PC New group looking to play 7 days, some thoughts.

Folks are talking like the choice is to:

1)  do the quest, and get the 4 skill points, or

2)  opt out of the quest, and not get those 4 points. 


Yes, because that's how all quests in the game work. Do the job and get the reward. Have you tried canceling the quest and just starting from zero points and earning those four points playing how you want and finding the trader on your own? I think it is far superior to doing the quest anyway. 

The 4-point headstart and the trader beacon are designed for new players. Experienced players should easily be able to handle the challenge of starting from 0 points and searching for the trader on their own. 

As an experienced player why do you feel you need a 4-point headstart and guidance to the trader?

 
maybe the best solution would be to treat everything at game start as optional new player tools that could be toggled:

Starting food & water.  On/off

Starting tutorial. On/off

4-point head start. On/off

First trader beacon. On/off

Debuff Immunity  On/Off

people could choose which items they wanted and it wouldn’t be set up like a quest and rewards. 

 
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As an experienced player why do you feel you need a 4-point headstart and guidance to the trader?


Personally, I don't really enjoy spending a lot of time at low levels, so a faster start is good.  At this point, I often even give myself some extra stuff to start a new game just to get out of that early game period faster.  For me, the game doesn't really start until you're in mid to late game.  Finding the trader is irrelevant to me but the points are something I don't choose to get rid of.

maybe the best solution would be to treat everything at game start as optional new player tools that could be toggled:

Starting food & water.  On/off

Starting tutorial. On/off

4-point head start. On/off

First trader beacon. On/off

Debuff Immunity  On/Off

people could choose which items they wanted and it wouldn’t be set up like a quest and rewards. 


Similarly, it could be that these things change based on difficulty level.  Lowest has everything and then maybe only some at the default difficulty (the second lowest) and then none for the higher difficulty levels.

 
The 4-point headstart and the trader beacon are designed for new players. Experienced players should easily be able to handle the challenge of starting from 0 points and searching for the trader on their own. 
Something is this line of argument is a little off. Mainly "is designed" .. maybe it's designed as something, but for now the implementation fails to deliver a difference between new/experienced. Thus making that claim about its design is outside the scope of things we can experience.

Can we play the game without ever spending a skill point? Yes. Not exactly a problem. But as long as the game doesn't actually remove the "newbie-buffs", we have to assume the skill system is designed and balanced With those points, not without them. Not that the balancing is even able to be strict enough to really care about 4 points, at best it'd become a question of how much cheese is ideal.

Then again, the starter quest - especially the current streamlined version - takes about a minute, so the "jumping thru the hoops" -claim is rather mundane in itself. It costs you a couple pebbles and splinters, just spam thru it to get going.. consider it testing out the controls for your new session... :)

 
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Yes, because that's how all quests in the game work. Do the job and get the reward. Have you tried canceling the quest and just starting from zero points and earning those four points playing how you want and finding the trader on your own? I think it is far superior to doing the quest anyway. 

The 4-point headstart and the trader beacon are designed for new players. Experienced players should easily be able to handle the challenge of starting from 0 points and searching for the trader on their own. 

As an experienced player why do you feel you need a 4-point headstart and guidance to the trader?
A few things about me.

My very first experience with (playing) 7 days to die was logging into a game where all kinds of modifications were in use, the people who wanted me to play with them had no clue how to play the base game, and couldn't answer any questions on how things were done, because they never played the base game at all, never learned how to do things on their own, and all they wanted from the game was just a fast track to endgame content.

I hate that.

That being said, I had (watched) my other friend for about a month before I bought the game, saw his struggles with the game (Like me, he wanted to learn how to play the base game), but soon realized that if playing multiplayer games on a public server was all 7 days to die had to offer, I would have been done with it within the first 24 hours.

Then I discovered how to start my own private games, and the rest is history.

I basically bought this game to play with a limited number of other players, so we could all experience the base game at it's easiest settings, while we learned how things worked.  Because of the way single player games work, I had my friends all start a game that I would join, thus keeping me from leaving the others in the dust because of how much time I can spend playing (as opposed to being a good player, mind you), as had happened in some other, previous games we tried to play together.

