PC Is the skill system due for an overhaul? A discussion on its strengths, weaknesses, how it can be improved (and whether the devs are planning to do it

Viktoriusiii said:
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TFPs have said again and again since the very early types they don't care about balancing (okay to be fair focusing on developing the game rather than focusing on balancing on features that might not be around in the end is usually a good thing... just not if this short period goes on for over 8 years 😕 )

So since this is a balancing issue and different people say different things (like my previous poster saying that clubs are best, when on high difficulties I play on the machete is without a doubt the 1st place. Not even close. And the stun baton closely behind (moving up there once you knock every Z down with the mod)

But since we are on the topic, I will give my opinion on what needs to change:

Perkrequirements. Good lord I hate level gating, but this is a close second. It is the epitomy of "we don't want you to have this too soon, but we didn't know how to make it happen, so go out there and level". In an RPG (which this is NOT, but won't open that can of worms again) this can work. In a sandbox, it just feels cheap.

Since they dislike LBD, maybe they can do it by setting requirements that are independent of levels:
"kill 500 zombies with a club" for "pummel Pete 4" 

"knock down 100 zombies with turrets" to unlock the scrap turrets

or or or.

Make it INTERESTING and not dependent on levels. This means you need to chose what path to go.

And not having a motorbike because you want to get a farm going... feels bad.

While TECHNICIALLY it doesn't matter if you are farming xp or doing a "challenge", you are working towards a specific goal and need to do various things.

While XP is so general... it feels ike it comes out of nothing. And you still need to grind the xp... you can just chose to build 5000 wooden blocks to get better at fighting.

And now that I write this I realize that I could have saved my breath because this is probably just seen as "LBD-light", so no point.

I just dislike that it is not a perk tree. Just a random assortment of buffs basically. Either completely broken, or borderline useless (or early useful late useless or other way round)
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I've reached the point where if I need to level up I just start building a new horde base design or rebuilding previous ones. Need that perk to make better food and I'm not in the mood for a horde base? Here's concrete 11x11x5 block.. ooh 4 perk points.

A LBD system where you have to get a requirement of kills as you said would be absolutely perfect for weapons. I'm not sure how to go about farming, maybe harvesting 100-150 plants? This is just a general discussion and the devs more than likely won't listen to it, but I think a modder would take up the challenge.

We should have the option of being able to take the perk before reaching the free perk requirement in case we don't mind wasting a skill point for an instant buff.

The biggest issue is that everything is so heavily perk reliant, you can't do a lot without perks unless you manage to get lucky and find schematics of everything you require. Otherwise its perking into many, many different trees.

 
Roland said:
To be honest, the chatter back then was much like it is now. People unhappy with whatever the current system was would come and post and those who liked it would defend it. There has never been 100% consensus by the player base of everyone being happy with the system. When Alpha 11 hit and tools and weapons had quality that was dependent upon how many times you crafted that tool it significantly changed the way the game was played by many people. So we had a lot of people who enjoyed the grind of making 100 stone axes and we had a lot of people who hated it but did it anyway. There were even some who tried their best to just keep playing normally (normally being how they played in Alpha 10 and below) and just let their tool and weapon qualities advance slowly over time even though the temptation to rush the progression was definitely something new in the game.
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I do want to say I'm actually fairly happy with the current system as a system. I think the game could do better by, say, playing to the games strengths and integrating the questing/POI system more directly somehow (I would love if every 5-level skill had one point that required you to complete a special quest at a special POI to get that bonus point or something just because I always want more reasons to do quests at cool new locations instead of the same old ones), but my complaints so far haven't really been with the system but rather with many of the specific skills being very weak, sometimes weak and niche, while others (especially int skills in single player) are incredibly powerful. I'd most just like to see many of the skills be more impactful and noticeable.

I'm not a big fan of LBD systems, for what its worth, and I overall like the current system of earning experience and spending points. That part is fine.

 
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I'm tellin' ya...I'm TELLIN ya....1 perk point for every 24 hours survived. Maybe an extra perk point or two for surviving BMH. Eliminate XP entirely. This is the way. Building, looting, crafting, questing - all of it is only to support the survival goal. This would be my preferred way to play so obviously it is objectively the best option. ;)  

Oh, but then I can just get a stash of food and drink and AFK in my base for 3 days and 3 points!

