PC Catering to New Players hurts Replayability for Experienced Players

[Nyecto]

Just want to point 3 stuff as what I consider myself : a new player.

Grid for building stuff (minecraft-like I guess ?) is not interesting. It's fun the first hour when you try stuff and ...that's all; afterward you know what is what and it's just time consuming in a bad way (my opinion). I much prefer to increase the time needed to make something as it was previously pointed by someone and even get a fight modifier which increase the amount of time required if in a combat situation.

For the recipes already there even if you don't know it ? I would like it to be hided : recipe still showing but not the stuff needed to build it. You need to get the skill-points or the book to see what are the components.

LBD: The concept is interesting but : you can increase your tool-crafting ability, get a skill-point and spend it in snipers. I'm sometimes using this in Skyrim : get a healer companion, find an enemy, put my back against a wall, raise my shield, go do other stuff IRL; come back later with shield, light armor and heavy armor at max; use all skill-points to increase my enchanting skills or whatever i want. I think it was the 'sit on a cactus and bandage yourself' version here ? Not really interesting :/

Actually MM said they don't want to bring it back LBD and some minors twerks are coming. The actual system is pretty good for me, books, recipes, skill-points and you can even don't use them if you want . Not that immersive but good in a gameplay perspective so ... Ok I guess ?

Last point is if I understand correctly : older player (1000+) almost know the map and POI to a point where they can explore a building eyes closed ? Seems pretty normal for me. Need more randomization ? Seems very good even for new players. Is it time consuming for the devs ? Don't know. But I prefer a functional house over something strange randomly done with holes in it. I'm looking at you RWG and your strange mountains/lakes.

See ya !

 

[stallionsden]

Just want to point 3 stuff as what I consider myself : a new player.
Grid for building stuff (minecraft-like I guess ?) is not interesting. It's fun the first hour when you try stuff and ...that's all; afterward you know what is what and it's just time consuming in a bad way (my opinion). I much prefer to increase the time needed to make something as it was previously pointed by someone and even get a fight modifier which increase the amount of time required if in a combat situation.

For the recipes already there even if you don't know it ? I would like it to be hided : recipe still showing but not the stuff needed to build it. You need to get the skill-points or the book to see what are the components.

LBD: The concept is interesting but : you can increase your tool-crafting ability, get a skill-point and spend it in snipers. I'm sometimes using this in Skyrim : get a healer companion, find an enemy, put my back against a wall, raise my shield, go do other stuff IRL; come back later with shield, light armor and heavy armor at max; use all skill-points to increase my enchanting skills or whatever i want. I think it was the 'sit on a cactus and bandage yourself' version here ? Not really interesting :/

Actually MM said they don't want to bring it back LBD and some minors twerks are coming. The actual system is pretty good for me, books, recipes, skill-points and you can even don't use them if you want . Not that immersive but good in a gameplay perspective so ... Ok I guess ?

Last point is if I understand correctly : older player (1000+) almost know the map and POI to a point where they can explore a building eyes closed ? Seems pretty normal for me. Need more randomization ? Seems very good even for new players. Is it time consuming for the devs ? Don't know. But I prefer a functional house over something strange randomly done with holes in it. I'm looking at you RWG and your strange mountains/lakes.

See ya !

We talking about RWG map not navezgane. Rwg is random and changes each seed. Great points by the way

 

[Guppycur]

LBD: The concept is interesting but : you can increase your tool-crafting ability, get a skill-point and spend it in snipers. I'm sometimes using this in Skyrim : get a healer companion, find an enemy, put my back against a wall, raise my shield, go do other stuff IRL; come back later with shield, light armor and heavy armor at max; use all skill-points to increase my enchanting skills or whatever i want. I think it was the 'sit on a cactus and bandage yourself' version here ? Not really interesting :/

And that's it. But what if the system didn't allow you to get points in sniper, but instead only allowed you to make a better tool? Had that been fixed, LBD wouldn't have been "broken".