So far, the greatest gameplay moment was when we had four folks in game at once, but that only happened once or twice, due to schedule problems, and while more time was had with three folks in game at once, that has not happened again after the husband woke his wife in the very early AM, while he had once again snuk online and was playing until he died once.  He tends to get loud, and seems to resent dying (at all), so I have not had the pleasure of playing with them since the third time she got woken up in the dead of night when he met his end.  She made it clear that that had to stop.  I have not played with him since we played our last hardcore attempt, and he walked out of the trader straight into a pair of zombies, and died before he could get back to base.

Since then, I have been mainly solo, as my other regular playing partners have had work/family and computer problems.

Now that being said, I'm not your average player, I'm much worse than that.

With all that background being said, I must share my vision for what I see myself doing in private games (no interest in public games at all), and that is to help new players to learn how to spawn, carry out the early quest line, and live long enough to hook up with the rest of the team, and to jointly fight our way to the trader.  And yes, that isn't a given, even with the easiest setting we can use.

The way I do this, is to share my screen in our discord voice channel, and if they need to know how to do something (and I have actually figured that out --- also not a given), and then they can watch my mouse pointer to directly to the right spot for them to get to the info/result they are looking for.  For my own part, I got the husband and wife team to each get a pair of monitors, so that they can both play the game, share their screen with their teammates, and watch the others on their second monitors. it makes things so much easier to play and help others to have that setup.  Makes the game experience very much better, as well.

Another way at looking at what I hope to achieve with this thread, is to give some customer feedback to the powers that be.  One thing I have seen many games fail over, is to fail to provide a way for the players to team up and kick much butt, while loosing seldom.

I played a dismal failure of a game called "New World" back not to long ago, and that very buggy program was a major problem, but the bugs were nothing compared to how the designers provided the players the way to spawn into the game.  Total garbage, no control, no feeling of 'hitting the beach side-by-side' kind of immersive gameplay, but just randomly scattered all over their world, and no way to run over and help out.

7dtd does some of the same mistakes, on a smaller scale, but when a group of players want to play the game together, for God's sake, at least give them the option for a "Party Spawn", so they can make their best effort a team effort.

When you have customer feedback, from someone that is going to be spending quite a bit of time with your product, and they are going to be posting threads (and maybe videos) of various things, like weekly "Spawn to Trader" games, where the whole point is to make sure everyone has a friend to have their back, and no one is left behind to make it on their own, without a clue how to make that happen.  Give folks a chance to experience teamwork, and a fun, shared experience with the game, and you might just get more paying customers trying out your product, and if they can work together as a team, and have far better a time killing mass quantities of Zombies, rather than, say, seeing the red screen, where their character is lunch, well...

As for the listed options, all sound good, but I would also ask for options for a party spawn, and a "been there, done that" checkbox, that says, "Hey, we get that you have proven your skills, and so, all you future characters will get their points/resources/items upon spawning, should you choose to simply check this here box in the GUI.

From a paying customers perspective, I have to value my friends playing time over the "Challenge" of doing the first few minutes of each characters life following a preset script, when a simple checkbox could instead be used after the first time an account has a character run through it, if the player using that account so chooses.

It seems clear to me, looking at this as a for profit product, that when the paying customers are giving feedback on how to improve their experience using the product for entertainment purposes, don't allow yourselves to be dissuaded by other players making essentially the argument that, "I don't think that folks should to allowed XYZ options because I don't want them to have such a option" as a valid point of view, as no one is forcing that player to use such a notional setting, so it costs them nothing if such a thing were to be implemented, for use by those that would like such an option to have it.

Time will tell, and I remain hope full that my friends and I will be able to start our adventures in the near future, with both a "Party Spawn" and "Been there, Done that" options checked, so as to reduce unneeded and boring repetition

 
Something is this line of argument is a little off. Mainly "is designed" .. maybe it's designed as something, but for now the implementation fails to deliver a difference between new/experienced. Thus making that claim about its design is outside the scope of things we can experience.
The implementation absolutely does deliver a difference between new/experienced. It’s called opening the quest menu and canceling the tutorial quest. Canceling a quest is something any experienced player knows how to do and if they do it the game will deliver a significantly different experience. The four points is pretty trivial since they are very easy to gain through normal play but not automatically knowing where the trader is makes the early game much more challenging unless you guess the right direction to start walking. Since this can all be enacted within the game using the existing UI buttons to cancel the quest in exactly the same way all quests may be canceled it is part of the game design. 
 