Sure, why not! Is that fun for you? Do you enjoy games where you don't really interact with the game at all, you just get "levels"? Have fun, then! And frankly, finding food & water and hunkering down in a safe spot isn't the stupidest way to try to survive a zombie apocalypse. Doesn't make for a fun game IMO, but IMO is not IYO so knock yourself out.

I'd contribute to the Venmo account of a modder who built such an overhaul after the game goes gold.

 
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Boidster said:
I'd contribute to the Venmo account of a modder who built such an overhaul after the game goes gold.
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I’d turn over all control and credit for my 0XP mod to a boidster with the skill and passion to fix it and improve it….

Oxp Boidmod has a nice ring to it!

 
What alpha was that for? Zip it up and send it to me, I'll take a look. If it can be done only with XML I might have a go.

 
Boidster said:
What alpha was that for? Zip it up and send it to me, I'll take a look. If it can be done only with XML I might have a go.
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It was mostly xml but as of Alpha 18 (which was the last version it worked for) there was no hook ups in xml for awarding a skillpoint at the end of a timer. You could make skillpoints the reward for doing a quest but not for just surviving to the end of the day.  In Alpha 19, I removed a lot of the fluff things I was adding to the mod and just focused in on the 0xp part but for whatever reason, the coding that allowed the skillpoint to be awarded to the player at the end of each day without any deaths was broken for A19 (and A20).

Sent you an email to your hotmail account with the zipped files. :)

 
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Roland said:
your hotmail account
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I haven't heard that word for years! o_o

savingprivateryan-ww2.gif


 
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GlyphGryph said:
What is "LBD"?

I just want to be clear - I didn't say Penetrator was bad, I actually think its exceptionally good, I said it was gated by things the player had no control over and without those things it did nothing, which is frustrating - specifically, finding the AP ammo crafting book, or finding enough AP ammo in stores (which I've found to be exceptionally rare unless, again, you've taken many levels of Better Barter, which makes it fairly common and is, I suppose, something the player has control of... but when the answer to every question about how to reliably make something work is "Take Better Barter", I think that's a problem). I had a previous game where I'd gotten to lv50 without any sign of the book, and having specced very heavily into Perception it was... it wasn't a good feeling that my only source of ammo was the occasional handful of bullets I could find from the trader, and even they were a once in a blue-blooded moon kind of deal.
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Finding AP ammo may just be the part of the loot balance that isn't there yet as they restructured the loot system in A20 again (clearly they are still not satisfied with it and have been at it the last alphas). In my MP game I play perception and through buying and finding I had about 80 bullets AP ammo in the third blood moon which was enough as the blood moon was still short. The interesting part is yet to come, will I find enough of that ammo to buy and loot at higher levels.

At least I expect more AP ammo to drop the higher my loot gamestage gets. But I don't expect to use AP ammo on POI raiding and keep it strictly for horde nights

You will not hear the "better barter" song from me. Unless I specialize in INT those two levels of better barter that you can get somewhat cheaply save you 15% (10% buying and 10% selling which might be half your income =~ 15%) but do NOT change what the trader has to offer. Even if you get the third point and a better secret stash  this probably will not suddenly give you heaps of the right AP ammo.

Me personally, I just like how RNG sometimes just doesn't provide the right stuff and gives you unexpected problems. If you don't find that book you can continue to search for it and use that ammo sparingly (in SP day 50 is mid game for me), depend more on demolition or even melee on horde nights, or use rifles just for the high damage value (i.e. concentrate on head shots instead). Just for completness sakes I could mention forgetin elixier but in all my games I have not used that even once.

 
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Some of the things can be fixed with modest changes. Mule Kick is generally considered a waste of points as you can open those slots via double pocket mods for your clothing items and triple storage pocket mods for the armor pieces. A simple fix would be a 63 slot inventory instead of the 45. Give the players one more row of open slots, two slots that can be removed/negated by the mods and then the last two rows where the debuff is removed/negated by Mule Kick. For guys like me who are hoarders in-game, that slight increase would be enough to satiate most people who add packpack mods though not all since people have gone insane with them (see 200 slot inventory mod).