Instead now we have a complicated perk/skill system that's never going to be balanced correctly and will always have "must haves" you need to buy, just to survive. <shrug>

 

[Nyecto]

@Stallion : isn't RWG random world generated ? The one when you sometimes have one 'block' of mountain over 2 empty but still get the aspect of a mountain ?

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Something like this with my poor ASCII drawing level? If yes; i don't want something like this in Random Houses Generated and much prefer the random houses to be handmade. But that's time consuming.

@Guppycur : same problem here while the tools/mining/weapons seems good : you still have to patch yourself with medic's over while sitting on a cactus ? I find the system balanced, it just depend on the kind of build you want to run; I'm looter/collector and yes, i'll not put any point in intelligence. My friend is miner and will not put points into explosives nor bows. You can always find drawbacks and we should consider the fact that some twerks will be done in this regard. But as I said, not the most immersive but gameplay-wise, it's good for me.

 

[stallionsden]

@Stallion : isn't RWG random world generated ? The one when you sometimes have one 'block' of mountain over 2 empty but still get the aspect of a mountain ? /\ /\

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Something like this with my poor ASCII drawing level? If yes; i don't want something like this in Random Houses Generated and much prefer the random houses to be handmade. But that's time consuming.

I do not understand what you are saying let alone your drawings lol. yes rwg is random world generated correct. but at present you get to a dungeon poi can loot it before even doing a quest and the path way with lights holding your hand to get to the loot room.

with randomised dungeon pois you can get the same poi but when you enter it is completely different or maybe even somewhat different to the other one that had the same outside to it.

remove the lights that hold your hand and also add another path or 2 that you can take but only 1 way will be the way to the loot. get it wrong and you awaken the zs and they set off towards you and thus trapping you or having trapped floor etc. But again what is in each dungeon poi is different and randomised.

Aswell as others have mentioned their versions as well.

But I am still wondering bout this bit of your comment - "The one when you sometimes have one 'block' of mountain over 2 empty but still get the aspect of a mountain ?


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Something like this with my poor ASCII drawing level?"

 

[Nyecto]

This drawing sucks ! I should get banned for that ! Let's try something else.

It's a side cut of a mountain or hill or whatever.

X0X0X0X

X0X0X0X

X0X0X0X

XXXXXXX

X are blocks composed of rock or dirt or iron or something but solid and 0 are nothing, free space.

1 block of something, one space of nothing.

From far away, you'll see a normal mountain but get closer and you get a hashed mountain.

I think it's a bug and had already been reported so not really relevant. It's only relevant in the fact that I don't want that for random POI. Just imagine a hashed house... even better for finding the hidden room which isn't hidden anymore :')

I'll prefer some handmade random POI but that takes time and isn't maybe in the TO DO list or at least not in priority list.

For the POI, I personally don't follow the light at all and just look in every room; behind every painting and destroy all doors so ...

If we just get the lights off; do you still need it or already know where you should go in most dungeon POI ?

After that, I don't have enough experience in dungeon POI to know the loot room and what you experience.

 

[stallionsden]

This drawing sucks ! I should get banned for that ! Let's try something else. It's a side cut of a mountain or hill or whatever.

X0X0X0X

X0X0X0X

X0X0X0X

XXXXXXX

X are blocks composed of rock or dirt or iron or something but solid and 0 are nothing, free space.

1 block of something, one space of nothing.

From far away, you'll see a normal mountain but get closer and you get a hashed mountain.

I think it's a bug and had already been reported so not really relevant. It's only relevant in the fact that I don't want that for random POI. Just imagine a hashed house... even better for finding the hidden room which isn't hidden anymore :')

I'll prefer some handmade random POI but that takes time and isn't maybe in the TO DO list or at least not in priority list.

For the POI, I personally don't follow the light at all and just look in every room; behind every painting and destroy all doors so ...

If we just get the lights off; do you still need it or already know where you should go in most dungeon POI ?