Can we play the game without ever spending a skill point? Yes. Not exactly a problem.
Who said anything about never spending skill points? I said that instead of getting the 4 skill points from doing the tutorial you earn them by playing the game. You still get the points and can spend them. 
 

But as long as the game doesn't actually remove the "newbie-buffs", we have to assume the skill system is designed and balanced With those points, not without them. Not that the balancing is even able to be strict enough to really care about 4 points, at best it'd become a question of how much cheese is ideal.
I agree that the four points is trivial so I doubt the game becomes unbalanced because you started the game from 0 instead of 4. For an experienced player it is still simplicity to stay ahead of the game’s difficulty curve even with such a slow start. I’ve certainly not noticed any bad balance against me by forgoing the points and I started skipping the tutorial quest years ago. 
 

Then again, the starter quest - especially the current streamlined version - takes about a minute, so the "jumping thru the hoops" -claim is rather mundane in itself. It costs you a couple pebbles and splinters, just spam thru it to get going.. consider it testing out the controls for your new session... :)


And that’s part of why, as an experienced player, I don’t do it. It’s too weak of a task for the rewards of 4 skill points and a free gps to the nearest trader.  The start of game freebies are too OP for anyone but a newbie. 

 
Since this can all be enacted within the game using the existing UI buttons to cancel the quest in exactly the same way all quests may be canceled it is part of the game design. 
All right, everything you can do, is designed gameplay? When's the last session you repeatedly mined for stone to toss it away a pebble at a time with the awesome stone toss mechanic, until you died of hunger? That's designed gameplay, and a great challenge, I'm sure.

Or maybe it's not. Maybe I mean something a little different. I find it hard to believe that TFP would've implemented this system towards the design goal that "experienced players will not have those 4 skill points". You can do it, but the game doesn't disable it for you, now does it even give a verbal suggestion towards it. If it's designed as such, the Implementation does Not match the stated design.

Who said anything about never spending skill points?
I would assume I did, as you're quoting me speaking of it. Why did I do it? Because it's a higher class of "reducing your skill point gain", it entirely covers your case of "reducing your skill points by 4", and is a little more difficult challenge, but completely feasible in the current implementation. It's essentially a claim that the challenge provided by -4 is rather negligible, thus I don't consider it "stupid". I just consider it "not intended gameplay".

The start of game freebies are too OP for anyone but a newbie. 
If TFP agreed, they surely would have disabled the starter quest for anything above normal difficulty?

I take the points and the compass marker, with my few thousand hours in the game; not because I need them, but because they're essentially trivial anyway. Removing either doesn't change anything, at worst it makes the run to your first trader take a couple minutes longer due to lack of cardio and horrible spawn luck.

 
Options may be added before gold.  They are redoing the UI and that is when we should start seeing additional options.  There are many options players would like to see added.  Some will be added and some will not be, partly due to not wanting a ridiculous number of options taking up your screen and partly because they want vanilla experience to be similar for people.  We'll just need to see what options get added.

If setting the number of spawn points isn't added as an option when generating a map in RWG, it is still easy enough to edit the file or use the teleport option as explained earlier.  I do agree that being able to set the number of spawn points when generating a map is a good option to have so you can set it to one for groups that want to play together.

I will also point out that there are servers that do not use mods and provide a vanilla experience, though most do use at least some mods.  I personally don't play on servers because I prefer to play with people I know, but the option is there.

 
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All right, everything you can do, is designed gameplay? When's the last session you repeatedly mined for stone to toss it away a pebble at a time with the awesome stone toss mechanic, until you died of hunger? That's designed gameplay, and a great challenge, I'm sure.

Or maybe it's not. Maybe I mean something a little different. I find it hard to believe that TFP would've implemented this system towards the design goal that "experienced players will not have those 4 skill points". You can do it, but the game doesn't disable it for you, now does it even give a verbal suggestion towards it. If it's designed as such, the Implementation does Not match the stated design.
I see my example a bit differently than just doing some inane task repeatedly just because it’s allowed.  People are asking to be able to skip the tutorial quest and TFP has provided the answer: Hit the cancel button. A button for skipping any quest is already part of the game. 
 

I get what you’re saying about there being no formal communication to the player that skipping the tutorial quest is the intended option for experienced players. Then again, they do provide a button for it and the name of the quest is “Tutorial” so it kind of seems obvious. 
 

