PC Do you max out?

[Rotor]

Our perception of how well the skill system fits into the gameplay loop will likely change once the end-game content is added.

If there were more to do, we might feel inspired to extend our game, which would allow us to see more of the skill tree.

I think it would be a mistake to spend more time tweaking skills at this point. Progression should be balanced around the finished product, otherwise we would be guessing as to how it would feel in the final game. 

Not only that, in my noob opinion, as a new player I am not even close to getting anywhere.  

For you guys that have been playing for Eons and get to invincible in 3 weeks, I see how it would seem meh.

For me, I am cool the way it, maybe 1000 hours from I will feel different, although some of the gating is weird.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

I get bored once I can do the base that lets me snooze through horde night.

I do 90 min days, so by day 63 - 70 I can have that set up.

After that, it's just a matter of feeding the thing.

enough pts in demo for gunpowder stacks.

str enough to max mining/mother/heavy arm/sexrex

Fort goes up for max brawling, machinegun, healy, pain.

agi comes very late to the party. (when I want parkour)

Int goes to 9 + nerdy.  better barter, etc. gotta have the get 50% xp from traps.

60 dart traps, can set it to insane, 64 zeds for BM and... just pick off the stupid vultures that fly at the cage.

Takes a LOT of steel, cement and darts, but, zeds are not getting through the traps.

(with that much work, they shouldn't)

After a few horde nights, it comes down to "ok, now what?"

I usually try to get all the books done, even the ones I never ever use. (spears)

I dunno about shortening the trees though, would end up getting to end game somewhat sooner.

(although not by as much as you'd think. Still takes TIME to mine all the stuff and smelt it.

Finding all the books though, is RNG)

Now, the ability to have more than one profile and be able to swap'em.. that would be nice.

FO76 has that, and I do use it.  1 for going out and killing stuff, one for crafting/repairs etc.

WoW has had it for ages.

Fergeting elixer isn't the same.  That's a total restart on the skill trees.

 

[pahbi]

I dislike the skill system, its to long and drawn out, so I use a modlet to quickly level through it.

The skill system could use some consolidation.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

Now that i started to play Darkness Falls, i doubt i can go back to the vanilla system and actually enjoy it. It didn´t bother me before though, but now that i have seen how it could be, the vanilla system seems unecessary restrictive. I think going back would be kinda frustrating, even when i can see that there isn´t enough challenge to give us more freedom and it would mess with the balance a lot.

 

[eXSe]

I mostly give up by the time I get my strength and intellect up to max-ish (I do throw in a couple of things from other skill trees in there for good measure) because at that point I can be confident enough to come into any POI and not hear my teeth chattering and feel my butt clenching.

Things that keep me on my toesies are number of zombies. not their sponginess, so I try to facilitate my own danger and add to the game longevity by adding more spawns and bigger wandering hordes. It works to a degree, especially in the beginning stages of the playthrough.

I do feel that developers should give some love to the survival aspect of the game. For me, at least, current food system is just bad because it feels so "arcady" or dumbed down... especially with those candies that are just ridiculous (I do know that some people may love them and I'm not, by any means, asking for them to get taken out. Just saying that I do not use them.) What I'm trying to say is that I'm looking for some immersion and realism in the survival aspect of a survival game and this just doesn't have that feel.

Just spitballing here, but maybe Fun Pimps could borrow some survival aspects of Zomboid and cram it into 7D2D

 

[RyanX]

Compress the skill tree and add some LBD back in.

 

[Jinx_DG]

 I've also read repeatedly that many players enjoy starting over,

I've started over early game so many times.... sometimes more then once a night. <sigh>   Speaking of... time to start a new one

 

[Crater Creator]

I think I disagree; if people are quitting the moment the chosen skill tree is full, making it shallower will just make people quit sooner, no? I don't see how it would solve much.

To the extent this is an issue, I see it as one of utilization.  I don't expect that all players will max out every skill, of course.  If they did, it would mean there aren't interesting choices between different character builds anymore.  But if people aren't even maxing out the skills under one attribute - or if, like me, they wonder if they'll even get to level 5 on more than a couple skills (across the board) before they're done with that playthrough - then I think about how much of the skill tree isn't even being seen.  If a lot of players don't see much of the cooler endgame stuff, because they lose interest before they get that far, that's a shame.  That'd be poor utilization of what the devs have taken the time to create.

The primary problem there is that Fortitude gives you headshot damage. At all...

Perhaps.  But I'm not criticizing the stats the player has when reaching the end of the skill tree per se.  I'll reserve judgment on that (since I don't get that far, heh).  Rather, working inside the box of how powerful a maxed out player already is, I question whether there are too many steps to get there.

The headshot damage and dismemberment chance you get from raising a base attribute are nice, but they don't seem like game changers.  Maybe those could be condensed into three levels per attribute, and then awarded as a 'set bonus' for completing one of the sub-categories for that attribute.  For instance, if you max out all of the Recovery skills under Fortitude (Healing Factor, Iron Gut, and Rule 1: Cardio), you unlock 30% more headshot damage and 15% more dismemberment chance on fist and machine gun weapons.  The current system encourages you to pick a specialty and stick with it, too, but this would be more like a carrot than a stick.

 

[theFlu]

If a lot of players don't see much of the cooler endgame stuff, because they lose interest before they get that far, that's a shame.  That'd be poor utilization of what the devs have taken the time to create.

(I spent way too much time on this, wrote about 3 lengthy responses and got nowhere... )

I do agree with the base idea here; having plenty of 5 point skills that no-one really takes is a bit off-putting. But, but .. I wouldn't want to make them desirable by adding more "non-sequitur" bonuses to them.

It's kind of a design problem through and through. Getting a full tree can not be necessary, since part of the design philosophy is that every spec needs to work; no skill can be mandatory. They've gone to silly lengths to ensure that every tree has a way to heal and a way to eat and a way to earn resources. Then there's Agility that has none of those. If the agi tree works in the game, then every other skill is basically a quality of life thing at best. (One might avoid that by making agi work in a unique way; something like living as a pacifist via stealth + fetch missions, but the world doesn't really support that)

I'm still under the impression that the current skill system is set in stone for gold, so I'm pretty disheartened for imagining anything better; especially when I deem the biggest issue being the silly Attribute-to-weapons -binding, which I don't see getting changed any more than LBD making a come-back.

With the decisions there, that kinda means you're stuck with the weapon skills being a "power priority" and the rest being various degrees of QoL, some of which will be more popular than others.

 

[Vintorez]

I usually just play until I die, unless it was from some kind of glitch or another.