After that, I don't have enough experience in dungeon POI to know the loot room and what you experience.

Yeh i would say thats a bug...

Ok i underatand now. Regardless of one follows the ligh or not they still see it they cant really ignore it or block it out.

I know not every player likes this but there are so far more that do like the dungeon pois to be randomised or however they feel woud make the dungeon pois less repetitive and more exciting and scarier. Of their own iterations such as spreading loot round the poi.etc.

But random world generation isnt in navezgane. Its completely different and each world seed is different. Those bugs you speak of will be fixed when they work on rwg bugs when ever that will be. Bit til then we have nitrogen.

Oh you speak of the mesh glitch/bug thing that affect pois. That also will get fixed i a aure when tfo get to it. But has nothing to do with randomising dungeon pois and making them great and replayable. Ams each time you enter it be different each time

 

[meganoth]

And that's it. But what if the system didn't allow you to get points in sniper, but instead only allowed you to make a better tool? Had that been fixed, LBD wouldn't have been "broken".
Instead now we have a complicated perk/skill system that's never going to be balanced correctly and will always have "must haves" you need to buy, just to survive. <shrug>

Show me a "must have" perk and I show you someone who doesn't use that perk. Hint: He's in endgame at day 1 :cocksure:

Seriously though there really are a few perks where you normally want 1 point in them now. But since you don't need to invest into an attribute to learn them they are effectively part of your attribute tree. The only exception where you might need more than 1 point could be SexTyr if you want to do melee (note the "if").

None of these "essential" perks are safe from balancing though. I'm sure they all could be nerfed to make them absolutely unappealing and somewhere in the middle between indispensable and nerfed to the ground must be a sweetspot.

 

[Guppycur]

Allow your gs to go up without health, strength and stamina perks and I'll show you a guy who dies a lot and doesn't have any fun as a result.

 

[ktr]

Allow your gs to go up without health, strength and stamina perks and I'll show you a guy who dies a lot and doesn't have any fun as a result.

I play primary AGI, secondary PERC and very rarely take base level perks for health, strength, or stamina. So far - across MP and SP - I've only died once in latter gamestages.

 

[meganoth]

Allow your gs to go up without health, strength and stamina perks and I'll show you a guy who dies a lot and doesn't have any fun as a result.

I can only say I have seen the conversation "Perk x is absolutely essential" followed by "I never buy Perk x" so many times in this forum. Once you have maxed out most of your perks in your primary attribute there is no problem with having interesting perks in other trees. A good definition of an essential perk might be that you get more out of it than from putting the point into your primary tree's perks. And that can be balanced.

For example: Stamina perk dependancies can be reduced by making weapons other than sledgehammer and club use less stamina. Not so far that the perk is useless, but optional.

Obviously one point into your attribute's melee weapon increases damage and decreases the amount of stamina you need on average for a zombie. As long as that saving is more important for your dps than getting your stamina usage reduced, stamina reduction is just a secondary item on your typical wish list.

 

[Laz Man]

Plus, the fix for the spam craft issue would have been to make sure you could only get better at crafting axes, not buy cement skills.
... instead, they replaced the whole system with something much worse.

I dont think it was much worse but probably better for the game the devs want to make.

A16 (LBD) was mostly great for those who enjoyed longer persistent games with more of a sandbox feel. Considering the devs vision is to have limited balanced skill builds, I can understand why they changed it.

The only good implementation of a balanced LBD skill system I've seen was in a MMORPG called ultima online where the player was limited to mastering up to 7 skills (700 max skill points) before other skills started to degrade. Even with a hard cap, skill grinding was always a curse with those types of systems. Cities would be littered with AFK players casting magic spells on themselves. I eventually made a battle mage/thief specced to rob those players of their magic ingredients for being AFK lol...

 

[Prisma501]

Allow your gs to go up without health, strength and stamina perks and I'll show you a guy who dies a lot and doesn't have any fun as a result.