If you want stone then hit the buttons provided to mine stone. If you want to skip a quest hit the buttons provided to skip the quest. 
 

I would assume I did, as you're quoting me speaking of it. Why did I do it? Because it's a higher class of "reducing your skill point gain", it entirely covers your case of "reducing your skill points by 4", and is a little more difficult challenge, but completely feasible in the current implementation. It's essentially a claim that the challenge provided by -4 is rather negligible, thus I don't consider it "stupid". I just consider it "not intended gameplay".
If you say so. I’m not sure that canceling a quest and thus forfeiting the reward is the same as voluntarily never spending any skill points but just at a lower degree.  Canceling the quest and not getting the 4points isn’t the same as foregoing the 4 points and never spending them. You are still going to get the 4 points and spend them— just by other means. 

If TFP agreed, they surely would have disabled the starter quest for anything above normal difficulty?
That’s one assumption. Another is that they allow players to make the choice of doing the quest or canceling it using the provided button to do so. I could just as easily say that if they disagreed they surely by now would have included a no tutorial start where you still get 4 free points and they never have.  
 

I take the points and the compass marker, with my few thousand hours in the game; not because I need them, but because they're essentially trivial anyway. Removing either doesn't change anything, at worst it makes the run to your first trader take a couple minutes longer due to lack of cardio and horrible spawn luck.
Have you actually tried it or are you speaking from hypotheticals? I invite you to try a standard start and cancel the tutorial quest. It definitely increases the variability of your start. Sometimes it is trivial if you find the trader right away. But there have also been games where I didn’t find the trader for a few days. It’s not a huge challenge but it isn’t so trivial as you are making it out to be. If it were then more people would do it to avoid the tutorial. When you have people doing a tutorial quest they despise all to get 4 points and a trader beacon then you know it isn’t so trivial in their eyes. 

 
Canceling the quest and not getting the 4points isn’t the same as foregoing the 4 points and never spending them.
I ... honest to god, I have no idea how you see the two different. <Insert meme: They're the same picture>

1) Do the quest, leave the 4 skill points untouched.

2) Cancel the quest, leave the 4 points unearned.

3) Just toggle off the quest from tracking and never craft plant fiber clothes, leaving the points stuck in the incomplete quest.

All of these are simply the player choosing not to utilize 4 available skill points. That choice alone will practically never change a single action you take in the game. You clean the same POIs, you fight the same battles, you build the same base.

Now, if you include the trader marker into the mix, then yeah, there's a small difference if it happens to combine with terrible spawn luck. I don't pretend to know what the intent for spawning is, some RWG iterations have spawned you straight at the trader, most seem to have you spawn within shouting distance of a city, mostly with a trader attached. Only by horrible luck (as in, "very rarely") have I found myself in the middle of nowhere such that I've had to travel a lot to find the first trader. Usually there's at least a road to follow, which will lead me to one within the first day. High ground and maybe some nerdpoling will give good enough of a grasp of the surroundings if completely lost, even with the RWG iterations that forgot to make the roads. But even the worst case costs you a couple days of wandering in the wilderness; it's a neat change of pace, but overall a rather pointless experience. Your first week just has less days.

Another is that they allow players to make the choice of doing the quest or canceling it using the provided button to do so.
They intentionally allow the players to be "OP"? I guess we disagree on the meaning of "overpowered" as well then. For me, that means something "essentially broken". Simply "powerful" would be a version that isn't broken.

The "button provided" seems to be intended as more of a "changed my mind, I want another quest instead" -function, rather than a difficulty tuning one. And for EA phase a "nvm this buggy mess that doesn't spawn, I'll just get on with my life" -function. It's there because removing it for a specific quest would be extra work - and there's no real reason to disable it.

---

Hmm..

If you want to skip a quest hit the buttons provided to skip the quest.
Want to.

The claim I disagreed with was:

"The 4-point headstart and the trader beacon are designed for new players."

New players are just as able to disable the tutorial quest as the veterans are. If they want to.

The implementation does in no way indicate that you're "not supposed to" take advantage of it after certain experience. Claiming that that specific feature is "for newbies only" seems to stem from the fact that it happens to be a playstyle you prefer, and you see yourself as an experienced player, so, other experienced players must agree? Just a case of honest hubris?

