Then its like hey how do you get glue and the noob gets 2 different answers. Confusing.
I'm swimming in glue but I kill every animal I see with my sniper build. I changed it to 1 bone for 1 glue in 17.1 so you guys will have twice the glue as before, it should be plenty.
Click to expand...
Personally, I like having more ways of crafting an item.

 
I'm not a fan of multiple ways to craft the same thing, it clutters up the recipe menu and why? If unbalanced then add more bones, not make some weird way to achieve the same thing. Then its like hey how do you get glue and the noob gets 2 different answers. Confusing.
Click to expand...
IKR?

You should get rid of all the different vegetables, meats, and canned foods and just replace them with an object called "food."

You should also get rid of the different melee and ranged weapons, and just have something called "weapon."

While your at it, you really don't need stone, iron, and steel for harvesting tools - no more axes, shovels, or pickaxes - just "tools" will keep the slow lane kids from hurting themselves by overthinking things.

Why have multiple ways to accomplish (aka craft) something? Because it adds to the overall problem solving experience. Because it increases the players ability to make meaningful choices within the game. Because it widens and deepens the immersive experience.

You're making a mistake by simplifying game concepts into a single path to completion.

-A

 
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IKR?
You should get rid of all the different vegetables, meats, and canned foods and just replace them with an object called "food."

You should also get rid of the different melee and ranged weapons, and just have something called "weapon."

While your at it, you really don't need stone, iron, and steel for harvesting tools - no more axes, shovels, or pickaxes - just "tools" will keep the slow lane kids from hurting themselves by overthinking things.

Why have multiple ways to accomplish (aka craft) something? Because it adds to the overall problem solving experience. Because it increases the players ability to make meaningful choices within the game. Because it widens and deepens the immersive experience.

You're making a mistake by simplifying game concepts into a single path to completion.

-A
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Please stop giving them ideas.

And how are you getting words like "choices" and "complicated" past the bad words filter here?

 
Funny story...I'm a math teacher and I taught my students the formula for finding the volume of a cylinder. We had already covered Prisms and Cylinders were very similar with just the inclusion of pi being the difference. After I taught them cylinders they wanted to use pi to find the volume of all shapes. They put pi into the formula for Prisms even though we hadn't used it for Prisms in the past and when we went on to Pyramids they tried to put pi into those as well.
There may well be many ways to add to 4 but human nature is to prefer one way and one way only and as soon as you introduce variations it really does complicate things.
Click to expand...
Oh, fellow collegue :D Not so sure, back when I was still teaching, students did that few times until they understood what pi is and why it was used..

But back to the topic:

You can't really say that variation is complicated/bad etc.

Variation in recipes,where you have 5-6 ingredients for an item, and only 1 actually varies, that is bad.

But to introduce completely new way of getting that item, be it through different workstation(you guys did this with some recipes campfire/chem station), or through using completely new set of ingredients is just giving players a choice to see what works for them.

Some player might not have a chem station and he would use campfire, other would use chem station for cheaper ingredient count or lower crafting time etc.

Don't get me wrong, not trying to be rude, but I don't understand double standards in this case. Choices are always good in survival type games, and implementation of choices is what makes game great or not.

 
But to introduce completely new way of getting that item, be it through different workstation(you guys did this with some recipes campfire/chem station), or through using completely new set of ingredients is just giving players a choice to see what works for them
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Right. My thought behind the tree sap was this. A builder needing glue would now have a reasonable way to get it, not just the people making an effort to gather bones. Take that sap, mix it with some plant fibers and coal... or perhaps even a new item like pitch that comes from campfires and forges. I would do this IRL well before attempting to grind down bones, so it's not an absurd idea.

 
Right. My thought behind the tree sap was this. A builder needing glue would now have a reasonable way to get it, not just the people making an effort to gather bones. Take that sap, mix it with some plant fibers and coal... or perhaps even a new item like pitch that comes from campfires and forges. I would do this IRL well before attempting to grind down bones, so it's not an absurd idea.
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Its a much better idea than making the chem station recipe for glue useless now. if you can make glue in the campfire with no beaker why are you ever going to make it in the chem station.

Used to be for efficiency but its all the same now. May as well remove it from the chem station. Band aid fixes. This is the kind of thing that happens when you don't try to foresee the future issue of a game change like that.

Or add bones to birds nests like i did for my modlet. But that sap idea is pretty damn good.

 
I'm not a fan of multiple ways to craft the same thing, it clutters up the recipe menu and why? If unbalanced then add more bones, not make some weird way to achieve the same thing. Then its like hey how do you get glue and the noob gets 2 different answers. Confusing.
I'm swimming in glue but I kill every animal I see with my sniper build. I changed it to 1 bone for 1 glue in 17.1 so you guys will have twice the glue as before, it should be plenty.
Click to expand...
I'm getting the impression that when you played Skyrim or any of the other Elderscroll games, you didn't spend all that much time in doing alchemy or the like areas?

This isn't a dig at you in any way, because everyone has different things they like and excel at, and this just doesn't seem like an area you are really into.

If the above is even remotely close: I don't think you should focus on the recipe area of the game. You obviously have a strong artistic and creative flair, and I think you and the game would be better served if you embraced it more.

Maybe, turn your focus on decorating biomes, mess with their distributions, amounts and so on, help beatify your world in other ways, instead of needing to make new textures/UV's and so on.

You made a quest line mod in the past for one of the elderscoll games, so why not start putting together a couple/few kick-ass quest chains we can do? It doesn't always need to be just about getting the loot, but could also start expanding the lore of the world you are putting together, or telling a survivor story that failed/succeeded etc,.

You could also take a page out of the scroll games, and have the recipe system just not tell you how to make everything but only the basic stuff, and let the players figure it out with the alternate methods.

Edit: Can't be complicated to a noob if they don't need to know about it, or need it, to complete the game to a satisfactory point ;)

 
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