Noob.

Cheers

 

[Shin]

It's definitely an entirely different game than when "we" first started. The mo has been to instead of fixing problems in the alpha, replace it with something else that has flaws to be replaced the next alpha.
Now from the tfp perspective, as I've always said, business is business, but mm has stated (and recanted, then restated, then repeat the cycle) that the goal is 25 hours, give or take.

That's what gets them the most business, fine. What it doesn't get them is replayability, which is what "we" used to have in prior alphas.

That is what's different about the game and why "us" old players feel slighted.

This most definitely is not the game we originally bought, and pointing out the Eula for early access is insulting, because it's a clear cop out.

Hope that helps you understand, even if you vehemently disagree.

Oh, and "this is the best alpha yet, we are finally getting what we envisioned" only to have that alpha trash talked the very NEXT alpha, doesn't help.

So very true :encouragement: I'm now gonna read on and find Rolands and others denial of the truth in all you said.

 

[Guppycur]

I can only say I have seen the conversation "Perk x is absolutely essential" followed by "I never buy Perk x" so many times in this forum. Once you have maxed out most of your perks in your primary attribute there is no problem with having interesting perks in other trees. A good definition of an essential perk might be that you get more out of it than from putting the point into your primary tree's perks. And that can be balanced.
For example: Stamina perk dependancies can be reduced by making weapons other than sledgehammer and club use less stamina. Not so far that the perk is useless, but optional.

Obviously one point into your attribute's melee weapon increases damage and decreases the amount of stamina you need on average for a zombie. As long as that saving is more important for your dps than getting your stamina usage reduced, stamina reduction is just a secondary item on your typical wish list.

Yeh I'm sure there are edge cases but I've seen lots of posts bitching about it, too, so ymmv. I'd very much like to see one of these "no points in str or cardio" builds, because they sound like fairytales.

 

[Ghostlight]

Then throw away your guns and use the bow or crossbow. Then you have to use your brain because you can't run into a POI with guns blazing. You have to be sneaky and careful and think strategically.

We've gone the opposite way and added tons more zombies to the world (I multiplied all the spawn.xml numbers by 10 in the end) with a very fast respawn time (0.05, which for our 90 minute days comes out at every zed we kill respawns in 4.5 minutes). You need those guns!! It's MUCH more fun. Never had so much fun in the game (since A16 obviously).

 

[Ghostlight]

Interesting perspective. You admit that RWG is worse design-wise than Navesgane which is a crafted world to the point that you list RWG as a reason why a new player might quit playing after they experience it. Yet you want the devs to switch from crafted POIs to randomly generated interiors.

Not me. I am one of the playerbase who is just fine with the fixed POIs. And I don't even exploit my way to the loot room either!! I just go with it.

However what I do dislike the RWG's insistence in giving me 20+ copies of the same damn POI all near each other in a small city. That's the issue. I understand there are a hundred or more prefab POIs? Yet I get the same small subset over and over and over in my RWG.

I’d like to correct your assumption that random gen has been low priority. It is a very high priority but comes with very difficult problems to solve. A randomly generated world or POI is never going to be able to compete design-wise with a hand crafted version.

The trick is to increase the size of the building blocks. Don't add a POI here and there at random on a city grid. Add a prefabricated street. Hope that made since. Basically make the random bits you jigsaw together larger.

If they switched to random interiors you would probably switch to complaining about all the limitations of those POIs much as you are now when comparing RWG maps to Navesgane.

Again, you are confusing me with other posters, or lumping me in with them. I'm fine with the fixed POIs, I've come to terms with them and even like some of them a lot - but I'm not fine with the inadequacies of RWG and the way it uses them.

 

[meganoth]

Yeh I'm sure there are edge cases but I've seen lots of posts bitching about it, too, so ymmv. I'd very much like to see one of these "no points in str or cardio" builds, because they sound like fairytales.