Have you actually tried it or are you speaking from hypotheticals?
Yes I've tried it, and I'm also capable of logical thinking. Thinking back to my starts, especially lately, a large majority have been basically at a city, with a trader, with zero effect from having the marker. Other than mild annoyance at a cluttered world view. And in this iteration spawning in an actual middle of nowhere is just annoying with thirst/dysentery being what it is without POIs.

When you have people doing a tutorial quest they despise all to get 4 points and a trader beacon then you know it isn’t so trivial in their eyes. 
If a 2 minute quest at the start of a game is something one despises.. I can't help them. Complain, sure. Heh, some of those complaint posts take longer to write than the sum of the starter quests they've done thus far. But complaining is cathartic. Getting that 4 points at that cost is delicious. Pointless, but delicious.

 
I ... honest to god, I have no idea how you see the two different. <Insert meme: They're the same picture>

1) Do the quest, leave the 4 skill points untouched.

2) Cancel the quest, leave the 4 points unearned.


That's because you are setting up this false premise and acting like it is mine. Here is the real premise:

1) Do the quest, get 4 skill points as a reward and spend them.

2) Don't do the quest, get 4 skill points from playing normally and spend them.

That's it. I never advocated not spending skill points. I never claimed skill points were forever lost by canceling the quest because that is a false premise. They aren't lost. You are simply earning them through different means and absolutely I do want people to spend their points. Never did I ever advocate for just leaving any skill points untouched. That was all you bringing such an idea into the conversation and then taking it to the nth degree by saying never use any skillpoints at all.

Saying that canceling the quest is forever losing 4 skillpoints is like saying that you decided not to upgrade all the blocks in your base and decided to go mining instead so you must have lost those points you would have gotten by upgrading. Both activities result in skillpoints so the points not earned by upgrading are earned by mining instead. No points are irrevocably lost just because you chose a different activity.

All of these are simply the player choosing not to utilize 4 available skill points. That choice alone will practically never change a single action you take in the game. You clean the same POIs, you fight the same battles, you build the same base.


No. All of your examples are ridiculous caricatures of what I was saying. Beats me why you felt compelled to do so. You might see canceling the quest and having to find the first trader on your own as tedious and trivial and a meaningless annoyance but not everyone sees it that way. Not that it matters since it is purely an option that players can take if they wish. You keep doing the tutorial and I'll keep canceling it. No biggie.

Now, if you include the trader marker into the mix, then yeah, there's a small difference if it happens to combine with terrible spawn luck. I don't pretend to know what the intent for spawning is, some RWG iterations have spawned you straight at the trader, most seem to have you spawn within shouting distance of a city, mostly with a trader attached. Only by horrible luck (as in, "very rarely") have I found myself in the middle of nowhere such that I've had to travel a lot to find the first trader. Usually there's at least a road to follow, which will lead me to one within the first day. High ground and maybe some nerdpoling will give good enough of a grasp of the surroundings if completely lost, even with the RWG iterations that forgot to make the roads. But even the worst case costs you a couple days of wandering in the wilderness; it's a neat change of pace, but overall a rather pointless experience. Your first week just has less days.


I know you don't care for the changes introduced in A21 so maybe you've been mostly playing A20 but I've noticed a change in the spawning points and from my experience it is rare that I end up right in front of a trader or even a city in A21. Nerdpoling isn't something I do but that is another of my choices that you would probably label needlessly tedious. You call two days of searching for civilization a neat change of pace but overall a pointless experience. I call it a nice variation to the game start compared to the tutorial quest + beeline to the trader game loop that happens every single restart in exactly the same way if you go that route.

And I guess I would ask you for the sake of understanding where you're coming from what you believe the point is for playing the game? What makes a two-day slower start where hunger and thirst may become critical all pointless to you? What is your objective that makes starting the game by canceling the quest "Pointless"? For me, it syncs perfectly for why I play the game and what I want to get out of it.

They intentionally allow the players to be "OP"? I guess we disagree on the meaning of "overpowered" as well then. For me, that means something "essentially broken". Simply "powerful" would be a version that isn't broken.

The "button provided" seems to be intended as more of a "changed my mind, I want another quest instead" -function, rather than a difficulty tuning one. And for EA phase a "nvm this buggy mess that doesn't spawn, I'll just get on with my life" -function. It's there because removing it for a specific quest would be extra work - and there's no real reason to disable it.


