It is the way in which you continually (not just in this thread) characterize doing anything other than the most effective/easiest way to do things. I just don't agree that players must choose the optimal choice or they're not really playing.
You are continually misreading me, in this thread you challenged me for using "faffing about" and "gimping yourself". Your definition of "Faffing about" was:
Meanwhile faffing about has always been a fun and rewarding way to play for those who can make the choice to do it.
Guess what, that's exactly the sense I was using it, in this thread. To faff about, to goof around, to have fun. The game has plenty of room for that outside of "optimal".
You are reading it like I'm saying "anything else is wrong", while I'm not. I'm not. While I'm not, there's still optimal and suboptimal. They're still things, even if I'm not saying suboptimal is wrong.
"Gimping" was used to specifically refer to being offered a choice:
1) "do thing X and earn Y" or
2) "do thing X and earn Y+Z".
You factually are gimping yourself by not taking the +Z for doing the X. You can do it if you want, nothing wrong with that, but it's not exactly a meaningful decision.
Yes, the word was chosen for its roughness, but the "choice" is a non-choice, and the roughness was added to emphasize that. The word is contextually fine as a description.
"lol...what? People are playing no-quest playthroughs. I think that establishes that there very much is still a choice between building a base first or questing first. Think up a new one... " (multipage multiquote is hard man) And this is the level of argument it was levelled against.. a "lolwut". It was fitting, whether you like it or not.
I'd love to see you build a base before looting a POI thou.
Finally, you keep missing my point: There is no NEED to remove quest spam
I'll grant that. It's kinda easy since there's no NEED for the game to exist. Point me to where I've said it's necessary. I hate the current end result, but I'm a nobody on a forum, I'm offering opinions, suggestions, stupid jokes and whines. None of them make anything into a NEED.
I mean, if they want to adjust things so you cannot spam quests and are forced to do them more infrequently that's not going to affect me much since I already do them less frequently by choice.
This is not a solution I have proposed, nor would I want it. Why are you offering it to me?
I'd like there to be Some Things that are Better solved outside of questing - survival, mining, some such. It would give the game a natural flow where you choose to do different things based on current needs.
Failing that, I'd like the spamlooting not to be Mandatory for survival and some form of slow gear progress. If the holy quest is still the best way, it doesn't bother me as much if it's not Mandatory. Parts of it are - water, gear progression.
the natural progression of creating better and better shelter as the capability to do so is attained.
This is literally what I did though. That's how a big build starts, small increments, minimal necessary defensive positions, then redundancies and slowly combining things into a main build.
But I disagree that anyone is forced to choose the trader and questing to solve everything.
Cool, not my claim though, and as you just keep misreading me .. I can't fix this. Or rather, I won't. It's a water thread. I'd deserve getting banned for the derails...
But your response to me choosing to keep the traders to a minimum influence in my game is that I'm just faffing around.
Indeed, just like I meant it the first time, faffing about, goofing off, having fun. Have fun. See ya.
EDIT: To add a reply to
If you really are playing a chill game what is wrong with building up your skills and strength for a few weeks and then move to the remote wilderness and build that massive fortress?
Because the point of the playthrough has been to "grow up with the build". Upgrade XP, horde loot etc, only minimally venturing out to "get stuff". It used to get me to decent tier tools and armor over time, for weapons some trading stone-to-guns was done in the later patches. I could start in a shack on day one.
Now, for a mining day, you'll need something like, what, 9 water? Probably more, but let's go with that. That's three filters, 6k coin. Easily done by day 7, no worries there. Managed to get iron tools from those quests? Great, repairing those will cost you a glue each, and for a day of mining you're looking at half a dozen repairs, if not way more (seriously low durability). So, couple more filters. All right. Ofc you could just use the stone axe, you'll have a Qfiver at that time. Not exactly fast, but, sure, it'll dig three stacks of stone to sell per reset.
Now, start digging with that and notice that... you're not going to get better with it. At all. All your improvements are going to come from the trader. If you'd like to cook your meat, you'll be looting for books for a couple weeks. I know the "trader progress" is there even if I just sell stacks of stone, he will likely have a cement mixer eventually, I will Eventually be able to buy steel tools.
But honestly, I've already "prepared" for two weeks, what's two more? Oh right, the idea was to grow with the build. Spend two more weeks and you're pretty much Done. Sure there's still some decent lootables out there, but nothing necessary. There's no progress anymore.
Now, if you feel like arguing against the edit, please keep in mind that I'm only describing my personal favourite playstyle. I'm not imposing that on anyone else, I'm not hissyfitting for my way being the Only True Way. I'm just explaining the issue, why the idea of the playstyle pretty much completely conflicts with the changes in A21, and why that might motivate me to argue against the water nonsense.
Now, go have fun!
I'm thinking of getting either that or Enshrouded, but they both kinda seem one-and-done games for me. Nothing wrong with that, but I ain't got the budget for too many of such.