Do you think Cardio is essential for normal melee combat or for "oh ♥♥♥♥" moments to run away?

If the former, players specializing in ranged combat get a free pass. Stealth players don't need much stamina at all. I haven't tested a heavy-armor-standing-around-in-doorways-and-hitting-everything-that-dares-approach-build yet, but it seems in "normal" difficulty settings at least you can only be seriously harmed if the zombies surround you.

If the latter, there are other ways in the game to get out of "oh ♥♥♥♥" moments. Like setting up a safety turret behind, good stealth or a safety gun with an always full magazine. Someone not doing (much) melee also has no need for Cardio since he can always use his full stamina budget for running. Maximum distance one needs is usually to where the bike is parked.

PS: Just for the thread title: https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/4/1742226629864818804/ . :cocksure:

 

[Fischer]

I'm gonna start by saying these are the ♥♥♥♥tiest forums for getting registered on I've ever seen. But I had to come on and say something about the load of ♥♥♥♥ being spouted. Probably not going to make me popular with the "old timers" with lots and lots of posts here so maybe my first and last.

I started playing in December on whatever version of the game that was and I've been having a blast. This game has gotten inside my head like no other I have ever played and it is like crack cocaine in game form. I already have over 200 hours. I found these forums and was just lurking reading about the next update and I caught this whole conversation and kept following it after it was moved here tho with all the name changes and shifting around it wasn't easy. Seriously thought the whole thing was deleted when the title got changed...derp

I just don't undestand why this stallionsden character is getting a free pass for being insulting and boorish and the few people who do call him on it get shouted down. He said this about me and peeps like me. I bolded the word all because he keeps saying he never said "all" lol--

"Thats cause all the new players need the answers given to them. Cant think how to make something with out the game giving them the answer."

and then goes on to continue to be insulting to anyone not exactly like him. its insulting and condescending to say I don't know what I missed. Why the ♥♥♥ should I give a rats ass what I suposedly missed out on? I like what we have now and it's ♥♥♥♥ing awesome and definitely replayable enough for me to have played the beginning of the game several times. I played one full playthrough until about day 110 and felt it was starting to get repetitive but I died a lot during that play and since then Ive been starting over every time I die to see what day I can get to without any deaths. They should make that a setting in the options, btw.

The first 25 hours of gameplay isn't boring at all and I've played it now about 6-8 times and I'm still not bored so that is some serious replayability right there. If anything it is the very end of the game that starts getting boring and repetitive which is why I decided to start over. As I said, I've died plenty so the game isn't just plain easy. Im not using any mods and don't even know how to add mods anyway and the game is still a ♥♥♥♥ing blast jus the way it is.

Anyways, people have been accusing the moderator and others of attacking stallionsden for his opinion but then they're giving him a free pass on insulting me and those like me and I call that bull♥♥♥♥ and I don't care if you've been here since the early days. You old timers don't like it when someone said your boredom comes from playing for so many hours but if you want to say that I need everything handed to me and to be babied then you'll just have to take it when I say go play a new game if the thrill is gone for you! Like, holy ♥♥♥♥--its just a game and games loose excitement after awhile. So far this one is still exciting for me. Don't bother trying to tell me I only speak for myself because I know. I purposely tried to only speak for myself and not say that a bunch of people are just like me cuz that is serious serious bull♥♥♥♥ to do that.

Sorry for the length. This is all I plan to say. If you want to argue with my opinion go ahead but you'll be ♥♥♥♥ing talking to yourself. I don't go in for all the back and forth posts and splitting up posts with quotes and analyzing each line of somone's post and all that. I did that one quote of stallions that set me off and I said my piece and hopefully other new players like me will agree that this game is great whatever its history.

 

[Guppycur]

I think cardio is essential for the day to day game play. Sure, we *could* choose poorly and inefficiently play the game, we might even get lucky enough to get to a point where it's overall successful, but that'd be silly.

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@fischer

Love the hearts! Happy Valentine's day to you as well.