Okay, I admit "OP" was too far. But you went too far on the "meaning" of the cancel quest button. It is not just an early access device to undo a mistake or avoid a glitched quest. Describing it that way helps your narrative which is why you are making up that story about the purpose of the cancel quest button. The button is provided to cancel any quest you don't want to do--including the tutorial quest. I know for a fact it was not added as simply an EA oopsie button.

The claim I disagreed with was:

"The 4-point headstart and the trader beacon are designed for new players."

New players are just as able to disable the tutorial quest as the veterans are. If they want to.

The implementation does in no way indicate that you're "not supposed to" take advantage of it after certain experience. Claiming that that specific feature is "for newbies only" seems to stem from the fact that it happens to be a playstyle you prefer, and you see yourself as an experienced player, so, other experienced players must agree? Just a case of honest hubris?


So all of this was because you didn't like me claiming that the 4-points and trader beacon are for new players? You took it personally that I might be calling you a noob since you think the 4-point headstart and trader beacon are delicious? At least we are at the root of the aggression. Well, let me apologize for the unintended message of that statement. It wasn't meant as a "noob insult" toward anyone who likes to get the 4 points and the trader beacon. When I said that those rewards were meant for new players I said it because they are the rewards of doing the tutorial quest. "Tutorial" as in a tool to teach the game to new players. It's actually what the name of the quest means: You are doing this quest to literally learn the basics of the game ie doing a tutorial. I promise that that is where my claim stems. It is purely based on the meaning of the word tutorial and that in most games and otherwise a tutorial is designed for new players to learn the basics. It just seemed to me to follow logically that the rewards for doing that learning exercise would also be for new players.  Experienced players would skip the tutorial in most cases where a tutorial was offered and if they skipped this game's tutorial they would also be starting the game from 0 skillpoints and no clear direction to the first trader.

I do prefer skipping the tutorial and believe the early game is better without the tutorial or its rewards and I wouldn't recommend brand new players to skip it while I do recommend experienced players to skip it but that's just sharing my own experience of fun like encouraging others to ride a rollercoaster that I liked. I'm really not stating that if you don't skip the tutorial you're not a true experienced player and I never said anyone must agree with me or they aren't experienced.

I agree that an experienced player can do the tutorial and take the rewards and a beginning player can cancel the turorial and forego the rewards. Neither of those cases negate the fact that the opening quest is a tutorial which by its very nature is something designed for new players which also means that the fruit of that same tree is also designed for new players.

Do the opening quest if you want.

Noob.

j/k

 
You're taking me as aggressive; I haven't tried to be. I gave up doing emotional caveats since the current day PC-policing went nuts, got a lil jaded - and thus I am just trying to stick to my points; I'm trying to be short, not hostile. "A little off" is the mildest form of "wrong" I could muster.

1) Do the quest, leave the 4 skill points untouched.

2) Cancel the quest, leave the 4 points unearned.


That's because you are setting up this false premise and acting like it is mine. Here is the real premise:


Canceling the quest and not getting the 4points isn’t the same as foregoing the 4 points and never spending them.
I'm acting like it's yours, because it IS yours.

I never advocated not spending skill points.
Indeed, instead you advocate for not earning them in the easiest way in the game, the thing the game asks you to do first in every session. This is a self-imposed challenge, just as leaving 4 points untouched would be.

I'm a mechanics player, I like minesweeper, I don't much enjoy CYOA-games - I like a good story, but stories are better told as movies, books, whatnot. Games, for me, are mechanical creations you learn to tinker with. The combination of good game and good story is often great, but with games, the mechanics are what matters to me. Leaving mechanics unused is poor utilization.

The starter quest points are There. To assume I would leave them unutilized is.. silly to me. Join a PvP server and guess how many experienced people leave them alone; you'll be correct.

Saying that canceling the quest is forever losing 4 skillpoints
For the "permanence" of the choice: The quest points are outside the normal level-up points in the sense that they don't slow down getting your next points, as they don't effect the XP required for the next point. Whatever measure you compare against, day, level, gamestage, trader state; you will always be 4 points short in the playthrough. Once you reach a soft cap for power (such as your main weapon at 5/5), the effect of the difference starts to diminish, but it will still be there until you've filled up your entire skill tree. If the missing points make you play slower, then you might even suffer a further handicap due to that.