Of course if past history teaches us anything The Fun Pimps won't make these small changes and will make a drastic change nobody saw coming.

 
I dislike that some perks are arbitrarily bundled. For example, master chef and mining, mining and shotguns, etc. I wish there was more independence. For example, I really like to mine, but I also would love to use bows and crossbows or rifles. Similarly, my brother likes building and farming, and would also love to cook food.

I would also love LBD to come back. I agree that LBD crafting is abusable, but maybe LBD actions skills at least can come back. They're being spammed anyway, and it adds a second layer of progression, and a little bit of extra level of gamer brain fun. I thank JaxTeller for the Action Skill modlet for now.

 
meganoth said:
Finding AP ammo may just be the part of the loot balance that isn't there yet as they restructured the loot system in A20 again (clearly they are still not satisfied with it and have been at it the last alphas). In my MP game I play perception and through buying and finding I had about 80 bullets AP ammo in the third blood moon which was enough as the blood moon was still short. The interesting part is yet to come, will I find enough of that ammo to buy and loot at higher levels.

At least I expect more AP ammo to drop the higher my loot gamestage gets. But I don't expect to use AP ammo on POI raiding and keep it strictly for horde nights
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I have to agree with this, you never find AP/HP ammo atm and I assume it is because the A20 loot system needs more polish/tweaking. We just need to give them time and constructive feedback and they will get it to a better state.

 
Roland said:
There was no one alpha when LBD came out. It was a process of development that evolved over several alphas. For example, in Alpha 11 there were no skills at all. There was only quality of tools and weapons and as you crafted them they increased in quality with a plus or minus 50 modifier to keep things somewhat variable. That was it. Then in Alpha 12 - 16 there were alterations and additions made. In some alphas you got xp for killing zombies and then they removed that and then brought it back. They tried a few iterations of crafting to get better at crafting (spam crafting) all the way to Alpha 15 when they changed it to only working in a workstation so people were babysitting their workstations and then A16 they removed spam crafting for higher quality completely but still had LBD for a number of skills. After all this experimentation from A11 to A16 with various forms and hybrids of LBD they decided to go with the more Fallout-esque system we have now.

A14 was probably the pinnacle of LBD crafting for better quality tools before it started diminishing and A16 the pinnacle of LBD skills before it was dropped but there really isn't one Alpha you can point to and say "This is where they turned LBD on"

To be honest, the chatter back then was much like it is now. People unhappy with whatever the current system was would come and post and those who liked it would defend it. There has never been 100% consensus by the player base of everyone being happy with the system. When Alpha 11 hit and tools and weapons had quality that was dependent upon how many times you crafted that tool it significantly changed the way the game was played by many people. So we had a lot of people who enjoyed the grind of making 100 stone axes and we had a lot of people who hated it but did it anyway. There were even some who tried their best to just keep playing normally (normally being how they played in Alpha 10 and below) and just let their tool and weapon qualities advance slowly over time even though the temptation to rush the progression was definitely something new in the game.
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Good to be back and good to see the LBD debate is still alive and strong 😛

 
I think it does need a tweeking. Right now there are 5 stats, And these stats follow the traditional pattern seen in many games. I believe they need to be tweeked and the stat screen should say "Seven" and each letter represents a group to put points in. Those groups will be called: Sadism, Evasion, Violence,  enlightenment and Nerdery. Bam, it's an acronym for seven and it contains the 5 elements of the universe and when those powers combine you become [SIZE=14.6px]captain[/SIZE] [SIZE=14.6px]apocalypse[/SIZE].

Sadism will have blade weapons and explosives, enligthenment will have mining and living off the land, nerdery will be most of the science skill, evasion will be stealth related skills and weapons. Violence will be mid range guns and melee skills and some support skills. Those also represent the [SIZE=14.6px]archetypes[/SIZE] of [SIZE=14.6px]survivors[/SIZE] who can be seen in the zombie wastes. the system goes from being dollar store S.P.E.C.I.A.L and becomes something a little better. 

When a group gets maxed out you get the [SIZE=14.6px]apocalypse[/SIZE] person perk associated with that group. 

 
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