Is Trader Joel just kind of.. useless?

Old Crow

Old Crow

Hunter
I visit Rekt for certain food ingredients and super corn seeds, I hit up Jen for books, magazines, and medical supplies. Bob provides technical stuff (though I admittedly don't visit him a whole lot outside of quests), and I see Hugh for my ammunition needs to supplement my team's ammo supply.

But Joel? He's kinda useless.

By the time we reach Joel, we have T6 armor. He offers no unique mods that the others don't carry, hell, he won't even offer clothing liners for sale. Aside from getting quests, what good is he?

Make him more useful, Fun Pimps!
 
Heh. I get what you mean, and you're right. Still, I don't bother targeting any specific trader other than to do the open trade route quests. Of course, I rarely buy anything from traders and the things I would buy can be found from any of them (e.g. solar).
 
Riamus said:
No surprise since the bases were made when the traders could be in any biome. I'd rather them be in any biome again than worry about whether they look like they fit in a specific biome. :)
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At least in RWG. I honestly think that would best for the game overall, but there's that sticky point of story and story (along with biome) progression that's yet to be ironed out. Honestly hope TFP is further along ironing that out than we are. :)
 
Joel *can* be useful if your pine forest start is next to the wasteland, and you check him regularly for key mods such as pocket mods, the treasure hunter mod, the cigar, so forth. I almost never buy armour. I ignore quality level 1-2 stuff from the traders since the bonuses they provide aren't all that useful (ex. +2% stamina regen recovery, +4 health, etc.) and are unusually expensive. It's why I never buy stone tools, either. Anyway, I either craft it, or just head to a tougher biome and loot everything I need within a week or two.

Personally, I would have Hugh be moved to the wasteland and Joel to the snow, but then again some of the aesthetics of their characters/compounds wouldn't quite fit.
 
I miss starting in a small house in the dead-grass area where Hugh is now. There was a POI house just southwest that had a forge too. Good times. I personally despise the placement of them in the current version. Rekt is 2.6lm from my base and nobody else is closer, really. I have a base in the wilderness on the west side of the map.
 
Riamus said:
No surprise since the bases were made when the traders could be in any biome. I'd rather them be in any biome again than worry about whether they look like they fit in a specific biome. :)
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Same here
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Dark Sun said:
Joel *can* be useful if your pine forest start is next to the wasteland, and you check him regularly for key mods such as pocket mods, the treasure hunter mod, the cigar, so forth. I almost never buy armour. I ignore quality level 1-2 stuff from the traders since the bonuses they provide aren't all that useful (ex. +2% stamina regen recovery, +4 health, etc.) and are unusually expensive. It's why I never buy stone tools, either. Anyway, I either craft it, or just head to a tougher biome and loot everything I need within a week or two.

Personally, I would have Hugh be moved to the wasteland and Joel to the snow, but then again some of the aesthetics of their characters/compounds wouldn't quite fit.
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Joel's would be easy to change just change the pine trees to snow. And nothing in Hughs is really snowy or anything
 
Are Is Traders Joel just kind of.. useless?

FTFY

IMHO, A serial single NPC interaction and progression mechanic; that has so dominated and overshadowed the games default sand box play style to the games own detriment. Many players won't even consider looting a POI with out a quest.

;-)
 
8_Hussars said:
Are Is Traders Joel just kind of.. useless?

FTFY

IMHO, A serial single NPC interaction and progression mechanic; that has so dominated and overshadowed the games default sand box play style to the games own detriment. Many players won't even consider looting a POI with out a quest.

;-)
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Well, you'll be able to turn them off in 3.0.
 
Riamus said:
Well, you'll be able to turn them off in 3.0.
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Sure thats fine. I already impose my own workarounds; either ignore them or mod them out.

I would be more interested in discussion on...

"A serial single NPC interaction and progression mechanic; that has so dominated and overshadowed the games default sand box play style to the games own detriment. Many players won't even consider looting a POI with out a quest."

I don't mind a RPG vibe. In fact I am a fan of what the Grim Tales mod puts in the game. But the single serial quest lines that do nothing to advance the story (soon?) seem such a disappointing uninspired implementation; and it so dominates the paradigm of game play.
 
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*shrug*

I like the quests and don't consider them to be a detriment. If the game had a real story like an RPG, then we could talk about having quests progress the story. But that isn't how this game is designed. There isn't a story to progress. Even when we get a story, if it is even in RWG at all, I don't expect it to be significant enough to be worth caring about beyond just the initial, "Oh, so that's why this happened." response when first seeing the story. There won't be any reason to care about quests progressing that kind of story, and in fact, most people probably won't care about the story after the first game or two with the story in it. Then they'll ignore it. And because they'll ignore it, there won't be any reason to care about progressing the story.

The issue with this game is that it is designed to be played many times over and over. No story, no matter how good, will ever be something people want to go through dozens of times. Many people hate the intro stuff in this game (what used to be called the tutorial) because it is the same thing over and over and over again and they are tired of seeing it. This is different from a game that is designed to be played once or maybe twice before setting it aside for months or years before playing it again. In that kind of game, a story is fine and can work well because you're not seeing it over and over again.

A lot of people have it in their heads that the quests being generic is a bad thing. But that really won't change. If they tie them to a story that people will not want to see every game, then the quests will not be something people will want to do because they are avoiding the story. If they are not tied to the story, they can be done over and over and they don't get boring as quickly. Even if the quest types are limited, a clear quest of each POI is at least somewhat unique because each POI is at least somewhat unique. The problem is that most people complaining about it have played the game so much that they already have completed every POI in the game many times and so it isn't interesting anymore. But when you get down to it, having quests (even if it's the same quest types) for over a 1000 different locations is pretty significant. Most games don't have that many, or even anywhere close to that many. You just don't notice it as much because you don't play the game dozens of times.

Unless they started to use significant randomization or AI to create "on the fly" quests and POIs, you're always going to feel like quests are limited in a game that you play so many times over and over again. Tying them to the story will hurt more than help in this kind of game.
 
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