Nerdpoling isn't something I do but that is another of my choices that you would probably label needlessly tedious.
For the "what patches am I playing"; I'm just waiting for A22. I played a few A21 games early on, but I cba looting another 1000 books. For nerdpoling, it's a minecraft game, the feature exists, you're supposed to be able to "build upwards". If they disable nerdpoling by, say, not being able to place blocks with feet of the ground, I'll happily build two poles, or a pole and a ladder to reach the same goal - if I need the information. I don't really utilize NP to get end loots or any of that, it's not fun, nor even really that powerful - early on the loot in any box sucks, and leveling up is the goal => the Quest Loop = 42.

No. All of your examples are ridiculous caricatures of what I was saying.
The only thing I was going for a "ridiculous caricature" with, was the "dig some stone and throw it away" -playthru. That was just to point out that not everything you CAN do is MEANT TO BE DONE. The "abandon quest" button is there, but I can't honestly imagine you're MEANT to start using it for a single specific quest. That's just horrible design.

You call two days of searching for civilization a neat change of pace but overall a pointless experience. I call it a nice variation to the game start compared to the tutorial quest + beeline to the trader game loop that happens every single restart in exactly the same way if you go that route.


the-same.jpeg

What makes a two-day slower start where hunger and thirst may become critical all pointless to you?
May. For suitably small values of "may". As in, it doesn't happen in 9/10 starts, they land into the quest loop within the first day. Pointless when it doesn't happen, and when it does, it's just a mild detour to loot a couple kitchens for water. If you're entirely out of POIs, I doubt that's a spawn that TFP would be happy with. Still rather pointless.

Describing it that way helps your narrative which is why you are making up that story about the purpose of the cancel quest button.
My narrative... :D Gaslighting much?

I'm describing the "abandon quest" button like it is used in every other game it exists in. I can't come up with a game where an "abandon quest" button is intended to be used as a difficulty modifier.. can you? Please do if you can.

I know for a fact it was not added as simply an EA oopsie button.
I didn't say it's just an EA oopsie, I said it's an oopsie. And an EA "bug resolver". But if you have some evidence to show that TFP has designed the button FOR dropping the tutorial quest and the associated skill points, well, you can't show it of course, NDA - but do tell them that the design sucks. You're free to sugar-coat it as much as you like, of course.

So all of this was because you didn't like me claiming that the 4-points and trader beacon are for new players?
Yup, that was the subject for my original claim. The discussion went wild from a simple disagreement on the apparent lack of a design intent.

You took it personally that I might be calling you a noob since you think the 4-point headstart and trader beacon are delicious?
Nope; you're free to call me a noob; that's also what I happen to think of myself. I haven't taken anything personally, I just felt there's something a little off about claiming that the starter quest is designed to be abandoned.

At least we are at the root of the aggression.
What aggression?

It's actually what the name of the quest means: You are doing this quest to literally learn the basics of the game ie doing a tutorial.
Well, then the rewards of the quest are OP, as they give an unfair advantage for veteran players who complete it. Which is why people do it even if they don't want to. Give a 10-stack of water and food bundle for newbies, and veterans might skip it, while the newbs would actually get something they might benefit from. Noobs will die just the same with +4 skill points, it's a rather pointless buff for them. Most of them will waste it on the rounding error that is Pain Tolerance anyway.

I think that paragraph basically covers the rest of your post; if it's "designed for newbs only" then the implementation just sucks.

Oh noes, I'm being called names on the interweps... Report! Ban! ... :)

 
If you don't want to use the 4 skill points you earn when doing the beginners quest (so the unfinished quest doesn't give you the willies) and if you are in a SP game just spend them in Charisma. That is absolutely useless in a SP game...unless you use the mod that makes it work in SP.

 
@theFlu

I think we just have completely different playstyles and goals in the game to be able to come to any resolution on any topic. Everything I enjoy about playing the game you view as faffing around, pointlessly annoying choices, and poor suboptimal choices. We both understand the playstyle of the other but fundamentally dislike it. That's fine. We just need to simply agree to disagree.

After my last post I started a new game on a new world and canceled the tutorial. I spawned next to a remnant house. I cleared it and then followed the pathway up a mountain to where a Ranger Overlook station stood. I cleared that and then standing on top of it I looked around and saw a flat area to the south that likely held a city. I headed in that direction and after about a km I did indeed see the city spread out before me. It took me the rest of the day to find the trader and I built a small tower across the street from it to spend the night. I also earned my first skillpoint as I finished upgrading the building blocks to wood blocks. That first day of gameplay created a great story in my mind as I played which is what I value. The fact that I was probably 4 skillpoints and a fetch quest behind where I would have been had I done the tutorial and gone straight to the trader with plenty of time to do a fetch quest didn't matter to me. In the grand scheme of things in a single player game it doesn't matter to me if I "win" by day 50 or by day 60. There is just no reason to try and play the mechanics of the game so optimally unless it is for its own sake of doing so as someone's point of playing-- which is what you shared is your preferred playstyle. This is why we hardly ever agree, I suppose.  Which is just fine. Its great that the game can handle such opposite playstyles.

Good talk with neither mind changed. :)

 
So I just did a health intervention, and forced myself to actually climb into bed for 8 hours, for the first time since I got the game, so if I can do that on a regular basis, many of my issues may resolve themselves.

Going forward with my plans, can anyone point me in the right direction to learn about the books in-game?  What I am specifically looking for is a way to plan a weekly play session, where we (my playing group) can run a game and pick one person to be specialized in one critical area.

For instance, if my friends and I do a weekly game, where we spawn, get together (made easy if I can do some experimentation on the spawn points), do the initial tutorial quest, and adventure to the trader, that should be a small enough amount of playing to then build an initial (RON) site near the trader, and allowing us to run a mission or two, as well as doing general looting at large.

Because party playing time is proving a very rare resource indeed for anyone who has ever had kids, or a life/job, I want to keep the scale limited, so the resulting thread can be made in a very small amount of additional time, and can cover lessons learned and the inevitable failures that took place, so next weeks thread can be an improvement.

The goal of these weekly threads will to be to figure out what is needed for running such things.  Where should I start posting a weekly thread at, and what would people want to see, so as to make first timers be encouraged to want to either play in one of my games, or even run some such thing on their own?

 
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So I just did a health intervention, and forced myself to actually climb into bed for 8 hours, for the first time since I got the game, so if I can do that on a regular basis, many of my issues my resolve themselves.


Yeah, don't live real life like game life. Sleeping is an implemented feature of real life...

Going forward with my plans, can anyone point me in the right direction to learn about the books in-game?  What I am specifically looking for is a way to plan a weekly play session, where we (my playing group) can run a game and pick one person to be specialized in one critical area.


If you read the perk descriptions they usually will mention which magazine is paired with it. You can also read magazine and book descriptions in the skills UI screen. Other than that the wiki might be up to date on all current books so you could check there.  In my cooperative games we have found the easiest is to bring all books and magazines to a common chest at the base so that the right person can read everything that pertains to what they are specializing in.

The goal of these weekly threads will to be to figure out what is needed for running such things.  Where should I start posting a weekly thread at, and what would people want to see, so as to make first timers be encouraged to want to either play in one of my games, or even run some such thing on their own?


Just here in general discussions would be fine. Good luck.

 
@Roland

I don't dislike your playstyle; at all. I've done plenty such playthrus and enjoyed them. One could argue the earlier alphas were by nature more of that chill exploratory style.

But I get where the misconception might come from: on the forum I advocate for the mechanics of the game to be the best they can, which will come across as elitist. But I think we even share an end goal: good mechanics serve good storytelling. Whether thru immersion in realistic zombie spawns or at the bare minimum staying out of the way of those "player crafted" stories (my issue with the water changes). Not to mention by just not "annoying the player away from the game" like Witcher 2 did to me, twice... never finished it due to clunky.

Here, if indeed the intended design is for players to start abandoning the tutorial at some point .. the implementation doesn't achieve that. If that's what TFP wants from the design, fine, I don't hate the idea - but it needs some forcing or at least encouragement to look like a proper mechanic. Atm it's like this VLDL -skit but without the force field:



👍

It's a good game, but enjoy it sparingly ... :)

 
Thanks folks!

I'm going to look into my current game, and document just where in the world (0,0) is, and then make a series of new game to test out what spawn points are being generated during game setup (for instance, are all games generated on the same map using exactly the same spawn points?  Or just a few, slightly different one?).  

I'll stop back in and post a pic or two from each game.

 
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